There’s very little in my life that I fail at.
I excel spectacularly at giving the image of a carefree existence. I’m remarkably talented at finding new and unexpected means of causing my father grief. And I’m one of the very bloody best at avoiding making enemies. My betrothed excluded, of course, though I shall maintain to my dying day that it’s her fault.
Finding a solution to my problems whereby I’m able to maintain a presence in Gracie and my child’s life while still fulfilling my duties and obligations to my country?
I am a dizzying wonder of a failure.
While Ares and Lavoie sit in my hotel room watching game clips to prepare for tonight’s match against the Nighthawks here in northern Virginia, and Murphy wanks around with his phone, I’m pacing a bloody hole in the rug with the requisite smile on my face, coming up with more and more ridiculous solutions to the Elin problem.
Thus far my best ideas involve dumping her in the Florida Everglades on our away trip in a few weeks, coming down with a rare, fatal, and highly contagious disease that can only be cured through a broken betrothal, and paying Austling off myself by continuing to play hockey in the States for the next two decades.
Which would also most likely involve excommunicating myself from my family and, in the process, result in Austling challenging the legitimacy of my father sitting on the throne due to my grandfather’s mismanagement of the country.
The taxpayers would be most put out to learn that anyone in my family—even someone long dead—had squandered the royal fortune.
If Austling were the type of man who bought his daughter dollhouses and bunny rabbits instead of princes and monkeys, I’d fear less for my country’s future. But fearing that your future father-in-law is mildly barmy is a different situation entirely from fearing that your mildly-barmy future father-in-law might try to seize power from your family’s kingdom.
“You have any sisters?” Murphy asks me. He’s lounging on my bed as though it’s his own, and I’m wishing sheep guts were as easy to come by here in America as they are back home in Stölland, because I’d love to gut his bed for him.
He’d undoubtedly retaliate. Probably in grand fashion, which would make for an excellent distraction from my problems.
If it weren’t for hockey and my teammates—my brothers on the ice—I’d be going bloody insane.
“No. Yes,” I reply absently to his question.
Lavoie looks up from the clips. “You don’t know if you have a sister?”
“I’ve a stepsister,” I clarify. “Recent acquisition.”
“Oh, right, right,” Murphy mumbles as he bends over his phone again. “She ever act weird about guys?”
I could only wish. Her fiancé is a tool of the first degree. “Ah, gossip hour. My favorite.”
“I’m serious, dude. Think there’s something going on with my sister and her boyfriend, but I don’t know what.”
Viktor knocks sharply and opens the door. “A visitor, Your Highness.”
My entire body tenses, because while I left Elin back at my flat in Copper Valley with a royal guard, my personal credit card, and directions to the city’s shopping district, I’m unconvinced she wouldn’t have used my money to charter a private flight for her monkey and herself to make a scene at tonight’s game.
“Bro, one day he’s going to hit his limit of saying Your Highness and he’s going to implode,” Lavoie says to Murphy.
“Is she hot?” Murphy asks Viktor.
Viktor’s left eye twitches.
It’s possible the man needs a night off. And equally possible he needs some female companionship.
“Send her in,” I tell Viktor.
May as well face my doom. However, as I take in the woman standing on the other side of the door, my smile finds me for once, rather than the other way around. It’s actually impossible to not smile at this woman. “Willow. We were just discussing you.”
My stepsister is tall and slender and dark-haired with the voice of an angel and the clothing stains that speak of a pre-kindergarten class that had too much fun with their spaghetti. Which is rather interesting for a Saturday. I wonder what she’s been up to, and how she managed to make the trip from New York to northern Virginia without noticing.
“Your father’s going to kill you,” she says without preamble.
“Well, hell-oo,” Murphy says.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle. Might I lick your spaghetti sauce, oui oui?” Lavoie adds.
“She’s engaged, gentlemen.” And odd is the day when I would prefer one of these puck monkeys to the man whose ring Willow’s been sporting most of this year. It appears none of us have any bloody sense.
“Engaged isn’t married,” Lavoie points out.
Willow looks past me at my friends. Murphy’s scratching his face with his T-shirt, showing off his abs. Lavoie’s making bedroom eyes and flexing his biceps. Ares ignores all of us and concentrates on his tablet, still watching clips of the game.
