Page 22 of The Heiress Masquerade (Dollar Princess #2)

As soon as Aimee bolted out of the unit block, she noticed two things. One, it had started to rain, and two, there was indeed a hackney cab waiting across the road. Disregarding the downpour, she checked the road for oncoming traffic, then dashed over to the carriage.

She caught a glimpse of someone behind the curtain in the back seat, but a moment later, in a flurry of motion, the carriage took off down the road, mud splattering up from the wheels, covering her in a grimy mess.

Standing there, with rain pouring down on her, and her hair and clothes now drenched, Aimee could only watch as their best lead disappeared down the street. She sighed and trudged back over to the unit block, noting that Harrison was there, standing under the entrance portico of the building, his arms folded over his chest, a scowl on his face, with his clothes and hair completely dry.

She glanced down at the mud all over her dress and felt like a drowned rat. Not the image she wanted to portray in front of him, but not much she could do about it now.

“Are you always so damn impulsive?” he said without hesitation, glaring at her like she was some errant child.

She stomped over to him, mostly because her skirt was sloshing with water and weighed about a ton. “I told you to stay with the man.”

He shook his head. “Unbelievable! I couldn’t leave you rushing off after whoever might be behind all this. What if you’d been hurt or kidnapped?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake. You’re obsessed with me being kidnapped when it’s never happened before.”

“Of course it hasn’t happened before, because your father has always made certain you’ve been well protected.” His eyes traveled down her soaked outfit.

“I couldn’t pretend to be Evie if I took a chaperone everywhere, now, could I?” she replied, wringing out some wet strands of hair that had escaped her bun. “Besides, I’m enjoying my freedom, and I intend to make the most of it on this trip.”

“You’re an impossible woman.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “You’re a bloody heiress who’s worth a fortune. If someone found that out, you could be in danger.”

“No one is going to find out.” She stormed past him and began to climb the stairs, hearing him follow behind her. “Besides, of late, I always seem to be in your fun company. So I’m completely safe.”

They got to the second floor and as soon as they were in the hallway, she felt Harrison’s hand on her upper arm as he pulled her to a stop.

“Who says you’re safe when you’re with me?” he said, turning her around to face him, before his lips pressed hungrily down upon her own.

She all but melted under the onslaught as his full lips pressed against her own, kissing her with a thoroughness that left her breathless and wanting more. But then he wrenched his mouth from hers and strode past her down the corridor, as if their brief kiss had meant nothing to him. “Come on,” he said without even looking back. “Let’s see if that man is still locked in the room, which I doubt.”

Fuming at his attitude, Aimee trudged behind him into the unit, only to find out Harrison was right, the man had fled. He’d first broken through the bedroom door, presumably barging through it with his shoulder, given the door had been ripped from its frame and was now hanging from only one hinge.

“Damn it!” he swore. “I knew he’d be gone.” He turned to stare at her, his glare accusatory. “You shouldn’t have run off like that.”

“Don’t blame me for this. I told you to stay here.”

“I’m not one of your servants or lackeys to be told what to do, princess .” His glare got even more ferocious.

Now it was Aimee’s turn to return his glare in full. “I don’t have lackeys , and I’m not a princess ,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “And it’s a bit rich you’re berating me for giving orders when you dish them out like candy yourself. Do this, do that. You can’t seem to help yourself. Do you think you’re the only one who can tell people what to do?”

“Generally, given I’m their boss, yes. What’s your qualification to do so, apart from being a pampered heiress with servants galore to boss about to your heart’s content?”

“I don’t boss about my servants.” She crossed her hands over her chest. The nerve of the man to suggest so.

“Oh please, you’ve grown up watching your parents tell people what to do your entire life. Giving orders is practically in your blood.” He shook his head and strode through the unit toward the front door. “Now, come on, there’s no point hanging around here, seeing as we’ve damn well lost our only lead.”

“You say damn quite a lot.” Aimee hurried to follow him. “Did you know that?” He spun around and glared at her, but Aimee merely shrugged. “It’s true.”

“I don’t normally curse so much,” he ground out through clenched teeth, before turning around and heading along the corridor then down the stairs. “Want to take a guess as to why I have over the past week?”

“Are you implying I’m the cause?” She lifted her wet skirt as she navigated down the stairs, her boots squelching with each step on the wooden boards.

