Royal Ruse - Emma Lea Page 0,6

slipped it over her shoulders. Her dress was black and made of a floaty material with large white flowers. It would be designer, of course, and one of the big names. Shiny gold shoes and large gold earrings completed her outfit, and my tailored suit felt like a rumpled thrift-store purchase beside her. Or maybe that was just me.

“You look lovely,” I said, offering her my arm as we headed down the path to the car.

“Thank you,” she replied with a tight smile. “It’s Ralph Lauren. I picked it up when I went shopping with your mother the other day.”

I opened the door for her and then walked around the car to the driver’s side. I didn’t have a problem with Clarissa spending time with my mother, it just seemed they spent more time together than Clarissa and I did. And then I had to wonder, had my mother prepped Clarissa about the proposal? Was that dress specifically chosen for the event?

I took a breath and tried to shrug off the tension in my shoulders before I climbed into the car.

It was a quiet drive to the restaurant, and I kept checking my watch. My parents’ ambush before I left had already put me behind schedule, and the traffic as we drove into downtown Boston wasn’t doing me any favors.

“We should have left earlier,” Clarissa said as we wove through Chestnut Hill.

I rolled my lips together and held back my sigh. It wouldn’t do to get into a disagreement on the night I planned to propose. There was a lot riding on Clarissa agreeing to marry me, more than there had been the day before when I picked up the ring.

I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter and rolled my neck, willing myself to calm down. She would say yes. She had to say yes. All the hints had been there; the rings on her Instagram feed, the increased lunches she had with my mother, and the wedding magazines I’d spied spread out on her coffee table a week or so ago.

We had been dating for a while now and getting engaged was the next logical step. We could plan the wedding for next year and that would give me time to get established in Kalopsia with the royal court…if that’s what I decided to do. Would Clarissa even want to uproot her life and move to the Mediterranean? I knew Kalopsia wasn’t what it used to be, but with a new king and a new royal court, surely things would be looking up. And Clarissa would be a markissia, surely that would be a draw for her. Marrying me and staying in the U.S. was fine, but I was just a glorified accountant here. In Kalopsia we would be titled and important, and surely she would prefer that?

The traffic slowed to a crawl as we approached Fenway Park. Clarissa huffed and turned her face to the passenger side window, her jaw clenched. Okay, so maybe I should have taken the increased traffic into account, but it was just one more thing I had to think about and my brain was already overloaded with everything I’d been hit with earlier. The king sent me a letter, written by his own hand, requesting my presence in his court. I didn’t think the entirety of that had quite hit me yet. I hadn’t even talked to Frankie about it. I’d planned to call her while I drove out to pick up Clarissa, but with my parents making me late leaving, I knew she would have already been at work. Maybe if I’d connected with her and talked it over, I wouldn’t feel so scattered and I would have planned the route to the restaurant better.

Who knew a simple thing like traffic could threaten to derail a proposal?

I shot a quick look at Clarissa, who was still giving me the cold shoulder. The night wasn’t off to a brilliant start, but surely she wouldn’t hold my choice of tie and the traffic against me?

Francesca

I checked my phone for about the fifty-millionth time and sighed before shoving it back into the back pocket of my jeans. I didn’t know why I was expecting Lucas to text me, I mean, he was proposing to Clarissa tonight…if all went well, I probably wouldn’t hear from him until tomorrow.

Was I an awful person for hoping she turned him down or that he chickened out?

Yes. Yes, I was.

“A round of beers for table fourteen,” Sherry said to