When I wake up, light is streaming in through the gauzy curtains overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains.
And I’m alone.
There’s a short note on the pillow beside me, along with my phone.
G–
I’ve texted you.
–M
His handwriting is bold and scrawly, the letters bleeding into each other. I smile. Both because he’s drawn a heart at the bottom of the note, and because he saved me from deciphering much more of his horrible penmanship.
It’s probably not that bad, but I don’t see it right. And he probably knows it.
I could learn to read better. Many, many dyslexics just like me have, and they’ve gone on to do bigger things than printing dicks on cookies in the back office of a one-horse town’s only bakery.
But I found where I fit. And that’s been enough.
Until now.
“Honey badger, read me the text from Manning,” I tell my phone.
Her electronic voice pipes up almost immediately. “I regret leaving a note, but you were sleeping so soundly I could not bear to disturb your slumber. I must be off for a meeting with my father, then to the arena for practice and the flight to Florida. If you require assistance in your return to Alabama, Kristofer will be more than happy to assist you. Safe travels, love. Talk soon.”
Wait.
Does he mean he wants me to leave?
I guess it makes sense. He’s out of town the next two or three days. And I do need to get home and check on my bakery, and I miss my cat and my friends, but what about taking care of his betrothal? And what’s going on with his family? Are they staying? Or traveling with him to his games?
I shuffle to his bathroom and grimace to myself.
Of course they’re not traveling with him to his games. A king and his queen can’t be hockey groupies.
I make eye contact with myself in the massive mirror above the marble sink.
But I could.
I could go to Florida. Get tickets to the games. Surprise him at the hotel—wait.
Do the guys share rooms? Oh, even if they don’t, Viktor will be—
Wait again.
Who am I?
I’m not a hockey groupie, and Manning’s betrothal is still very much a real thing until he confirms it’s off.
He will. But I know we should be as quiet as possible about our relationship until he’s formally a free man.
I finger-comb my hair, grin at the idea of our relationship, sigh wistfully over the idea of a long soak in that huge tub, and go in search of my clothes.
I don’t have to look far, because Manning has once again put everything in its place, and he’s found a place for what doesn’t belong on a fancy upholstered chair with carved wood trim. He even folded my clothes neatly before placing them on the chair.
Right down to my dirty, torn underwear.
For some reason, I can’t stop smiling all over again at the thought of Manning folding my dirty underwear. It’s wrong, but it’s so…right.
The apartment is quiet when I carefully open the bedroom door, so I dash down the stairs, intent on making it to my bedroom quickly to grab clean clothes.
But the living room isn’t empty.
“Miss Diamonte. I wondered when you would arise.”
I nearly trip on the last step. “Oh. Um, hi, Your Majesty.” Am I supposed to curtsy like Elin did yesterday?
Oh, fuck it. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’m a clueless American. And I’m very adept at playing dumb.
He’s in a charcoal suit, sitting on the couch with his ankle crossed over his knee as he sets aside the paper he’s apparently been reading. For a king, he’s pretty casual except for the way every bit of him right down to his shiny black shoes reeks of power and importance.
He nods to me. “Come. Join me.”
Fucking feet. They’re obeying even though my brain is spiraling into panic attack territory. This man is intimidating and infuriating all at the same time, and here I go, walking over to join him even though he didn’t even say please.
Also, my belly’s starting to grumble again.
I need to eat soon.
“Good morning,” I say, stopping at the edge of where the couches are arranged.
Manning said he had a meeting with his father. But he hasn’t texted to tell me how it went.
Or if he’s still alive.
“Sit,” the king says. “I believe we’re overdue for a discussion.”
I pinch my lips together and remain standing.
“Come, now, Miss Diamonte. I don’t bite.” He smiles, his eyes twinkle just like Manning’s—though his are considerably more creased in the corners, and I have far less trust of his father’s eye twinkle than I do of his—and I let myself sit stiffly on the edge of the other sofa.
I need a shower—I smell like a sweaty fish in dirty gym socks, and now I’m thinking about showering with Manning, or soaking in that jet tub with him upstairs, or bad Gracie, concentrate.
Right.
The king. Manning’s father. My baby’s grandfather.
Oh, boy. I think that was a hot flash. Or possibly embarrassment. Or flat-out fear.
I tell myself Joey wouldn’t flinch before the king of any country, so I won’t either.
“I understand we have a situation in need of solving,” King Tor says.
“Do we?”
“You’re carrying my son’s child.”
“No, I’m not.”
The words fall out on their own. I’m not the worst liar in the world, but I’m not the best either, and I know he doesn’t believe me.
