ARROGANT BRIT (A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE) (5 page)

Oh no. This CAN’T be happening.

The two gentlemen had their backs to me, but
turned when we came into the room. I recognized the younger one instantly, and
a faint look of surprise flickered across his face as he took me in.

His father was the first to say something.

“Clara! I’m William. It’s great to finally
meet you!” The older man exclaimed cheerily. He was the spitting image of his
son, but with light gray fringing his hair and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses
over his eyes.

“Hi, William,” I responded as politely as I
could muster. My eyes immediately slid to the other one, though.

How. How is this happening?

“And allow me to introduce my son, Dalton.”
He motioned towards the marine from last night, who stepped forward to reach
out his hand.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Clara,”
Dalton smiled warmly. “I’ve heard good things about you.”

Temporarily rendered speechless, I hastily
swallowed as I shook his hand.

“Yes… you too.”

“Oh?” Mom asked, taking interest in this.
“Are you familiar with Dalton? I don’t remember ever saying
 
anything about him to you on the phone…”

Shit.

“Yeah, Mom, you totally did,” I nervously
insisted. “You mentioned something about him being in the Marines, right?”

“No, don’t believe so,” she shook her head.
“Hell, I didn’t even know about the Marines until a few days ago, isn’t that
right, Will?”

William shrugged. “I can’t remember how long
ago that was. A week? Two? A month? Regardless, it doesn’t particularly matter,
does it now?”

Mom pursed her lips but conceded the point.
She had a bulletproof memory, and hated to not be completely correct. That’s
why, when she answered, “No, I suppose not,” she turned to me with a curious
look.

“Anyway, why don’t you two sit down and
acquaint yourselves, hmm?” William gestured towards the hall. “Go get seated.
Sarah and I will wrap up things here, yeah?”

“Sounds good, Father,” Dalton nodded
cordially before disappearing into the hallway.

Confused and alarmed, I followed him out of
their sight, cornering him as soon as we arrived at the dining room.

“What the
hell?
Is this some kind of sick joke?” I demanded, halfway accusing him.

“Kind of what I was beginning to wonder,” he
replied apathetically. “I mean, what are the odds? We run into each other last
night, you want me to fuck your brains out, and now we’re sitting across the
table from one another as our parents prepare to tell us
all about
how they met…”

“I was
not
going to fuck your brains out,” I snapped quietly, thinking back to
Natalie’s words.

“You said about that much.”

“I was
drunk
.”

“And that’s why I didn’t bring you home with
me,” he replied casually. “There’s no way you could have consented in your
state. You got yourself
plastered
last
night. Off of one drink!
One!”

“The bartenders suck at that bar,” I groaned.
“The guy probably fucked up the alcohol ratios and handed me the strongest long
island in history.”

“Which somehow evaded your notice…?”

“I was tired.”

“
Tired
,”
he scoffed, summing me up with a glance. “You were
tired. That’s
what you’re going with? Look, I understand that
you’re upset about this, but–”

Dalton lowered his voice and took his seat as
we heard footsteps. After a moment, our parents came into the room, setting
various pots and dishes down on the placemats.

“Why don’t you sit down, Clara?” Mom asked politely.
“We’ll be back in a moment.”

I did as I was told, and the two of them
disappeared back to bring out more food. The moment that they were gone, I
rounded my furious gaze back to Dalton.

“I’m just weirded out,” I hissed. “This is
obviously a sign that
we
weren’t
meant to happen.”

“What do you mean, ‘weren’t meant to
happen?’” Dalton asked, looking just slightly bothered by my wording. “You
know, we saw each other before we knew about any of this.
 
I don’t necessarily see that as being
wrong.
”

“Are you being
serious
right now?” I asked with mild disgust. “You can’t be being
serious. Not at all.”

“Look, we can talk about this later,” he
remarked. “They’ll be back in a second.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I insisted,
crossing my arms. “We almost had sex, but we didn’t, and now our parents have
revealed to us that they’re dating. Case closed.”

A look of anger flashed across Dalton’s face.
He was opening his mouth to retort when Mom and William popped back into the
room, setting the last few pots down and taking their seats with us.

“Alright, kids, dig in!” William chuckled,
rubbing his hands together. Sarah complimented the men on the food, and Dalton
flashed me a knowing look.

And so begun the most awkward lunch of my
entire fucking life.

Chapter 5

After that rollercoaster of a weekend, I was
grateful to have a solid distraction. However, I couldn’t help but feel
personally cheated and slighted by the cruelty of fate.

