Royal Ruse - Emma Lea Page 0,10
the bar.
“She broke up with me,” he said.
“Wait, what?” Those were not the words I expected to come out of his mouth, even with his inebriated state as proof that the night hadn’t gone as planned. “Clarissa broke up with you?”
He moved his head in a nodding motion, although he’d laid it down on the bar.
“She wants passion, and she thinks I’m dull.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge, opening it and sliding it toward him.
“Drink this,” I said.
He pushed up slowly and took the water, taking a sip before pushing it away and laying his head back down again.
“You didn’t drive here did you?” I asked.
“Uber,” he mumbled.
“So Clarissa broke up with you,” I repeated, still not quite believing it.
“Yep,” he said, tilting his head to look at me.
“Do you want me to punch her?” I asked, fully prepared to take a shot at the woman who could make my best friend so unhappy. “Or I could start trolling her on Instagram. Yeah, maybe that would be a better thing to do, hit her where it would really hurt.”
Lucas snorted. “Thanks, but no.” He groaned. “Clarissa turning me down and breaking up with me isn’t even the worst bit.”
“It’s not?” I couldn’t imagine what was worse than his girlfriend breaking up with him when he was trying to propose to her.
“No,” he groaned. “Now I can’t go to Kalopsia.”
“Pardon?”
He sat up then and reached for the water, taking another drink before trying to focus on me. “That’s right,” he said. “I haven’t told you that bit of news yet.”
“What news?”
“The king wants me to go to Kalopsia and be part of his newly formed royal court. He wants my father to pass his title to me.”
“O-kay,” I said slowly.
I knew about Kalopsia, but only in really general terms. I knew a bit of the history and that they had a new king and that Lucas’ family were once part of the court.
“So what does Clarissa turning you down have to do with that?”
“Father won’t let me go unless I’m at least engaged,” he mumbled, dropping his head again.
“What? Why?”
Lucas sighed. “They think the island is overrun with desperate gold-digging women who will take one look at my title and my trust fund and seduce me into marrying them.”
I snorted. “Your parents do realize we’re living in the twenty-first century, right?”
“You’ve met my parents,” he said. “Is it so hard to believe they would say something like that?”
I sighed. “No, you’re right, but Lucas, you’re twenty-seven years old and if the king is summoning you, I don’t think your father has a say in it.”
“You’d think that,” he sighed. “But you know my father. He made a ruling, and that’s that. Clarissa turned me down and now I can’t go.”
“Did you want to go?” I asked, curious.
I would have thought Lucas would be relieved to not be forced so far out of his comfort zone.
He sat up again and focused on me. “That’s the thing,” he said, reaching for the water again. “I didn’t think I wanted to go but then Mother and Father said I couldn’t go unless I was married and going to Kalopsia suddenly became a lot more attractive.”
“Don’t tell me you actually stood up to them?” I said, impressed.
“No,” he sighed. “I didn’t say anything to them. At that point I thought Clarissa would say yes and it would be a moot point.”
“And now?”
“Now I want to go and I can’t.”
“Of course you can. I don’t think your father can overrule a king.”
“But can you imagine the fallout? I just can’t deal with that.”
“Even if it means not going to Kalopsia?”
Lucas sighed. “Even then,” he replied.
I felt bad for him—not about the Clarissa thing; I was positively doing a happy dance over that—I felt bad because for the first time, Lucas wanted to do something for himself and he was being denied. I wanted to go to his father and tell him to step off and let Lucas go, but it wasn’t my battle to fight.
“Couldn’t you just…go for a couple of weeks and check it out?” I asked.
“I wish I could,” he replied, fiddling with the water bottle.
“What do you remember about it?” I asked. He never really spoke about the island nation that was his home.
“I remember the water,” he said, smiling. “The water is this amazing blue, and it sparkles in the sunlight. I remember all the colored buildings built along the coast.”
“Like in Santorini?” I