The Bad Royals Box Set: The Complete Royally Unexpected Series, page 31
“Fine,” Heath says, grinning. “Just as long as you’re mine.”
And with that, Heath crushes his lips to mine. He kisses me in front of my family. In front of the priest and the scandalized staff of the Gregory household. In front of the whole world.
I wrap my arms around his neck and let my heart sing.
This. This is where I want to be. This is where the world feels right.
In the Duke’s arms. By his side. Promised to no one else but him.
EPILOGUE
HEATH
Ada invites me back to the Belcourt Estate, her family graciously echoing the invitation. As we arrive, a soft sprinkling of snow starts to fall.
Ada glances at me from the passenger seat of my car, reaching over to slide her hand over my thigh. “This isn’t what I expected for Christmas this year.”
I grin. “Me neither.”
I park the car, pausing as I watch the rest of her family filter inside. Ada smiles shyly. And I can’t resist. I have to kiss her. I tangle my fingers into those black locks and take her lips in mine. She tastes like heaven and hope and everything good in the world.
Right there, in the car, after breaking up her wedding and leading the police to the Count’s residence, I vow to never let her go.
It doesn’t matter that we barely know each other. It doesn’t matter that we’ve started a relationship with furtive kisses and stolen passions.
I feel more alive than I have in years. It feels like my brother and parents are smiling down on me, watching me mend the wounds that were inflicted upon me years before. Ada is the healing balm. With soft lips and moans that slip through our kiss, she holds me tight and stitches me back together.
When we pull apart, Ada stares at the Count’s engagement ring on her left hand. Tugging the simple gold band free, she shakes her head. “Wearing that thing felt wrong from the beginning.”
“I should have given you one the day you came to see me,” I say, my voice a low rasp. “When you played my mother’s piano. I should have dropped to my knees and begged you to marry me.”
Patting my chest, I find the little black velvet box containing my mother’s old ring. Before she died, she made me promise to give it to someone. She told me not to let bitterness and anger cloud the rest of my life. She told me to fall in love, and to fall hard.
For the first time, I feel like I’ve fulfilled that vow.
I pull out the box, flipping it open and lifting my eyes to Ada. “I know I’m an idiot for letting you walk away from me. I know I’ve ignored you and kept the truth of my investigation from you. I know you have every right to refuse me, but I’m not afraid to beg. Ada Belcourt, meeting you was like being struck by lightning. You’ve lit up my entire world, and it’s only in the past four weeks that I’ve realized how dark life is without you.”
She stares at the glittering stone, flicking her eyes up to mine. “This is not how I expected tonight to go at all.”
A thin blanket of snow is already covering the vehicle, shielding us from prying eyes. It feels warm and secure in here, like we’re alone in the world. I gulp, tugging the ring free from its velvet box.
“Marry me, Ada.” My hand is shaking. Breath short. Eyes moist.
Everything I have, Ada holds in the palm of her hand. She has my heart, my future, my child. If she refuses me, I know I’ll never recover.
With a thick gulp, Ada nods. “Okay.”
I smile so hard it hurts my cheeks. My chest feels like it’s cracked open. Okay means yes. Okay means she’s mine, now and forever.
As I slip the ring on her finger, she lets out a hiccup and a laugh, shaking her head. “It fits.”
“Meant to be.” My eyes shine with unshed tears as I smile at my future bride. We were destined to find each other. From the moment I first saw her, she was meant to be my wife.
Sliding her hand over my cheek, Ada lets out a sigh. “Merry Christmas, Your Grace.” She grins at the title. “Heath,” she corrects.
“Merry Christmas,” I answer, leaning into her touch. Words stick to my throat, but I want to tell her. I need to tell her. I’m sick of hiding in my mansion, away from the stares and the whispers and the emotions. I’m sick of living my life in fear, focused only on revenge.
Ada has shown me another side of life.
