The Princess and the Player

“Playa Del Onda is practically like Miami.” Bella grumbled, mostly to herself. “You’d think she’d prefer the coast.”

Her father put his spoon by his plate even though his bowl of gazpacho was still almost full. It hadn’t been long enough since the last time they’d dined together for her to forget that meant a subject of grave importance was afoot and it wasn’t her aunt’s preference of locale.

“I have another matter to discuss. How was your first meeting with Will Rowling?”

Biting back a groan, she kept eating in a small show of defiance. Then she swallowed and said, “I haven’t scheduled it yet.”

Her father frowned. “I have it on good authority that you spoke to him today. On the boardwalk.”

Spies? Her father had stooped to a new low. “I wasn’t talking to Will. That was James.”

Oh, duh. Her brand new security-guards-slash-babysitters had spilled the beans. Too bad they were the wrong beans.

Rafael’s brows snapped together. “I cannot make myself more clear. Will Rowling is the man you should be pursuing.”

Bella abandoned her spoon and plunked her elbows on the table to lean forward, so her father didn’t miss her game face. “What if I like James better?”

Never mind that James had washed his hands of her. Regardless, it was the principle of the thing. Her father liked to try and run her life but failed to recall that Bella’s typical response was to tell him to go to hell.

“James Rowling is bad news wrapped with trouble,” Rafael shot back with a scowl. “He is not good enough for my daughter.”

It seemed as if James had quoted this exact conversation to her yesterday on the beach. What was he, psychic? James’s comment about the photographs that had gotten him into trouble crossed her mind and she realized there must be more to the story. She actually knew very little about the man other than the way he made her feel when he looked at her.

She eyed her father. What if Rafael had told James to brush her off? Would James have listened? She wouldn’t put it past her father to interfere and now she wished she’d chased James down so she could ask. Shoot. She’d have to arrange another accidental meeting in order to find out.

“Maybe I’d like to make that decision on my own.”

“Perhaps you need a few more facts if you’re determined to undo the work I’ve already done on your behalf.” Her father rubbed his graying temple. “Will Rowling is the next CEO of Rowling Energy, and he will be of paramount importance to your brother’s relationship with the entire European oil market. How do you suppose the Montoros will lead a country rich with oil if we do not have the appropriate alliances in place?”

“Gabriel’s smart. He’ll figure it out,” she said, but it came out sounding a little sullen. As smart and capable as Gabriel may be, he’d never been king before and besides, Alma hadn’t had a king in a long time, so her brother would be a bit of a trailblazer.

She owed it to Gabriel to give him a leg up.

“Have you given any thought to Will Rowling’s feelings, Isabella? You haven’t reached out to him in the three days since you’ve arrived. You could not have insulted him more if you tried.”

No, she hadn’t thought of that. She swore. Her father had a very small point. Miniscule. But a point nonetheless. How would she feel if Will had come to Miami to meet her and then didn’t call her, choosing instead to flirt outrageously with her best friend, Nicole, for example?

She’d hunt Will down and tell him to his face what a dog he was. So why should she get a pass to do whatever pleased her? It didn’t matter if her father had scared off James—this was about doing what she said she’d do.

“I’ll meet Will. Tomorrow, if he’s free,” Bella promised and turned her attention to eating. The faster the gazpacho disappeared, the faster she could as well.

It didn’t go down as well this time. Righteousness wasn’t as fun as it looked in the brochure.

* * *

Will Rowling took Bella’s call immediately, cleared his schedule for the next morning and agreed to take her on a tour of Alma. He’d been very pleasant on the phone, though his British accent sounded a bit too much like James’s for her liking.

When Will picked her up at 10:30 a.m. on the dot, she flung the door open and actually had a bad Captain Obvious moment when she realized Will looked like James, too. Duh. As common as fraternal twins were among the moneyed set of Miami, she’d never actually met a set of identical twins.

She studied him for a long second, taking in the remarkable resemblance, until he cleared his throat and she found a dose of manners somewhere in her consciousness. “I’m so sorry! Hello. You must be Will.”

“I don’t know if I must be, but I am Will,” he agreed.

Was that a joke? Trying not to be too obtrusive, she evaluated his expression but it was blank. With James, she never had to wonder. “I’m Bella, by the way.”

“I assumed so. I have your picture.”

Of course he did. And this was her house. Wasn’t this fun? “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes, if you are.” With a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, he held out a hand toward his car, and waited until she left the house to follow her so he could help her into the passenger seat.

Will climbed into the driver’s seat and buckled his seat belt carefully before starting the car, which guilted Bella into fastening hers as well. Seat belts. In an itty-bitty place like Alma, where nothing happened.

She sighed and pasted on a bright smile. “Safety first.”

Usually she trotted that line out during a condom discussion. She almost cracked a joke along those lines, but something told her Will might not appreciate the parallel. Sinking down in her seat, she scouted for a topic of discussion. They were supposed to be seeing how they meshed, right?

Will must have had a similar thought process because he spoke first. “Thanks for arranging this, Bella. I’m chuffed to show you around Alma, but I’d like to know what you might be interested in seeing. Anything jump out at you? I’m at your command.”

Did he mean that in the double-entendre way? A provocative rejoinder sprang to her lips that she’d have let fly if she’d been in the car with James. Should she flirt with Will, the way she normally did on a date, or would that just lead to him taking her up on it, when she wasn’t even sure she wanted him to? Maybe she should just be herself, but what if Will hated her immediately? Would her father lay another guilt trip on her?

All of this second-guessing was making her nuts. She wasn’t with James, and everyone—including James—wanted her to make nice with the proper Rowling. Yeah, she’d looked up James last night, finding far more information about him than she’d expected, and little of it would fit the definition of the word proper.

No one, not even James, had thought it relevant to mention the man was a professional soccer—football in Europe, apparently—player. Since he appeared to have quite a bit of fame, maybe he’d assumed she already knew. Regardless, bad press followed James around like it did her. No wonder her father had nearly had a heart attack when she mentioned James’s name. He was the very opposite of the proper brother.

Proper pretty much covered Will’s personality. Five minutes in, and judging by the stiff set of Will’s shoulders, he wasn’t as much of a fun time as his brother. Hopefully, she’d judged wrong and would soon discover otherwise.

“Thanks,” she responded. “I’ve only seen the coast and a bit of Del Sol. Why don’t you pick, since this is your home?”

“No problem.” He shot her a small but pained smile, cluing her in that this whole set up might be as difficult for him as it was for her.

She should give him a break. “So, Will. How long have you lived in Alma?”

An innocuous enough subject, hopefully, and given the brothers’ accents, it was a safe bet they hadn’t been born here.

“Since I was seven. My father moved us here from England.”

“Oh, that must have been quite an adventure.”

She’d lived in Miami her whole life and living someplace new did have appeal for that reason alone. If only this arranged marriage business hadn’t soured the experience of coming to Alma, she’d be having a blast. And that was why she still didn’t think of it as her home... She still reserved the right to go back to Miami and play aunt instead of princess if the royal pressure grew too great.

Though with Tía Isabella’s arrival in Alma, going home held much less appeal.

Will’s face remained expressionless, but he tapped his pinky on the steering wheel in a staccato rhythm as he drove north out of Playa Del Onda along the coastal road that circled the main island.

“The move was difficult,” he said shortly and paused so long, she wasn’t sure he planned to continue. But then he said, “My mother had just died.”

“I’m sorry,” Bella murmured. “That would be difficult on young boys.”