The Prince's Fake Fiancée

by Leah Ashton

  ‘I used to come swimming here with Lukas,’ he found himself saying, his gaze focused on the crests of the small, lapping waves. ‘It felt like the only place on the island where we could totally relax—and where no one was watching.’

  ‘Or asking questions,’ Jas prompted. ‘Like the media outside the school today.’

  Marko shifted to face Jasmine, unsurprised she’d guessed why he’d come here.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘No paparazzi to bother us here.’

  But also no palace staff, and once Lukas was sixteen—no minders. Not one person to observe or comment on their behaviour. Or to advise and pre-empt how they should behave.

  ‘Were there more paparazzi than you’d expected today?’ Jas asked, her voice gentle.

  He didn’t want her concern.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was exactly as we’d all expected.’

  Her unspoken question seemed to whirl in the breeze: And so why did you run away, then?

  But he didn’t have to answer that. He didn’t need to explain anything to Jasmine, or to anyone.

  Except...

  That he did.

  His whole life he’d rebelled against all that was expected of him. Since adulthood he’d divested himself of pretty much all royal responsibilities, aside from those related to his military career.

  But those days were over.

  At least, for now.

  ‘Do you know what the paparazzi would’ve asked us if we’d walked out?’ Marko asked, still staring at the waves.

  Jas seemed to realise it was a rhetorical question.

  ‘They wouldn’t have asked about the literacy programme, or about the kids we met today,’ he continued. ‘They wouldn’t have cared about how investing in literacy will change these kids’—and many other kids’—lives. They wouldn’t have cared about anything important.’ He paused. ‘Instead, they would’ve asked about your dress. Or your shoes. And I can guarantee there would’ve been some stupid Playboy Prince comment—because, of course, that’s who they want people to think I am, because it gets them clicks and sells their magazines.’

  ‘And you didn’t want to answer those questions?’

  ‘Not today,’ Marko said. He rubbed his forehead again. ‘Even though I know I need the media onside. Even though I know I could’ve just ignored the stupid questions and said my piece about the literacy programme and be done with it. All I needed to do was play nice, and play the role that Lukas needs me to play. Play the game like a good boy. For once.’

  ‘But you couldn’t,’ Jas said neutrally.

  Marko waited for the question—for the Why?—but it didn’t come.

  Maybe that was why he decided to explain.

  ‘The first girl I kissed, I kissed at my fifteenth birthday party. It was at the family estate, and not at the palace. We were under this tree practically in the middle of the property, with the lake behind us.’

  Jas gasped. ‘I know that photo,’ she said. ‘She had blonde hair, right?’ Marko nodded. ‘And that was your first kiss?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We were over a kilometre from the road, but a photographer with a telephoto lens decided to trespass and he obviously got close enough for that shot.’

  ‘Wow,’ Jas said. ‘I don’t know how I’d feel if my first kiss was documented and then printed and reprinted for the rest of my life. Although, I wouldn’t have expected a photographer to be lying in wait behind my local fish and chip shop when Josh from Calculus stuck his tongue down my throat.’

  Marko couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘That is pretty terrible, though,’ Jas said, more seriously now. ‘You were still a kid.’

  ‘I was,’ Marko said. ‘And so was she. It was my first experience being personally targeted by the media. Until then, I’d just been photographed with my parents. This was different. And Sofia—the girl I kissed—was mortified. For a few weeks, she and her family were hounded by the media. It was ridiculous. A private moment—a private memory—was ruined.’ He managed a grin now. ‘Although I did learn to be more creative with where I kissed girls from then on.’

  ‘I bet,’ Jas said drily.

  ‘It didn’t stop after that. For some reason, suddenly Lukas and I were being followed everywhere we went. I used to hate how confined I felt in the palace, but now I felt that way everywhere. Didn’t matter what I did, the media was there. I got drunk for the first time at uni—and there they were. I woke up with a hangover and a headline on the front page of the paper.’

  Marko shifted his weight on the sand so he was facing Jas.

  She’d pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms loosely around her knees.

  ‘Lukas handled it really well. He just accepted it as part of the deal. I guess he had to—he was the heir to the throne, and so he’d carried that responsibility from birth. He just conformed to what was expected of him. I did try for a while, for a few years at least. But then my father got sick...’

  Marko stopped. Swallowed.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘eventually I figured, if they want photos of me drinking, or kissing girls—then I’ll give them to them.’ His lips quirked. ‘And also, I was eighteen, so it wasn’t like that was a hardship.’

  But Jas wasn’t smiling with him.

  ‘Your dad had cancer, didn’t he?’ Jas asked.

  ‘A different type from Lukas,’ Marko said firmly. ‘And with my father, they think maybe his military service in Vietnam caused—’ He stopped again. Swallowed again. ‘Anyway. It’s different, and treatments are further advanced now, and Lukas’s prognosis is excellent.’

  He sounded as rehearsed as Lukas’s oncologist.

