Prince's Proposal (The Exiled Royals 1) (8 page)

She knew something was wrong when she woke up.

Ray wasn’t there, wasn’t curled around her like the world’s most divine and amazing teddy bear. Instead, she awoke to a still, dim and empty room and a cold mattress beside her. Standing, she pulled on his ridiculous novelty t-shirt.

It hit her mid-thigh and part of her was pleased to have something of his on her, well, besides the rings. It was as if she was part of him now; that they were merging.

Last night was the most intimate experience she’d ever had. It had felt like soul touching soul, which was why it was with a heavy heart she met him at the kitchen table. He was sitting there staring at his phone as if it were a poisonous snake that could leap up and bite him. The coffee mug between his hands was still full, but not steaming. Something bad had happened.

Taking a deep breath, she pulled up the seat next to him and took his hand, all the while bracing herself for the world’s biggest and most painful blow off. “What happened?”

“I have to go home.”

She blinked. None of that made sense. They’d spent part of three weeks living together so that he could keep his parents happy and one day, one
far off
day, go back to being the rightful heir and future king of Yagovia. As of last night, though, Ray had still been in exile and
couldn’t
go home. So where the hell was all this coming from?

Frowning, Mel asked, “What do you mean ‘go home?’”

“Gregory called. He said that a newspaper took a very good picture of us at the fair; it showed your rings. My mother and father want me home at once to show them my new bride.”

“What?”

“Yes, they want to see for themselves that I’m responsible now that I’ve settled on a wife. You don’t have to come, and I’ll gladly face their wrath alone.”

Her throat was incredibly dry, and it was difficult to talk, but she forced herself to anyway. “I’m in love with you. What’s happening doesn’t change that. I know you’re worried about commitment. I’m no one’s queen. I’d never be any good at it. I don’t even speak Yagovian.”

“That’s okay, no one is asking you to be queen. I just have to go back, explain to them that I’ve taken a bride – that is if you’ll have me.”

She sighed and picked at her cuticles. Mel couldn’t dare make eye contact. If she stared into those Aegean blue eyes, then she wouldn’t make the correct choice. Except what was that? Was it to stay and go return to her safe but lonely life, or to trust Ray and follow him to his world?

Could she bear to wake up alone again after last night?

Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t
.

Twenty-four hours ago, Melissa would have known her answer automatically; she would have run for daylight and saved her heart. But it was too late now, and she wanted to fight for Ray, to keep him in her life no matter what.

“I’ll go,” she said, leaning up and kissing him. “I think this is nuts, but I’ll go.”

“You look exhausted, brother,” Serena said, smiling at him next to her at the table in the servant’s kitchen. Irina, true to her affable nature, had left a pile of her finest sweet rolls and fresh made marmalade. “Surely being home with mother and father isn’t as bad as it looks.”

“It’s not,” he lied.

“Say that once more with feeling,” she said, her green eyes twinkling back at him as she pushed her long, black plait behind her shoulder. “There is no way that you’d be up, skulking around the kitchen at two a.m. if you weren’t miserable.”

“You’re up at two,” he said, trying to deflect from the mess his life was.

She laughed; it was a sweet song, like bells, and the realization of how much he’d missed her and Yagovia flooded through him. He never wanted to be exiled again, but he wasn’t sure that his parents cared for Melissa.

They’d been polite enough when she’d been announced, but had not joined him and Mel and Serena on the carriage tour of the countryside. They’d also been beyond reserved at dinner and had mostly chosen to speak, if at all, in Yagovian.

No, “thrilled” didn’t seem to cover mother and father’s reaction.

Neither did “warm” come to think of it.

“I am here,” she said, biting into the roll and letting honey drip on her chin. “Because I knew that you were upset, and I was waiting to be the best big sister possible and lend an open ear.”

“What do you think of Melissa?”

“I think she’s kind and honest, that she seems polite but nervous as hell, which is a good sign.”

“How is it a good sign?”

“Because she’s not excited and acting as if she’s become a Disney princess; she’s clearly weighing in her mind how serious a position and a life this can be.” Serena smiled and sipped some milk. “The point is, she wouldn’t be so nervous and wouldn’t be trying so hard if she didn’t truly care about you.”

“I…thank you, sister,” he said, offering her a small smile. “I really appreciate everything you’ve just said.”

“It’s the truth. If I hated her or thought she was a gold digger, then I would have let you know. I think she’s got the inner strength that any woman would need to be the one for you. Sitting through Mom and Daddy’s stink eye over dinner on its own would have driven a lesser woman to tears.”

“But if Mother and Father hate her, then what am I going to do?”

“You’ll have to do what makes you happy,” she offered kissing his cheek, her breath still smelling a bit of sugar. “Even if it means you can’t stay in Yagovia.”

He swallowed hard and suddenly the sweet roll tasted like ash on his tongue. “I don’t want to be forever in exile. But…”

“But?”

“I don’t think I can trade loving Melissa, being with her, for anything, even the crown.”

Serena smiled and hugged him, and he wished life were simpler, that they were still kids and the future of the kingdom wasn’t at stake. But that wasn’t their life.

“Then I promise to make a good queen since you won’t be here,” Serena said soberly.

He almost choked. “What?”

“It’s a joke, silly. I know that Mom and Daddy will listen. Just explain it to them as you have to me, and I know they’ll see the change too. I know it.”

He wished he felt as sure.

“Mother, Father, we need to speak about my wife.”

