Falling For The Rebel Princess. Ellie Darkins

pulled the plug on the whole arrangement. That was why they’d not intervened last night: they knew she had a zero-tolerance approach to them interfering with anything that didn’t affect her physical safety.

      She was never going to be the perfect Princess, so why build her family’s hopes up? She could let them down now, get it out of the way, in her own way, and not have to worry with blindsiding them with disappointment later.

      Except it hurt to disappoint them, and it didn’t seem to matter how many times that she did it. Every time, the look on their faces was as bad as the time before.

      What would they say this time, she wondered, when they realised that she had married someone she had just met—so obviously to scupper the sensible match that they were trying to make for her? And she had married a rock star at that, someone who couldn’t be further from the nice reliable boys that they enjoyed steering her towards at private family functions. What was the point of going along with that? she’d always thought. Entertaining the Lord Sebastians and Duc Philippes and Count Henris who were probably distant cousins, and who all—to a man—would run a mile as soon as they found out that they might not be needing that place at Eton or Charterhouse, or wherever they’d put their future son’s name down for school before they had even bagged the ultimate trophy wife.

      Joe leaned past her to look out of the window, and then gave her a pointed look. ‘I guess our happy news is out.’

      ‘Looks that way,’ she said, with a hesitant smile. ‘Ready to face the hordes?’

      ‘As I’ll ever be.’ He looked confident, though, and relaxed. As if he’d been born to a life in front of the cameras, whereas she, who had attended her first photo call at a little under a day old, still came out in a sweat at the sight of a paparazzo.

      But she stuck on what she’d come to think of as her Princess Scowl, in the style of a London supermodel, and pressed her knees and ankles together. It was second nature, after so many hours of etiquette lessons. Even in skin-tight leather, where there was no chance of an accidental underwear flash. She ran a hand through her hair, messing up the backcombed waves and dragging it over to one side in her trademark style. A glance in the rear-view mirror told her that her red lip stain was still good to go, managing to look just bitten and just kissed. She took a deep breath and reached for the door handle.

      Joe stopped her with the touch of his fingertips on her knee. ‘Wait.’

      It was as if the leather melted away and those fingertips were burning straight into her skin. Wait? For ever, if she had to.

      But before she could say, or do, anything, they were gone, as was Joe. Out of the door and into the bear pit. Then her door was wrenched open and his hand was there, waiting to pull her out into the bright desert sunshine. She gripped his hand as he helped her from the car, and the flashbulbs were going off before she was even on her feet.

      Shouts reached her from every direction.

      ‘When was the wedding?’

      ‘Was Elvis there?’

      ‘Were you drunk?’

      And then there it was, the question that she’d never anticipated but that she realised now had been inevitable from the first.

      ‘Are you pregnant?’

      She stumbled, and it was only Joe’s arm clamping round her waist and pulling her tight that stopped her falling on her face in front of the world’s press. And then she was falling anyway, because Joe’s lips were on hers, and her heart was racing and her legs were jelly and her lips...her lips were on fire. One of his hands had bunched in her hair, and she realised that this, this look, this feeling, was what she’d been cultivating in front of the mirror for more years than she cared to think about. Just been kissed, just been ravished. Just had Joe’s tongue in her mouth and hands on her body. Just had images of hot and sweaty and naked racing through her mind. He broke away and gave her a conspiratorial smile. She bit her lip, her mouth still just an inch from his, wondering how she was meant to resist going back for more.

      And then the shouts broke back into her consciousness. ‘Go on—one more, Charlie!’

      And the spell was broken. She wasn’t going to give them what they wanted. She turned to them, scowl back in place, though there was a glow now in the middle of her chest, something that they couldn’t see, something that they couldn’t try and own, to sell for profit.

      She grabbed Joe’s hand and pulled him towards the door of the venue, ignoring the shouts from the photographers.

      She dragged him through the door and into a quiet corner.

      ‘So I guess we survived our first photo call.’

      She had hoped the relative seclusion of this dark corner would give her a chance to settle her nerves, for her heartbeat to slow and her hands to stop shaking. But as Joe took another step closer to her and blocked everything else from her vision, she felt anything but relaxed.

      ‘Are you okay? You look kind of flushed,’ he asked.

      ‘I’m fine. I just hate...never mind.’ Her voice dropped away as her gaze fixed on his lips and she couldn’t break it away. This wasn’t the time to think about what she hated, not when she was so fixed on what she loved, what she couldn’t get enough of. Like the feeling of his lips on hers.

      ‘Joe, I thought I saw you come in. And the new missus!’

      Ricky, the drummer from Joe’s band, Charlie recognised with a jolt.

      More flashbacks of the night before: the band laughing with them in the taxi cab to the courthouse, joking about how they were going to have to sign with her now she’d done this. She had to convince them that they’d been mistaken last night. That she’d married Joe for love at first sight, before they started talking to journalists. If it wasn’t already too late.

      She reached for Joe’s hand and gripped it tightly in hers, hoping that it communicated everything that she needed it to.

      ‘Hi, Ricky,’ she said, plastering on a smile that she hoped broadcast newly wedded bliss and contentment.

      ‘So your first day as husband and wife, eh. How’s it working out for you?’

      She tried to read into his smile what he was really saying. If only she could fake a blush, or a morning-after glow. But in the absence of that, she’d have to go on the offensive.

      ‘Pretty bloody amazingly, actually,’ she said, leaning into Joe and hoping that he’d run with this, with her.

      ‘Really?’

      Ricky gave Joe a pointed look, and it told Charlie everything that she needed to know. He had thought last night that this was all a publicity stunt, and nothing that he had seen yet had changed his mind.

      ‘Well, I’m just glad that you both decided to take one for the team.’ He grinned. ‘It was a brilliant idea. I wish I’d thought of it first.’

      She opened her mouth to speak, but Joe got there first.

      ‘I’m not sure what you mean, Ricky. We’re not doing this for the team. I admit it was a bit hasty, but we really meant it last night. We wanted to get married.’

      ‘Because you’re both so madly in love?’

      She felt Joe’s hand twitch in hers and tried not to read too much into it.

      ‘Because it was the only thing we could do,’ he said. ‘I don’t care what we call it. Love at first sight. Or lust. Whatever. I just knew that once I had Charlie in my arms there was no way I was going to let her go. And if that meant marriage, then that’s what I wanted.’

      Bloody hell, maybe he should have been an actor rather than a singer. He certainly gave that little speech more than a little authenticity. She leaned into him again, and this time he dropped her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She looked up at him, and there was something about the expression in his face that forced her up onto her tiptoes to kiss