Dare Me

by Tara Wylde

  He sits beside my bed and runs his hand through his thick hair. “Alexis, I don’t –”

  I’ve never heard him sound so hesitant, so unsure.

  “I can’t believe I said those things to you.”

  I reach out and take his hand in mine. “Lucas it’s okay. Eileen set me up – and she played you.”

  “No.” He stands, jerking free of my grip. “It’s not okay.”

  He stands, jerking free of my grip, and paces from one end of the to the other and back again. Damn, he moves nice. “She tricked me, but I made it easy for her.”

  I push the button on the bed’s control panel, gritting my teeth against the residual pain I still feel despite the pain medication as it slowly elevates me into a sitting position.

  “It’s something you can work on, change. Next time, instead of leaping to the worse possible conclusion, think happy thoughts. Tell yourself a bad joke. And talk to the other person before hurling accusations. Okay?”

  Lucas stops beside my bed and stares down at me. I stare at my hands.

  “Next time?” He says the words slowly, as if he can’t quite believe what he's hearing. “At the match, I said I wanted to talk to you, but … things happened and we never got the chance.”

  “Lucas, there’s something I need to tell you first.”

  I need to get off my chest first. If I don’t I’ll lose my nerve. “When Eileen … when I thought I was going to … you know. The only thing I could really think about was you. I’ve said this to you before, once, but you were asleep so I guess it doesn’t count. You probably don’t want to hear this, but I made a promise to myself that if I lived, I’d tell you that I love you, more than anything else in this world, more than I ever imagined possible.”

  Lucas doesn’t say anything. The cheap clock above the door ticks away the seconds one … three ... seven. Unable to stand it any longer I sneak a peek through my lashes at Lucas.

  He’s standing stock still, the biggest, happiest grin I’ve ever seen spread across his face.

  He leans down and plants a feather soft kiss on my lips.

  “Alexis,” he whispers, his breath fans across my face. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I love you and I want to cancel the terms of our marriage contract and make this a real marriage. One that stands the test of time.”

  Epilogue - Lucas

  Eight Months Later

  I find my pretty wife sitting in our private box, her legs curled up underneath herself and her MacBook propped on one thigh. A cup of herbal tea steams beside her.

  I brush a kiss across her brow before looking at what has her so engrossed. “Fourteenth Century vases?”

  “Mmm.” She tears her attention away from the computer screen long enough to tip her head back for a proper kiss. “I’ve found some that might have been made by a Moravian farmer who lived in the Northern part of the country.”

  “Uh huh,” I close the laptop and set it aside, before wrapping my arms around her and lifting her up. A moment later, I’m sitting on the chair and she’s on my lap. “I paid for this box with the idea that you’d be able to watch the competition in peace and comfort. Not so you could work.”

  She wraps an arm around my neck and cuddles close, her curves fitting perfectly into my contours. She kisses my neck, her lips unerringly finding the spot behind my ear that sends lightning bolts of pleasure to my cock.

  “I paid attention to the most important bit. I watched your round.”

  “And –?”

  She smiles against my skin. “You’re the greatest fencer in the world. The way you handled the competition. Masterful.”

  “Spoken just like a good wife. Now you should watch. Roderick’s about to start.”

  “I can think of something else I’d rather do.” She nips my jaw as her hands slide under my shirt, her nails scoring my skin.

  “Roderick expects us to watch. He’ll want to know what we think.”

  “Mmm,” Alexis wiggles around, her sweet ass rubbing back and forth across my cock and nearly making me cross-eyed until, finally, she straddles me. “I think we can make something up, don’t you?”

  “That doesn’t seem kind.”

  Her hands unfasten my jeans and suddenly I don’t give a rat’s ass what Roderick thinks or wants. Or whether it’s kind.

  Sometime later, while lying on the floor of the private box, I shift so I can see Alexis’s face. She curls into my chest and smiles up at me.

  “That was fun.”

