Resisting the Bad Boy - A Standalone Bad Boy Romance Read online

  Aunt Lila smelt like antibacterial soap and menopause, and though I was supposed to be thanking her for being my savior these last few months, I felt anything but.

  Her husband had passed and left her with a convenient fortune, and she was dutifully and painfully lording it over everyone. I could imagine her at church, making the fat Sunday school ladies beg and plead for a donation, and wringing her hands at how much of a burden it was to suddenly be the one in charge of who was and wasn’t allowed to pursue their dreams that day.

  Death had formed a sort of psychic bond between me and aunt Lila. Her brother, my father, had died and then soon afterwards her husband had followed. There were no other nieces or nephews. Nobody but me. And so she wrung her hands and decided that I was her cross in life to bear, and that she ought to fork out for a proper education for me.

  “It’ll be real lectures and real tutorials, not just fannying about every day,” she carried on. I knew for aunt Lila ‘Fannying about’ could mean anything from turning up ten minutes late to doing coke in back alleys on a school night. To be fair, I had been guilty of both at some point. I knew what she was saying. She knew I knew what she was saying. There was money available. A lot of money. I could go to the school of my dreams. But there were …conditions.

  “I know, auntie Lila. I’m ready. It’s going to be great.”

  “It’s not going to be great, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “It’s going to be hard work. Are you even listening to me?”

  She sat opposite me, and we both looked down at the pamphlets and brochures on the table in front of us. Shiny, happy drama students printed on high glass cardboard. One of the most prestigious programs in the country. A veritable field from which the big names would come and pluck out the talent they saw.

  “Melissa Craig, you know Melissa?” she said. “She graduated Blackworth’s two years ago and she’s already had offers to work on a Broadway musical over the summer.”

  My aunt Lila knew all the theatre people, all the actors and actresses and playwrights in England and where they had gone to school and whether their parents were decent or not. My whole family was a theatre family. Or at least, it had been, once. Now it was just my thrice-rehabbed self and aunt Lila, a manager slash professional busy body to the stars.

  “Now I’ve set up a direct debit for you, and you’ll have a hundred pounds a week. I think that’s pretty generous, given the rent is sorted and that I’ll take care of the tuition. If you have other expenses, you just say so, obviously.”

  Obviously. She waited for me to protest, but I knew better. It was a generous offer. One I should be thrilled to have. One even might say I should grovel a little.

  “I’m sure a hundred pounds a week is more than enough. It’s not like I’ll be doing anything other than studying, right?” I flashed her a playful smile.

  She sighed and gave me a weary look.

  “You always had a free spirit,” she said and smiled gently.

  These last few months, I had taken to imagining that when she looked at me, she was seeing my father somehow. It made things better, imagining that she was kind to me because I reminded her of dad.

  “Free? No such thing as a free lunch!” I said, doing my best imitate her and her favorite saying.

  “No, and don’t you forget it,” she laughed.

  I idly thumbed through the pamphlets. Blackworth’s Art College. I would complete an exclusive set design course, after which my aunt would be able to send me off to any of her well-connected friends and secure me a respectable position that would make my father proud. That was the plan, at least. It didn’t hurt that people usually recognized my name. Nyx Westling, daughter of Sir Norman Westling, knighted by the queen for his contributions to Britain’s cultural landscape and for that one time he won all those awards for his performance as Cesar.

  Little Nyx Westling. My parents had graciously put up with my deviance for a little while – they were ‘creatives’ themselves, weren’t they? – but now aunt Lila entered stage left and was ushering in a new act; one in which my character redeems her sorry self and grows up already.

  It was all laid out. All agreed on. All signed and ordered and direct debited. My future lay ahead of me like some colorful pamphlets on a coffee table. It didn’t feel like the most exciting thing in the world, but I guess that’s cold hard reality for you.

  “Dear, I know it’s been hard,” she said, her voice changing all of a sudden.

  No. Not now. I didn’t want another talk like this.

