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The scenario he planned where he delicately broke the news to Bre no longer existed, and her frantic messages made it clear the idea frightened her. Henry remembered how she mentioned her tendency to run when situations became difficult, so he knew he needed to tread lightly. Which is why he was amazed at the amount of prep he saw surrounding their upcoming nuptials when he walked into her office.
“Your Grace!” Matthew yelled as he jumped out of his seat to greet him. Bre remained seated, the expression on her face indicating Henry could expect to catch hell the second they were alone.
“Mr. Nash, nice to see you again,” he told the older man. Even in his frustration, Henry remembered his manners. “Do you mind if I steal Bre for the remainder of the day?” he questioned politely though he knew there would be no qualms.
Looking over at Bre, he half expected her to put up a fight, but her desire to talk to him won out as she grabbed her bag and made her way out the door not greeting him or saying goodbye to Matthew.
“Are you hungry?” he asked Bre as he directed her towards the private back patio of the house. “The kitchen staff made a picnic for us,” he told her. He’d hope something romantic might soften her up.
She remained tight-lipped as she stormed towards the patio. Her shoes against the hardwood floor the only sound in the otherwise quiet house.
“Bre,” he pleaded, wishing she would open up to him. He was not used to caring about a woman’s emotions, so he was unsure of what to say in this particular situation.
She whirled around once they were outside. Her auburn hair wild around her face and her green eyes blazing. Henry wanted nothing more than to throw her up against the wall and fuck her compliant but refrained from partaking in his baser needs. “I cannot believe you told your mother we are engaged,” she screamed, throwing her hands in the air.
“I’m aware it looks bad,” Henry told her, looking around worried that someone might be listening in on them.
“Bad!” she screamed out again. Her voice rang against the massive stone furthering Henry’s concern of someone overhearing them.
“Keep your voice down,” he told her firmly.
She glared in response. “Do not order me around right now,” she ground out. She looked nearly ready to stomp her foot like a toddler. Henry might have found her annoyance endearing in other circumstances. “ You have absolutely no right. How in the hell could you do this? And worse, how could you let your mother spring this one me?”
Henry was at a loss for words. He’d experienced the ire of plenty of women in the past, and ninety-percent of the time he deserved their screaming, but he’d rarely cared. He cared now.
“Answer me!” Bre yelled once more growing more ferocious as Henry remained calm.
“I told you this morning I’d handle the situation,” he told her unsure of what else to say. Sure, he could confide to Bre that his mother pissed him off, and he’d said the first thing he could to shut her up, but as the seconds ticked by, he became more and more unsure of that answer. Did some part of him want to trap Bre? He had no intention of marrying, but even a fake engagement would settle the uncertainty that seemed to linger between them.
“When I said to handle the situation, I didn’t mean lie,” Bre said, throwing her hands up in frustration.
“I didn’t lie, per se,” Henry told her. He spent most of the day contemplating how he might make his fake engagement to Bre real; now, he simply needed to execute his plan. With her on board, Henry knew he could have everything he wanted.
“We aren’t engaged last time I checked,” she yelled. “ In fact, I’m not even certain if we are dating, so yes, you lied.”
“We could be engaged,” Henry told her evenly doing everything to appear calm and collected amid Bre’s stormy behavior. He wanted her obedience, but fucking her into submission might not work this time. He needed to approach her as one might a frightened animal. ‘She’s just overwhelmed’ he told himself.
“You’ve lost your mind,” Bre countered pacing back and form, her heels clanking against the stone patio. “Apparently, sex makes you crazy. I’ll keep that in mind,” she rambled on her panic increasing.
Henry needed to control the situation before she spiraled into the abyss. “Listen to me,” he told her, taking her soft, delicate hands in his own. “Think of the benefits of our engagement,” Bre opened her mother to interrupt, but he quietly shushed her, “We can explore whatever this is while also repairing my image. Being engaged to you, might help me to keep my seat in Parliament, and in turn, we can be together, no tabloids, no parental disapproval, no hassle.”
That was perhaps the worst proposal Henry’d ever heard and the least effective way to get Bre to agree.
“And in the process of you getting everything you want, my life ends up in shambles. What happens to me when you repair your image and then decide to go off and do the next thing? I’m not part of this world Henry, and I’m not going to marry a man I barely know, for status and power, so that he can go off and screw whoever he wants when he finally gets bored.”
Henry wasn’t sure how to respond. He didn’t want to spook Bre with talks of love, nor did he want to lie to her. Henry enjoyed Bre’s company, but he’d never done monogamy for very long, and the idea of being with one woman for the rest of his life wasn’t something he could necessarily agree to.
“We won’t be getting married,” he told her honestly. “I’ve never planned to take a wife, and as much as I enjoy your company, I do not plan to change my mind.”
“Really?” she questioned. “You spent a lot of time lamenting on the beauty of arranged marriages for someone who planned to never be in one.”
Henry conceded to her point, “I wanted my mother to believe I’d gone along with her plan to shut her up, and I wasn’t sure if you were running back telling her about our every conversation,” he confessed remembering how he waited to see if any breadcrumbs he dropped for his mother ever made their way back to him; he was pleased when they didn’t.
“You still haven’t explained how I benefit from all of this,” Bre told him her voice calmer. Henry felt his own heart calm down as he thought Bre beginning to consider his rather unorthodox proposal.
“I’ll give you a job,” Henry told her. Bre continued looking on obviously confused as to how such information benefited her.
“I already have a job; well, I had one before you went off the rails,” she told him.
