wanted it. As her hands drift over my chest, she spreads suds and soap over my body. She washes my injured shoulder with the gentlest touch, flicking her eyes to mine a few times to make sure she’s not hurting me.
She cares.
Cares about hurting me. Cares about hurting my brother by being here.
All the while, she pushes her own dreams aside.
Should I really be asking her to do that? Here I am, having my body washed by the most beautiful girl in Argyle, dreaming of making her my wife.
But she told me herself she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want to be my wife. She doesn’t want to stay in Argyle. She wants to explore, to sing, to travel.
The only way I can give her that is if I let her go.
The royal life is regimented and planned. I’ll travel, sure, but it won’t be the way she wants to travel. She won’t be sticking her arms out of a convertible and sailing the high seas.
If this relationship were to become real, I’d be condemning Cara to a life of pomp and circumstance, devoid of the spontaneity she craves. It would be the life I’ve been living since I was a child—duty, responsibility, and the weight of the crown.
“What’s going on in that big, princely head of yours?” Cara chucks my chin as she arches an eyebrow. “You look like you’re carrying the world on your shoulders.”
“I was just thinking about how beautiful you are,” I answer, dropping my lips to hers.
The shower soaks us both as we kiss, and the sun dips below the horizon. Pulling away from me, Cara stares at the sunset as a sigh slips through her lips. She leans her head against my good shoulder, and we stand there in silence.
Comfortable silence. Companionable silence.
A silence that I could get used to, if Cara wanted it.
Then, she pulls away and turns off the shower. “I’ll get wrinkly at this rate,” she grins. “Come on. I’m hungry.”
When we make our way inside, wrapped in white, fluffy towels, the air conditioning is blasting through the villa. Cara shivers, finding the remote to turn it off.
“No need for that,” she huffs, shivering.
I love that Cara is comfortable around me. She treats me like any normal person. She isn’t scared to turn off the air conditioner without asking me. She doesn’t defer to my preference for everything.
She’s her own, whole person, not some shell of a human created to do my bidding.
Right now, she has her head stuck in the refrigerator. I stare at her ass as she pulls out some of the pre-made food the royal chef prepared before our arrival.
“I could definitely get used to this,” Cara says, flipping open a container to reveal delicious spiced chicken and rice. “This is better than my cooking for sure.”
I grin, grabbing the fork she hands me and dig in. I ignore the tremor in my heart at the thought of Cara getting used to this life.
That would mean she wanted this life. That she chose it.
That she chose me.
The next day has a full schedule of royal activities. Cara accompanies me as a guest, staying out of the spotlight. As we visit the local elementary school and then the hospital, I find myself glancing at her and wishing she were beside me for all these photo opportunities instead of staying in the background.
We haven’t gone public with the engagement, for obvious reasons—it’s not real. An engagement to Cara Shoal would cause a splash, and a breakup would cause an even bigger one. We can’t let anyone know about our supposed engagement.
She’s only here to buy me some time with Dante.
But I still steal a glance or two her way. When we visit the children’s ward in the hospital, I watch as Cara reads a story to two of the kids, who laugh and lean against her. Cara’s cheeks flush as she reads the book aloud, making different voices for the characters and slowly gathering more and more kids around her. They flock to her, and my heart thumps.
She’s good, she’s kind—and everyone can see it. What if a couple of those kids were ours? I push the thought aside.
When the day is over, we head back to the villa. Cara leans her head against the back of the car seat, sighing.
“That was exhausting, but nice.”
“Yeah?”
She nods. “I know no one was there to see me, but I still felt lucky. All those kids at the hospital have gone through so