Page 25 of Scandal
“Why didn’t you?”
He grips the steering wheel as we drive along the winding road. Shadowy trees pass by the window as the moon rises higher in the sky. “I don’t know. I guess I liked the idea of him seeing me as the opposite of what the tabloids have made me out to be. Not some lonely rake, but someone who could be…loved.”
Oh god. My heart can’t take it. Is that how he feels?
“So that’s what we’ll give them,” I say with renewed confidence. Nerves be damned. I am going to help this man because everyone deserves to feel loved.
“Merc, we barely know each other.”
I simply shrug. “We know enough.” Well, I know enough—about him.
He tosses me a doubtful glance. “When’s my birthday?”
“January twelfth,” I reply a bit too quickly. My cheeks flush as I add, “Mine is February eighteenth.”
He seems a bit taken aback by my answer, and it takes him a moment before he asks, “Okay. What’s your favorite color?”
I roll my eyes. “Blue, but your parents aren’t going to be suddenly convinced we’re in love because we know each other’s favorite colors, Ash. We need to know more personal stuff.”
He shifts in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “Like what?”
I laugh. “I don’t think your parents are going to ask anythingthatpersonal. But you’ll need to know stuff like where I went to college.”
“UCLA. You studied music production.”
My mouth gapes open. “Yeah, how did you know that?”
He shrugs. “Your dad talks about you a lot. I listen.”
If my cheeks weren’t red before, they are now. “Oh. Um…well, I know you didn’t go to college.”
“That’s actually false. The internet always leaves out the quarter of a term I did at St. Andrews.”
I snicker. “A quarter of a term? How long is that? Like a week?”
He smirks. “Two weeks. I really gave it the old?—”
“Please don’t say it?—”
“College try.”
“You really have been in the US too long if you’re saying dumb shit like that.”
His smile falters. “Well, I don’t really have to worry about that anymore. If my parents have their way, I’ll be hosting balls and be married to a duchess or a rich heiress in no time.”
The blood in my veins suddenly turns cold. “Is that what they want?”
“The idea has been mentioned a time or two,” he says, his voice chilly and resolute. “I am inheriting an earldom, after all. It’s what’s expected of me.”
“Is that whatyouwant?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, the car stops, and he says, “We’re here.”
I was so focused on him, I didn’t even notice the house—could you call such a place a house?—come into view.
Holy shit balls.
“The entrance was once far less grand,” Asher says, staring at his ancestral home with little to no emotion. “Or so we’re told. The imperial staircase was added in the eighteenth century. As were the gardens over there.” He leans over, his shoulder brushing mine as he points left. “And the conservatory. The earl at the time was a bit of a showboat.”
