Royal Ruse: A Sweet Royal Romance (The Kabiero Royals Book 1)

by Emma Lea

  I clung to his hand as we walked out the front door and toward the waiting car. “Do you feel like seeing some of the town?” I asked.

  He smiled sadly down at me. “Sure.”

  When we got to the car, the driver was waiting for us. His name was Deacon, and I’d chatted with him a little on our drive to the Andino estate. He told me he had a son, Griffin, who was studying in America and who he hoped would come home soon.

  “Deacon,” I said as he opened the door for us to climb into the car.

  “Yes, Ms. Davenport?”

  “I told you to call me Frankie,” I admonished lightly. “Lucas and I want to see some of the town. Not the tourist bits, but the real bits, the places where the locals hang out.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea—”

  “Of course it is,” I said, cutting him off. “Kalopsia isn’t dangerous, is it?”

  “No more than any other city,” he replied. “But I’m sure Lord Andino—”

  “Lucas, please,” Lucas said. “And I think it’s a brilliant idea. Frankie is doing a research paper on how the country is changing under the rule of the new king.”

  Deacon nodded. “Okay. I know just the place to take you,” he said. “You might even remember some of the people,” he said to Lucas. “Or rather, they might remember you.”

  We climbed into the car and I could barely sit still with excitement. The palace was lovely and meeting the king and queen and the other members of the royal court was great, but what I really loved about traveling was getting to know the locals. I loved finding out their stories and their backgrounds and what life was really like through their eyes and not just though the eyes of a travel blogger or tourism brochure.

  “If we’re going to mix with the locals, you should probably know that the town has a name.”

  I turned to look at Lucas. “Isn’t it Kalopsia?”

  He grinned. “That’s the name of the island. The town surrounding the palace is called Kallos.”

  “I knew that,” I replied with a sniff.

  Lucas chuckled, and it made my heart light to know that I was giving him something to laugh about.

  “There are other towns too, right?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “We’re not as big as Limnos, but we are still bigger than Santorini and we can sustain several villages.”

  I grinned at him.

  “What?”

  “You said ‘we,’” I replied, bumping my shoulder against his.

  His cheeks flushed. “It’s weird,” he said with a sigh. “I feel connected to the island, to the town and yet…I still feel like an outsider too. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Of course it makes sense,” I replied, taking his hand and weaving my fingers through his. “You lived here for more than half your life and even though you left when you were young and you’ve probably forgotten a lot, that still lives inside you, here,” I said, using my free hand to tap his chest. His very firm chest. I may have rested my hand there for a little longer than entirely necessary.

  “My life in Boston is so far removed from life here,” he murmured, his dark eyes on mine.

  I hadn’t realized just how close I was sitting. I could practically climb onto his lap…not that I would. And I had one hand wrapped in his and the other pressed against his chest. I could feel the steady beat of his heart through his shirt and I swear it seemed to pick up its pace as I leaned against him.

  He chuckled nervously and pulled back from me, untangling our fingers and turning to look out the window as the car descended from where the estate stood on one of the many hills in Kallos.

  “You will be glad to get back to Boston and back to civilization,” he said. “I imagine by the end of the week you’ll be fed up with this place and begging me to let you go home early.”

  His words struck deep, but they didn’t hurt as much as the way he deliberately distanced himself from me, even going so far as to shift over on the seat so our thighs no longer touched. I turned to look out the other window and to hide the disappointment on my face. There was no reason for me to be disappointed. This was all fake. Sure, we were friends, but friends didn’t hold hands and snuggle. Friends didn’t look at each other like they wanted to kiss. Friends didn’t imagine climbing on the other’s lap and nestling into the crook of their neck.

  I huffed out a breath and watched the scenery. The car wound its way down through the narrow switchbacks toward the beach and the surrounding retail precinct. I admired the way the generations who came before had used the land so economically to build their homes. They’d created a natural terrace effect that followed the curve of the bay. It was ingenious, really. Everyone had a view of the water and they built the houses into the cliff face itself which would keep the villas cool during the long, sultry summers. They were also made of the local volcanic rock, literally made out of the excavated parts of the cliff they were built into. I could admire their forethought and I really wanted to know more about this culture that had been through some rough times. I wanted to see how they would reinvent themselves.

  And all that research would keep my mind off my burgeoning feelings for my best friend.

  Chapter 13

  Lucas

  Over the following two weeks Frankie and I fell into a comfortable routine. In the morning, we had breakfast together on the terrace—sometimes it was her terrace and sometimes it was mine. The palace provided breakfast in one of the larger communal dining spaces, but I enjoyed having Frankie to myself first thing in the morning. I enjoyed watching her slowly come alive once she’d had her coffee and something to eat. I enjoyed seeing her sleepy, and a little mussed. I liked it a lot. I liked it a bit too much.

