Billionaire's Wife On Paper / Their Royal Wedding Bargain. Michelle Conder
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past. ‘Please sit down and have dinner. I’m getting a crick in my neck looking up at you.’
Logan strode over to the table and pulled out the chair and sat down, his knees bumping hers under the table. She shifted back a bit, trying to ignore the rush of heat that shot through her legs and straight to her core. Why couldn’t she be immune to him? Why was she so acutely aware of him?
They began eating in a stiff silence, only the clanging discordant music of cutlery scraping against crockery puncturing the air.
Layla drank her glass of champagne and Logan refilled her glass as if he were a robotic waiter, but she noticed he didn’t drink from his. His untouched champagne glass stood in front of his place setting, releasing bubble after bubble in a series of tiny vertical towers.
She picked up her glass with her left hand and the diamonds on the ring winked at her under the chandelier light coming from overhead. Something was niggling at the back of her brain… Why hadn’t Logan given Susannah his grandmother’s ring? Layla remembered Susannah’s engagement ring as being ultra-modern and flashy. It was a look-at-me ring that was not to Layla’s taste at all. ‘Logan?’
He looked up from the mechanical task of relaying food from his plate to his mouth. ‘What?’ His curt tone wasn’t exactly encouraging, neither was the heavy frown between his eyes.
Layla toyed with the ring on her left hand. ‘Why didn’t you give your grandmother’s ring to Susannah when you became engaged?’
Something passed through his gaze with camera shutter speed. ‘She didn’t like vintage jewellery.’ He put his cutlery down and shifted his water glass an infinitesimal distance. ‘I didn’t take it personally. I was happy to buy her what she wanted.’ He picked up his cutlery again and stabbed a piece of parsnip as if it had personally offended him.
Layla waited until he had finished his mouthful before asking, ‘How are her parents and siblings coping? Do you hear from them or contact them yourself?’
A shadow moved across his face like clouds scudding across a troubled autumn sky. ‘I used to call them or drop in on them in the early days but not lately. It only upset them to be reminded.’ He put his cutlery down in the finished position on his plate and rested his arms on the table, his frown a roadmap of lines.
Layla reached for his forearm and gave it a gentle squeeze. ‘I can only imagine how awful it must have been to have come home and found her…like that…’
He pulled his arm away and sat stiffly upright in his chair, his expression as blank as the white tablecloth. But after a long moment he relaxed his posture as if something tightly bound within him had loosened slightly. ‘When someone takes their own life it’s not like any other death.’ His gaze was haunted, his tone bleak. ‘The guilt, the what-ifs, the if-onlys, the what-could-I-have-done-to-prevent-this are unbearable.’ He expelled a heavy breath and continued, ‘I blame myself for not seeing the signs.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself but I understand how you and most people do,’ Layla said. ‘But I read somewhere that sixteen percent of suicides are completely unheralded. It’s a snap in the moment decision borne out of some hidden anguish.’
Logan picked up his champagne and drained it in a couple of swallows, placing the glass back down with a savage little thump. ‘There were signs but I ignored them.’ He waited a beat or two before continuing in a ragged voice. ‘She had an eating disorder. Bulimia. I don’t know how I missed it.’ His mouth twisted in a grimace and his tone became tortured with self-loathing. ‘How can you live with someone for months and not know that about her?’
Layla reached for his hand but this time he didn’t pull away. ‘Shame makes people hide lots of stuff. Bulimia is mostly a secret disease and much harder to pick up on than anorexia, where the physical effect is so obvious.’
Logan looked down at their joined hands and turned his over to anchor hers to the table. He began to absently stroke the back of her hand with his thumb, the caress only light, lazy almost, but no less magical. Nerves she hadn’t known she possessed reacted as if touched by a live electrode, zinging, singing, tingling.
He lifted his gaze to hers and something toppled over in her stomach. His thumb stilled on the back of her hand but he didn’t release her. His gaze moved over her face as if he were memorising her features one by one. When he got to her mouth she couldn’t stop herself from sweeping the tip of her tongue across her lips—it was an impulse she had zero control over.
Logan gave her hand another quick squeeze in time with the on-off movement of his lips, in a blink-and-you’d-miss-it smile. A smile that didn’t reach high enough to take the shadows out of his eyes. But then he let go of her hand and sat back in his chair and picked up his water glass and drained it, placing it back down with a definitive thud.
‘Finish your dinner. We have a busy day tomorrow meeting with the lawyer to organise the legal paperwork. Rather than drive, I’ve taken the liberty of organising a flight from Inverness to Edinburgh.’ His business-like tone and abrupt change of subject was disquieting and left her with far too many questions unanswered.
‘Okay…’ Layla wanted to know more about his relationship with Susannah. She had idolised them as a couple, seeing them as a match made in heaven. Feeling jealous of the love they’d shared, hoping one day someone would love her in the same way. But finding out their relationship might not have been as open and wonderful as she had imagined made her understand why Logan was so reluctant to commit to anyone else.
But Layla had personal experience of the tricky question of how well could you know anyone, even someone you had lived with for years. Didn’t her childhood circumstances prove that? Her father had always been a difficult man; prone to angry outbursts, regular violence—especially when on drugs or drunk, but who would have thought he was capable of the crime he’d eventually committed—driving into a tree at full speed to kill the family he’d purported to love?
‘The legal stuff…’ She chewed her lip for a moment, desperate to get her mind off the accident that had killed her mother and changed her own life for ever. ‘You mean a pre-nup, right?’
‘Pre-nups are commonplace these days. Please don’t be offended by my desire for one. You have your own assets to consider—your cleaning business, for example.’
Layla gave a self-deprecating snort and picked up her champagne glass. ‘Yeah, right. My assets hardly compare to yours. You have offices all over the UK and Europe. My office is basically on my phone. I decided to give up my Edinburgh office after your grandfather died to come back and help Aunt Elsie. It seemed easier to work from here until everything is settled with the estate.’
‘I’m sorry you’ve been so inconvenienced,’ he said, looking at her with a concerned frown. ‘I had no idea you’d given up your office.’
She waved a dismissive hand. ‘I was glad to come home. Flossie was missing your grandfather and Aunt Elsie was finding it hard to do everything on her own.’
‘Your business is doing well, though, isn’t it? You’re running at a decent profit?’
Layla was not going to admit to him or to anyone how close to the wind she sailed at times with her business. Failure was not an option. A nightmare that haunted her, yes, but not an option. Failure would prove she was nothing but a product of her chaotic childhood—a child of addicts. Her parents had had no ambition beyond the goal of sourcing enough alcohol and drugs for their next binge.
Owning her own cleaning business gave Layla power and control, and God alone knew how little of that she’d had in her childhood. ‘I do okay.’ She put her glass back down again.
‘How okay?’ His gaze was as direct as a laser pointer.
Layla shifted in her seat and lowered her eyes to the remains of her meal on her plate. ‘It’s not always easy to get reliable workers. It takes time to build up trust, to know they’re always going to do the right thing by me and the people I get them to clean for.’ She met his gaze and continued. ‘They’re