Duke for the Summer, page 1
Duke for the Summer
Emily Spady
copyright 2024 by Emily Spady
all rights reserved
ISBN: 9798884536739
Also by Emily Spady
The Hot Mess Prince
Contents
1.
2.
3.
4.
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6.
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8.
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10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
Epilogue: Two Months Later
Acknowledgements
About the Author
1.
For years, Nate Schafer had dreamed of being discovered. As a kid, doing kickflips, as a teenager, loitering in Hot Topic, trying to look the exact right combination of bored and dissolute, even in his early twenties, hoping that some cute guy on the bus would compliment his tattoos or ask him what he was listening to. Hoping that somebody, someday, would look at him and say, you’re special, you’re perfect, instead of dismissing him as a weird little guy with no career prospects and only average looks.
So it felt especially insulting when the scam emails started coming, telling him that he, Nate Schafer, was the sole inheritor of a castle on a tiny island near Sicily. Hilarious. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble, too. They’d designed a family crest and gotten somebody to write the emails in formal English, and it was almost convincing enough that he allowed himself to hope…
Except that was stupid. His dad, by all accounts, had been some druggie rando with no ties to Italy, let alone royalty, and his mom was as midwestern German-American as they came, and so Nate just blocked the address of the sender and marveled briefly at the creativity of internet scammers before forgetting about the whole thing.
That is, until a very handsome, very annoyed Italian man showed up on his doorstep, brandishing a binder full of papers.
“You are Nate Schafer.” It wasn’t a question, but his name sounded so fancy in this guy’s accent that Nate did an auditory double-take. Maybe he actually wasn’t Nate Schafer. At least not the right one.
“Yeah?” he said cautiously.
“You didn’t answer my emails. I had no choice but to come here myself.”
Nate’s hand twitched on the doorknob. “Look, I make fifteen dollars an hour, so if you want me to, like, transfer money to some offshore account to buy a castle or whatever–”
“It’s your castle. You have no need to buy it.” Mr. Tall, Dark, and Officious opened the binder, showing him what looked like a photocopy of an antique document. For all Nate knew, it could be some Italian noble’s shopping list. There was a seal of some kind on it, and he realized that it looked familiar: the emails had had a similar graphic. “Castello di Carmosino, historic seat of your father’s ancestors. I had almost given up hope that there were any heirs left, and then I found you. I’m Jacopo Brunetti. My family have always been caretakers of your estate.”
He held out his hand. It was a nice hand, strong and large, with no rings on the fingers.
Nate didn’t shake it.
“Yeah, you must have made a mistake. I don’t even know my dad’s name. There’s no way he was connected to some noble family.” He shrugged, adding, “Sorry.”
“It’s impossible that I made a mistake.” Jacopo scowled, his eyebrows dark V’s. There were little threads of silver at his temples. “You took a DNA test recently, yes? Twenty Three and I, or something.”
“Yeah?” An early gift to himself for his thirtieth birthday. Nate tried to remember what it had said. Nothing too interesting. European mutt across the board, right?
“Before your great-great uncle, the last Duca di Carmosino, passed away years ago, we were able to save his DNA profile.” Jacopo tapped the binder importantly. “You’re a match.”
Nate had a chill sense of surreality, and he realized he was sweating. Absurdly, his brain asked, the dookie de Carmosino? But duca meant duke, of course, it must, because of all the paperwork, and he was obviously going insane, because–
“My great-great uncle is a duke.”
“You are a duke. You are the last surviving member of the famiglia di Carmosino.”
“I, um.” Nate rubbed a hand over his face. A thousand thoughts were clambering over each other in his head, and somehow the only one that came to the surface was an intense awareness that he was wearing ratty basketball shorts and a t-shirt that had barely passed the smell test, and he felt like that on its own disqualified him from inheriting a dukedom. “Shit,” he said. “Uh. Well. I guess you’d better come in.”