  After breakfast we went our separate ways. I’d been working with the king and the parliamentary finance minister on sorting out the finances of the country. The economic situation was a mess, but it was slowly making headway. Kalopsia was once a flourishing country but after a decade of being ruled by a man who cared more about his own comfort than that of the people he was supposed to look after, its once wealthy coffers had been decimated.

  I found it curious that the original meaning of the word Kalopsia was ‘the delusion of things being more beautiful than they are.’ I knew the story of how and why the island was named—from the ocean, the island looked like a precious gem sparkling amid the Aegean Sea, but once the explorers landed, they found the stony ground and hilly terrain difficult to work with. Eventually, the settlers made peace with the island and found a way to work with the conditions rather than against them and then Kalopsia took on an alternate meaning, a more literal understanding of the word—kalós meaning good, beautiful, and lovely with ópsis meaning view. Now it had come full circle and was once again living up to the original meaning of the name. Kalopsia was lovely on the outside, but underneath the picture-postcard views, it was in a bad way.

  While I worked with the king, Frankie spent time with the queen and her ladies-in-waiting. It wasn’t traditional for the queen of Kalopsia to have ladies-in-waiting, but Meredith had adopted the tradition from her home country, where she was once a lady-in-waiting to the queen of Merveille.

  I didn’t know exactly what Frankie got up to in her visits with the queen, but they seemed to be forming a strong friendship.

  I felt more and more comfortable with every day that passed. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever feeling so completely at home anywhere, ever. I still hadn’t decided what to do with the family compound. Part of me was excited to renovate it and perhaps move into it, and another part of me worried that if I did, my family would inundate me. While the compound existed in a state of disrepair, there was no chance of my parents deciding to visit. That sounded callous, but these past weeks being away from their influence had been enlightening, to say the least. I felt more alive and more myself and just…more. My anxiety was at the lowest it had been for I didn’t know how long, and every day I woke with a sense of purpose and anticipation. At night I s
lept better than I ever thought possible and I knew it had to do with more than just the fresh sea air.

  Frankie was an enormous factor in my perpetually excellent mood, too.

  We hadn’t spent this much time together since college and I relished the renewing of our closeness. I didn’t have to pretend when I was around Frankie and I knew she wouldn’t try to change me into someone I wasn’t. Unlike my family, who viewed my introversion as a character flaw that was both a disappointment and somehow reflected badly on the Andino name. Not once since coming to Kalopsia had I felt like my personality was lacking. The king—Jamie—appeared to value my thoughtful and methodical appraisal of the documents he passed my way. He didn’t push me to make a snap decision or expect me to predict the future, something Effie wanted from me constantly.

  I would be more than content to stay in Kalopsia forever. Jamie had yet to ask for my decision regarding taking up the position in his court, but I was leaning toward accepting. The only flaw would be leaving Frankie behind…or rather her leaving me behind when she finally went home.

  But I refused to think about that. I refused to think beyond the immediate future. For now, she was my fiancée, or at least she was in the sight of the royals, and I was content with that.

  “Are you ready for lunch?” Dorian asked, coming into the office Jamie assigned to me.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about Lord Dorian Stamos. I couldn’t quite get a read on him and I definitely didn’t like that he and Frankie were so chummy. I would even say I was jealous except friends didn’t get jealous and that’s all Frankie and I were. Friends.

  “Yes,” I said, pushing back from my desk and standing up to stretch.

  This was another part of palace life that I could get used, which was odd, really, considering my proclivity for sticking to myself. A communal lunch and a communal evening meal. Lunch was a less formal affair with a wide range of shared plates served family style. Dinner was more formal and often included one of the parliamentary ministers.

  We walked through the corridors to the balcony where lunch was being served. It was another glorious day and the breeze off the sea kept the temperature cool enough to eat comfortably. I immediately looked for Frankie and when our eyes met, her face lit up in a beatific smile. I could almost delude myself into thinking she really was my fiancée, especially the way she immediately came over to me and popped up on her toes to brush a chaste kiss on my lips. She’d been doing that more and more, and I couldn’t say I hated it, nor did I want it to stop.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” she replied, almost shyly.

  “Good afternoon, Francesca,” Dorian said from beside me.

  Frankie rolled her eyes and elbowed him. “Don’t call me that,” she said.

  Dorian smiled. He knew it annoyed her, and he continued to do it anyway.

  Something ugly twisted in my gut and I had the overwhelming urge to push Frankie behind me so Dorian couldn’t smile at her and she couldn’t smile at him.

  Instead of giving in to the ridiculous caveman instincts, I simply rested my hand on the small of her back and grinned down at her.

  “What’s for lunch?” I asked.

  Francesca

  I climbed into the back seat of the car and slid next to Lucas, letting our shoulders touch. We were headed into the village, as we’d done nearly every afternoon since that first day.

  There was something so easy about being with Lucas. I was not shy and usually I had more confidence than was warranted but even so, this was a country I didn’t really know all that much about, despite my extensive research before leaving America. The internet was a wonderful thing, but it didn’t give the full picture. For that I needed to have an in-real-life experience, and that could be daunting, even for someone as confident and self-assured as I was.