  “I’m fine, aunt Lila, really.”

  “I know you are. You’re strong. I know that. But you’re a very lucky girl. I know you can’t see that right now, but you’re actually in a very fortunate position.”

  Sure, but fortune that came with strings attached.

  “You’re mourning now. We all are. But this new course is going to be a good thing for you. I can just feel it.” She leaned over to squeeze my knee.

  I tried to smile. Tried to play the part of a Very Fortunate Girl.

  “I won’t let you down,” I said quietly, looking down at her hand on my leg. She gave me a friendly pat.

  “There’s a good girl.” she said, and stood up to leave.

  I had come a long way. Less than two years ago, I was partying around London like there was no tomorrow, and if there was a substance out there, Leah and I had tried it. But with mom and dad gone, all of that lost its shine. Lost its glitter. I hated what aunt Lila was saying. But in my heart I couldn’t find a way to disagree with her. It was time to sober up, be a mature adult and face reality head on.

  Chapter Three

  What better way to face reality than in a tasteful grey skater dress with little silver earrings and ballet flats?

  It was the third day of my new course and I was meeting with the people I’d liaise with over the course of the semester, and we’d bring to life our very first production. I had responsibly drawn fifty pounds at the start of the week for incidental expenses, and had come to the meeting with a civilized looking folder, a click pen and a can-do attitude.

  “Where the hell is Adam?” said a wiry looking blond girl. “He swore up and down he’d be here today.”

  Tamara Keane was the head producer and had summoned us all here for our first meeting. We were a small company, and the college theatre group typically only managed around thirty people or so. But each and every last one of us was invited, at this first meeting of the new season.

  “Let’s just go on without him?” said the guy beside her.

  I tried to remember if he’d been introduced to me as the choreographer, but to be honest, I had been introduced to dozens of people over the last few days.

  Nevermind.

  Tamara squeezed her eyes shut and drew a deep breath, then threw open a folder and started talking us through a detailed series of notes she’d given us for this semester’s production, a reworking of a classic folk tale. Bluebeard.

  “The story is a reimagined fairytale,” she said, “and so takes place in a time and space parallel to our own. This is not your standard hokey Sherwood forest vibe, and we’re not doing Game of Thrones either; this is something like a formalized collective unconscious, like a dream, but only more precise.”

  I was struck by how well-spoken she was. While I knew that most people on this project were already second or third year students, I suddenly felt a flash of intimidation. A brand new copy of Myth and Archetype in Theatre sat on my bedside table, still in its Amazon Packaging. Shit.

  “This term we’re thinking about creating a real sense of intimacy on stage,” she continued, “and so everything is geared to reflect that. The dialogue should be tight. The set comfortable. The lighting close and evocative. We had some trouble last year getting that really organic feeling, so we kept it small this term, and I really want to see you guys coming through with that. It has to just flow…”

  I nodded along with everyone else in the hall, circled loosely round a small table, finger
sandwiches waiting in the wings. This was it. I was finally doing it. Grown up stuff. Serious stuff.

  I flicked through my copy of the outline and found the set design tab. I’d be meeting with Tamara once a week to explain my concepts, and once every day for rehearsals, but other than that, I was on my own. My ballet flats began to pinch.

  Bluebeard was an all right story, I guess. A beautiful but stupid peasant girl is lured by a wealthy aristocrat who woos her and ask her to be his wife. Even though his beard is an eerie blue color, and he’s big and scary looking, she goes for it. He takes her to his massive castle, they consummate the marriage, but in the morning he tells her he has to go away to do something or other, but will return. In the meantime, she can access any room in the castle – and he hands her a set of keys.

  The problem is that she is forbidden from opening just one door. He leaves, she invites her sisters round, and they all get curious and start to try to open the forbidden door. When they do, they discover something too awful for words: the room is filled to bursting with the bloody corpses of all Bluebeard’s previous wives. They’ve been chopped and mutilated and stashed there in secret. The girl shuts the door and locks it, but a small drop of blood falls onto the key.