*
“Do you want coffee?” Nate held up a Keurig pod. “I’ve got, uh, caramel brulee or apple cinnamon?” Jacopo was looking at him like he’d grown a second head, but he blundered on. “They’re the only flavors left. My mom buys them at Costco?”
“Sorry,” Jacopo said slowly. “I’ve studied English extensively, but sometimes the, uh, idioms escape me. What is this–”
“Costco? Yeah, it’s a huge store where you can buy, like, a gallon of mayonnaise or a year’s supply of toilet paper or whatever. My parents are borderline doomsday preppers, so it’s kind of their favorite place.” Nate stared at Jacopo, willing himself to stop talking. This man didn’t fit in his shabby living room, with its faded floral sofa (a hand-me-down from his stepsister) and seldom-vacuumed carpet. He was tweedy, professorial, mysterious, his black hair slicked back, his strong eyebrows skeptical. His clothes were somewhat dated but had the look of being well-made and well cared-for. And the stubble beginning to come in along the line of his jaw made Nate suppress a shiver.
“Um,” he concluded. “Coffee?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so, I’m very tired.” Jacopo rubbed at his temples. “Your airports are stressful. And there was a man on the bus who seemed agitated about something called the Area 51? I hope it is not near here. It sounds very dangerous.”
“Oh God, did you take the Greyhound?” Nate set a mug down in front of him. “All that duke money didn’t pay for a hired car or something?”
Jacopo took a sip of the coffee and slid the mug away, coughing slightly. “There isn’t–that is, the caretaker only receives, how do you call it? A stipend. I could not hire a car.”
Right. The caretaker only received a stipend. Because there was a castle, and the castle had a caretaker, and it all belonged to Nate.
The castle, he amended. The castle belonged to him. Nate cleared his throat.
“So, like. Ok. I’m the last Duke of Carcassonne–”
“Carmosino.”
“Sorry. I’ll practice getting it right, I promise. What happens now?”
“You need to come back to Italy with me,” Jacopo said. “There are documents to be signed, and there’s the matter of your inheritance. And you’ll have to decide what you want to do with the property–provided you don’t want to live there permanently.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Nate felt his stomach sink. Of course, of all the castles in the world, he’d have the luck to inherit a shitty one. It was probably haunted to the gills.
“Il castello has had no occupants in over twenty years.” Jacopo rubbed his temples. “Parts of it are not set up for modern living.” He reached for the coffee cup, then seemed to think better of it. “But the inheritance is substantial, as long as you are willing to stay there for three months.”
“Oh. There’s a three-month clause.” Yeah ok, it was one hundred percent haunted. There was probably a cursed portrait or a room with a slowly-withering rose somewhere in there, too. Who knew? Anything was possible, after today.
“Yes. I apologize about the complication, but, well–” Jacopo steepled his fingers over his chin. “One of the dukes wrote into law centuries ago that no one could inherit the family fortune without living in the castle for at least three months. He wanted to prevent whoever married his daughter from automatically getting the money, I believe.”
“So I have to live in a castle in Italy for three months and then inherit a fortune?” Nate took a gulp of coffee. His head was buzzing, and when he looked down at his fingers, they didn’t seem quite real.
“Well, yes. But you won’t be alone. As I said, I’m the caretaker of the castle, so I’ll be there to help you.”
“Okay.” Cool. Cool cool cool. Don’t freak out, Nate, you’re just suddenly a rich duke who’s about to spend three months in a definitely-haunted castle with a hot Italian man. No big deal. “I think–I think I need to sit down. I think I need to call my mom.”
*
Jacopo looked even more out-of-place in Nate’s tired little Honda civic than he had in his living room. He’d been polite enough to ignore the empty cans of Red Bull rattling around on the baseboard and the pile of work clothes in the back, and he was resolutely staring out the window as they headed out of Eugene, seemingly fascinated by the hayfields and pastures of sheep. Nate’s mom, Barb, and his stepdad, Dave, lived out in the country. It was the kind of out in the country where your mailbox had reflectors on it and your nights were punctuated by coyote song and the occasional rifle shot and the nearest town was a bunch of trailer homes clustered around a church and a liquor store.