  Jas just nodded, and tightened her arms around her knees. He sensed she was trying to work out the right words to say, but that was the thing—there weren’t any.

  She could hardly reassure him that she was sure Lukas would be okay.

  ‘Look,’ Marko said, before she had a chance to say anything. ‘The short explanation is: I only found out my brother had cancer this week. I’m doing fine most of the time, but when Ivan told me it was time to go and face those damn stupid questions today, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t go outside and pander to the media that didn’t give a crap about me when they photographed me self-destructing as my father was slowly dying. I couldn’t. I—’

  His voice cracked. Just like the scared twenty-year-old almost-man he’d once been.

  He stood up, and was walking towards the water before he’d even realised what he was doing, his hands unbuttoning his shirt, then his trousers.

  In boxer briefs only, he stood for a moment on the smooth rocks in the shallows, the water lapping against his knees.

  And then a moment before diving into the water, he looked over his shoulder. At Jas—still sitting on the sand—just looking at him.

  ‘You coming in?’ he asked.

  Chapter Eight

  JAS HAD NOT joined Marko for a swim.

  Common sense had prevailed, as had the reality that she had known this man for less than a week, and that she worked for him. Swimming with Prince Marko in her underwear was not an option.

  But...oh, it had been tempting.

  She’d seen photos of him shirtless before—and after what he’d revealed she felt terribly guilty for being part of the audience that drove photographers to intrude on Marko’s life—but those photos really did not reveal how...devastating a shirtless Marko was in real life.

  She’d known he was fit and strong, and she’d known he had muscles. But she hadn’t known the way the sun would paint every hard edge of his body with gold, and she hadn’t known how she would feel when the owner of all those delicious hard edges was looking at her.

  When he’d surfaced after diving into the water...and that water had sluiced over his broad shoulders and down his pectorals and the occasional dark hair on
his chest...

  She had literally fanned herself with her hand.

  And then quickly stood up, and made her way back to the car. The pain in her ankle now no more than the slightest echo of an ache.

  As she’d put the distance between herself and a nearly naked Marko, she’d been able to focus instead on their conversation, and what he’d revealed to her.

  Her heart ached as she imagined a teenage Marko grappling with growing up—and later grieving the death of his father—in front of a paparazzo lens. And it ached some more at the emotions the Prince was attempting to deal with now: fear for his brother balanced with the responsibility of acting as Vela Ada’s head of state—while faking an engagement.

  This was big stuff. Huge.

  No wonder he’d run today.

  But he couldn’t do it again. She knew he knew that, and somehow she was certain that there wouldn’t be a repeat of today.

  There was a steeliness to Marko—a sense that once he decided upon something he was unwavering in his determination to follow through. His successful military career reflected this. As did, Jas suspected, his extraordinary playboy reputation. As he’d told her today, once everyone—the media, Vela Ada, the world—had decided he was a player, he’d just run with it.

  Her lips curved upwards; she didn’t think doing so had been entirely a hardship for Marko.

  However, after today, she was aware there was more to Marko than his reputation.

  He was much more than just the Playboy Prince.

  * * *

  The next day, there were no royal engagements scheduled.

  Jas, once again, had breakfast out on the terrace. However, today Marko didn’t join her.

  But, aside from an early morning run that Jas knew about only because two of her team had accompanied him, Marko didn’t leave the palace all day.

  Even so, Jas didn’t lay eyes on him.

  Instead, she spent the day working—not as a fake fiancée, but as the owner of a rapidly expanding personal protection services company. And after a day playing princess, she definitely had a lot to do.

  Apart from remaining abreast of the two assignments her two other teams were currently engaged in, she also needed to plan ahead for Prince Marko. She might now be standing by his side in a different capacity, but she was still in charge of his protection. So her team needed to be out visiting upcoming venues, and liaising with Ivan and other palace staff about scheduling and logistics.

  Frustratingly, Jas herself could no longer lead the scouting trips, although her team were more than capable of doing that without her. Even so, she asked for video footage to be taken where possible—even though she had each location’s building plans, it wasn’t quite the same as seeing a venue for herself.

  In the evening, she ate dinner out on the terrace.

  She told herself it was because the weather was glorious—warm with a breeze that carried the scent of conifers and just the slightest hint of the ocean—but when she found her gaze drifting to the French doors once again, she knew she was just lying to herself.

  She had hoped Marko might join her.

  Why?

  As they’d driven home from the beach yesterday, Jas had barely spoken a word to Marko. If she’d expected becoming his unexpected confidante would lessen the constant tension between them, she’d been patently, spectacularly wrong. His impromptu swim seemed to have washed away any chance of that happening. Back at the palace the Prince had excused himself to his rooms—and there he had remained.

  Why was she surprised?

  Because, really, wasn’t it normal that things were a bit weird between them now? She’d gatecrashed an intensely private moment, and because of that—and only because of that—he’d been rawly honest with her. After all, why else would he tell her—effectively his employee—something so intensely personal?