If we’d just fucked and I’d gotten it out of
my system and cast her aside, it’d probably have been completely different.

Well, it would have been a bit weirder than
usual since I’d see her at family reunions, but it would have still gotten her
out of my system. I wasn’t used to mentally marking a sexual target and having
the opportunity ripped from my clutches on a technicality.

I had begun to think that Clara had a point.

She was determined to nip whatever we might
have had in the bud. I couldn’t help but admit that us having something while
our
parents
had something was a bit…
strange. I knew it wasn’t incest because we weren’t related, but Clara clearly
thought along those lines, and maybe she wasn’t wrong to shut everything down
before it started.

However…

I always hated to turn down a challenge.

All of this had to go on the backburner for
the moment, though. Just one day later, before I was ready, Monday morning was
here. That meant something that I’d been putting off for over eight years now.

School.

You might have gotten the impression,
correctly
, that college was kind of a
complete afterthought to me. As a Marine with eight years of service under his
belt and a massive inheritance on the way, I wasn’t particularly interested in
giving even
more
of my life away.

There was one
slight
problem with that…

And it was named
Raleigh and Riana Carlyle
.

My elderly, posh grandparents were the
rightful wielders of the Carlyle Fortune. After they skipped my father and lost
their daughter, I was the only remaining heir to the bloodline. They only had a
few rules, but their firm expectations were airtight:

1. Never disgrace the family.

2. Earn a place of societal standing.

3. Obtain a dignified higher education.

I wasn’t interested in kissing ass up the
societal chain, so I discussed the option of joining the active military of my
resident country. To my favor, I had several dignified ancestors who had served
as officers in the British Army, and my grandparents were surprisingly lax in
caring
which country
I served, so
long as it was a “relevant” one.

Of course, I didn’t do it just to get their
money, even if we
are
talking about a
fiendishly large quantity of it. There were a lot of overlapping factors
involved in that decision.

For one, I did it for me. I wanted the
discipline, the prestige, and to essentially drown in pussy for the rest of my
life. Call me selfish, because it’s true, but I’m a particularly
forward thinking
brand of selfish.

Secondly, I wanted to make an effort to
please my father, who was perpetually afraid of me following in the footsteps
of his former life. At the bare minimum, I knew he’d be pretty fucking proud of
me.

Finally, by being smart about my expenses for
eight years, I walked out of the service with over $150,000 in cold, hard cash.
It meant significantly less beer than I would have liked, but it
also
meant I had options.

After all, if fate intervened and the Carlyle
Fortune was ripped from my hands, like my father before me, it left me in a
reasonably good financial position without it.

I could still buy a house or travel the world
with well over a hundred thousand dollars.

So far, my grandparents loved me. I never
felt pressured under their expectations, particularly since it wasn’t difficult
to keep my sexual exploits away from their ears. That’s pretty much the only
thing I could think of that might jeopardize my claim, since they were
apparently the biggest fucking prudes on the planet.

However, I wasn’t exactly interested in
scrimping on the sex for years, especially without the inheritance being a done
deal.

Despite not particularly giving a rat’s ass
about the degree, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to at least try. I was
actually looking forward to the next step on my quest for the Carlyle Fortune
when I walked into my first class of the semester,
Psychology 1001.

I was just in time, and I spotted an empty
seat up in the small, stadium-style seating. Unfortunately, I didn’t even get
two minutes of peace before I realized that fate was going to be a prissy
little bitch after all.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I
grunted to myself when I glanced down and saw Clara a few rows below me,
tentatively awaiting the professor’s appearance.

What is it with this goddamn
girl?

Clara had been everywhere I’d turned since
the beginning of the weekend. Everything from the Marine banquet, to the bar
afterwards, to
Father’s little family
get-together…

I realized the seat next to her was
available, and a sly smile crossed my lips.

Fine. Challenge accepted.

Narrowly, I squeezed into the seat before
some other guy could snag it. Clara quickly glanced up, her breath catching in
her throat.

“Hullo, love,” I grinned knowingly.

“What. The.
Fuck.
” She trembled. “Are you, like, actually stalking me now? Why
can’t I fucking get away from you?”

“Yes, you’re absolutely right,” I conceded
mockingly. “I specifically called you in to work my banquet, trailed you to the
bar, hooked our parents up, and
somehow
got
your schedule and put myself in your class.”