  I stroke her hair away from her sweaty face. “If there’s one hundred rabbits standing shoulder to shoulder in a line and ninety-nine make a single backward leap, what do you have?”

  Alexis’s eyes gleam.

  I’ll never tell her this, but the first time I laughed at her joke, just before she was loaded into the ambulance, I hadn’t really found the joke funny, I’d just been so relieved that she was well enough to tell bad jokes, the laugh just exploded out of me.

  But her reaction showed me just how much she values a sense of humor, so during these last few months, I’ve made an effort to shed some of my dignity. An effort which includes learning how to tell the bad jokes Alexis loves. As I’ve gradually felt less self-conscious about spewing nonsense, I’ve noticed how much she genuinely enjoys my efforts.

  On one or two occasions, I’ve even used a joke to ease a tense situation. I know, baby steps. But I’m trying.

  “Why do I get the impression that one steadfast rabbit isn’t the correct answer?”

  I snort. I’m pretty sure she actually knows the punch line of every joke I’ve told, but she always acts like she’s never heard it before. It’s one of thousand or so different things I love about her.

  “A receding hare line.”

  Alexis giggles and cuddles even closer. “Fantastic, tell me another.”

  I search my memory. Alexis is a walking dictionary of different jokes but I struggle to remember two or three at a time. I finally decide on one I don’t think I’ve told her yet.

  “Do you know why the skeleton decided to attend the bar-b-que.”

  Alexis doesn’t answer. After a moment, I realize she’s fallen asleep. Not surprising. These days she falls asleep at the drop of a hat.

  I carefully shift my position so I can look down on her face. More than a year after making the hasty decision to marry her and eventually falling in love with her, I think she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, both inside and out.

  Sighing with contentment I rest my hand on her lower belly, measuring the soft swell and gauging how much the child within has grown. Right now, they’re a cluster of cells, but soon those cells will turn into a recognizable form and shortly after that, my country will welcome the newest member in the line to the throne and I’ll hold my first child in my hands.

  I don’t care whether it’s a boy or girl. All I ask is that they’re healthy, full of life, and that they have their mother’s enormous heart and unbreakable sense of humor.

  Part II

  His Sword

  Here comes the bride?

  Yeah, right.

  I might be a Prince, but I’m not the Royal Wedding type.

  Not until some grad student finds a centuries-old Treaty.

  Now I’ve got two weeks to find a virgin wife!

  The clock is ticking. I’m about to lose my fortune, my titles, my kingdom, my everything.

  And I don’t even care.

  There’s only one thing on my mind: Amanda Sparks.

  Sweet, innocent, pure.

  And the girl I’m about to make my wife.

  She just doesn’t know it yet.

  Her father’s business is about to go bankrupt, but I can save it.

  $25 million dollars, tax free.

  All I ask for is a year.

  And a night to be her first…

  Chapter 45

  1. DANTE

  “You realize it’s technically within my rights as monarch to have your head chopped off for fuck
ing with me like this?”

  Carlo looks at me gravely with those basset-hound eyes, and my stomach drops to the floor. He can’t be serious. He has to be joking. Granted, he’s never done it before, but there’s a first time for everything.

  Jesus Christ, he has got to be fucking with me.

  “Your Highness,” he says. “In the twenty-nine years you’ve known me, have I ever – ahem – fucked with you?”

  It’s just the two of us in my office, a spectacularly cavernous space in a castle on an island in Lake Orta in Northern Italy. It’s straight out of Game of Thrones. Just like my life.

  And with the news he’s just brought, I feel even more isolated from the rest of humanity than I usually do. The least he can do is talk to me like I’m a normal human being.

  “For the millionth time, Carlo, you can call me Dante when we’re alone.”

  He flashes me a strained grin that highlights the deep creases in his aging face. Carlo Ferrare has been my chief counsel and lawyer since my sister died ten years ago, and he served my parents for twenty years before that. He’s as smart and as loyal as they come.

  “And for the millionth time, no,” he says. “My family has served yours for five generations. I’m not about to be the one who gets familiar with my royal charges.”