Smart man. He might not say much, but he’ll probably perform best of all of us on the ice tonight.
“I’ve found a charity project while in the States,” I tell her as I gesture toward my guests. “Class lessons for the commoners.”
“I think you’ve found some lost causes,” she replies. She gives Ares a wave—Ares and Zeus apparently unofficially joined Willow’s band this summer, as one of her bandmates is their little sister—and he replies with a grunt. She turns back to me. “And you should be worrying about your own neck, not charity.”
If Willow knows of the situation with Gracie, it’s only a matter of time before her mother—and therefore my father—knows.
Although I have to wonder if Viktor has already informed His Majesty.
“My neck is in no danger,” I assure her. “The royal jewels, however…”
She heaves a sigh and rolls her eyes heavenward. “Did you have to go there?”
“My apologies, madam. I’ll endeavor to never subject you to thinking of my genitalia again if you would assist me with another problem.”
“I’ll take care of his genitalia for you,” Murphy offers.
“No. No.” Willow waves her hands about. “All of you keep your hands to yourselves.”
Generally, making up for the lost time of not having grown up with her—and therefore not having tormented her for nearly thirty years—is far more enjoyable than it’s proving to be today. “Lavoie and Murphy are much too attached to keep their hands off each other.”
“Yeah, like you and Berger here,” Lavoie says.
Ares dribbles the remains of a protein shake in Lavoie’s hair. Lavoie yelps, Ares ambles to his feet with some get the fuck out before I make you in his hooded glare, and Murphy shoots off the bed.
“We’ve got a game in an hour,” Murphy says to Ares. “Not the time to be pulling your puppet-master shit.” He claps me on the shoulder on the way out. “If I were you, I’d rather marry my stepsister than my fiancée.”
Before I can deck him, he’s out the door. Lavoie winks at Willow on his way out. Ares picks her up in a massive hug, leaving her feet dangling a foot off the ground, and I hear her back cracking before he sets her down.
“Thanks, Ares,” she says.
He pats her on the head. “Nice girl.” He snags my protein shake and shuts the door. I half wonder if he’s planning to stand guard outside.
He doesn’t say much, but he’s highly protective. And I suspect his concern is more for Willow than for me.
But she is the more attractive and kinder of the two of us.
Willow rounds on me. “I can’t believe Joey knows and you’re still standing,” she hisses. “And what were you thinking, sleeping with a woman when you’re engaged?”
“Betrothed.” The word is clipped, and I’m once again struggling to hold on to my smile. Also, please note I refrain from mentioning there was no sleeping involved. I do have the occasional gentlemanly tendencies. “Through no fault of my own.”
Her dark hair falls across her face as she drops her cheeks into her hands. “You need a time-out.”
“I’m quite the terrible lout,” I say.
“Horrible,” Willow agrees.
“A rather unsuitable groom.”
She eyeballs me with her don’t you try sneaking your vegetables off your plate and into your napkin, young man preschool teacher x-ray vision. “You’re playing a game.”
I’m having a game played on me. “It would be most kind of me to offer Elin a more amenable arrangement. Or perhaps a more suitable fiancé than a drunken man whore.”
She folds her arms. “You’re not really a man-whore.”
“Whoever would tell you such a lie? I’m quite the man-whore, even if I’m not the drunkard I claim to be.”
“Are there honestly that many women who would want to sleep with you?”
I’d be offended at her lack of appreciation of my virility and attractiveness, except Willow is the sweet, innocent sort who’s had the same boyfriend—fiancé now—for the entirety of the five years I’ve known her, which means she’s probably found all of approximately three men attractive in her entire life.
It’s not me. It’s her. She’s rather sheltered for a native New Yorker.
And possibly having a bad day, because she’s not usually so blatant in her disregard of any of our charms. Or maybe she’s finally fitting into the family.
“There are women who make sport of bagging princes,” I tell her with enough cheer to make her face scrunch. “Most of them close their eyes and concentrate on the crown instead of watching my ugly mug.”
She’s rather flummoxed.
I’m enjoying the distraction that tormenting her is providing me. My game on the ice tonight is likely to be utter shit.
In which case the Thrusters might consider letting me go before the end of my contract.
Which will mean no more delays in having to marry Elin to fulfill the final bit of the contract of her father bailing out my family.