Barb had seemed calm enough on the phone, in that dreamy way of hers that might be a result of the damage she’d done to her brain years ago or might just be the result of her determination
“Sorry. What’s the name of the island?” he asked.
“Carmosino.”
“Car-mo-see-no.” Nate sounded it out. “And the town is called?”
“Collinarossa.”
Ooh. Yeah, he’d felt a little internal shiver at that one, at the way Jacopo’s tongue wrapped around the consonants. Nate kicked himself mentally. He really shouldn’t be objectifying this poor guy’s accent. Who even knew if Jacopo was into men, anyway? It could end up being a very awkward, platonic, uneventful three months.
“What’s it like?”
“Hm,” Jacopo said. “Small. Very hilly. Different from this.” He gestured out the window.
“Well, yeah, this is a valley.”
“It’s a nice place. Very little privacy, I’m afraid. Everyone will be–curious about you.” His eyes raked over Nate’s body then, quickly, but not so quickly that Nate didn’t notice how they lingered, on his forearms, on his chest, and though Nate had never really been able to get big from working out, he knew he was strong, and worked hard at maintaining his body, and he let himself wonder for a moment if it wouldn’t be such a platonic three months after all.
Scratch that, it definitely would be, because now his mom was showing Jacopo pictures of him as an eleven-year-old.
“And here Natey is at the Veneta Renaissance Faire. I was one of the Queen’s handmaidens that year, and Natey wanted to be a knight, so we covered his bike helmet in tinfoil and made him a breastplate out of cardboard. Look, isn’t it adorable? He decorated it himself, such a creative kid. Anyway, that was the year he ended up throwing up from the heat–”
“Mom.”
“So you make sure he doesn’t get overheated in Italy, okay, Jacopo? He’s got sensitive skin.”
“Ma’am, it is my duty to serve the famiglia di Carmosino,” Jacopo said. “I’ll make sure nothing harms your son.”
“You’re a treasure.” Nate’s mom patted Jacopo’s arm, her chandelier earrings swinging wildly.
He kind of was, Nate had to admit. Jacopo was good with moms, that was for sure. He’d been nothing but polite through dinner, even managing to put away some of the bizarre mayonnaise, pea, and salami spaghetti that Barb had made “in his honor.” He’d nodded thoughtfully and shown no sign of offense when Barb had talked about how Nate had been conceived at a concert for a Grateful Dead cover band (a cover band! Nate had wanted to throw himself out the window). In fact, now that Jacopo was here, Barb seemed more than eager to talk about Nate’s dad, and by the end of the night, Nate had learned three entire things about him: he’d also been short, his name had been Nico, and he’d evidently been a casual fan of psychedelic instrumental jams.
Absolutely great, that she trusted a stranger with that information.
“And he never mentioned that he was, you know, European royalty?” Nate asked, rubbing his temples.
“Oh, he might have, honey. But men always say things like that when they want to get into your pants.”
“Mom.” Nate cast a despairing look at Jacopo, who was digging into Barb’s marionberry cobbler, apparently oblivious.
“This is delicious,” he said. “What is the fruit?”
And now Barb was telling him about how they harvested the berries out in their backyard, and how he would just have to meet her daughter, Thea; she’d been to France, you know, she was very worldly.
“Natey, maybe Thea could visit while you’re in Italy!”
Sure. Yeah. Nate loved Thea, but the last thing he wanted was his adorable half-sister swanning around in front of Jacopo with her eyelashes and her big boobs and even bigger personality.
“Are you done? With the cobbler, I mean.” Nate held out a hand. “I can help Dave with the dishes.”