  That was where Lucas came in. Just having him by my side, being able to pick his brain and get some sort of idea of what life was like before, and sharing this experience with him had made it so much richer. I got a much deeper understanding of the people and the country just by being here with him.

  Deacon was right. The people I’d spoken to so far—or at least some of them—remembered Lucas. That first day, after we visited the compound, we went to a part of the town that was rundown but not neglected. The people were obviously doing it tough, but they were also doing their best. They hadn’t lost their pride in their country or their town. A couple of the older women had exclaimed after Lucas, pinched his cheeks, and dragged him into hugs. Many of the men slapped his back and nodded gruffly toward him. I thought Lucas would be uncomfortable and shy around these people who seemed to know him, but the most amazing thing happened. He actually smiled. He smiled and hugged the women back. He shook hands with the men and even had a few sips of raïda with them. Some of them had worked for his family and when the Andinos left, taking the jobs with them, they were left without income and forced to face the next twelve years with uncertainty. I worried there would be backlash or anger, but if there was, it wasn’t directed at Lucas.

  It was a running theme among the people I continued to meet and interview for my research. There was a resilience about them. A lot of them had taken part in the underground resistance and had banded together to find Jamie and bring him back. Much of the country thought the young prince—now the king—had died along with the rest of his family, but there were a few who believed he escaped. Instead of being resentful that he got away and left them behind, they held on to the hope that he would one day return and save them.

  It wasn’t exactly how it happened. By the time Jamie returned, the usurper had already fled. He’d stripped the country of its wealth and when it could no longer sustain his lifestyle and the people turned against him, he ran away. That was when the resistance movement found Jamie and brought him home.

  It was a fascinating story, as was Jamie’s own story and the love story of him and Meredith, and it made me think of things I had no business thinking of. Like what it would be like to have someone fall in love with me the way Jamie obviously fell for Meredith. I was a romantic, I couldn’t deny it, although most people wouldn’t peg me for it. I loved sappy movies and stories of love against all odds. I came across as brash and a little rough around the edges, but there was nothing like a good love story to make me cry. But more than that, it made me believe in the inherent goodness of people. It made me believe there was a happy ending for everyone, even if that happy ending looked a bit different for everybody.

  Deacon parked the car and Lucas and I got out. We’d been coming to the same small community a couple of times a week since that first time. Yes, I was there to do interviews with the residents and to listen to their stories, but I’d also come to love these people in the brief time I’d been here. And they loved Lucas in a way his own family had never demonstrated. More than anything else, I loved watching the way he bloomed under the attention of the mothers and the fathers and even the sons and daughters who were of a similar age to him. A few of them were once playmates, before his family thought it untoward for the son of a family of their standing to mix with the common people. Lucas might be remembered fondly, but not all the Andinos were. And I couldn’t deny I had to fight off the feelings of jealousy when some of those daughters showed a little too much interest in Lucas.

  Had I always been this possessive of him? I didn’t remember feeling this way when Lucas started dating Clarissa. I never liked the woman, but I hadn’t felt the urge to mark my territory, had I?

  “Lucas!” one of the men, George, called to him as soon as we entered the bar. “You need to try this.”

  It was a familiar refrain. The men had taken to making their own form of raïda after the distillery closed down and for the last twelve years they had been refining it, selling it even, when they needed money to support their families. They ran a profitable, if bootlegged, business. I didn’t think the king minded and I know Lucas secretly loved it.

  Lucas shot the small glass of
clear liquor and then coughed. The men laughed, and Lucas along with them.

  “That’s…” Lucas coughed again, his face going red. “I think that needs a little more refining,” he rasped out.

  One of the men slapped him on the back and handed him a second shot glass. “This one will go down easier,” he said with a wink toward me.

  Lucas drank the second shot, not coughing that time, and grinned. He was adorable. Seriously. My fake fiancée was the best-looking man in this entire town—island—and when he looked at me with that slightly dazed look and that dopey smile, my heart literally melted…okay, not literally because that would be bad, but it felt like it. My insides went soft and mushy and my knees went weak. I stepped closer to him and kissed him. I had to. He held me close and kissed me back until the whistles and hoots from the assembled locals made me pull away with a blush. When Lucas looked at me again, there was something in his gaze I hadn’t seen before, something that made me wonder if there could be more between us than the status quo. My heart went soft and warm, and I smiled back at him, hoping he saw exactly how I was feeling in my eyes.

  Lucas

  It might be the raïda talking, but when I looked at Frankie, I could have sworn she looked at me like I hung the moon. It made me feel powerful. It made me feel like I was ten feet tall and invincible and I couldn’t deny I liked the feeling. Nobody and nothing made me feel that way, not even Clarissa and I had asked her to marry me.

  If I was honest with myself, Frankie always made me feel more; more confident, more sure of myself, more joy, just…more. But something had changed. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly when, but coming to Kalopsia certainly made the connection between us more tangible.