“Ugh. Actually, that last one is me,” Clara
sighed. “I transferred into Psych at the last second. I wasn’t on the
attendance until this morning.”

“See? It’s destiny,” I told her.

“
Destiny?
”
She looked at me like I was crazy.

“Of course! Either you and I are the butt of
some cruel, cosmic joke… or something
really
wants us to give each other a chance. You can’t deny that this is pretty
bizarre.”

“The only
bizarre
thing about this is that our parents are dating,” she spat out in a hushed
tone.

“So you’re fine with us, then,” I countered
without skipping a beat. “It’s just our parents that are the problem. Good to
know.”

“No, that’s not what I said at all,” she
insisted.

“You said, and I quote,
the only bizarre thing about this is that–
”

“I know what I said.”

I smiled, watching her grow more flustered by
the second. Clara shook her head at me, the very picture of exasperation;
valiantly, she tried and failed to hide a faint smile, hinted at the corner of
her lips.

At that moment, the profession stepped into
the room. A thin, gaunt figure with thick, snow-white hair and a matching,
magnificent beard, he set down his briefcase on the podium and glanced up at us
through thick, black-rimmed spectacles.

“Good morning, students, and welcome to
Psychology 1001. My name is Doctor Thaddeus Pritchard. You may call me
Professor Pritchard
or
Doctor Pritchard
; either will do. Now
then, I’ll be guiding those of you here next week for the following several
months. Please pull out your textbooks and flip to page 108 while I call roll…”

“Shit,” Clara whispered. “I totally forgot to
pick one up.”

“No need,” I replied casually, pulling out a
thick, heavy copy of
The Realm Inside: A
Beginner’s Psychology Guide
. “We can share this for the moment.”

She bit her lip and raised an eyebrow, but
couldn’t overlook that this book was, used, still over a hundred bucks.
 
“Just for today.”

“Oh, of course,” I shrugged. “Just today.
You’ll get your own copy after that, assuming you stick out the class, that
is.” I let my slight smile carry the tone as I challenged her. “I hear this
guy’s kind of tough, after all. You might not hack it.”

“Is that so?” Clara replied, slipping a few
strands of hair behind her ear. She was watching me with an eyebrow raised.
“We’re assuming, of course, that you won’t be intimidated by him either. A guy
like that looks like he belongs behind a podium at Harvard, not here.”

The professor smacked something loud against
the podium, drawing our attention.

“I’m sorry, is your flirtation more important
than my class? If that’s the case, feel free to excuse yourselves,” Doctor
Pritchard airily cut in.

“Apologies, Professor,” I replied with
dignity. “I was merely offering to help a fresh transfer with reading materials
for today.”

“English, hmm?” Doctor Pritchard observed
keenly. He adjusted his glasses against his nose and peered towards me. “What
part of England are you from?”

I was surprised by his sudden interest.

“Uh, South London.”

“I see,” he murmured. “Interesting. I spent a
decade teaching in London. Awful food, too much drinking, but it was, overall,
a pleasant experience.” He turned to Clara, who seemed amused by this
assessment. “Is it true that you joined in the last twenty-four hours?”

“This morning, actually,” she answered.

“Better last minute than a week late,” he
nodded with a tentative smile. “What’s your name? You won’t be on my attendance
sheet unless I pencil you in.”

“Clara Campbell,” she answered.

I smiled privately.
Alliterative. I like it. Also, not a far cry from ‘Clara Carlyle’…

With a brief moment of horror, I banished the
thought away. There was
no reason
to
have thoughts even remotely like that… until I realized that, if our parents
married, that could possibly wind up becoming her name, anyway…

Once he made the corrections, Doctor
Pritchard continued the roll call, leaving me plenty pleased with my thoughts.
Well, maybe he’ll be a little easier on me
with the grade.

The rest of the class wound up fairly
straightforward. This professor didn’t employ casual starter days – we were
already reviewing material and assigned homework at the end of the session.

It was hard to stay committed to paying
attention to him with Clara right there. I felt myself enamored by the way she
focused on the material, biting her bottom lip when she was heavily
concentrating or perplexed.

She was so effortlessly beautiful.

That’s when I knew I had to take things
seriously with her… that I had to
try.
I
could have just written her off, but honestly? All that
destiny
stuff I had told her?

I believed it.

It was weird to me that I’d seen so much of
her in such a short period of time. We were
definitely
supposed to be paying attention to each other, and the more that I did so,
and the longer that I watched her out of the corner of my eye, the more I felt
a little
something
tug inside me for
her.