“I love you,” I whisper, placing my palm on her thigh. “I never believed in love at first sight until I saw you. And when I heard you play that piano at the Farcliff Castle, I knew my life would never be the same. You’ve reached into my chest and pulled my heart free of the thorns caging it in. You’ve awoken feelings inside me that I didn’t know were possible.” I take a deep breath, closing my eyes as her fingers stroke my cheek. “And you’re carrying my child. I thought”—I pause, forcing my eyes open—“that I’d never have an heir. I thought my family would die with me. But…”
My voice drifts off, and I slide my hand from her thigh to her abdomen.
With one hand still cupping my face, Ada places a palm over my hand on her stomach, intertwining my fingers with mine. “You want the baby?” she whispers, hope blooming over her face.
“Want it?” I laugh. “Ada, I’m desperate for it. Desperate for you. Did you hear me? I love you. Completely. I never want to let you go. I never want to watch you walk away from me again.”
“Technically, you walked away from me.” She grins, squeezing my hand. Then, biting her lip, she blinks two tears free from her eyes. “I think I might love you, too.”
Our story is messy. It’s backwards. It’s fast and tangled and not at all what I would have expected. But in Ada’s eyes I see the truth, even if her words are hesitant.
She loves me. She loves me. The mother of my child, my future wife, the woman who dragged me out of the bitterness of my own past—she loves me. Me! How did I ever deserve this? How could I have gained not only a wife, but a child, too?
Leaning over to lay a kiss on my lips, Ada smiles. “Come on,” she says. “We do presents on Christmas Eve at my house. I’m sure my mother will have rustled something up for you, too.”
“You’re my gift this year,” I say, letting a smile stretch over my lips. My heart thumps hard, reminding me that I’m alive. That I have a future with Ada. That I have a child on the way, and I’ll do everything in my power to provide for my baby. Our baby.
I spend Christmas with the Belcourts, then marry Ada a week later. We spend every single day together, walking through snow-covered fields and admiring the crisp, blue skies that seem even bluer in the cold weather. I kiss her often, telling her I love her multiple times a day. How could I not? I never thought I’d feel this way. I never thought I’d have this.
A wife. A family.
Happiness.
I don’t stay stuck at the Blythe Estate anymore. I go to every concert that Ada puts on. We go to the theatre and the ballet. We go see movies. We become fixtures in the tabloids, which makes Ada laugh.
“They don’t need to explain my relation to the royal family anymore.” She giggles, pointing to the newspaper. She looks cute with her cheeks tinged pink from the cold weather and her eyes shining bright. I kiss the tip of her nose.
As our child grows inside her, so too does my love for her bloom. If I thought this was just a passing attraction, I’m proven wrong every single day. Whenever I wake up with my wife’s arm slung across my chest, or I get to kiss her soft lips and feel her swelling belly under my palm, I know this is real. It’s deep. It’s everlasting.
Our son is born the first week of September, exactly forty weeks after that fateful Christmas ball, on a particularly warm autumn day. Ada is gorgeous and strong and I fall in love with her all over again. The past nine months have shown me what it means to live.
We name him Paul, after my brother. He’s perfect.
The case against Count Gregory is strong, and he’s sentenced to sixty years in prison on multiple counts of fraud and embezzlement. His crimes turn out to be so egregious that the judge uses him as an example, giving a damning speech at the sentencing hearing. It makes waves around the world, with his sneering face plastered on the front page of every major newspaper.
Truth be told, Gregory’s conviction has little impact on the pharmaceutical companies and research institutions that developed harmful drugs with him, but I decide his punishment is a good enough start. Fighting against unsafe drugs will be my crusade, and I’ll fight it gladly—as long as Ada is by my side.
After all, if not for Gregory I might not have had the courage to shed my fears and pursue love. Pursue Ada. I would have let her slip through my fingers and I’d have stayed tucked away in my own estate, cursing the world.
Our next Christmas is spent at the Belcourt Estate. Kiera ends up attending Farcliff University, studying medicine. Maggie’s foot heals, and she continues dancing. Their parents accept me with open arms, and I finally feel like I have a family again.