And not only because his eyebrows are rising at the same time his chin tilts down and he folds his arms across his wide chest.
But I can’t confess to having Manning’s baby yet.
Or possibly ever.
Not while he’s still betrothed to someone else, which is on until he tells me it’s officially off.
“Why would anyone in their right mind want to have a royal baby when you do horrific things like pick their spouses for them before they’re old enough to walk?” I blurt before he can call me on the lie. “And you can go ahead and look down your nose at me all you want for the cookies I decorate, but do you know what? I make my own way in this world. I support myself just fine, and I’ll continue to support myself just fine, surrounded by people who care about each other and don’t give two shits about appearances and stupid rules and money and power. What you’re doing to Manning is wrong. People shouldn’t be bought and sold. And I don’t care what you think of me, because I think so very, very little of you that I don’t even know why I’m standing here having this conversation.”
Oh, dog. Oh dog oh dog oh dog. I just said all that.
And I don’t actually want to take it back.
Because he has put Manning in a terrible position, and someone needs to call him on it.
“You’re sitting, Miss Diamonte.”
Dammit. “I’m standing on principle. It’s a figure of speech.”
He drops his foot to the floor and leans forward, hands dangling between his knees. “I can hardly fault you for wishing my son free to court you, but there are—”
“Court me? Look, we both know I’m not princess material. That’s fine. I get it. Princesses don’t say fuck and decorate cookies with penises. Understood. No hard feelings. But I will always consider Manning to be a friend—” so much more than a friend “—and if there’s one thing that makes me madder than a hornet in a mud wrestling pit, it’s seeing my friends hurt for no reason. And if you make him marry Elin, you’ll be hurting him. You’re his father. Don’t you want something better for him?”
His jaw’s ticking, as though I’ve stopped amusing him and now I’m pissing him off.
Good.
“There are certain duties and obligations that come with—”
“Oh, horse shit.” I should shut up. I really should. “How good of a ruler can you be when duties and responsibilities make you miserable?”
“Young lady—”
“And why Manning? He’s third in line? No, fourth. Because your grandson comes before Manning, doesn’t he? Did you sell him already too?”
“I do not sell my sons and grandsons.”
Huh. Pretty sure that vein throbbing in his neck isn’t a good sign for his blood pressure. “Then why?”
He blows a long breath out his nose, the vein stops throbbing, and a man ten years older suddenly sits before me. “The agreement was reached before I had any say in the matter.”
“Why?”
“Miss Diamonte—”
I know that tone. It’s the you wouldn’t understand tone. The you’re too simple and stupid tone.
I’m fucking tired of being stupid.
I rise. “You know what? You have a pretty good opportunity here to ask for help from someone who’s not going to kiss your ass and fall all over herself, and someone who might just see your problems from a different enough viewpoint to help you find a solution, but if you’re too damn tied up in believing that I couldn’t possibly understand the terrible, horrible struggles of your privileged life, then I’ll just have to solve this problem myself another way.”
My knees are quaking as I turn and stalk toward the hall, grabbing the entire platter of leftover cookies as I go, because I don’t do well with telling off anyone even after two cups of coffee, a shower, and a few hours with my ovens, much less telling off the ruler of an entire nation before breakfast.
But I won’t apologize.
I might not be right.
But neither is he.
I don’t even care that he wasn’t responsible for the original betrothal agreement. Because any father worth his salt would find a way to break it.
My father would’ve found a way to get me out, no matter the cost, and he died near-penniless after a lifetime of barely making ends meet by scrounging up work around Goat’s Tit.
I’m about to slam my bedroom door when I realize something’s off.
Elin’s door is open.
And her bedroom is empty.
I don’t just mean she’s not there either. I mean her decorations are gone, her magazines and clothes are gone, and even her brain is gone.
The model brain, I mean. Sorry. That came out wrong.
Loki lopes into the room with one of my socks on his head.
Why is her monkey still here if she’s gone?
Did she abandon him?
Or did he refuse to go with her?
I hand him a chocolate chip cookie. He crumbles it and throws the pieces toward the bed.
“Is she gone?” I whisper to him.
He nods.
Which might mean she’s gone, or it might not, because I have no idea if he truly understood the question and knows how to answer.
I barely graduated high school, which was almost a decade ago. I don’t know anything about monkeys.
I go back to my room, shut the door, shove a snickerdoodle in my mouth, and rummage about for some clean clothes.
Manning’s gone. At least for the next several days. I don’t want to stay here. I want to go home.