  I sigh and run my hands down my face. This is surreal. I feel like I’m on Punk’d or some other “gotcha” show. I pray that Ashton Kutcher is going to jump out from behind on of the suits of armor that line the window wall. But I know that’s not going to happen.

  “I want to make sure I’ve got this completely straight,” I say, as if doing so will make the universe wake up to how crazy this is and somehow cancel if for me. “I have to be married by my 30th birthday, which means I have two weeks to find a woman, get engaged and plan a state wedding?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir.”

  This is ridiculous. It’s the 21st century, not the Middle Ages, or the Napoleonic Wars. I have 300-megabits-per-second wi-fi in this medieval tomb of an office, for fuck’s sake. And I’m being held hostage and my life turned upside-down because of some obscure decree that a grad student found hidden in the handle of my family sword.

  “And it’s absolutely not fake?”

  “It’s been verified – discreetly – by four royal historians, sir. It’s authentic, and if it was to end up in court, it’s my opinion that it would eventually prove legally binding. Napoleon himself created the decree specifically for Morova, because he understood the wealth and power inherent in its banking interests. It was incredibly powerful as a principality – far more so than Monaco, Malta or the others – and he wanted a loophole that would allow him to claim that wealth to fund his European conquest.

  “By adding such an obscure decree, he could either control the monarchy, or he could get rid of it altogether. Fortunately, Napoleon died before he ever used it, at least as far as we’ve been able to discern. But since the law was never repealed, it could very well still be in effect.”

  Why can’t I have a normal family history like everyone else? Grandpa was a farmer, Uncle Joe stormed the beach at Normandy. No, I have to have a three-thousand-word fucking Wikipedia entry for a family tree.

  “Why didn’t you know about this?” I snap. “If this applies to all Morovan monarchs, it must have applied to my ancestors!”

  “I can’t say what circumstances led to it being hidden in the sword’s handle, sir. But the fact remains it was, and we must follow the edict or face dire consequences.”

  I snap my fingers. “We just hide it,” I say. “Bribe the grad student and go about our business as if no one found anything. I go back to being a playboy and we all get on with our lives.”

  I know I’m clutching at straws, but I’ll do anything to make sure this doesn’t happen. I can’t be roped into this. I won’t be roped into this.

  But what’s the alternative? Lose the monarchy? I can’t let that happen.

  Carlo sighs deeply. His tall, lanky frame looks like a broken rake inside his tailored charcoal suit, his white hair swept back in a pompadour from another era.

  “Sir, you’re already on rocky ground with the Crown Council,” he says. “They disapprove of your lifestyle, and Chancellor Huber would like nothing more than an opportunity to oust you and eliminate the monarchy.”

  “And steal the family fortune,” I snarl. “Yes, I know.”

  “In this day and age, secrets rarely remain secrets for long. If it were to become public that we deliberately hid the decree, it would undoubtedly lead to the fall of the house of Trentini.”

  I jam my hands in the pockets of my suit pants and pace the exquisite Persian rug that covers the center of my office’s marble floor. I graduated from Oxford, I should be able to think my way out of this.

  Granted, I partied away most of my time there…

  But nothing is coming to mind. Carlo is right – tradition and protocol matter deeply to the Morovan people, even if there are fewer than fifty thousand of them. And Huber is a popular leader. It’s a hornet’s nest that we just can’t afford to kick.

  Pacing is starting to get on my nerves, so I wander to the window on the south wall to the dappled surface of Lake Orta below us. Isola D’ora – the Island of Gold – has been my home for almost thirty years.

  It’s also been my prison. And now, it looks like I’ll be getting a cellmate. Someone I don’t even know.

  I sigh and turn to face Carlo. I feel bad for snapping at him – he’s doing everything he can to help. But it’s not every day you get told your life is pretty much over.

  “If it’s any consolation, sir, I’m sure Maria is up to the task of making sure the wedding happens,” he says. “She’s already in the process of planning your birthday celebration. Turning it into a royal wedding should be simple enough.”

