A Cinderella Twist: A Contemporary Royal Romance Page 9

  I frown. “Why are you getting so upset about this? We barely know each other, what difference does it make to you if I’m dead on the inside or not?” I can’t even deny what I said. Or claim it won’t be true one day very soon if this week plays out the way it’s meant to.

  She huffs and I think maybe she’s not sure why she cares so much either. “You’re Chase’s brother.”

  “So?”

  “I love Chase like he’s my brother,” she argues. “And if I feel like he’s my brother and you’re his brother, then –”

  “Then I’m like your brother too?” I finish. Then I internalize the sigh which follows the conclusion. I also internalize the thoughts that surge through me along with the sigh. Apparently, brotherly is not how I feel about her.

  Meanwhile, she seems temporarily at the end of her argument. “I just care, okay? I’m a caring person. My father raised me to be a decent human being with empathy. It’s a good thing. Stop making it weird and start telling me what’s going on. Is Triston bad news? Did he deny she was his? What happened?”

  I close my eyes and take a breath. When I open them again, they lock instantly on hers. I know the second they do, I’m about to tell her everything. Not just about today. But every last detail that brought me here.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  GREER

  It takes some convincing, but Lachlan finally accepts that Monroe is perfectly fine in my father’s care and relaxes enough to allow me to shove him into the loveseat tucked away in the travel and geography section near the windows to talk.

  “Don’t you have other kids getting out of school right around now you have to get home to?” he tries one last time to sway me from settling in to have this conversation we are most definitely having.

  “Not today. One has basketball, the other is on the dance team and the third is going home with a friend today to work on a science project for the fair this weekend.” I smile serenely, fluttering my lashes at him like a semi-psycho. “Nice try though.” I make my smile disappear as fast as I plastered it on. “Now talk.”

  He nods, facing forward and rubbing his hands together nervously. For a moment, I feel like he’s having the conversation inside his head, forgetting to say the words out loud so I can hear them. Then, he turns his head with a start and the words come out. “How much exactly do you know about me?”

  “You can’t open with a question.” I scoot my butt into the corner between the back and the armrest, pulling my legs up to cross them while I sit facing him as much as possible.

  “Why not? It’s an important question.”

  “Because,” I explain, “posing a question from the start leads to me doing the talking and not you.”

  “Fine.” He rolls his eyes at me before he returns to staring straight ahead. “If I’m not allowed to ask anything, can I assume you don’t know anything about my father’s family business?”

  “That’s a question, too,” I point out. “But assume away. Also, what is your father’s family business?”

  He tilts his head in my direction again. “I’m about to get to that.”

  “It’s all very mysterious.” I fold my arms over my chest, leaning back into the crease. “Whatever it is, he must be pretty successful to have felt so strongly about passing it on to you that he put it in the custody agreement. I’ve never heard of that before either, by the way. How does a parent retain any rights to the kid once said kid is of age? I mean, what if you had grown up and said, no thanks, I’d rather be a plumber. Or a teacher. Or an astronaut. What would have happened? Could he have taken you to court to sue you for custody of yourself?” When I’m done babbling on about my own curiosities, I notice he’s busy staring at me, mouth gaping and eyes a little buggy. “Listen, for future reference, don’t hold out on me so long with information next time. If I’m not privy to enough details, my brain does a thing. It’s not pretty. These are the results.”

  “Noted.” He brings his jaw back in and puts his eyeballs back. “Can I tell you all the stuff you want to know now, or did you have more insane theories you wanted to share before I give you the reality, which to be fair, will probably sound like something you made up anyway.”

  “Your real life is as crazy as my imagination?” I’m both exquisitely intrigued and profoundly doubtful.

  “Has your imagination cooked up a scenario in which I’m a prince, first born to my father, King Apsel of Linden, and thus set to rule come his sixty-fifth birthday and consequent age of retirement, which is less than a month from now?”

  I’m not sure how to respond to that. Mainly, because he said it with such a straight face, I have to believe he was being serious, but at the same time, I also have to believe he’s fucking with me. “You’re a prince.”

