by Marsh, Anne
When did I fall in love with a handsome king-to-be?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dare
In the fairy tales my queen-to-be mother used to read us, the princesses always wait for their princes to make the magic happen. They sit around in towers. They get locked up in rooms. They wait and they wait and then they fucking wait some more. It’s amazing that any of them managed to hook up before they were eighty.
The princes, on the other hand, ride to the rescue. They slash their way through flesh-eating thorns, they slay dragons, they scale enormous towers—and they do all this for a kiss. They’re selling themselves short. If I had to climb up a tower using a hair ladder and my wits, I’d insist on boning Rapunzel when I reached the top.
Edee isn’t waiting. She’s here and she came after me. If I needed one more reason to love Edee, she’s just handed it to me. She quietly makes her own rules. She’s fucking fearless. Me? I’ve never been afraid to make a scene so . . . why am I worried now?
I grab the shoes she’s discarded. They’re amazing heels, a fuck-me number that I’d love to see Edee wearing . . . with nothing else. But that’s not the number one want on my list. Because what I want most of all is more. More Edee, more time with her both in bed and out. Another chance at winning her heart and giving her mine. The shoes are the sexy fantasy, but the woman herself is everything. I wave off my security detail and turn to chase her.
And then I pause. I have to do this right. I turn to my king and I ask the question. I want to do this right. Dot my i’s with little fucking hearts.
“Permission to marry. Sir.” That last word is the cherry on my mother-may-I sundae. If he refuses, I’m leaving anyhow. When I meet his gaze, I know he understands that.
I’m a player or I have been. I’ve hopped from bed to bed, and my dick’s got enough frequent flyer miles for a free round-the-world ticket. But . . . I won’t cheat. I won’t make promises and not keep them. So the day I marched down the aisle, my player days were over and I’ll never have this again. And that makes me the property of one Edee Jones, American, introvert, pet photographer extraordinaire, and the woman I love. I’ve spent my life breaking the rules, but somehow, this time, I need to find a way to break the rules—to win.
My timing sucks. I should wait until we’re private. I shouldn’t force him to deal with me, with us, in front of a crowd. His hands are tied in so many ways, and I’ve just drawn a very public line in the sand. All around us cameras go off like bombs, recording my request for Internet posterity. By tomorrow, I’ll be a bad meme.
And I deserve it in so many ways. Nik still doesn’t have his memory back. Luca still has the habits of a troll. And I? I still have a country I love—and a royal duty. But my heart’s running out the ballroom doors.
“Dare.” Queenie looks pained. “This is impossible.”
“Not impossible—just difficult. I won’t marry one of those girls.”
“It’s too late for second thoughts,” he says.
But one thing I’ve learned? It’s never too late, not until the very last moment when you have to let the person you love go because they’ve crash-landed on a mountainside. That’s the definition of too late, and while I may have been slow to figure it out, I know it—in my heart, my soul, my very being.
“I’ve tried to be who you need me to be. I’ve come home, I’ve done everything you asked. Somehow, I’ll figure out how to be the king Vale needs—but you have to let Edee stand by my side.”
All those corny songs about how behind every man there’s a good woman? All true. Without Edee behind me, under me, at my side? I’m nothing. So in the end, it comes down to one thing.
“I love her. Someone wise once told me that when you love someone, you hold her tight. Just holding onto the memories could never be enough.”
Queenie flinches as I give him back the words he gave me so many years ago when I was a boy crying for his parents and he was a new widower.
Those words are going to be plastered across every gossip site and paper tomorrow. The cameras will record my words and a lip reader will translate them. But I love Edee and it’s time the world knew that, even if I don’t get the permission.
“Vale needs a king and queen,” Queenie says. He doesn’t yell, doesn’t threaten. He just points out the truth. “Do you really think marrying an American is best?”
The jury’s out on whether choosing Edee will be best for Vale. Honestly, the answer has to be no. She hasn’t been raised to be a princess. The sometimes-vicious politics, the complicated diplomacy, the etiquette, and the culture? All foreign to her.
“Running away bought you time,” Queenie continues. “But now you’re home and you need to choose Vale. Vale has to come first. Call it destiny or royal duty, but you’re the face of our nation and you have a family legacy to live up to. Edee can never be a royal princess.”
And while he searches for words to devastate me with, I tell him the truth. “I found my queen.”
It’s that simple.
That complex.
Country or self. Say yes to what’s best for everyone—or put myself first. I don’t know what to say. I don’t have an answer, at least not one that I want to give. I’ve spent the last few weeks with Edee, and now I can’t imagine spending all the rest of them without her. And yes, it’s selfish. I know that. But I remember holding her, kissing her awake, being there by her side—and I want to that, over and over, every day for the rest of my life.
Queenie sighs, his hands going to the chain he always wears around his neck. I’ve never seen him take it off, not once. As a kid, I assumed it had rusted shut or fused itself to his skin. As an adult, I understand it’s a choice he’s made, to be reminded every time he looks in a mirror or feels the slide of metal against his throat. He won’t forget Rose, not while he’s wearing her next to his skin.