With a four-month-old baby in her arms, Ada sits next to the big Christmas tree in the Belcourt living room, looking like a goddess. She picks up a small envelope and hands it to me, smiling. “Merry Christmas, my love.”
I tilt my head, staring at her curiously.
She smiles, nodding for me to open the envelope as she bounces baby Paul in one arm. Is it wrong that I think she looks hot right now?
Tearing my eyes away from my wife, I open the envelope and pull out an invoice. Frowning, I read it, recognizing my parents’ piano-making business letterhead. “What’s this?”
“I made inquiries,” Ada says, smiling. “All the craftsmen who worked for your parents missed making Blythe pianos. They all agreed to come back, and one of them even knew an old client who wanted a new instrument.” She nods to the invoice. “That’s the first order for the second generation of Blythe pianos.”
My throat grows tight. Eyes mist. I can’t even see Ada clearly now, only a vague form of her rocking our child in her arms. “You… Is this real? They want to come back?”
“Everyone read the news, Heath,” she says softly, coming to sit beside me. “They all wanted to stand by you. They know you respect the business, and the only reason you shut it down was to pursue the investigation against Gregory. But that’s over now.” She nudges her shoulder against mine. “We can move on. Together.”
Wiping my eyes with the heels of my palms, I shake my head. “Ada…” Emotion chokes me. When my vision clears, I see her smiling at me, and my heart erupts.
“I love you,” I say, kissing her. “So much.”
“Okay, okay!” Kiera shouts from across the room. “Get a room or hand out another Christmas present to someone else. I don’t want to watch a make-out session.”
Giggling, Ada pulls away. I throw my arm over her shoulders, letting out a deep breath. In this room, with Ada, our son, and my new family, I know I have everything I’ll ever need.
Ada leans her head on my shoulder, and I kiss her temple.
My love. My Ada. Forever.
* * *
HEARTLESS PRINCE
ROYALLY UNEXPECTED: BOOK TWO
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
—Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
1
DAHLIA
I’m cursed.
Always have been, always will be—but I’ve learned to live with it.
The barista doesn’t know that, though. She just thinks the milk steamer on her espresso machine stopped working as soon as I walked up to the counter.
“Sorry.” Her eyebrows arch. “It’s never done this before.” She glances at the door marked ‘Staff Only’ behind her, chewing her lip. I wonder if her manager is a hardass.
I shake my head. “It’s fine. Forget about the lattes. I’ll just have two black coffees.”
“I’ll refund you.”
I smile. “Don’t worry about it.” I’m not going to punish her just because I’m perpetually unlucky.
Her shoulders relax a bit. She gives me a shy smile. “Okay—thanks.”
I take the two coffees to the table where my aunt, Theresa, is waiting. She nods her chin toward the machine, which magically started working again for the next customer.
“What happened?”
“It’s the curse.”
Auntie T rolls her eyes. “Of course it is. You know there’s no curse, right?”
“Try living a day in my shoes and then tell me there’s no curse. This morning, I slipped on a banana peel in my kitchen. A banana peel! I don’t even eat bananas! Unless this is live-action Mario Kart, that shouldn’t happen to a regular person.”
“Maybe you’re just clumsy,” she grins, “and isn’t your roommate an athlete? Athletes eat bananas, don’t they?”
I huff, sinking down into the chair across from her. The curse is real, and it sabotages me every day. Don’t even ask me about my love life—that’s in the Oxford English Dictionary under ‘disaster’.
My roommate, Elle, would tell you otherwise—but she thinks just because I have a healthy sex life, it means I’m good at dating. I’m not. I’ve never had a relationship last more than a couple of weeks.
“How was the Prince’s Ball, honey?” My aunt asks, bringing her coffee cup to her lips. With an oversized, leopard-print, faux-fur jacket and long crimson nails, she doesn’t exactly look like she belongs in the campus café.
I can’t meet her eye. I suck at lying—so, I just tell the truth. “I didn’t go.”