  “Yes.” He nods. “Prince Lachlan of Linden. That’s my title. Fancy, right?”

  “Hold on.” I put my finger up, gesturing for him to wait while I make a very necessary phone call.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Calling your brother.” I can’t commit to this conversation until I have verbal confirmation from Chase that Lachlan is telling the truth. Without it, I’ll be forced to jump back and forth between snarky sarcasm and sincerity, unable to decipher if I’m being confided in or made fun of, and not wanting to risk being wrong about either.

  “I have a no phones policy in my classroom,” Chase grumbles into the receiver.

  “I don’t know why you always say that when you answer the phone you clearly have in your classroom,” I retort. “Also, is your brother really a prince?”

  “Yes. Soon to be king, actually. Weird, right?”

  “No,” I nod though, “totally believable.”

  “Sure, it is. I gotta go now. You know, because no phones.”

  “In your classroom. I know.”

  He hangs up. Even after I hear it, I check the screen to be sure. Well, I check the screen to have something to look at other than Lachlan. Now that it turns out he wasn’t messing with me, I feel a little dumb having called Chase.

  “Need another minute?” Lachlan asks quietly.

  “Yes.” I turn my head to face him again. “Probably best not to give it to me though. God only knows the thoughts I will conjure if left to my own devices.”

  He smirks. “They’ve already started collecting, haven’t they?”

  “Do I curtsy when I see you now? Am I even allowed to make eye contact when I talk to you? Should I be calling you Prince Lachlan, or your highness? Oh my God, have I been swearing around you? Called you an ass to your face?”

  “Have you called me an ass behind my back?” He looks surprisingly hurt at the thought.

  “I mean, I might have. When you decided to avoid me for two days,” I admit.

  “That’s fair, I guess.” He frowns for a second longer before he shakes it off and goes on, “And as far as everything else goes, you don’t have to treat me any differently than you have up until now. I’m a prince in Linden. Here, I’m just Chase’s older brother, okay?”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  “My turn to do more talking?”

  I nod again. “Yes, please.”

  “See, now that was way too polite,” he teases.

  “Fine, but only because I’m freaked out right now, not because I’m trying to treat you all royal like,” I insist. Though I’m not sure it’s any better. “Do more of the talking so I can do less of the thinking.” I wave my hand impatiently, urging him to continue.

  He chuckles but obliges. “As heir to the throne, it was kind of important that I move back to Linden once I was of age, so while it wasn’t officially part of the custody agreement,” he makes a silly face at me, “it was part of the arrangement my parents made and one I agreed to once I was old enough to understand.” He takes a moment, and I can’t help but wonder how much he really agreed to and how much he understood that the plan was set in motion before he had a choice. Before he was even born. “Even before I was of age, I spent plenty of time at the ca
stle, learning the language, the traditions, the culture. But things changed the day I moved in and wasn’t just a visitor. I became the prince I’d been told my whole life I was, and now, for the first time in my life, I had to act like one.”

  “Hosted a lot of balls, waiting for a magical young maiden to leave behind a glass slipper?” I joke, making an awkward effort to rejoin our chat as my usual self.

  He smiles. Even if he’s not buying my humor, he seems to appreciate the gesture. “Surprisingly, no. That part, I might have enjoyed.”

  “You don’t like being a prince?”

  “I loved it, to tell you the truth. Until a few weeks ago. Now, I hate it. But, I’m also more passionate about it than ever.” His smile turns crooked. “If that makes any sense at all.”

  “It does not.” I grin back at him. “And I can make sense out of a lot of nonsensical things.”

  “I’m aware. I’ve heard your ramblings,” he teases. Then, slowly, his expression turns serious. Sad even.

  “What happened a few weeks ago?” I ask, coming back to the moment his feelings about being royal changed.

