The Princess and the Player

She studied him for a long second, taking in the remarkable resemblance, until he cleared his throat and she found a dose of manners somewhere in her consciousness. “I’m so sorry! Hello. You must be Will.”

“I don’t know if I must be, but I am Will,” he agreed.

Was that a joke? Trying not to be too obtrusive, she evaluated his expression but it was blank. With James, she never had to wonder. “I’m Bella, by the way.”

“I assumed so. I have your picture.”

Of course he did. And this was her house. Wasn’t this fun? “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes, if you are.” With a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, he held out a hand toward his car, and waited until she left the house to follow her so he could help her into the passenger seat.

Will climbed into the driver’s seat and buckled his seat belt carefully before starting the car, which guilted Bella into fastening hers as well. Seat belts. In an itty-bitty place like Alma, where nothing happened.

She sighed and pasted on a bright smile. “Safety first.”

Usually she trotted that line out during a condom discussion. She almost cracked a joke along those lines, but something told her Will might not appreciate the parallel. Sinking down in her seat, she scouted for a topic of discussion. They were supposed to be seeing how they meshed, right?

Will must have had a similar thought process because he spoke first. “Thanks for arranging this, Bella. I’m chuffed to show you around Alma, but I’d like to know what you might be interested in seeing. Anything jump out at you? I’m at your command.”

Did he mean that in the double-entendre way? A provocative rejoinder sprang to her lips that she’d have let fly if she’d been in the car with James. Should she flirt with Will, the way she normally did on a date, or would that just lead to him taking her up on it, when she wasn’t even sure she wanted him to? Maybe she should just be herself, but what if Will hated her immediately? Would her father lay another guilt trip on her?

All of this second-guessing was making her nuts. She wasn’t with James, and everyone—including James—wanted her to make nice with the proper Rowling. Yeah, she’d looked up James last night, finding far more information about him than she’d expected, and little of it would fit the definition of the word proper.

No one, not even James, had thought it relevant to mention the man was a professional soccer—football in Europe, apparently—player. Since he appeared to have quite a bit of fame, maybe he’d assumed she already knew. Regardless, bad press followed James around like it did her. No wonder her father had nearly had a heart attack when she mentioned James’s name. He was the very opposite of the proper brother.

Proper pretty much covered Will’s personality. Five minutes in, and judging by the stiff set of Will’s shoulders, he wasn’t as much of a fun time as his brother. Hopefully, she’d judged wrong and would soon discover otherwise.

“Thanks,” she responded. “I’ve only seen the coast and a bit of Del Sol. Why don’t you pick, since this is your home?”

“No problem.” He shot her a small but pained smile, cluing her in that this whole set up might be as difficult for him as it was for her.

She should give him a break. “So, Will. How long have you lived in Alma?”

An innocuous enough subject, hopefully, and given the brothers’ accents, it was a safe bet they hadn’t been born here.

“Since I was seven. My father moved us here from England.”

“Oh, that must have been quite an adventure.”

She’d lived in Miami her whole life and living someplace new did have appeal for that reason alone. If only this arranged marriage business hadn’t soured the experience of coming to Alma, she’d be having a blast. And that was why she still didn’t think of it as her home... She still reserved the right to go back to Miami and play aunt instead of princess if the royal pressure grew too great.

Though with Tía Isabella’s arrival in Alma, going home held much less appeal.

Will’s face remained expressionless, but he tapped his pinky on the steering wheel in a staccato rhythm as he drove north out of Playa Del Onda along the coastal road that circled the main island.

“The move was difficult,” he said shortly and paused so long, she wasn’t sure he planned to continue. But then he said, “My mother had just died.”

“I’m sorry,” Bella murmured. “That would be difficult on young boys.”

All at once, she realized this was James’s history as well as Will’s. And now she was absurdly interested in learning more. The gorgeous deep blues of the bay unfurled as far as the eye could see on her right but she ignored the spectacular view in favor of watching Will.