The chain coils in his hand. It’s not particularly expensive—a Tiffany’s Diamonds by the Yard number—and the matching stone in the woman’s ring is equally modest. Sparkly, sure, but more like a one-mortgage-payment diamond rather than a house or an entire fucking palace.
Queenie holds the ring up. “I bought this for Rose. She said I’d never worked a day in my life and wouldn’t understand a paycheck if it bit me in the ass. She was right, so naturally I had to prove her wrong.”
I choke back a laugh. My auntie was a fine woman.
“I bought this with the salary I earned as an officer in Vale’s army,” Queenie continues. “She wore it every day for the rest of her life. I earned it and I earned her. She’d want to know what your intentions are toward that young lady.”
I’ve never heard a ballroom so quiet. Everyone wants to hear what comes next.
“To marry her again, sir,” I say.
My uncle nods, slides the ring off, and drops it into my hand. My fingers close over the diamonds. I bought Edee a ring the first time we got married, something sparkly and expensive from a Vegas jeweler, but that was window dressing. This ring matters and I tuck it into my pocket next to the ring box I brought with me just in case.
“Then go get her,” he says.
I look over at my brothers. Nik nods because he’s a fucking saint and he loves me (or he will when he remembers me); and Luca . . . he doesn’t smile or nod.
He simply growls.
“Who do you think sent her the plane ticket?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dare
I run after Edee as if my life depends on it because it does. In fact, I’m chasing her so hard that I almost slam into her when I round a particularly tall boxwood. She’s not running away. She’s parked her cute ass on an ancient bit of wall that dates back to the Greeks or Neanderthals or some suitably dusty, impressive ancestor.
She slaps a hand against my chest. Hard. “Tag. You’re it.”
I love games—but I play to win. I catch her
hand in mine and raise it to my lips, brushing a kiss up her soft fingers and over her bare knuckles.
“You’ve lost something,” I say. “You’re not wearing your rings.”
She crosses one bare leg over another and looks at me. The dress she’s wearing slays me and I decide on the spot that pink should be the new color of Vale. My most favorite things are pink after all—the peonies my mother decorated the palace with, a really awesome cake the palace chef makes, strawberries, strawberries after they’ve been dipped in champagne, and place inside somewhere else that’s pink . . . Pink is fucking perfect. My dick votes we move straight to hot reunion sex.
Sex is an important part of a healthy relationship.
I wait for lightning to strike or hell to freeze over. Nada.
I’ve never had a relationship before, but I want one.
“So tell me, Your Royal Highness, what else did I lose?” She looks me up and down and I swear her gaze lasers through my tuxedo jacket and spots the ring. “Because it’s not you. You’re right here.”
“So you’re waiting for your prince to come.” I wink at her. “And here I am.”
Her face tightens. “I saw where you just were.”
Uh-oh.
“Did you pick out my replacement already?”
“Of course not,” I growl. “I already picked you. I told Queenie I was married, but he wanted me here tonight for solidarity. He said that if I couldn’t say yes, I didn’t have to say no, either. One of us is supposed to be proposing tonight, and I just ran away with the ring.”
She tips her head back, staring at the stars. Aquila, Cassiopeia, Aries. Jason, that poor bastard, had to find Aries’s fleece in order to claim his throne and become king. There’s an important lesson there for men. We can bumble around half the known world hunting for treasure, or we can fucking stop and ask for advice. Jason didn’t find the fleece until he wised up and begged Medea for help. He married her, too, because he wasn’t stupid.
I suck at asking for help, but now is the right time to start. “Talk to me?”
Edee looks at me. “There were three girls in that gazebo. That doesn’t seem like an accident to me.”
It’s dark here in the garden, and I can’t see her face clearly. “Queenie wants me to say yes, but he has his reasons.” I unbuckle my sword belt and toss it onto the ground. “Royals are good at keeping secrets, and my family has plenty. I should’ve shared, but I didn’t. I’m not good at that. At letting people in.”
“Then tell me now.”
I drop down beside her, my thigh brushing hers, my arm resting against her shoulder. “It’s not just my secret.”
I want to be the man she needs—the kind of man she trusts to stick by her side. Permanently. But my head . . . my head remembers all the ways people have sold me out before. The times my life has ended up on the Internet and on public display. My heart, however, believes that Edee is different.
“Why did you agree to a betrothal ball? Why didn’t you come back? Did you agree to marry one of those girls? Are we even still married?”
“The ball was one of Queenie’s surprises. I took one look at those girls and knew I was planning on walking out of here and straight back to you. And yes. Fuck, yes.”
She processes my answers. I’m telling her the truth. Or most of it. I’ve never lied to her overtly, but I have kept shit back. And yet she still took a chance and came here tonight. I know how she feels about public scrutiny and she just went off on my ass in a crowded ballroom full of reporters. By now, a significant percentage of the world’s seven and a half billion residents have also heard the news.
I don’t think she’s grasped that, however, because she gives me a smile. It’s tentative and faint, like so much of the starlight overhead, because it’s taken a long time to travel here through all that empty, black space. “Explain it to me, Dare.”