Bloody hell.
“Does Martin have a rich friend in want of a woman to spend his money and warm his bed?” I ask abruptly.
She’s rubbing her temples now. “This is insane. Call the wedding off.”
I lift a brow. “I shall call off mine if you call off yours.”
She slugs me in the arm, which feels vaguely like being batted at by a butterfly’s wing. “You got a woman pregnant. It’s your job to marry her.”
“Do you know what we don’t have in Stölland?”
“Morals?”
“I was going to say prudes, but certainly, let’s go with morals.”
“Manning.”
I’m pacing again. “If I claim my child, he’ll be vulnerable to being sold off as property just as Gunnar and I have been.”
She gapes at me as though she can’t understand the concept.
Of course she can’t.
Her mother—lovely woman—married my father for love. And Willow stayed in the States, with her life, her job, her fiancé, her band, and her friends, while Sylvie moved to Stölland. Sylvie still visits Willow in the States several times a year, and Willow’s been to Stölland herself a time or two, but visiting the fjords and touring ancient Viking ruins and attending the capital ballet are not enough to instill in one the sense of royal duty that comes with carrying the weight of the crown since birth.
“Politics, my dear,” I tell her. “I am not a man, I’m a pawn. And if I refuse to marry Elin, your mother’s comfortable position in the palace will be in as much danger as the entire family’s. Elin’s father has us by the scruff of our wool. So if you know of any rich gentlemen in need of a titled Stöllandic lady, it would be most kind of you to pass along a name.”
She’s shaking her head. “And I thought you were a little crazy just for the hockey thing. What does Joey’s sister—Gracie, right?—what does Gracie think of all of this?”
Women aren’t a subject my brothers and I have ever discussed seriously. Gunnar’s marriage was arranged. My pending doom is arranged. Colden has escaped the noose, thanks to apparently being born an inferior specimen, but he claims to have no interest in marital trappings, arranged or otherwise.
So discussing a woman with family is far from second nature.
It’s more like willfully stabbing myself in my hand while offering up my bollocks for peanut gallery commentary.
“Miss Diamonte has informed me she has no need of me,” I say.
I must be wearing the expression of a twitterpated, love-sick fool—which I assure you I am not, because that would be rather over-the-top ridiculous—because Willow puts a hand to my upper arm and squeezes. “Oh, Manning. I’m so sorry.”
“Whatever for?” I smile, because that’s what I fucking do. I smile. “I hardly have need of her either.”
Willow’s eyes bulge out of their sockets. My stomach can relate. It’s feeling like bolting out of its socket as well. Flashes of my brief time with a dark-haired woman from another world add a pressure in my bollocks.
Her dancing dark eyes. The easy, generous smile. That belly button stud. Her slick heat. Eager mouth.
The music in her laughter. Her inner strength and determination. Her pride. Her kindness.
Life has handed Gracie nothing, and she asks for no more than she’s willing to earn through hard work.
“She means nothing to you?” Willow whispers.
I’d very much like to snap something in two. Swallow a bottle of mead. Put my fist through the nearest wall.
“My duty lies with my country,” I tell my stepsister. “Miss Diamonte neither needs me nor wants me. Why, then, would a man waste his time pursuing such a woman, when he already has one awaiting him in his bedroom at home?”
Her eyes are narrowing, and I can’t decide if it’s because she can see right through me, or if it’s because she’d like to call Ares back in here to throw me out the bloody window. Probably both. “Then you’re probably right.” Her voice is soft, too heavy on the sincerity and too insightful for a woman whom I had thought had successfully avoided embroiling herself in the ugly side of the life to which her mother married into. “Why trap Gracie with all the stupid, archaic, insane rules of royal life just so your baby can know his father? You’re doing them both a favor.”
I’m no longer concerned about my hockey game tonight.
No, the rage will carry me over the ice just fine.
It’s tomorrow I worry about.
Because Willow’s entirely correct. I am not worth the price of the pain that would come to Gracie—and to my child—were they to also become embroiled in the mess of extracting myself from my betrothal to Elin.
I need to let her go. Permanently sever the ties between us.
For her own good.
Hers, and my child’s as well.
I would not be an asset in their lives. I would be nothing but a liability.
