Ugh. I was such an idiot for thinking he was about to profess his love for me. Things like that didn’t happen to me. I wasn’t that girl. I was the good-time girl who was great for a laugh and someone you could be friends with, but I wasn’t the girl men like Lucas fell for. I knew that—I’d known it all along—and yet I’d still let myself fall for him. But no more. I had my research to do and then I was gone. We could be Facebook friends and eventually this feeling of heartbreak would fade.
That’s what I hoped would happen, anyway.
Lucas
I tossed my pen on the desk and ran my hands through my hair as I exhaled with frustration. This morning with Frankie had not gone well, nor had the meeting I’d had with the king afterward. I was unfocused and distracted and I knew I was wasting everyone’s time, but I just couldn’t get all my thoughts together, not with the way Frankie and I had left things.
I felt like a fool. Frankie seemed to deliberately misunderstand what I was trying to say. It was obviously her way of letting me down gently without actually letting me make a complete idiot of myself.
She’d brushed off the kiss as if it were nothing. It wasn’t nothing to me and I really wasn’t that drunk. I was maybe a little tipsy, just enough so that my usual anxiety took a backseat. I kissed her because I wanted to and I thought it was good…the best damned kiss I’d ever had, if I were honest, and Frankie refused to even acknowledge it.
And what did I do? I did what I always did and backed off. I didn’t push. I didn’t even chase after her when she fled from me, leaving me standing on the beach watching my future run away with her.
But what choice did I have? She obviously didn’t want me. Not like that, at least. No, Frankie wanted me as her friend, just like I’d been for years. It wasn’t her fault my feelings changed. It wasn’t her fault I wanted more, and so I let her go because having Frankie in my life as a friend was better than not having her in my life at all…right?
I growled low in my throat and tugged at my hair once more. I didn’t know if that was true anymore. I didn’t know if having Frankie in my life—so close and yet so far away—was such a good thing for my mental health or for my future prospects. How could I get over her if she was always in the background? How could I move on if I was always haunted by my feelings for her? Maybe it would be better if we were no longer friends. The thought made my gut clench and my heart ache, but what was the alternative? Pining after her for the rest of my life?
“Little Lord Lucas,” Dorian smirked as he stepped into my office and plopped himself down in the chair across from me.
“What do you want?” I growled. The absolute last thing I needed right now was Dorian and his crap.
He held his hands up in mock surrender. “Whoa. Who stole your lunch money?”
I frowned at him. “Probably you,” I spat.
He laughed. “As much as I would love to take credit for your foul temper, I don’t think I’m the one you’re mad at. Trouble in paradise?”
“Shut up.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, smirking once more.
I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest, aiming a glare at Dorian. For some reason he was the one person who got under my skin enough that I had no qualms about standing up to him.
“Did you come in here for a particular reason, or are you just trying to make my day even worse than it already is?”
Dorian sighed and then sat forward in his chair. “I came to talk about the distillery.”
“What about it?”
“I want to help,” he said, sitting back and adjusting the cuffs of his suit, not looking at me.
I snorted. “You want to help? Right.”
He looked up at me and narrowed his eyes. “I know we might not have gotten off to the best start,” he said, no smirk in evidence. “But I want this idea of yours to work and I can help you make it work.”
“So you can take the credit for its success?” I asked. I couldn’t help but be cynical about Dorian’s offer of help. The man did nothing unless he benefited from it in some way.
He smiled that infuriating smirk. “Well, a little bit of goodwill thrown my way from the king wouldn’t hurt. Besides, if we don’t do something soon, this country will go backwards. What you are proposing has some merit and between the two of us I know we can pull it off.”
“You mean, without your help it has no chance of succeeding.”
He beamed a blinding smile in my direction. “Well, now, see? You can admit there’s an advantage of letting me help you.” I frowned and may have growled a little and he sighed. “Look, you have to admit you lack certain…skills I can help with. Am I right?”
I exhaled roughly. “I suppose,” I admitted grudgingly.
“While I’ll admit you are good enough with figures, you do lack a certain charm needed to convince the king and the rest of parliament to agree to your proposal. That is where I come in. I can schmooze the decision makers while you do all the background rigamarole.”
As much as it burned to agree with Dorian on anything, he was right. While I may be able to snap and growl at him behind closed doors, there was no way I could hold my own with the members of parliament.
“Fine,” I snapped. “I’ll let you help.”
He grinned wolfishly at me. “Excellent. Now, I also came here to talk to you about another, more delicate matter.”
I raised my eyebrows in question.
“I noticed some…shall we say, tension, between you and the lovely Francesca…?”
“Leave Frankie out of this,” I growled.
He smiled condescendingly at me. “I wish I could,” he said. “But I think Miss Davenport is a very important part of this entire plan.”
“I’m sorry?” I asked, confused.
“She is going to be your wife, isn’t she?”
I rolled my lips together. She would not be my wife as much as I wanted her to be. In just a few short weeks, Frankie would go home. We still hadn’t decided how that would even happen, but happen it would and I needed to find a way to explain it to the king…and my parents.
“She will be your wife?” Dorian asked again when I didn’t answer.
“That’s generally what getting engaged leads to,” I answered.
“Hmm,” Dorian hummed, examining my face a little too closely for my liking. “Well, as your wife, Francesca will need to be involved in this as much as you and me. In fact, she should probably start attending planning meetings and she can come with me to the parliamentary—”
“No,” I blurted, cutting him off.
He frowned at me. “Francesca is exactly the person we need to help push this thing through.”
“She can’t,” I said, looking down at the work in front of me and pretending to take an interest in the columns and rows of the spreadsheet. “She has her research.”
“Which is exactly why I think she would be an asset. She’s researching how a country like Kalopsia is getting back on its feet and reestablishing trade and industry and the economy. Her insights would be invaluable.”
“I said, she can’t.”