“What? But we received the thank you note from Farcliff Castle. They only send those out if you attend.”
I scrunch my napkin between my fingers and take a deep breath. “My roommate went instead of me.”
“Why would she do that?” Theresa’s painted nails fly to her chest and her bright, red lips drop open. She frowns, as if Elle stole my invitation from me.
Elle didn’t steal anything from me. I was the one who convinced her to take my place—and not very easily. She had no desire to go, but I’m glad she did. That’s how she met Prince Charlie.
“I didn’t want to go, Auntie T. You know how I feel about castles and crowds.”
Theresa’s eyebrow arches and she looks me up and down. “First of all, you know I don’t like it when you call me Auntie. It ages me.”
My lips tug into a small smile.
Theresa continues: “Second of all, why would you pass up the chance to go to the Prince’s Ball? It only happens once every generation! Are you insane?”
“I didn’t feel comfortable going up to the castle.”
Theresa tuts, shaking her head. “I blame your mother for this. She scared you away from your own heritage. Why should a Raventhal daughter be afraid of meeting the royal family? It’s all this talk about a stupid curse. No one should put those thoughts into a young child’s head.”
“She’s right, though. It’s not safe for me there.”
Theresa pinches her lips and drums her fingernails on the table. She tilts her head, watching me. “If you’re so scared of the castle, why—of all the places where you could study organic chemistry—did you choose Farcliff University?”
“Microbiology.”
“What?”
“I study microbiology, not organic chemistry.”
“I thought you said…”
“That was just one of my classes last semester.”
She waves a dismissive hand. “Whatever. You’re avoiding the question. Why come here? With your grades, you could have studied anywhere—yet you come to the one place that terrifies you.” My aunt purses her lips. “It doesn’t make sense for you to come here if you’re just going to avoid the royal family. You live in a dumpy house on the edge of Grimdale, and you pretend your last name is Smith. You’re a Raventhal, Dahlia. You belong up at the castle with the rest of them—so why avoid it?”
I take a sip of coffee and avoid her eyes again. She’s right. I live near the edge of the poorer end of the Kingdom called Grimdale—hardly the typical neighborhood for a Raventhal to live. However, it’s a perfectly acceptable place for a girl called Smith to live while she studies at Farcliff University.
Growing up, I was hidden away in the forests of the Rocky Mountains. I lived with my three aunts, who served as guardians while my parents lived in exile. I wasn’t even told that I was originally from Farcliff until my sixteenth birthday. My parents would come and visit me twice a year, and my mother was the one who’d explained that I’d been cursed as a small baby.
That’s why they took me away from Farcliff—to keep me safe from the curse. That’s what my mother said, at least. My aunts would shake their heads and tell her to stop putting silly superstitions into my head.
I know how crazy it sounds, but that’s the kind of thing that stays with you. Now, I’m supposed to be taking part in court life as if none of that ever happened? As if I haven’t been told that going to the castle will kill me?
I sigh. “I don’t know. I feel like an imposter. This is where I was born, but I was shipped away from Farcliff when I was a toddler. I never got to see the Raventhal home. Growing up with you, Aunt Helen, and Aunt Margie was…”
I trail off, lost in my own thoughts.
“It was what?” Theresa’s voice has an edge to it.
I take a deep breath. “It was wonderful. I loved growing up in the wild. I loved being surrounded by nature and birds—even if being allergic to pollen, and bees, and insect bites isn’t exactly convenient in the middle of the wilderness. Even so, it was peaceful. But… I don’t know who I am, Theresa. All of a sudden, when I turned sixteen, you told me I was a Raventhal and that I belonged in the Farcliff Court. I just want…” I sigh, shrugging. “I don’t know what I want.”
I sip my coffee as Theresa studies me. When she doesn’t say anything, I know she wants me to keep talking.
“Whenever I see Mom, she always tells me they’re dangerous at court. And then you’re telling me the opposite—pushing me towards it, telling me it’s fine. Which is it? Is it safe, or not safe? Am I cursed, or not cursed?”
