Page 7 of The Spare

‘I can only imagine.’

Xav said she had let rip at him yesterday, said he’d never seen that side of her. And quite right, too. I’m one hundred percent sure my brother made the right decision, but poor old Slinks is the shittiest kind of collateral damage. It has to be said: she smells incredible. As I hold her, I marvel at the fact that, if my dastardly plan goes well, this woman will be my wife. We’ll share everything: not just the spotlight, where I know we’ll excel, but a million private, unseen moments, too.

We’ll share our entire lives.

Now that is a head-fuck of such epic proportions that my only real option is to shove it firmly away and focus on the novelty factor of all this—the fact that it’ll be a seriously grand adventure.

There’s no other way to deal with it, really. I have never had concrete plans to marry, but then I’ve never had plans to inherit a title, either. I’ve always assumed that, sometime in my thirties, I’d either fall in love or submit to familial pressure (or both) and marry some poor girl. That said, I could see myself not marrying either. Being the fun uncle, the unencumbered bachelor, and, further down the line, the silver fox partying in St Tropez with a string of models half his age.

A British Leo, if you like.

Whether I’ve thought this through sufficiently is not a question. I categorically haven’t. I’m basically offering Selena a lifetime contract without having read a single word of the fine print myself. Or maybe this analogy is more on point: I’m letting some random hook me up to a bungee harness without knowing if they even have health and safety regulations.

They should probably put a giant health and safety warning on the entire institution of marriage, come to think of it.

But it’s the only way I can imagine doing this.

Act first, think later.

My father needs a successor.

My brother needs my help.

His new dependents need it even more.

Slinky needs to be saved from the unthinkable public humiliation she will suffer at my family’s hands.

And every one of those problems has the same solution. Marry her. Ergo, I just need to do what I need to do and work through the consequences when the job is done.

Besides, she’s unspeakably hot. Like, smoking.

Just how bad can it be?

‘Your bloody brother,’ Selena is saying against my pec. ‘I could kill him with my bare hands.’

‘I bet you could.’ The first rule of marriage, I’m assuming, is not to get caught zoning out on your wife. I rub her back in circles. ‘I’m so sorry this has happened to you.’

She pulls back, her face flushed. Now that she’s up close, I can see the dark shadows beneath her immaculate eye makeup, the reddened rims of her eyes. ‘Do you know her?’

‘Who, Ivy?’

A terse nod.

‘Yeah.’ Now is probably not the time for me to admit that I introduced them. More than introduced them: I bussed a load of sex workers from Alchemy up to Xav’s thirtieth birthday party and offered Ivy a five-grand bonus if she’d fuck the birthday boy.

Nope.

That’s definitely unnecessary context at this particular moment.

And I very definitely won’t allow myself to consider that I’ll have to give up my Alchemy membership if Slinky accepts my proposal.

‘She’s a good girl,’ I say instead. ‘I know that’s not what you want to hear, but she is, and she’s been through a seriously rough time.’

The housekeeper announces herself with a knock and sets down a tray with various paraphernalia on the coffee table in front of the fire.

‘That’s not exactly my problem,’ Selena says when she’s gone, shutting the door behind her.

‘No, it’s not, but it is your problem that you and Xav would have been an utter fucking disaster together. Lord, I dread to think how awkward the two of you would have been.’