Outrageous Proposal (A British Bad Boy Romance) by Sienna Valentine Page B

father drunk would obviously make things much more difficult. But he did duck into one of the bars just off the lobby and pour himself few shots of rum to calm his nerves. It was early and the place was mostly empty, so he didn’t even feel a bit self-conscious about it.
    His father’s plane had touched down at the local private airport over two hours ago, but the elder Moore had immediately gone off to attend to business on the island instead of meeting Harrison first. He owned several resorts in Bali and would never fly halfway around the world without stopping in to grace them with his presence.
    The delay was a tactic Harrison recognized as a power trip, an intimidation move meant to make his own time look more important than the time of whoever he was meeting with. It was probably a subconscious, even reflexive action ground into his father’s habits from decades of dealing with the world’s most powerful and ruthless businesspeople. Yet it still stung Harrison to see those same kinds of tactics used on his own son. He had some sliver of hope, after all these years, that things could be different between them. So far, it didn’t seem that hope would be rewarded.
    Familiar resentment began to bubble up in his blood like poison bile, and he immediately tried to clamp it down with some meditative thinking, a trick he had been trying to master for the last few months. He had an extraordinary scheme to pull off this week, and it wouldn’t do to have his deep-seated feelings about their relationship rear up and make things worse. He had to look respectable, changed . He was getting married, becoming the man his father wanted. He had to play the part down to the letter or it would never work.
    Part of the bitter bile in Harrison’s mouth was certainly due to his wish that he didn’t have to play a part at all. He would rather simply not resent his father in the first place, have his father respect him for who he was and the choices he chose to make on his own, but that was an even more improbable happening than him getting engaged. His father made it clear a very long time ago that there was only one path he expected Harrison to follow, and any deviation from that would be viewed the same as failure.
    For many years in his youth, Harrison had tried to have his cake and eat it too — to be the rebellious, fuck-up heir who didn’t care about his father’s boring traditions, and also to make his father proud through his personal achievements. It never worked, of course. His father never gave a damn about any accomplishments Harrison made that weren’t in service to the family or its businesses. He never encouraged any interests Harrison had in the arts or culture.
    What happened with Anastasia had been the last straw, the final attempt at fitting into the world into which he had been born. But there were lots of reasons Harrison had gone before his father one day many years ago, humbly, to ask for a favor for the first time in many years.
    Heartbroken, fed up of fighting his father, and utterly sick of England as a whole, Harrison told his father he would take any resort job the elder Moore would find him, as long as it was far away. It was the one and only time he could remember his father giving him what he asked for.
    Harrison moved to Bali and never looked back.
    With his father thousands of miles away, Harrison dove headfirst into the blissful paradise of having power, wealth, and freedom. He found he took very naturally to running the resort, a fact which surprised his father at first. But Harrison was a people person, and that was all this job was, really. Everything else was details. Harrison had everything he could ever want in Bali, and no one could make him do anything he didn’t want to do. He was in power. He was king.
    And kings didn’t get their hearts broken.
    Yet as he stood at the bar staring at the shot of rum in his hands, Harrison wondered what had gotten into him the other night when he had sent