“I’m not implying anything. I’m stating a fact.” He got to the bottom and strode out through the entrance hall to the street outside, which now only had a slight drizzle of rain softly sprinkling on the footpath.

Just her luck. Here she was looking like a wet rag doll, while Harrison looked like the golden-haired Adonis he always did. “You’re annoying.” Honestly, she felt like throttling him sometimes. His arrogance and highhandedness were so frustrating.

“Right back at you, princess.”

“Argh, stop calling me that!” she said as he hailed a hackney over to them.

The hackney pulled up beside them and Harrison started to give the driver Mrs. Holbrook’s address.

“No,” Aimee quickly interrupted him. “Take me to the Mayfair Grand.”

He blinked several times, and it was the first time she’d seen him appear at a loss for words.

“I’m not taking you to my hotel.” His voice was low and strangled.

“It’s my father’s hotel,” she replied. “And don’t give yourself unwarranted praise. I have no intention of staying with you.”

“Then why do you want to go there?”

“I’ve rented myself a suite for my stay, and given I’m soaked with rain and mud I want to have a bath and clean up before I return to Mrs. Holbrook’s.” She stepped into the carriage and took a seat as Harrison gave the hotel name to the Hackney driver and stepped in behind her, closing the door with a thud.

“You’ve rented yourself a suite?” His eyes narrowed on her as he sat down on the opposite seat across from her. “Why am I not surprised.”

“I had to,” she replied, wondering why he hadn’t sat next to her like on their last trip. “I don’t intend to stay there, just make use of the bath when I get some free time to myself.”

They sat there in silence for several minutes while the carriage navigated through the afternoon traffic.

“Do you always do whatever you want?” Harrison’s deep voice broke the silence. “Obstacles be damned?”

“I don’t often get the chance to in New York, but when I do get an opportunity, I try to make the most of it. After all, if you don’t go after what you want in life, you’ll never get it, so you might as well chase what you want. That’s what my father says, and I’ve taken it to heart.”

“Clearly.” He shook his head. “Who else would think to rent a suite for her entire stay, simply to make use of the bath on occasion, instead of slumming it like the rest of us have had to?”

“Haven’t you been living there in a suite since you moved over here? All on my father’s largesse?”

He pressed his lips together. “I’ve worked damn hard to get to where I am, and, yes, I’ve stayed there in a suite because it makes little sense to buy anything when I’ll eventually…”

His voice trailed off and Aimee angled her head toward him. “When you’ll eventually what?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “And staying there was your father’s idea. But I still wouldn’t waste money on a suite to have an occasional bath.”

“You would if you had to share the bathwater with several other people.”

“Share the bathwater?” He appeared dumbfounded at the idea.

“Yes. Mrs. Holbrook only allows one bath to be run per week, and that’s not one bath per person, that’s one bath in total, for the entire household. Which means all of us ladies have to use the same bathwater, and I would be the last, being the newcomer. Can you imagine how dirty that water would be when it got to my turn?”

A shiver ran through her at the thought. “As much as I wish to embrace the experience of being my cousin, having to share my bathwater is a line I’m unwilling to cross, especially when I have the means to make alternate arrangements. If that makes me a pampered princess in your eyes, then so be it.”

She wished that were true, because for some odd reason his opinion of her mattered. It mattered a lot. Which made no sense given she disliked him so much…well, she didn’t dislike him, not really. He just made her so frustrated sometimes that she felt like screaming or launching herself into his lap and recommencing what they’d been doing earlier.

How could kissing anyone feel so good as it felt when she kissed him? The man who’d irritated her for as long as she could remember. But try as she might to understand her feelings for him, thinking about it only confused her more. So rather than focus on that, she decided to change the subject to something she was as equally confused about but would be far easier to find answers to. “Why do you think someone sent that man to retrieve the ledgers I’ve borrowed?”

“I’ll need to have a closer look at them to try to ascertain that,” he replied, accepting the change in topic without question. “Are they at Mrs. Holbrook’s?”

“No, I left them in my hotel room, so I could go through them in more detail after work today, before I eventually went back to Mrs. Holbrook’s.”

“Won’t she get suspicious if you’re always sneaking off after work?”

“I just tell her I’m visiting my cousin.” Aimee shrugged.

“Lying seems to come naturally to you.”

