“Are you ready for lunch?” Dorian asked, coming into the office Jamie assigned to me.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about Lord Dorian Stamos. I couldn’t quite get a read on him and I definitely didn’t like that he and Frankie were so chummy. I would even say I was jealous except friends didn’t get jealous and that’s all Frankie and I were. Friends.
“Yes,” I said, pushing back from my desk and standing up to stretch.
This was another part of palace life that I could get used, which was odd, really, considering my proclivity for sticking to myself. A communal lunch and a communal evening meal. Lunch was a less formal affair with a wide range of shared plates served family style. Dinner was more formal and often included one of the parliamentary ministers.
We walked through the corridors to the balcony where lunch was being served. It was another glorious day and the breeze off the sea kept the temperature cool enough to eat comfortably. I immediately looked for Frankie and when our eyes met, her face lit up in a beatific smile. I could almost delude myself into thinking she really was my fiancée, especially the way she immediately came over to me and popped up on her toes to brush a chaste kiss on my lips. She’d been doing that more and more, and I couldn’t say I hated it, nor did I want it to stop.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she replied, almost shyly.
“Good afternoon, Francesca,” Dorian said from beside me.
Frankie rolled her eyes and elbowed him. “Don’t call me that,” she said.
Dorian smiled. He knew it annoyed her, and he continued to do it anyway.
Something ugly twisted in my gut and I had the overwhelming urge to push Frankie behind me so Dorian couldn’t smile at her and she couldn’t smile at him.
Instead of giving in to the ridiculous caveman instincts, I simply rested my hand on the small of her back and grinned down at her.
“What’s for lunch?” I asked.
Francesca
I climbed into the back seat of the car and slid next to Lucas, letting our shoulders touch. We were headed into the village, as we’d done nearly every afternoon since that first day.
There was something so easy about being with Lucas. I was not shy and usually I had more confidence than was warranted but even so, this was a country I didn’t really know all that much about, despite my extensive research before leaving America. The internet was a wonderful thing, but it didn’t give the full picture. For that I needed to have an in-real-life experience, and that could be daunting, even for someone as confident and self-assured as I was.
That was where Lucas came in. Just having him by my side, being able to pick his brain and get some sort of idea of what life was like before, and sharing this experience with him had made it so much richer. I got a much deeper understanding of the people and the country just by being here with him.
Deacon was right. The people I’d spoken to so far—or at least some of them—remembered Lucas. That first day, after we visited the compound, we went to a part of the town that was rundown but not neglected. The people were obviously doing it tough, but they were also doing their best. They hadn’t lost their pride in their country or their town. A couple of the older women had exclaimed after Lucas, pinched his cheeks, and dragged him into hugs. Many of the men slapped his back and nodded gruffly toward him. I thought Lucas would be uncomfortable and shy around these people who seemed to know him, but the most amazing thing happened. He actually smiled. He smiled and hugged the women back. He shook hands with the men and even had a few sips of raïda with them. Some of them had worked for his family and when the Andinos left, taking the jobs with them, they were left without income and forced to face the next twelve years with uncertainty. I worried there would be backlash or anger, but if there was, it wasn’t directed at Lucas.
It was a running theme among the people I continued to meet and interview for my research. There was a resilience about them. A lot of them had taken part in the underground resistance and had banded together to find Jamie and bring him back. Much of the country thought the young prince—now the king—had died along with the rest of his family, but there were a few who believed he escaped. Instead of being resentful that he got away and left them behind, they held on to the hope that he would one day return and save them.
It wasn’t exactly how it happened. By the time Jamie returned, the usurper had already fled. He’d stripped the country of its wealth and when it could no longer sustain his lifestyle and the people turned against him, he ran away. That was when the resistance movement found Jamie and brought him home.
It was a fascinating story, as was Jamie’s own story and the love story of him and Meredith, and it made me think of things I had no business thinking of. Like what it would be like to have someone fall in love with me the way Jamie obviously fell for Meredith. I was a romantic, I couldn’t deny it, although most people wouldn’t peg me for it. I loved sappy movies and stories of love against all odds. I came across as brash and a little rough around the edges, but there was nothing like a good love story to make me cry. But more than that, it made me believe in the inherent goodness of people. It made me believe there was a happy ending for everyone, even if that happy ending looked a bit different for everybody.
Deacon parked the car and Lucas and I got out. We’d been coming to the same small community a couple of times a week since that first time. Yes, I was there to do interviews with the residents and to listen to their stories, but I’d also come to love these people in the brief time I’d been here. And they loved Lucas in a way his own family had never demonstrated. More than anything else, I loved watching the way he bloomed under the attention of the mothers and the fathers and even the sons and daughters who were of a similar age to him. A few of them were once playmates, before his family thought it untoward for the son of a family of their standing to mix with the common people. Lucas might be remembered fondly, but not all the Andinos were. And I couldn’t deny I had to fight off the feelings of jealousy when some of those daughters showed a little too much interest in Lucas.
Had I always been this possessive of him? I didn’t remember feeling this way when Lucas started dating Clarissa. I never liked the woman, but I hadn’t felt the urge to mark my territory, had I?
“Lucas!” one of the men, George, called to him as soon as we entered the bar. “You need to try this.”
It was a familiar refrain. The men had taken to making their own form of raïda after the distillery closed down and for the last twelve years they had been refining it, selling it even, when they needed money to support their families. They ran a profitable, if bootlegged, business. I didn’t think the king minded and I know Lucas secretly loved it.
Lucas shot the small glass of clear liquor and then coughed. The men laughed, and Lucas along with them.
“That’s…” Lucas coughed again, his face going red. “I think that needs a little more refining,” he rasped out.
One of the men slapped him on the back and handed him a second shot glass. “This one will go down easier,” he said with a wink toward me.
Lucas drank the second shot, not coughing that time, and grinned. He was adorable. Seriously. My fake fiancée was the best-looking man in this entire town—island—and when he looked at me with that slightly dazed look and that dopey smile, my heart literally melted…okay, not literally because that would be bad, but it felt like it. My insides went soft and mushy and my knees went weak. I stepped closer to him and kissed him. I had to. He held me close and kissed me back until the whistles and hoots from the assembled locals made me pull away with a blush. When Lucas looked at me again, there was something in his gaze I hadn’t seen before, something that made me wonder if there could be more between us than the status quo. My heart went soft and warm, and I smiled back at him, hoping he saw exactly how I was feeling in my eyes.