‘I couldn’t do that.’ She stared at him in amazement. ‘It’s a tradition.’
‘Make a new tradition.’ He shrugged.
‘You make it sound so easy.’
‘That’s because it is easy. Just choose what you want. Say it. Do it.’
‘Is that what you did? Was it all that easy for you?’
He paused. ‘I came from a position of far less power and privilege than you, Jade. So no, some things were most definitely not easy. But in a way, I had more liberty to do what I wanted. Because no one knew and no one gave a damn and no one was ever going to try and help me or require me to do something “their” way.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be—’
‘Don’t apologise, I’m glad you didn’t face the struggles I did.’
‘So how did you overcome them?’ she asked. ‘How did you do it all alone?’
She was so genuinely curious, he found himself telling her a snippet of history he’d not mentioned in years. ‘My first plan to gain financial freedom was to be a professional sportsman. It didn’t matter to me which sport—I’d got a full ride through sport into a good school. I was captain of both basketball and football teams and I’d decided to do whichever paid me more to get through college. I trained my ass off. But I tore the muscles in my knee and that ended that. No more captain. No more sports teams. No more school.’
She looked shocked. ‘They took away your scholarship?’
He nodded. ‘I was a nerd as much as I was a jock, but they wanted me for physique, not physics.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know why, but math just came easy and I had ideas and I sure as hell had nothing to lose. Only my own time. So, working around a bunch of hand-to-mouth jobs, I developed that fitness app. It grew very popular, very quickly. I leveraged it while hustling other work on the side, earning however I could, investing in small, then larger projects. There was a lot of luck and timing.’
‘And effort.’
‘Sure.’ Maximum effort, all hours and every weekend for years. Hell, he still worked more hours than not.
‘I can’t imagine being the CEO of a huge conglomerate.’
He laughed. ‘Yes, but a CEO of a private company can be directive and bossy and not give a damn about what other people think. I can’t imagine what it would be like being Queen of a country where you’re like public property. A figurehead, a role model who everyone looks to for guidance on everything from fashion to foreign affairs.’
‘There’s a parliament, my people vote. I don’t make all the rules myself.’
It sounded to him as if she didn’t make any. ‘And you get a Sovereign Grant, I know. But you still give official assent, right? You’re still the overseer of good governance.’
Jade had spent her life being trained to understand good governance. To understand being good, full stop.
‘Do you have good advisors?’
‘They’re very experienced,’ Jade murmured evasively and took the last bite of the tender meat.
‘And they want you to marry that Leonardo guy.’
She shot him a glance.
‘It must’ve been hard to be separated from your mother and your sister,’ he added. ‘Even with all your women mentors, you must have missed them.’
‘Juno and I stayed in touch as best we could. She visited each year for a while...’ But then Juno and their father had fought and Juno had left. ‘Juno hasn’t been back in years, not ’til now.’
‘What about your mother?’
‘I never saw her again after their divorce.’
His eyes widened. ‘You were how old?’
‘Eight.’
He looked at a loss. ‘Pretty harsh way to deal with a difficult situation.’
His quiet response made her chest ache. She never discussed this, but Alvaro had got under her guard.
‘My father didn’t want to put in the work to find a new way of working as a separated family. He just cut her out, like a cancer or something.’ It had devastated Jade and she knew it had been even harder on Juno. ‘He was so rigid, he refused to even consider—’
She tried to catch back the fear and the pain it had caused her, wanting to shove it back down deep. Thinking about this was pointless; there was no changing it.
‘I know he was hurt too,’ she muttered. ‘Badly. That’s why he reacted so harshly, but...’
She shook her head. She’d never shared this. She couldn’t trust anyone—that had been drilled into her.
‘Why didn’t it work out for your parents, do you know?’
‘Maybe because she wasn’t a princess?’ Jade said sadly. ‘She was Hollywood royalty, so she was used to some similar pressure... But I think maybe they were too different. And too quick to rush into it.’
‘Is that why you think some arranged marriage with a prince would be better for you?’
‘I...’ She stared at him, her breath stolen. But then she lifted her chin. ‘Maybe. I think my country deserves stability within the Crown.’
‘Your country deserves that?’ He watched her. ‘What do you deserve?’
‘My few weeks of freedom,’ she said softly. ‘And then?’ She shrugged. She didn’t want to think about it any more. Not tonight. ‘Every family has its quirks, right?’ she muttered glibly.
Alvaro’s smile twisted. ‘My family is a doozy,’ he offered, as if recognising her regret at revealing any of this. ‘I got some of that “cut-you-out-like-a-cancer” treatment too.’
The woman who gave birth to me...the woman who supposedly adopted me...
What did that mean, ‘supposedly’? And was that when he’d been afraid he wouldn’t have enough to eat? Had he not just gone hungry, but been starved of all those other necessities too? ‘I’m sorry, Alvaro.’
He closed his eyes momentarily. ‘What is it you’re doing here, Jade?’
One truth spilled. ‘Not having people watch my every move. Or have cameras trained on me every time I leave my home. I’m eating all the cheap chocolate. Soaking up the bright Christmas lights.’
‘You don’t have Christmas lights in Monrova?’
‘They’re very refined fairy lights. Traditional and dignified.’
‘You want neon party lights?’ He half smiled.
‘Glow-in-the-dark reindeer? Yes, I do. Why not?’