“It’s simply being creative about the situation. How else would I achieve my goals?”

“And what are your goals? To work with your father in a business environment?” he asked, sounding doubtful. “Most girls your age want to go to balls and dance the night away, not read ledgers in their spare time.”

“I’m one-and-twenty, Harrison Stone. I’m a woman, not a girl.”

He grinned. “Yes, you’re ancient.”

She rolled her eyes blatantly in front of him. “Not as ancient as you.”

His grin was quickly replaced by a frown. “I’m only thirty.”

“Why haven’t you married yet?” she asked, suddenly curious. “You’re well past the age most men do.”

“I’ve been busy creating my fortune.”

“Most men marry to do that. So why not you?”

“That’s none of your business.” He glanced out the window, an expression on his face saying the topic was closed, but Aimee was never one to blithely accept defeat, especially not when she wanted an answer.

“I rather think it is, given you’ve kissed me, several times in fact. You’ll probably even kiss me several more times before I leave, too.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, let’s stop pretending with each other. We might not particularly like each other, but we’re certainly attracted to each other, and there’s no denying that.”

He cleared his throat. “I liked it better when you were pretending to be your cousin and weren’t so forthright.”

“Yes, I imagine you did. But, in any event, why haven’t you married? Most men trying to climb the corporate ladder like to take a wife to do so. And you know my father always likes his employees to have a stable family life.”

“Why haven’t you taken a husband?” he replied. “According to your father, you’ve had ample opportunity to.”

“I have. However, the simple fact is, I don’t want to marry.”

“Most women do.”

“Neither of us are like most other people, are we?” She took in a deep breath. “I want to conquer the world, and a husband would never let me do that.”

“You’re very like your father.”

“I am, though, unlike my father, every hurdle has been thrown my way and I’ve had to find ways to jump them all. A husband, however, wouldn’t just be a hurdle, he’d be a mountain I wouldn’t be able to shift.”

“That’s probably true here in England,” he replied. “But in America, you know the gentlemen are much more accommodating of their wives being outspoken and daring.”

“Being outspoken and daring is one thing. Wanting to run my father’s empire? That’s another thing entirely.”

“Why do you want to?” There was no sarcasm or mockery in his question, only curiosity. “Most women are more than content to be the queens of their domestic domains, not want to run a multimillion-dollar company.”

“When I was seven…” she began, thinking back to that moment when she’d been reading a journal on the floor in the library, hidden behind a desk, and her father and grandfather had come into the room discussing the succession plan of the company. “I overheard my father and grandfather talking about what they’d do in the future with the company, given my mother could never have more children after the complicated birth she’d had with me.”

Ever since Aimee had realized it was essentially her fault her parents hadn’t been able to have more children, part of her had always felt guilty, even though rationally she knew her parents didn’t blame her. So she’d always felt the need to prove to them that she was enough, not that they’d ever made her feel she wasn’t, even if that’s how she felt.

“If I’d been a boy,” she continued, “they wouldn’t have needed to have that conversation, because it would’ve just been assumed I’d take over the company. It was in that moment that I decided I’d do whatever it took to prove to them that I could continue on the family legacy and be a worthy successor to my father, despite the fact I’m a girl.”

“Have you told your parents this?”

She smiled, but it was filled with the ache of sadness. “Oh, we’ve had many heated conversations about it, with neither of them able to understand why I’d want to work when I could marry and have children, living a life of continued luxury.”

“Isn’t that what most people want, though? Marriage and children.”

“Then why aren’t you married and a father already?”

“Not all of us are destined for that path,” was his gruff reply as he adjusted his legs in the confined space.

“That’s certainly true.”

“I’m surprised you’re so jaded about marriage when your parents have an ideal marriage.”

“Yes, they’re still very much in love with each other even after twenty-three years.” An unusual fact in their world.

“Don’t you want the same?”

“I haven’t yet met a man I could imagine spending a future with.” And she hadn’t, at least not until recently. The thought sent a chill down to her toes. No. This man wasn’t even close to being someone she could spend her life with. “Even if I met someone I could fall in love with, I doubt he’d accept me wanting to run a company. Not even my father allows my mother to work.”

“Knowing your mother, I imagine if she did want to work, your father wouldn’t be able to stop her.”

