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Harper held in a nervous twitter of laughter at his joke. “Oh.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, anyway,” he added. “I’m sure it’s nice and all, but I’m not about to hurt myself while I stare at you.”
Harper didn’t know if she should be relieved or offended. He’d told her before that she was beautiful, but at the moment he seemed as though he couldn’t care less about catching a glimpse of her naked body. Maybe he was using reverse psychology on her, she couldn’t be sure, but she had the sudden urge to take off her clothes and prove him wrong.
Against her better judgment, she went with the surge of bravery and decided to put him to the test. “That’s good to know,” she said. She set her pajamas on the edge of the bed and pulled her blouse up over her head. She paid no attention to Sebastian as she straightened the straps of her cream-satin bra and unzipped her pencil skirt. She let it pool to her ankles, bending slowly to pick it up off the floor and to give him all the time he might need to see her cream thong and firm ass. She’d spent a lot of hours in the gym working on that butt and he damn well better be impressed by it.
She wanted to turn and look at him. For some reason, she wanted to see naked desire and need in his eyes. She knew it was there—she could practically feel his gaze on her body. But she didn’t dare look at him. She wasn’t sure what she would do if she found what she was looking for. Would she act on it? Ignore it? As it was, they would both spend tonight aching for something they couldn’t have.
Harper decided not to turn in Sebastian’s direction. It was enough to know that he hadn’t moved from his spot since she’d started undressing. She forced herself to step into the plaid pajama pants. She unbuttoned the flannel top and readied it to put on before reaching back to unfasten her bra. Before she could slip it from her shoulders, she caught a blur of movement from the corner of her eye and a moment later the bathroom door shut hard. The shower came on not long after that.
So much for being comfortable around each other and getting it out of their system, she thought. Harper continued to put on her pajamas with a grin.
* * *
It was only the first day and she could already tell this was going to be a miserably boring trip.
It was not at all what she had envisioned when they’d been invited to the glamorous overseas wedding of Violet Niarchos and Aidan Murphy. Yes, sure, they’d flown on a snazzy chartered plane and were sleeping in a private Irish castle, but watching the Queen of England snore into her teacup would be more exciting than hanging around this rotting pile of bricks with a bunch of blowhard billionaires.
She’d heard the wedding coordinator talking to her assistant on the plane about the week’s itinerary. It sounded like one boring event after another with no end in sight. The week promised “highlights” like a round of golf for the gentlemen, a tea party for the ladies and shopping excursions into the sleepy village by the sea.
Couldn’t they have at le
ast stayed in Dublin for a night? Every person who walked past her in the hallway was worth a bloody fortune and yet hadn’t the slightest clue how to have any fun with their money.
If not for the little blackmail scheme she was running, the whole trip would be a waste of her time. So far, even that had proven fruitless as far as money went, but it had been something to do. Watching Harper squirm under the pressure of blackmail was nice, but it wasn’t what she really wanted.
That spoiled little princess needed to shut up and pay up. She could afford it. It was one tiny fraction of the fortune she was set to inherit from her dear old grandfather. Harper hadn’t worked for or earned that money. It was to be dropped in her lap just because she’d been born into a family that handed down multimillion-dollar trust funds just as easily as other people passed hazel eyes and freckles down to their children.
She might not have all the money now, but she would have it soon. In the meantime, Harper could easily get her hands on it. She could borrow it from one of her rich friends, her brother...even her new boyfriend was loaded. Basically anyone on that flight could hand over the cash without blinking. Harper just needed the right motivation to ask.
Harper didn’t deserve twenty-eight million dollars. She didn’t even deserve the twenty-seven million, nine hundred thousand that would be left after she paid the blackmail.
She deserved it. She needed it.
And she was going to get it before the week was up.
* * *
That was the longest night of Sebastian’s life.
As it was, he’d stayed in the bathroom far longer than was necessary. After he’d showered and tried to take the edge off, he’d meticulously brushed and flossed his teeth, rinsed with mouthwash, washed his face...anything and everything he could do to kill time and wipe the image of Harper’s near naked body from his mind.
She might as well have been naked. That tantalizing little thong left almost nothing to the imagination and with the creamy color that nearly matched her skin, the rest of it just blended away. He’d tried to play it cool. Act like the mature adult he thought he was when they’d started this little game. He’d gritted his teeth, tried to think of the most un-arousing things he could, and even closed his eyes for a moment or two. But he hadn’t been able to keep his gaze away for long. When she’d moved to take her bra off, though, he’d known he’d had to go.
It was that or... No. That hadn’t been an option.
Theirs was a fake relationship. Despite all the handholding, embraces and canoodling they did in public, it was all fake. They weren’t in love. They hardly knew one another. When he’d signed up for this, he’d thought it wouldn’t be that hard to pretend to be Harper’s lover. Now he wanted it for real so badly he could hardly draw in the scent of her perfume without gaining an erection.
By the time he’d come out of the bathroom, almost all the lights were out and Harper had been in bed. She’d been lying on her side with her back to him, so he’d been able to get into bed, turn off the nearby lamp and go to sleep without having to face her again.
At least that had been the idea. Instead he’d spent most of the night tossing and turning. He’d felt anxious. Squirmy. Filled with nervous energy that he couldn’t shake. He should have been exhausted after staying up all day to adjust to the time change, but it hadn’t mattered. All Sebastian’s body cared about was the warm, soft female lying mere inches from him.
He remembered seeing the light of dawn through the curtains right around the time he was finally able to doze off. The next thing he heard was the shower running. When Harper emerged from the bathroom—fully dressed, thank goodness—she sat in the chair and rifled through the welcome bag they’d received the night before.
“What’s on the agenda today?” he muttered into his pillow with a gravelly, sleepy voice.
“Today they’ve chartered a bus into the nearby town of Sligo if anyone wants to go shop or sightsee. It leaves at ten, after breakfast is done.”