His father, King Vladimir, regarded him with one skeptical eyebrow raised. Beside him, his mother, Queen Natasha, had her fists clenched at her side. It was she who answered first.

“There’s nothing to talk about. She’s an American and she’s not worthy of you. Perhaps if she were a Vanderbilt or a Carnegie, but she’s not, is she?”

“Son, certainly you can’t be serious. She’s a cocktail waitress, for God’s sake.”

Ray gritted his teeth but refused to shout or to give in to his anger. The last time he’d had a confrontation with his parents, he’d screamed loudly and thrown things and refused to make any concessions. His inability to bend or be flexible had landed him in exile half a world away. He was better than that now, more mature. It was worth keeping his head in order to make his parents accept Melissa.

She deserved it.

That gentle and strong soul he saw inside of her deserved it.

“That’s her current job, yes, but that’s not her worth.”

His mother stood up and started to pace, the train of her designer dress flaring out behind her. “She’s a waitress who works in Vegas. I know that those cocktail girls wear next to nothing to serve. Is that who you think should be by your side on the throne?”

“Say what you really mean, Mother.”

“And what’s that?”

He narrowed his eyes at her but kept his tone deadly level. “That she’s a whore, that because she has a particular uniform at
The Lucky Seven,
that she’s going to be disloyal to me.”

“She appears easy,” his mother replied, shrugging. “I’m a firm believer that appearances are not deceiving. You’re a prince of Europe, and she’s gutter trash.”

His father hesitated for just a second before nodding his assent. “That’s completely right. Son, we called you here with the hope that Melissa was more than a commoner, but she’s not even a banker or a lawyer or a doctor. It’s not seemly for this woman to sit on the throne, ever.”

“Then this is it? You’re giving me an ultimatum? I come back in a dedicated relationship with a phenomenal woman, the only woman I’ve ever loved, and it’s not enough for you?” he said, his gaze burning into his mother.

His mother stopped pacing, her jet-black hair an imposing curtain over her shoulders. The same blue eyes he saw every day in the mirror bore into his, her fury a match for his. “I’m saying that you either give up the girl or give up the throne.”

Ray felt his legs wobble under him. “So to be king, I have to dump Melissa?”

There was a gasp behind him, and he turned to see a servant leading Melissa into the assembly hall. Turning back, he noticed the triumphant grin on his mother’s face. Of course, like everything else in his life, she’d choreographed this. It was all a play that she had scripted in order to mold him to her asinine ideal of a perfect heir.

“Oh, so I guess all those promises…” Mel said, her voice quiet and small. “You know what? Forget it. I’ll make this easy for you, Raymond. I know you don’t love me, that I’m a novelty for now. I…have a good life, my
king
.” She finished and turned. 

Raymond raced after her as she stormed to her quarters.

The world was empty.

That was her reaction. The flight home from Yagovia was a blur. She’d fled out of the castle so fast that she barely remembered getting to the airport. Then, she’d returned home to her tiny trailer and spent the last week crying on her bed and eating cold SpaghettiOs out of a can.

Yes, there was work, and she went, but it all felt cold. The same hopeless faces of the regulars looking for a big casino win that would never come. It wasn’t just the games that were rigged. It was life, and she was on the side that never won.

God, Fate, the Universe…pick your euphemism. They held all the cards in her life, and she kept coming up with nothing.

It had seemed just this once that she had all aces with Raymond Kharmin, now returned Prince of Yagovia, but that was the cruelest illusion of all, like some cosmic joke when the magic carpet had been yanked out from under her.

It was in that unending fog that Brandy found her in the break room and handed her an envelope.

She frowned down at the manila envelope. “I don’t understand?”

“Oh, it was a huge deal. Jimmy at the bar complained. Some official looking dude, all suited up, showed up here at noon and made a scene because he couldn’t find you. He left this package with me and made me promise that only you would open it. You getting a subpoena or something?”

Mel sighed and rolled her eyes. With the luck she’d been having lately, she wouldn’t be shocked if she were. “No, what is it?”

“I kept my word this time. That guy was scar
y
–and huge. I’d have guessed mafia, but he had this thick accent. I thought he was like fucking Russian or something weird like that.”

No, not Russian
.

She tore open the envelope. There was no reason for her to have anything hand carried to her by a Yagovian royal courier. The only thing she could think of was some horrible non-disclosure agreement to keep her silent about the sham marriage she’d had to the once and future prince.

It completely dumbfounded her when the only thing the envelope contained was a note in Ray’s handwriting with an address on it and a single house key.

“Okay, so someone’s former prince made with the cryptic. Is this a parting gift?”

She blinked back tears. It was a natural question and Brandy wasn’t being cruel when she asked; she was just being Brandy, which meant she was being extremely honest. “I think so.”

Melissa’s throat hurt. She’d stormed off on him, even when she knew they’d just been in an arrangement. And without giving him a chance to say whether he would take his parents’ ultimatum or not, whether he would stand up to them for her. 

Despite everything, it touched her that he’d kept his part of the bargain. She knew the address. It was in a nice neighborhood, not by his golf course mansion – she could never have afforded the property taxes there – but a beautiful area where there was a community clubhouse and a pool.

Hell, this was the neighborhood she’d driven by a dozen times. How had he known? Maybe he’d learned more about her tastes in those few weeks than she’d realized.

“Hey, at least you have something. I’ll cover your shift,” Brandy said, hugging her tightly. “Go see what your new place is like.”

Outwardly, she smiled, but inside Melissa was cringing. There was only one home for her, and it was alongside Raymond.

But that was just not meant to be.