  “My grandmother called a meeting. She’s no longer queen, but she’s still the Westergaard matriarch and she may not rule the country anymore, but the same cannot be said for our family.” He sits up a little taller and I notice he’s gone from rubbing his palms together to kneading his fingers. Where before he was nervous, now I think he’s in pain. “My stepmother’s the one behind it all, I know she is, but it doesn’t matter. Not now that she got my grandmother to side with her.”

  “Side with her about what?”

  He sighs, falling backwards into the sofa cushions like an act of defeat. “Monroe.”

  This time, I don’t ask any questions. I don’t have any. The mere mention of her name, froze my brain, made me too scared to contemplate the directions the next wave of revelations could go from here.

  So, I wait. I wait with a patience even I didn’t know I possessed.

  “Chase isn’t my only younger brother,” Lachlan says after what feels like an eternity. “After my parents split and my mother remarried, my father did the same. His bride was a duchess even before she married my father, and both families felt it was a good match. He’s never said as much, but I don’t think love was ever part of the equation.” Lachlan gets quiet again. This time the silence doesn’t last as long. “They were married for just over a year before Apsel Junior was born. And he was five before I even met him. Before then, my mother wouldn’t let me travel to see my father on my own, so he always came to us. My stepmother and brother never joined him though.” He clears his throat. “Apsel and I were never close. For years, I assumed it was due to growing up with so much literal distance between us. Obviously, he and I couldn’t have the relationship Chase and I had when Chase and I lived in the same bedroom the first fifteen years of his life. Still, Apsel was my brother too and I expected our relationship to change, grow closer, once I lived there and we finally had a chance to get to know each other.”

  “But that didn’t happen?” I guess, my voice so quiet and soft, I barely recognize it.

  He shakes his head. “Turns out, he’s hated me all of his life. Or at least all the years of his life he was old enough to understand that he would never be king because growing up the firstborn and only child in the castle didn’t negate the fact that he wasn’t the actual first-born son my father produced. I was.” He sighs. “I don’t even blame him. I doubt he ever would have cared one way or the other if his mother hadn’t spent his entire life complaining about the injustice of it. She’s the queen, in her mind, her son should be heir. So on, and so forth.” His head rolls back and his lids slide down as if he’s trying to escape the memories.

  “I still don’t understand,” I say, trying to free him from the moment in time he seems to be stuck in. “What does any of this have to do with Mo?”

  “Nothing,” he says dryly. Then, he sits up, turning his entire body on the couch to better face me. “And everything.”

  LACHLAN

  THERE’S SOMETHING SURREAL about hearing it all laid out at once. Up until Greer, everyone involved has been there from the beginning, they know how this story started, where it began to unravel and how it is meant to end.

  “There are rules in place to protect the crown and the royal blood meant to wear it,” I explain, trying to hold the disgust in my own voice at bay, but it’s hard, given all I’ve learned in recent weeks. “First and foremost, these rules were put in place to ensure the name as well as the bloodline would continue.”

  “Meaning?” Greer’s brows are furrowed, and since about halfway through this conversation, she’s been chewing at the outside of her thumbnail.

  “Meaning that the heir to the crown is always the firstborn son,” I start.

  “Seems a little sexist,” she mumbles, edge of her thumb still glued to her mouth.

  “It’s a lot of sexist actually, and it’s not even the worst of it,” I tell her. “Back in the day, this rule meant the king was free to take as many wives as necessary to find one who would bear him a son.” I swallow down the rest of my thoughts on this particular matter. “In more recent years, it meant the crown would go to the firstborn son of the second son of the previous king, should the current king only produce daughters. If the second son also wound up being sonless, this same rule applied moving down from there.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to just let the daughters keep their names when they get married?” she asks, mockery distinctly present in her tone.

  I snort. “So many things would be so much easier and less offensive, but that’s not how the Westergaards prefer to operate.” I stretch out my legs and let my hands rest in my lap. Now that she knows the big secret, it’s easy to surrender to the rest of the tale. “Outside of having to be the firstborn son, it is preferred but not required, said son is married by the time he takes the throne as king.”

  “Increased chances of a next generation.” Greer nods. “Got it.”

