Page 5 of The Scandal You Started
A year older than her, George Aynsley was everything a big brother was meant to be. Teasing, protective, a bit of a softie, and nosy as fuck.
He had a friendly charm to him with his chocolate-brown eyes and hair cut on the shorter side, and warm olive skin that was freckled over his nose and upper arms. He wasn’t as pudgy as he once had been in his early teenage years, but at five-eight in height, he was still on the thicker side in a rugby player sort of way. Considering he regularly played the sport and watched itlike his life depended on it, it was no surprise he’d become what he lived for.
Lowering the glass from her mouth, Rayna narrowed her gaze. “What?”
Having grown up with him, she knew the look he was giving her all too well.
He chucked his chin. “This guy.Jake. How’d it go?”
Oh, here we go.
“Why are you asking?”
“I’m curious. You spent three consecutive days with him.”
Holding the glass against her lips, she mused over the implied question in his statement.
Yeah, she liked Jake, and she’d enjoyed his company. But a few hours for three days wasn't enough for her to be sure of anything more than that.
Eventually, she settled on saying, “I gave him my number.”
“You did?”
She shrugged. “He lives in our region, and he was sweet about it when he asked after walking me here, so yeah, I did.”
The mischievous twinkle in George’s gaze brightened. “So is he the one who’sfinallygoing to end everyone’s woes over your lack of a boyfriend?”
Rayna grunted and straightened from the counter. “It’s not everyone. It’s just you and V.”
“And your grandparents, Erin, Benedict. Uncle Declan and Aunt Win. And probably your—”
“Like I say every time, you all need to find some hobbies instead of focusing on whether I have a boyfriend or not.”
“But you need to get married—”
She reacted to his taunt as he’d probably hoped she would. “Oh, piss off.”
He flinched and threw his head back, cackling triumphantly as she glared in irritated amusement.
“Like I’m ever getting married,” she spat, walking away from him.
Chapter 2
Rayna
“Age, thirty-one. Height, just over six-foot-three. Blood type, B positive. Weight, over two hundred and twenty-five pounds, though likely to be over two-thirty when he’s eating properly. And he has a high muscle-to-fat ratio, suggesting high levels of regular exercise.”
Thatwas the troublesome lord according to his medical record being read out by his assigned doctor, Ash, from the POTeM medical team.
“Bloody woods, is he a man or a bear?” George muttered from the chair next to Rayna.
Having landed at two a.m. after an hour-and-a-half long flight back home to the easy-going city of Redworth in northern Khaas, Rayna and George had crashed at the house they’d bought together a year ago before being summoned to the lab for a twelve o’clock meeting.
Since she’d sat down around the table in the white-walled meeting room, Rayna had been growing increasingly baffled along with George.
Where on bloody Neves had River found this lord exactly?
Nothing about his description sounded like the typical pompous, titled elite of theTregencyperiod that most of the history books and sources she’d studied talked about. It didn’t help that the pure exhaustion on all four men’s faces around the rectangular table, other than George, was so painfully evident either.
