Arrabella
Arrabella has managed to coax Patrick into the privacy of their suite, but the instant Roshaan shuts the door and they’re alone, Patrick turns on her.
“You fucking lied to me. Do you know how that makes me feel? How betrayed?” He flings his arms wide, gesturing to the expanse of the suite. “This cruise, this wholewe need time togetherwas a fraud, and you’ve been plotting it for months. And the romantic nights in Italy—your loving behavior? Was the sex just a fucking lure, too? Fuck.”
He drags a hand over his hair, pulsing with visible rage, the magnificence of their surroundings completely lost on him.
Arrabella has never seen her tall, thin, gentle Patrick show any hint of violence. He’s her “milquetoast” fiancé—as his father called him last Christmas. Secretly she’d agreed with Angus. Patrick definedmilquetoast. But now, suddenly, she isn’t sure what he might be capable of.
Getting him into the suite was a small win. Now her goal is to keep things from escalating. To bring him down, calm him. Make him agree to stay.
But she’s terrified of making a wrong step, saying something that could inflame him further. If Patrick walks now, she knows she’ll lose him for good. And with him will go her chance at becoming the power wife of a media mogul with a global empire at their feet. What then?
She still has her looks, her sex appeal. She’d still have marketable skills, but she’s thirty-nine with one disastrous marriage already under her belt, plus there was the public humiliation that came with that.
She’d honestly thought her ex, Hugh, was the one. She still wishes he had been. No matter his fuckups, Hugh continues to hold sexual power over her. Arrabellastillfinds the erotic bastard mesmerizing. Shestillcan’t really, fully quit him.
She was in her twenties when she met the wildly charismatic Lord Hugh Pembroke—a well-born barrister with political aspirations and a seriously healthy trust fund. They married a year later, dividing time between Belgravia and the Pembroke family’s Beechwood Lodge in the Cotswolds. It was perfect.
Until it wasn’t.
Hugh turned out to be just like her father—a serial womanizer with gambling, alcohol, and cocaine addictions. And like her father, he lost everything they owned. Arrabella was toppled from her London society pedestal and became trashy tabloid gossip fodder. She resolved never, ever to repeat the same mistake.
Patrick McGregor seemed a safe target. Not terribly handsome, yet robustly wealthy and well connected. Easy, even—he’d been instantly vulnerable to Arrabella’s calculated seduction. Soon she was back on the high-society guest lists, and she has zero intention of losing it all again. A woman can start over only so many times.
“Patrick,” she says gently, “shall I fix us a drink?” She glances at the sparkling wine in the ice bucket. Too celebratory. Wrong move. “A Negroni?” she suggests. Strong enough to take the edge off them both.
“I don’t want a drink. And I don’t want Lillith’s money.” He points his finger at her. “And I’m not challenging my father’s will. If you thought forcing me and Lillith to—”
“It’s not about her money,” she cuts in carefully, taking two glasses from the bar. “At least, not all of it. Because part of that inheritance is actually yours—always was. Your father was irrational over Christmas when he cut you out. His cognition was slipping. You saw it. We all did.” She drops ice cubes into the glasses. “You know that he would’ve written you back into his will. He did it, what—three times before? Cuttingyou out before relenting and writing you back in? It was one of his sick power games. He was a difficult man, Patrick, but youarehis son.”
She pours gin, vermouth, adds Campari. Stirs.
“His dying so suddenly before he could set things right—” She allows emotion to thicken her voice. “It was weird, Patrick. The timing was weird.”
“He was ninety-two.”
“And in apparent robust health. A heart doesn’t just stop.” She carries the drinks over, hands him a glass.
He takes a sip. Another small win. Relief eases into her as she drinks, too.
“The postmortem showed nothing suspicious, Arra.”
His use of her nickname shows a chink in his armor—another tiny win. She allows silence to settle, pacing herself. She becomes conscious of the coolness in the air-conditioned suite, the soft vibration of the ship’s engines as they sail toward Crete. If she can relax him enough, she’ll have the rest of the night to work on him before theOrchiddocks at Souda in the morning.
“The toxicology showed digitalis,” she says gently.
“Cause of death was cardiac arrhythmia,” Patrick says. “Yes, with contributing digoxin toxicity, but you heard Lillith and his doc. My father had chronic heart disease he didn’t want anyone to know about. He was on medication—the digitalis glycoside levels were within therapeutic range, as would be expected.” His voice cracks. He turns to the window, drinks deeply.
Arrabella feels a clutch of emotion. Patrick might be forty-five, but inside he’s still a boy craving his father’s love—something Angus perpetually dangled just out of reach, always demanding Patrick be bolder, brasher, more “manly,” more deserving of his affection. The words that Angus fired at Patrick like bullets across the Christmas lunch table sift into her mind.
You’ll never be a real businessman. Never a true McGregor. Too goddamn woke. Need to fucking grow some balls, man.
The row arose after Patrick’s failure to seal a takeover bid. Angus was livid. Patrick argued that he’d allowed the deal to collapse for ethical reasons—staff would have been laid off without compensation. It would’ve brought legal challenges, bad press. It was not the branding he wanted.
His father exploded and called Patrickmilquetoastand ayellow-bellied Caspar the coward, then stormed off to his study. Patrick followed, shouting. Behind closed doors there was more loud yelling, glass breaking, then sudden dead silence. Whatever Angus said to Patrick in there, it crushed him. He came out of that study changed. He gave up fighting. He seemed to curl inward, and away from her, too.
Patrick finally turns to face her.