  “Sure,” I say, trying to keep my anger in check. “I’m the one with the easy job. All I have to do is find a wife. In two weeks. How hard can it possibly be?”

  Carlo levels a look at me that I suppose normal people would probably associate with a school principal. I was educated by private tutors, so I can only imagine.

  “Your Highness,” he intones. “Now is the time to stop complaining and start planning. You do have a reputation as being somewhat irresponsible – a sudden marriage is not outside the realm of possibility. And as much as we would like to convince ourselves otherwise, most people are willing to suspend disbelief when it comes to royal marriages. As long as we maintain the illusion of the fairytale, the reality doesn’t really matter.”

  He’s right. My parents fought all the time – they loved each other, sure, but they were definitely not the idyllic couple everyone saw at the public functions. In fact, I’m pretty sure their marriage was arranged, at least partially, to solidify the family banking interests against attack from the National Council.

  Basically, Carlo is reminding me that I live by a set of rules that don’t apply to normal people. Reinforcing the fact that I live at arms’ length from the rest of the human race.

  I sigh. That’s not news; why am I treating it like it is? Yet another bizarre twist in a life that’s been full of them, and I’m not even thirty yet. I need to accept it and move on. There isn’t time for anything else.

  “So,” I say with a sardonic grin. “Anything else I need to know before I go out and find my princess bride in the next two weeks and try to pass her off as a legitimate love interest?”

  Carlo looks down at his folded hands and clears his throat. Shit. That can’t be good.

  “Carlo?”

  “There is one more stipulation, sir,” he says, avoiding eye contact. “And I’m afraid it’s a bit of a, shall we say… unique challenge.”

  “What could possibly be more of a challenge than finding a wife in two weeks?” I ask, goggling at him.

  “Sir… she, uh. She has to be a…”

  “A what? Blonde? Catholic? Taylor Swift fan? Spit it out, man.”

  He lowers his v
oice to a whisper.

  “She has to be a virgin, sir.”

  I’m sure every single person in the entire 100,000-square-foot castle hears the words I say next, loud and clear.

  Chapter 46

  2. AMANDA

  “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”

  “Gah!”

  Every nerve in my body ignites at the same time as the shout rings out from the prince’s office. It makes me drop my tea, dumping Orange Pekoe all over the blue satin blouse I bought specifically for meeting with him. Meanwhile, the cup and saucer tumble to the stone floor and shatter into a thousand jagged shards.

  Awesome, I groan inwardly. Just fucking perfect. Way to make that first impression, Amanda.

  I can’t believe this is happening – any of this, not just spilling my tea and making a fool of myself.

  A month ago I was on a sabbatical in Malta, poring over old documents in a dusty library vault to research my dissertation. Now I’m in a palace on Isola D’ora, the most beautiful place on the face of the planet, and standing outside the office of Prince Dante of Morova, the hottest royal bachelor on the face of the planet.

  And my new boss. Sort of, anyway.

  Now, here I am soaked to the skin with tea and standing over two obliterated pieces of bone china that have probably been in the prince’s family since before the Renaissance. Thank God the tea went tepid while I was talking to my new friend Maria, or I’d have blisters forming on my chest right now, as well.

  I must look a sight because Maria rushes over to see if I’m okay. She grabs a napkin off the silver service tray and starts dabbing at my blouse.

  “Are you hurt?” she asks, looking me over like a protective mother. Not surprising, given her years as a de facto nanny to the prince’s niece and nephew, Oriana and Vito.

  “Just what little pride I had when I came in,” I say with a half-grin. “I hope the prince wasn’t directing that at me.”

  She takes my arms and looks me in the eye. Maria is a stunning woman, the epitome of Northern Italian beauty: burnished oak hair, honey skin, sea-blue eyes. Me, on the other hand? My mom’s Irish roots might as well be a neon sign on my head: red hair, a complexion like coconut milk, and pale blue eyes that look more like faded jeans than Maria’s startling sapphire ones.