  Jas would bet her beloved vintage saucer collection that Marko wasn’t one to confide in random strangers.

  And that was who she was: a random stranger.

  Just as he was a random stranger to her.

  Who’d kissed her.

  Who’d made her heart flip and every childhood fairy tale come true when he’d carried her in his arms.

  Jasmine laid her knife and fork firmly on her dinner plate, loudly enough to make a noise and make the attentive wait person—everyone who worked in this palace was attentive—who’d just walked out the French doors startle.

  The interruption as her plates were collected was timely.

  It did not matter that Marko had kissed her—it hadn’t been real. And it also did not matter that she thought about his lips on hers more often than she should—which was never—or about how being carried by someone so strong and powerful had taken her breath away.

  Or that he’d asked her to come swimming with him in her underwear.

  Jas squeezed her eyes tight.

  Maybe he’d intended for her to swim in her dress. Or—more likely—because he didn’t think of her that way, a nearly naked Jasmine Gallagher was of no concern to him.

  Yes. That was definitely it.

  Her phone rang, vibrating against her water glass.

  Her mother.

  Jasmine sighed.

  She must have received her email, finally sent late the night before.

  ‘You’re actually marrying a prince?’ her mum said, barely giving Jas an opportunity to say hello. ‘This is not some elaborate April Fools type thing? I did not dream that my only daughter was on the front page of the Canberra Herald?’

  ‘It’s September, Mum,’ Jas said, because it was the only thing she was actually allowed to refute.

  ‘Jasmine Sadie Gallagher, this is not the time to be cute.’

  ‘I know,’ Jas said. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know how to explain.’

  That, at least, was honest.

  Jas took a deep breath, and repeated what she’d written in her email. ‘Marko asked me to keep this secret. He didn’t want our relationship scrutinised by the media unless it went somewhere.’

  ‘I’d say it’s gone somewhere, Jas,’ her mum said. ‘And surely he would’ve understood that your own mother is an exception, and you could’ve said that I was trustworthy. It isn’t like I would’ve told anyone, you must know that.’

  The hurt was obvious in her mum’s voice, and it made Jas feel ill. She couldn’t remember lying to her mum since she was a teenager—and what she was lying about now was far more important than that one time she’d wagged school to go to the movies, and Jas still felt a little guilty about that.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she said again. ‘I really am.’

  She couldn’t wait until this charade was over and she could tell her the truth. No matter what her contract might say, she wasn’t living the rest of her life with this lie hanging over the most important relationship in her life. Her family was just her and her mum. It always had been.

  ‘So you’ll be living there? In Vela Ada?’

  Jas chewed her lip. ‘I guess?’

  ‘You guess? Isn’t that the kind of thing you should discuss before you get engaged to royalty, Jasmine?’

  This was horrendous. Guilt wrapped itself heavily around her shoulders.

  ‘And, Jasmine, I was reading about this prince of yours, because I thought surely my daughter wouldn’t marry a man who seems to have had sex with everything that walks in Europe—but, no, it is that prince. You know what he’s called, right? The Playboy Prince? Why would you want to marry someone like that?’

  Jas’s head pounded with the effort to not blurt out everything.

  Or to cry.

  Her mum thought she was losing her daughter to the other side of the world to a man she didn’t know, and none of that was true.

  Right now, Jas genuinely hated herself for getting tangled up in this mess.

&nb
sp; ‘He’s not really like that, Mum. You can’t believe everything you read in the tabloids.’

  At least Jasmine believed that herself now. Marko was so much more.

  ‘So all those photos with different women are what—all his closest friends?’

  She knew her mum was just doing her job as a mother. She was supposed to be worried, she was supposed to be concerned—and yet Jas found herself snapping back at her.

  ‘Actually,’ she said firmly, ‘most of those photos were taken years ago. More recently, Marko has rarely been photographed with women he’s dating. The tabloids just like to reuse old photos, or make up stories with recent photos of him alone, particularly whenever he dares to go to the beach somewhere—and then speculate about who he might be dating. Just because an article says he dated someone, doesn’t make it true.’

  Last night, Jas had spent several hours discovering this all for herself.

  Yes, Marko had probably deserved his playboy reputation, but the media were the ones who persisted with it—not Marko. But, Jas imagined, writing about how Prince Marko had settled down and now had a fiercely private personal life wouldn’t sell many magazines, or get many clicks on social media.

  There was a moment of silence, as if her mum was digesting this information.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ her mum said, eventually. ‘I know you’re no fool. You wouldn’t be marrying him if he was really like that. I should’ve known. It’s just that, after—’

  Jas knew what was coming, and found herself gripping her phone so hard it hurt.

  ‘—after what happened with Stuart, I can’t help but worry about you.’

  Now it was Jas’s turn for a moment of silence.

  ‘That was more than three years ago, Mum,’ she said, doing her best to sound perfectly calm. ‘It’s not an issue any more.’