“I’ll figure something out. And Zan is doing better now that her divorce is final, so she might be able to help.”
“Allegedly doing better,” Lizzy says with an arch of her brow that makes it clear Zan hasn’t been any more forthcoming with Lizzy about her work in Zurich than she’s been with me.
Our younger sibling has always been fiercely private, so much so that we didn’t know she’d been married until she announced she was getting a divorce last year and wouldn’t be able to send money home until her ex stopped fighting her for control of their assets.
Zan is a mystery wrapped in a secretive burrito, but she’s a good person, and she loves Lizzy as much as I do.
“She’ll help,” I insist. “And if they have to, Mama and Papa can look for work.”
Lizzy breaks into breathy laughter that makes my jaw clench even though I know she’s right. My parents are more likely to sprout wings and fly than suddenly become the kind of people who are gainfully employed in their sixties. They have no marketable skills, and our mother hasn’t been out of her pajamas in nearly a decade. She’s taken my father’s penchant for dressing up to the opposite extreme. Yes, they’re silk pajamas, and she looks very glamorous drifting up and down the mountain in her seafoam pant and kimono set, but still…
“Then I’ll get a second job waiting tables or tending bar in town,” I say. “Tourism is up and—”
“No, Beebee,” Lizzy says, using the nickname from our baby years, when “Sabrina” was too hard for her to say. The old endearment makes the back of my nose burn. “I’m going to marry Andrew. This is my path. I realized that a long time ago, and I’m okay with it. I truly am. But I need your help to go into this marriage with my head held high. I can’t ask my brand-new husband, who I barely know, for a hundred-thousand-dollar loan just days after the wedding. It would be mortifying and start off the rest of my life on the wrong foot.”
“Lizzy, please, there has to be another way,” I say, but she pushes on.
“A forty-thousand-dollar loan isn’t nearly as bad. And if the spring catalog gig leads to a promotion within the company, I’ll earn enough to pay back the loan in six or seven months.” She takes my hand, pressing it between her much cooler palms. “I just need a little help from my best friend.”
“You’ll always be my best friend,” I say, my voice thick with emotion. “I love you so much, Lizzy. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she says, before adding in a teasing voice, “be cooperative. You can do this, Bree. You’re great with people. Heck, you might even have fun at all the engagement stuff. You’re a blast at parties, and you always know what to say. Not like me with my anxiety and stupid stutter.”
“You don’t stutter anymore.”
She arches a “give me a break” brow. “Not when I’m with family, no, but it will take time for Andrew and his brothers and mother to feel like family,” she says candidly, breaking my heart a little.
She should be marrying a man who already feels like family.
Like her best friend. Like the partner who will help her through every trial and celebrate her every success.
But that’s not our reality, and I know better than to wish for things to be different and expect something to happen. I tried that when I was a little girl—wishing I had normal parents—with very poor results.
I hold Lizzy’s gaze, the voices inside me warring until the loudest voice—the one that would die for either of my sisters—drowns out all the others. “Okay,” I whisper.
“You’ll do it?” Lizzy’s brows shoot up her forehead.
“I’ll do it,” I say, doing my best not to dwell on what it will be like to pretend to be engaged to her wretched fiancé.
If I stop to think about the arrogant, entitled narcissist I’ll be forced to be nice to for four weeks, there’s a chance not even sisterly love will keep me from running screaming into the woods to live with the mountain goats, never to be seen or heard from again.
No matter how much the extrovert in me loves company, there are times when company is overrated.
Especially the company of Prince Andrew Jerkface von Dickladle.
Chapter Three
Prince Andrew Dario Lawrence Von Bergen
A man whose royal buns are in the hot seat…
* * *
My family is crazy.
Certifiable.
They’ve booked tickets on the Loco Locomotive and are poised to roar out of the station, but I’ll be damned if I’m getting on board.
I understand that arranged marriage is still a thing in the Middle East and parts of Asia, but that’s not the world I was raised to inhabit. Gallantia is next door to Switzerland, and you can’t get much more modern than the Von Bergen royal family.
My grandfather was the first monarch to appoint women to his cabinet, my father was a famous movie star who ran off to Tibet to “find himself” and never came back, and my mother is a well-respected pediatric heart surgeon. Growing up, my brothers and I were tutored by some of the best and brightest minds in the arts and sciences, and I was coding my own video games with my little brother Nick before my head was large enough to hold up the kid-size crown my grandfather insisted I wear for our weekly meetings in his office.
By the age of twelve, I was updating Gallantia’s tourism site, determined to make the world love my country as much as I did. By fourteen, I’d worked with my grandfather to refurbish the river casinos, transforming our capital city of Baden Bergen into an international destination for high rollers and their families.
And at sixteen, I launched the Royal Package PicsWithFriends account, beaming a spotlight on my homeland that drew the gaze of the entire planet and changed the course of my life.
Within a few months, ad revenue from sponsored content on the account—mostly from companies hawking luxury clothing, swimwear, and headphones they were dying to see draped on princely bodies—eclipsed my generous royal allowance. And yes, I’ve donated every penny I’ve received to charities in my country, but I’ve also enjoyed every second of my affiliate-sponsored jet-setting around the globe.
I’ve lounged poolside, skied pristine slopes, and hiked into jungles in more countries than most people can name and brought my troublemaking younger brothers along for the ride. Nickolas and Jeffery can each be a pain in the arse in his own way—Jeffery because he keeps his cards so close to his chest, and Nick because he’ll show his cards to anyone—but they’re also my best friends. Born within four years of each other, we’ve been partners in crime from the day Nick came home from the hospital.
Which makes the current state of collective insanity even harder to stomach…
“I seriously can’t believe you’re on board with this,” I say, dragging my dropped jaw off my chest. I thought an afternoon at the exclusive Mountain High casino resort pool would put my brothers in a more compassionate frame of mind, but so far, not-so-good. “Imagine you were the ones being sold into marital slavery.”
“Oh, please. She’s a sweet, beautiful, accomplished woman,” Nickolas says, popping a cherry into his mouth and chewing lazily. “And a blonde, so I’m not sure what you’re complaining about.”