  “Ordinarily, my unmarried status, while obviously frowned upon, would not be enough to forfeit me the crown. However,” and this is where things get really disgusting, “because I am an unmarried man with a child out of wedlock to whom I share no biological connection and who, to top it off, is not a firstborn son – though this should be irrelevant, I’m told it’s not - my eligibility to rule is being called into question. Especially since my younger brother is married. And his wife is pregnant. Supposedly with a boy, though no one has seen the sonogram.”

  “That’s insane.” Greer has reached the only natural conclusion. “Why should any of it matter?”

  “Basically, because my stepmother will scratch and claw her way through any loophole she can find to make her son king,” I sneer. “But the bullshit version sounds more like, ‘Not only are you asking us to risk losing a direct descendant to inherit the crown, but you’re also expecting this family to tarnish its well-preserved reputation all on account of your personal choices,” I say, mimicking my grandmother’s tone. “You may be royal by blood and name, but despite our every effort to groom and prepare you for your responsibilities to your family as well as your country, I’m afraid you’ve remained your mother’s son, through and through.”

  Greer’s nose crinkles and her hand falls away from her mouth. “Has she met your mother? Or Chase? Because that is a damn compliment if I ever heard one, and I’m just not sure your grandmother’s clear on that.”

  I laugh. It’s the lightest I’ve felt since I walked in here. “I’m positive she’s not, though I appreciate that you are.”

  She smiles softly, holding my gaze for a few seconds longer. Then, her brow furrows again and the smile turns to a frown. “That’s why you’re here to find Mo’s biological father. To put you first in line again.”

  “It’s not that simple.” I cover my face with my hands, wishing not for the first time it was this easy to shut out the world on a more permanent basis. “If it were just a
choice between Monroe and the crown, there’d be no choice to it. She’s been my responsibility from the moment I said yes to a pregnant Riley, pleading with me to take her child and keep her safe. But she’s been my daughter since the first night she came home with me and cried the second the nanny tried to take her from me. She’s mine. I’m hers. And deep down, I think I always knew what Riley was really asking me when she brought me those guardianship papers. She knew she wasn’t going to make it out of the abyss. She was too tired, too lost. And Monroe should have been her reason to fight, to keep living, but I think all she could see when she looked at her was another person she was going to fail.” Every word feels like a knife through my heart. Not just the pain of losing her, or the pain of knowing Monroe will never know her own mother. Somehow, it feels like a betrayal to admit she died on a battleground of her own making.

  Greer leans forward and takes my hand, holding it gently between hers. “What makes it complicated?”

  “Linden.” I swallow down the emotions still rising in my throat. “Before Monroe, Linden mattered more to me than anything.” I’m not sure I even know how to explain it. “I spent my whole life preparing for the day I was old enough to go and meet my destiny. The fate that came with being born my father’s son. I took it seriously, saw honor in it, and from the moment I was eighteen, I dedicated every waking second to learning all there was to know about my country. The government. The economy. The industries that thrived, the ones that didn’t. Met the people. Heard their concerns, their needs and their dreams for our country.” I stop to breathe and to remember. It’s been over a decade, there’s no way I could possibly relay to Greer during one conversation the impact my path has had on me. “If I believed my brother would do right by them, would reign with honor and consideration, ensuring a land my people can be proud of, feel safe in and live well in, I would step aside without hesitation. He’s given me no reason to believe in him. On the contrary, he’s happy to follow old patterns and outdated beliefs. The tried and true that only serves the privileged and leaves behind everyone else.” I slow down, pausing to say the last of it, the words that continue to run in circles inside my own head, making it impossible to tune them out or ignore them or even hear them in a new way. “I can’t be the man I wish to be, or honor my daughter as the father she deserves, if I don’t honor the responsibility I was entrusted with. Her life. As well as the lives of every Linde I spent the last decade promising a life of servitude to. And all their daughters who deserve to grow up in a country where the firstborn daughter can be destined to be queen. And every child learns that royalty has nothing to do with blue blood and everything to do with a courageous, selfless heart.”