  She is shaken. And she can’t clean the drop off the key. Bluebeard returns, and she knows the drop of blood will let him know that she disobeyed him. He comes home. He sees the drop. He tells her that now she will be beheaded and go into the room along with all the other women. But, just in time, the peasant girl’s father and brothers comes to her rescue, kill Bluebeard and save her. Seemed like a bit of a simple story to base a whole play around, but whatever.

  “If there are no questions, well, there are lots of new faces so we’ll just be get to know each other today, and I’ll come around and schedule some meetups with people individually, OK?”

  Everyone nodded and stood up to mingle or head for the refreshments. And that was that. It had all seemed easy enough. Maybe being a stuck-up adult wasn’t nearly as hard as aunt Lila had made it out to be.

  Not quite knowing what to do with myself next, I flicked through the script, slightly alarmed at how many scene changes there were. I’d have my work cut out for me. Just as I was turning the page, the doors banged and someone flew in, scarf tails flapping and hair windswept.

  “Sorry, sorry I’m late, I’m here now!” he said, and every head in the room turned to look. My eyes shot to Tamara, who was scowling and looking him up and down.

  “Congratulations Mr. Morgan, that’s really quite the feat …managing to turn up a full,” she looked at her watch, “a full 40 minutes late. Lovely. At least you’re here now, though.” The sarcasm was overwhelming.

  The guy broke into a goofy grin and walked over into the crowd, the people there loosely stepping aside to make room for him as he walked over to her.

  “Tamara, my apologies, I was …held up this morning, really I was. Couldn’t be helped,” he said breezily, and as he unwound his long scarf from his neck I could see that he was quite the imposing figure; tall, muscular, his strong limbs moving with a kind of energy and menace that I’ve only ever noticed in those who choose, shall I say, the dramatic life. I couldn’t help but stare. And it seemed like I wasn’t alone – everyone else in the room fell silent and just …watched him. He was mesmerizing, and I couldn’t tell why.

  “Here’s the outline. Let’s not have a repeat of last time, if you can manage it,” Tamara said in clipped tones.

  She handed him a folder and he took it carefully from her, then made a show of curtseying as she turned to carry on her conversation. The crowd tittered. This must be the notorious Adam Morgan, an actor known on campus for being just as likely to earn the college accolades as he was to need an emergency fundraiser to bail him out of jail on opening night.

  I had heard a few rumors about him, even from aunt Lila, but nobody had mentioned …well, nobody said how absolutely hypnotic his eyes were. They had their own gravitational field. Something about them just trapped you. His eyes caught mine and I blushed hard.

  Shit.

  “Hey, do I know you?” he asked, waltzing right up to me. My face instantly felt on fire.

  I cleared my throat. “Um, I don’t think so?”

  I was alarmed at how close he was suddenly standing to me, how swiftly he had glided across the floor and landed right there in front of me, his eyes on me like a laser, like I was his next meal. Tamara ogled him out the side of her eye as she carried on talking to another woman.

  “That’s Nyx Westling, she’ll be doing our set design for Bluebeard,” she said, not turning to face us.

  Adam’s face lit up and he tilted his head. “Westling? Huh. Are you related t--?”

  “Norman Westling. Yes, he was my father.”

  He jumped back and grinned at me. “That must be it!” he said. “That must be why I recognize you!”

  He was so incredibly animated. Not larger than life, exactly …but sparklier somehow.

  “I don’t think we’ve met, though,” I said. If I had known such a hot guy would be giving me the third degree like this I wouldn’t have worn such a somber dress, that’s for sure.

  Then, he did something so unexpected my heart nearly burst out of my chest. He reached out, easy as you please, took my chin in his hands and turned my head side to side, as though I was a race horse he was examining or a vase he was checking for cracks.

  I gulped. He was so close I could smell him. Like rain. If rain was sexy. God, I don’t know, my brain was in a total scramble.

