Forever Theirs
Page 1
Forever Theirs
A Thalanian Dynasty Novel
Katee Robert
Copyright © 2018 by Katee Robert
All rights reserved.
Cover image by Sara Eirew
Cover art by Oliviaprodesigns
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact katee@kateerobert.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Created with Vellum
To Andie -
Thank you for geeking out just as hard about Galen, Theo, and Meg as I did!
Contents
Book List
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Afterword
Coming Soon!
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Katee Robert
Book List
The Kings Series
Book 1: The Last King
Book 2: The Fearless King
* * *
The Thalanian Dynasty Series (MMF)
Book 0.5: Theirs for the Night
Book 1: Forever Theirs
Book 2: Theirs Ever After
* * *
The Hidden Sins Series
Book 1: The Devil’s Daughter
Book 2: The Hunting Grounds
Book 3: The Surviving Girls
* * *
The Make Me Series
Book 1: Make Me Want
Book 2: Make Me Crave
* * *
The O’Malley Series
Book 1: The Marriage Contract
Book 2: The Wedding Pact
Book 3: An Indecent Proposal
Book 4: Forbidden Promises
Book 5: Undercover Attraction
Book 6: The Bastard’s Bargain
* * *
The Hot in Hollywood Series
Book 1: Ties that Bind
Book 2: Animal Attraction
* * *
The Foolproof Love Series
Book 1: A Foolproof Love
Book 2: Fool Me Once
Book 3: A Fool for You
* * *
Out of Uniform Series
Book 1: In Bed with Mr. Wrong
Book 1.5: His to Keep
Book 2: Falling for His Best Friend
Book 3: His Lover to Protect
Book 3.5: His to Take
* * *
Serve Series
Book 1: Mistaken by Fate
Book 2: Betting on Fate
Book 3: Protecting Fate
* * *
Come Undone Series
Book 1: Wrong Bed, Right Guy
Book 2: Chasing Mrs. Right
Book 3: Two Wrongs, One Right
Book 3.5: Seducing Mr. Right
* * *
Other Books
Seducing the Bridesmaid
Meeting His Match
Prom Queen
The Siren’s Curse
1
“Meg, someone puked in the bathroom.”
Meg Sanders closed her eyes and counted to ten very, very slowly. It didn’t change Jonah’s words—or their implication. By the time she turned to face him, she had her expression under control. Mostly. “You’re telling me…”
“I’m clocking off.” He held up his timesheet. “My shift ended thirty minutes ago and I’m about to go into overtime.”
If she let that happen, cleaning up someone else’s puke would be the least of Meg’s worries. “Okay, go ahead.” Their boss had a notorious temper when it came to overtime, and they’d all learned to avoid going over the allotted hours whenever possible. Jonah was a decent dude, and she didn’t want to drop that hammer on him. “I’ll take care of it.” Last call had already been sounded and the lights were all up. If the last four people didn’t file out soon on their own, she’d call them cabs and kick them to the curb.
Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. Jonah clocked out, and she must have looked as miserable as she felt because he herded the patrons out and waited for her to lock the door before he headed for his car.
Yeah, Jonah was a good dude.
He’d even blushed a little when he’d asked her out a few weeks ago, and took it well when she turned him down. She might have cited her insane work schedule that would only get more insane once school restarted in the fall, but the truth was far more pathetic.
How could anyone compare after she’d been with a prince and his bodyguard?
What was supposed to be a single night straight out of her dirtiest fantasies turned into the standard she was in danger of comparing every future relationship to. Not that she could call being picked up at a club on her twenty-third birthday and going home with two guys for the sexiest night of her life a relationship. It wasn’t. The amazing sex was just that—sex.
Even if she was starting to suspect it had ruined her for life.
No use thinking about it now.
They left. They never called.
You’re the one who snuck out without saying goodbye. They probably took a hint.
Meg laughed softly at the absurdity of her spiraling thoughts. She found the mop bucket and hauled it to the sink and squirted some soap into the swirling water. Easier to focus on her hurt pride than the money stress she couldn’t quite escape. The deadline to pay her fall tuition was this week and she hadn’t quite come to terms with the fact after all the hours and tips and even a second job she was still short.
Seriously short.
Short to the tune of two thousand dollars.
Not that much money in the grand scheme of things, but it might as well have been on the moon for all Meg could access it. She’d gone so far as to fill out a couple credit card applications, but they sat unsent on her desk at home. They were just a temporary fix. Fall tuition would turn into spring tuition, and even if she could scrape together the money this time, she wouldn’t be able to do it next time. Better to just bow out gracefully now and leave her degree unfinished.
But she hadn’t filled out that form, either.
