Married by Contract (13 page)
Read Married by Contract Online
Authors: Noelle Adams
They say
some children are born with silver spoons in their mouths. I wasn’t one of
those children.
I am Amalie Rothman, and I was
born with a crown on my head.
I assume those silver spoons
are figurative, unless there are strange goings-on in certain quarters
involving newborns and high end cutlery. But the crown on my head was entirely
literal. My mother has a photograph of me, only one hour old and wearing a
tiara, in her private lounge to prove it.
She took the same picture of
my older brother and my two younger sisters. She’s very proud of her husband’s
royal lineage. My parents kept having children, hoping for a spare heir after
my brother, Henry, but they only ended up with more daughters. Not that extra
princesses of Villemont are useless. After all, there are plenty of dull,
unattractive men of distinction to marry us off to.
My mother had a certain Edward
Farmingham Channing IV in mind for my future husband. He wasn’t noble, but he
was the heir to a multi-billion dollar fortune. Noble blood is well and good,
but money is even better.
Four years ago, when I was
twenty, I dug in my heels and told my mother I wasn’t going to marry the man. I
wanted to go to university and study art instead. After endless rounds of
debate and argument, I finally announced I was leaving whether she wanted me to
or not. She still says I ran away, although all I did was move to Minneapolis
for college, on the assumption that I’d return home when I graduated.
That was how I ended up
getting whistled at in the hallway of my apartment building.
I was unlocking my door, but
I paused when I heard the wolf whistle. It was so out of place and so unexpected
that it took me a minute to even recognize.
I finally turned my head to
see Jack Watson grinning at me from down the hall.
“Did you just whistle at me?”
I asked, trying not to smile back as he approached.
Jack lived in the apartment
next door, and he wasn’t anything like the men I was used to, who were all well-groomed,
over-educated, and oozing a kind of privileged ennui. Jack was big and handsome
with rough edges and a blunt candor that always surprised me. I’d known him
since he moved into the building last year, although we only ever interacted in
the hall or the parking garage.
“I did,” he admitted, his
eyes traveling up and down my body with open appreciation. “You look good.”
It was an unseasonably warm
day for April, so I was wearing a little green sundress. I’d thought I looked
pretty when I finished dressing that morning, and it was nice that Jack thought
so too. “But why did you whistle?”
“That’s what guys do here.
Didn’t you know that?” His brown eyes were still warm and amused, but I could
tell he was asking a genuine question.
As much as I tried to speak
with a normal American accent, I still sounded European. Villemont is a microstate
tucked in the Alps between France and Germany. It’s been a sovereign nation for
more than three hundred years, but it only spans twenty-five square miles and
boasts a population of about 15,000. I’ve been told my accent sounds in between
French and German, which makes sense since they’re both official languages of Villemont.
There was a lot about
American culture that was new to me, but I did know about wolf whistles. “Yes,
of course,” I said, answering Jack’s question. “But I thought it was a rude
thing men did to women on the street.”
“It is.” He glanced away,
looking momentarily sheepish. “It was dumb. Sorry.”
I wasn’t used to guys apologizing
so easily. “So why did you do it?”
“Because I do a lot of dumb
things around you.” His mouth twitched up slightly. “Haven’t you realized that
by now?”
He’d made no pretense of his
attraction to me over the months I’d known him. At first, he’d always been
asking me to go to dinner or the movies with him. After a while, when I kept
telling him no, he stopped asking me out, but it was clear he was still
interested.
I tried to remind myself that
I was graduating next month and would have to return home—probably to marry
someone politically or diplomatically advantageous to my family. There was no
sense in indulging the flood of attraction that suddenly consumed me when I stared
up at Jack’s handsome face, broad shoulders, and sexy smile.
I’d always turned down his
advances because it was smart and because I knew the relationship could never
go anywhere. But I was finding myself more and more tempted to say yes.
“Oh,” I said, lowering my
eyes, wishing I was just a normal college girl who could respond to any man I
wanted.
“Are you going out tonight?”
“No.” It was a Friday night,
but I never went out much. I had some casual friends, but it was hard to get
close to anyone and keep the fact that you were a princess a secret.
No one knew who I was here,
and I wanted to keep it that way.
“I was thinking about
ordering a pizza. You can come over and have some if you want.”
I swallowed hard, giving
myself a quick mental lecture about how silly and futile it would be to hang
out with this man, when a future was already mapped out for me back home. “Thank
you. I probably won’t, though.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,
but it’s a standing offer. Just knock on my door any time you want.” Jack wore
khakis and an untucked black T-shirt. I knew he ran his family’s sporting goods
franchise, but he rarely dressed up for work. He looked around thirty, and I
liked just about everything about him—even the way he always needed to shave at
the end of the day.
He was so different from everything
I was accustomed to.
“Okay. Thank you.” I inhaled
deeply and then let my breath out, forcing myself to turn away and finishing
unlocking my door.
I glanced back one more time
before I stepped inside. He was still standing there, gazing at me with those
deep brown eyes and an almost wistful smile.
Damn, it was hard to say no
to him.
But I was Amalie Rothman. I
was a princess of Villemont. And Jack Watson wasn’t for me.
***
You
can find out more about A Princess Next Door
here
.
Noelle
handwrote her first romance novel in a spiral-bound notebook when she was
twelve, and she hasn’t stopped writing since. She has lived in eight different
states and currently resides in Virginia, where she writes full time, reads any
book she can get her hands on, and offers tribute to a very spoiled cocker
spaniel.
She loves travel, art,
history, and ice cream. After spending far too many years of her life in
graduate school, she has decided to reorient her priorities and focus on writing
contemporary romances. For more information, please check out her website:
noelle-adams.com
.
Books by Noelle Adams
Eden Manor Series
One
Week with her (Ex) Stepbrother
Beaufort Brides Series
One Night Novellas
One Hot Night: Three Contemporary
Romance Novellas
Willow Park Series
Heirs of Damon Series
Standalones
Chasing Jane
Fooling
Around
The Protectors Series
(co-written with Samantha Chase)