  “I never said anything about meeting before…” he said in a low growl, and I suddenly felt glued to the spot, like he had frozen me there with a spell. He was over six foot tall, dark-haired and with eyes that felt indecent to look into too long.

  “What I meant was that I recognize these features… you take after your father, I think. But only as he was in that Cesar play, of course,” he said, and released me again. I think I had stopped breathing.

  “Well, um, that’s…” I bumbled, but he was speaking again.

  “Tell me why you aren’t performing in this feature? It’s a sin not to act. You have the most glorious cheekbones I’ve ever seen and you’re hiding away doing costume design.”

  “Set design,” Tamara corrected, somewhere behind him. I felt I was going to die blushing.

  Did that ever happen? Did people die of massive blood flow to the cheeks? Probably. ‘Glorious’ cheekbones? I didn’t know whether to laugh or run and hide under the refreshments table.

  “Still, those are features built for the stage, anyone can see that,” he said. “You have acting in your blood, you have it in your face. I’m sure it kills your father to see such good genes squandered, no?” He smiled mischievously at me.

  “Actually, my father’s already dead. He passed away in a car accident two years ago.”

  Almost imperceptibly, the crowd hushed and though nobody turned to look, I could feel their ears swivel towards us like satellite dishes. The grin fell from his face.

  “A car accident. Oh shit,” he said. He suddenly seemed to shrink by half.

  “Oh don’t worry, you didn’t know, it’s nothing really …you didn’t know, so don’t worry about it…” I started blabbering, but before I knew it, the world in front of me went wet and wobbly and all of a sudden, great, hot tears were rolling down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop them.

  “Oh shit, oh God I’m sorry, I’m such an enormous twat,” he was saying, but through my tears he blurred away and I put my head in my cupped hands, trying to regain my composure. This was certainly not how I intended any of this to go. I heard Tamara’s voice as she chastised him in a loud whisper, and she was joined by the others in the crowd, also whispering loudly.

  “Really, it’s no big deal, please don’t worry.”

  But then his hands were on my shoulders. I did that ugly thing that people do when they cry, I heaved and snorted through my nose trying to stop my sobs, and ended up making them wor
se. I suddenly wished with all my heart that he never, ever peeled his hands off of me.

  “Come, let’s go outside for some fresh air,” he said, and before I knew it a firm hand was on the small of my back and he was steering me out of the theatre.

  I didn’t resist. I was still trying to quiet the jagged breaths in my chest, worried that my tears were washing away my good start to the term already, and that any second now I’d have a snot bubble on my nose, just precisely when I wanted to look put together for this irritatingly handsome guy.

  Mercifully, I found a tissue and dabbed at my wet face, and then we were outside, and he closed the big doors behind us, thrust his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forward on his heels as he looked over at me.

  “I’m sorry, that was very awkward,” I said.

  The memory of my father was usually something that I only took out late at night, once I had thought of absolutely everything else and there was nothing else to do and still so many hours of night left to go. It was a secret. Crying about him was something I did when I was alone, in the dark, so in the morning I could half pretend it was only a dream. But now I had burst into tears in public. For the rest of the term, I would be remembered as the fragile girl who cried in the first term meeting.

  He rocked back and forward on his feet, then peered up thoughtfully at the sky. When he looked back down at me, it nearly took my breath away.

  “I’m kind of sad you’ve stopped crying,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your face …you have the most exquisitely expressive face.”

  I squirmed a little and tried to think of where to put my eyes. I could vaguely hear the people inside talking through the closed doors. I stood awkwardly, wondering what the hell was supposed to happen now.

  “See! Look at that, beautiful,” he said, and leaned in closer.

  “I don’t …what do you mean?”

  He gave me a wild look, one I couldn’t decipher. He seemed permanently on the brink of jumping up into the air, or bursting into song. He was, I think, the most remarkable person I had ever met. Part magician, part acrobat. He was the very picture of ‘animal magnetism’ …but I hadn’t decided if the animal in question was a dangerous one or not.