“That’s true.” Aimee smiled. “She’s formidable. Mrs. Astor better watch out.”

“Mrs. Astor?”

“The reason my mother sent me over here in the first place. She wants me to marry into the aristocracy so she can lord it over Mrs. Astor and never again not be invited to the woman’s annual ball.”

“Ah, yes, Mrs. Astor’s famed annual ball.”

“Anyhow, now that you know why I have no intention of marrying, tell me, why don’t you want to marry?”

He was silent for so long Aimee didn’t think he was going to answer her.

“I made a deal with myself when my parents died that I wouldn’t suffer through that pain of losing someone I love again. Hence why I’ve never married and never will.”

The raw pain in his eyes made her own heart ache for him. Leaning forward, she reached over and took his hand in her own, her fingers intertwining with his and squeezing them. “I can’t pretend to imagine it.” Which she couldn’t. The thought of losing her parents or Evie was enough to make her want to start bawling. “All I can say is I’m so very sorry.”

He didn’t say anything in reply, but his thumb brushed over her palm, and Aimee felt the heat of it curl all the way down to her toes.

“I suppose that’s another thing we agree on,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. “Marriage is definitely overrated, and not for either of us.”

His lips twitched at the corners. “At the rate we’re starting to agree on things, by the time we get to Wilheimer’s house party, we might not disagree on anything.”

“I never took you for a dreamer, Harrison Stone.” She grinned back at him. “But I think you might just be one.”

The carriage came to a halt in front of the hotel, and Aimee realized she was still holding his hand. Reluctantly, she let go, missing his warmth almost immediately.

“While you tidy up, I’ll study those ledgers,” he said, as the door to the carriage opened and one of the hotel doormen held out his hand for Aimee and helped her down to the footpath.

Harrison followed her out, before taking her elbow and leading her through the lobby to the lifts. They stood waiting as the lights on the wall blinked with each level the elevator descended.

“I shouldn’t be too long,” Aimee said. “I’ll have a quick bath and change into the spare outfit I’ve kept in the room in case of an emergency.”

“Why do I get the feeling you have a lot of those?”

“You are quite the comedian, aren’t you?”

“Well, enjoy your bath. Not everyone has the luxury of having them. I certainly didn’t when I was young.”

“Yes, I know, I’ve grown up with every conceivable privilege,” she said as the lift came to a stop at the lobby level. “But when you get used to certain standards and ways of living, it’s hard to give them up.”

“That’s true,” Harrison said. “I suppose it would be difficult to expect a million-dollar heiress to share her bath with anyone.”

“I’d share it with you.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and if she weren’t so embarrassed at having said them, she would have laughed at the look of pure shock that came over his face.

For a man who was always in control, right at that moment it looked like he’d been bowled over by a freight train, but there was also another expression in his eyes, something deep and primal, something she couldn’t quite identify, but which sent a thrill down her spine.

“What did you just say?” His voice was husky as he tugged at his collar like it was choking him.

Aimee shrugged, feeling suddenly bold. “I think you heard me.” After all, shouldn’t she make the most of this trip? She’d never been as attracted to anyone as she was to this man, even as frustrating as he was, and she had no plans of marrying anyone. Why shouldn’t she be like the other women at the office and enjoy having a liaison with a man she was attracted to, without any strings attached? Provided they weren’t discovered, and she didn’t get pregnant, which, hopefully, Harrison would know how to prevent, why shouldn’t she experience all she could on this adventure?

The lift doors opened, and she stepped inside. “Level six, please,” she said to the operator, turning to face the entrance and noticing Harrison wasn’t getting inside. “You’re not coming up?”

“I never use the lifts,” he said, looking oddly uncomfortable. “I’ll meet you up there.”

The doors closed and she could only watch through the glass panels as he turned and strode toward the stairs. Was it because of what she’d said that he didn’t want to go up with her?

“He doesn’t use the lift?” she asked the lift operator as they began to ascend.

“Not the boss, miss. He always uses the stairs,” the man replied. “Always has, ever since he got here years ago.”

How odd. Another mystery about the man, and Aimee loved solving a mystery. And what a mystery Harrison Stone was proving to be. One she wanted to undress and discover everything about.

Goodness, she’d turned into a wanton woman on this trip, but the thought didn’t worry her in the least. Instead, she was excited, because it meant this was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime trip.