There is no NDA, no promises of silence, nothing but these . . . feelings between us. Once I’ve done this, she’ll either tell me that she understands and we’ll move forward—or she’ll go back to Las Vegas. She’s not making any guarantees. For all I know, my family’s secrets could end up splashed across a dozen websites tomorrow.
I suck in a breath. This can’t be any worse than my first jump. I sucked down too many Red Bulls and got the dry heaves right before we rode to altitude. The exit was almost anticlimactic and then I was free-falling. Pretty fucking amazing, seeing all of Vale spread out beneath me but a jump goes fast. One minute you’re in the door and then you’re air bound and you open your chute and the harness yanks hard at your balls and it’s all about the landing.
I just have to exit the plane, so to speak.
I sound like an idiot.
Here goes everything.
“My older brother, Nik, has always been the heir to the throne. He’s the best man for the job. We call him Saint Nik, and he’s earned the name. Feeding orphans, looking out for the weak and the vulnerable, running international charities single-handed. Puppies follow after him like he’s the Pied Piper of their doggy world. He was on a volunteer trip a few months ago . . . and he didn’t come back. His helicopter crash-landed on the side of a mountain. I didn’t know. He was lost for days, and no one told me because I was the playboy prince, too immature to handle that kind of secret.”
Edee shifts beside me. Her hands come up, go back down, as if she’s not sure what to do with them. “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”
I look her in the eye. “I fucked, I partied, I had a good time. But none of that prepared me—”
“To cover for Nik,” she says quietly.
“To be Nik. Queenie wanted me to take his place—to step up as heir and to be the perfect prince. He also needed a distraction, and a royal wedding would have been perfect. He wanted to announce my betrothal immediately, wanted the media attention focused on dresses and rings and happily-ever-after. He didn’t want anyone asking where Nik was.”
“You give awesome distractions,” she agrees. “Although Elvis and Hunka Hunka Burning Love Drive-Through Chapel probably don’t fall into Westminster territory.”
“Definitely not.” My grin is wry and a little bit guilty. Did I take that away from her? “Would you have wanted that long, ceremonial walk up the aisle with a million-dollar dress, a tiara, and a bishop? Because we could do a vow renewal.”
Queenie can kiss my ass—the bishop owes me.
“No, I don’t need to be married on TV with a million people watching.” And if she’s decided something, she slides onto my lap, knees on either side of my thighs, hands on my shoulders. Hello. FYI, ladies? If all wedding discussions were conducted this way, guys would be much more willing to spend hours discussing cakes, venues, and bridal favors.
“You don’t want to be king?” Her eyes look into mine, and I want to look away. But I don’t.
“It’s complicated.” I don’t know how to explain it to her. “No, I don’t want the job of being king. But Vale is my country and if they need me . . . I want to do the right thing. I have to be what everyone needs me to be. And if that means I end up on the throne, then that’s what I do.”
“But Nik’s not missing anymore.”
“He was rescued by an American backpacker. She looked after him for weeks until someone from the palace tracked them down. But there are gaps in his memory. He doesn’t remember who he is. Who we are. So—”
“So you’re not off the hook,” she says softly. My eyes are glued to her, and not just because my view is amazing—and it totally is. Her sweet face, the trust I see there, the curve of her lip, and lower where her shoulders and tits threaten to spill out of her dress.
“There’s something else I didn’t tell you, although the Internet probably already has. The royal rulebook says a prince must have the king and queen’s permission to marry. Our marriage isn’t valid in Vale.”
�
��So you’re telling me I’m technically single.”
“No.”
I don’t have to think about what comes next. Since she’s come this far, I don’t think she wants to be alone.
“You’re mine,” I whisper roughly, squeezing her close.
“You were born for this,” she whispers back, and I know she’s looking up at the palace and all it represents.
“I was born for you.”
I don’t want to go back, not when I can go forward. Plus, I’m not all that reformed. I do want what’s best for Vale and I always will, but I’m also still me. I stand, scoop her up into my arms and twirl us both in a lazy circle.
She shrieks something distinctly uncomplimentary about my royal ancestors. You American girls have such a colorful vocabulary.
“Put me down.” She mock slaps my shoulder.
I drop a kiss on her forehead. “That’s not very PC of you.”
She looks up at me. And . . . fuck. There are tears in her eyes. Tears that I’ve put there because I’m a royal dick. She told me in Vegas that she had trust issues—that she had a hard time believing I’d always be there for her. While I’m still trying to decide how to further plead my case, footsteps crunch on the gravel behind us. It’s either my bodyguards or the Valeian army, come to arrest me for my crimes against the throne. But like I told her, I don’t belong on the throne.
I belong right here, with her.
“Incoming,” I whisper against her ear. She tenses and swipes at her eyes. She’s an angry crier and she’ll hate it if anyone sees her like that, so I sprint toward the closest mass of shrubbery. I have one chance to get this right, and for once in my life, I don’t need or want an audience. The only person who matters now is Edee.