While Barb seemed sold on the entire idea of Jacopo, Dave was refreshingly skeptical. Of course, Dave was skeptical about everything; there wasn’t a conspiracy he didn’t love. Wiry-haired arms buried in a sink full of suds, he asked, “Nate, are you sure about this? I don’t want to hear that you’ve been a victim of human trafficking, or–or had your organs harvested in some backwards Italian lab. What if this Jacopo guy has a brother who needs a kidney, or something? What if that was the purpose of the DNA test, to see if you’d be a match?”
“Dave,” Nate said, rolling his eyes. “They have better healthcare in Italy than they do here. There’s no, like, underground kidney harvesting ring. We saw online that the island exists, and the name of the duke on the Wikipedia page matches the name of the guy I’m related to. So.” He wiped a dish and put it in the rack.
“Wikipedia can be modified by anyone,” Dave grunted. “Google maps can be hacked. What if it’s a mob thing? Or an underground prostitution ring, Nate? I’m no Liam Neeson.”
Nate rolled his eyes. “Why would anyone come all the way to the US to abduct me, specifically? It’s so crazy that it has to be true.”
“Ok, well, if he tries anything, remember–”
“I know, I know. Fight dirty, use elbows and teeth.”
They were silent for a moment, looking out the window over the sink. It was early summer, the high grass on Nate’s parents’ property dry and yellow. Nate watched as a goat tore relentlessly at a loop of marionberry brambles. He felt a sudden wash of homesickness, thinking of long warm nights and crickets chirping and the smell of dusk. He’d never quite belonged here, in this quiet life Barb and Dave had built for themselves. Would he belong any better in Carmosino?
“Have you given any thought to logistics?” Dave asked. “He said you need to stay there for three months?”
“Yeah. I figured I’d just sublet my apartment to some college students. Maybe travel a little bit when the three months are over. And then I guess I have to figure out what to do with my inheritance.”
“Are you sure you just have to live in the castle? What if they want you to govern the island, or something? Nate, what if they want you to produce an heir?”
An uncomfortable feeling squirmed through Nate’s stomach. He hadn’t thought of that. “That would… be a problem.” Nate heard the creak of the screen door, and saw Jacopo walk out onto the porch. He seemed agitated, his tall, narrow frame hunched against the railing. Nate swallowed. “I’ll, uh. I’ll be right back,” he said.
2.
Jacopo Brunetti was confused. More than confused, he was confounded, his head swimming. None of this was what he had expected. The America he’d imagined had been like New York in the shows his mother liked, the horizon filled with shiny skyscrapers, people bustling along the streets, flower and hot dog carts (he’d never had a hot dog; had wanted to try one), angry cab drivers. Oregon was nothing like that. It had trees, and fields full of sheep, and something called a–what was it? Cossaco?–and strange little coffee pockets with absolutely hideous flavors, and a bus system called the Greyhound, which he’d taken down from the Portland airport and which seemed to specifically be the main mode of transportation for insane people.
The new duca di Carmosino was nothing like he’d expected, either. When Jacopo had read the name Nate Schafer, he’d pictured someone powerful and fierce, maybe a lawyer or businessman. Someone who wore suits regularly and had steel countertops in his kitchen. But this Nate Schafer had some kind of bird tattooed on his shoulder (Jacopo had seen its talons, peeking out from beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt), and tree branches snaking down his arm, and something else on his chest, just visible enough for lines to tease above the collar of his shirt. He had sensitive skin, skin so translucently pale that the tattoos seemed burned into it, and sandy blond hair, and he wore ragged basketball shorts and band t-shirts, and his parents had goats and chickens in their backyard, just like Jacopo’s.
Jacopo tapped a pack of cigarettes against the rail of the porch, watching the goats tear up mouthfuls of grass. The sky had gone a pale heather color over the treetops. It was a riot of greenery, this America, wild and strange, and Nate was wild and strange, too. Jacopo tried to imagine him in the castle, tried to imagine three months in close proximity with him, and felt a strange tingle between his shoulder blades.