She was stuck in place, unable to move forward or go back. If she dropped out, she was no better than what her mother had always called her: a fuck-up destined to retread the footsteps of her family for as long as living memory. Poverty. A marriage or four. Crippling debt that she’d never be able to climb out from beneath. A job that slowly sucked every bit of joy out of her life.
She couldn’t do it.
She couldn’t go back to that small town and that dingy trailer and face the family she’d given the middle finger to when she turned eighteen and graduated with honors. Meg had worked too damn hard to put herself in a position to make something of her life.
Look at her now.
Cleaning up someone else’s puke.
She wheeled the bucket down the dim hallway to the pair of bathrooms situated near the back door. The bar could stand in for countless bars across the country. The lights a little too low, the floors a little too sticky, the alcohol a
little too cheap. But it was what passed for her second home. She loved most of the people she worked with, and if her boss was kind of a dick, well, that went with the territory.
Meg took a slow, deep breath and pushed open the first door. The smell of vomit sent her reeling back a step, but she mastered her response. Just get it over with and you can go home. Home, to her tiny apartment filled with secondhand furniture. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was hers and she loved it. There was only this filthy bathroom between her and her lumpy bed and damned if she’d let the stench permeating the air beat her.
She got to work.
It was, in short, awful.
Jonah hadn’t caught the mess in time and part of it had dried. When the door swung open behind her, Meg was cursing up a storm and scrubbing with the mop at what looked like melted cotton candy and corn. Never eating either of those things again. She didn’t even realize she was no longer alone until a masculine chuckle rolled through the bathroom.
She jumped and swung the mop around, nearly braining… Meg froze. This was it. She’d finally lost what was left of her mind, because transitioning into an exhaustion-fueled hallucination was the only explanation for him being here. She blinked and blinked again. He didn’t disappear. “Theo?”
Theodore Fitzcharles III, former Crown Prince of Thalania, propped the door open with a leather shoe that was no doubt designer and gave her a pained grin. “Hey, princess.”
She looked from him to the half-cleaned vomit to the mop in her hand. For one second, Meg seriously considered whacking him with it just to rumple him a little. Even when he had her pinned to a couch and was fucking her within an inch of her life, Theo never ceased to look perfectly put together. The man was downright pretty, though he was too masculine for that adjective. His face was all sharp angles and full lips and blue eyes that held stories she could only guess at. Tonight, he wore a plain white T-shirt that looked like it might have been ironed at some point, and a pair of jeans that probably cost more than Meg’s monthly rent. She couldn’t even hold it against him, because it was so purely Theo.
No, she couldn’t hold that against him.
But she could hold the fact that he’d been MIA for three fucking months against him.
She considered the mop in her hands again, but ultimately decided going after him with it would just prove how angry she was. Meg dunked it into the dirty water and went back to cleaning. “Didn’t expect to see you again.”
“Do you normally leave your number when you don’t expect to see someone again?”
He had her there, but she’d never admit it. She’d left her number when she still thought the night had passed with two strangers whose only real sin was being so rich it blew her mind. It was only when she snuck down the hall that she’d learned the truth. Theo was the exiled prince of Thalania. An exiled prince came with more baggage than she had, and that was saying something.
But she hadn’t gone back for her number.
She still wasn’t sure why.
Her excuse of not wanting to face them in the light of the morning didn’t hold up to three months of absence. Meg scrubbed harder at the mess on the floor. “If it was an invitation—and it wasn’t—then it was one to call me. Not stalk me to my place of business and show up after hours when I’m alone and defenseless.”
He laughed. The bastard laughed. “Defenseless, Meg? Never. If there’s anyone defenseless in this scenario, it’s me.”
The words proved what she’d already suspected—he wasn’t going to be any more honest with her now than he had on that night three months ago. If he’d told her who he really was in the club, she might still have gone home with them, but at least she would have done it with eyes wide open. But he hadn’t been honest—neither of them had. She opened her mouth to tell him to get lost, but that wasn’t what came out. “Where’s Galen?”
Theo shrugged. “He had a few errands to attend to.”
Another suspicion proved correct. “He doesn’t know you’re here, does he?” Theo might play to his own set of rules, but Galen had one priority: Theo. He’d made it very clear that he had no intention of continuing anything with Meg. It was the one comfort she’d had. She and Galen outvoted Theo.
At least they had until he showed up here without his shadow in tow.
Theo gave another of those shrugs that meant nothing at all. “Contrary to what you seem to believe, we’re not attached at the hip.”
“Could have fooled me.” She waited, but he seemed content to lean against the doorframe and watch her, so Meg gave a shrug of her own and got back to work. Ultimately, his presence there changed nothing. The second she walked out of that apartment three months ago, she’d decided to leave everything—everyone—in it behind. “We’re closed.”
“Meg.”
She didn’t want to look at him. That way lay dragons. He was too attractive, too magnetic, and he knew it. But she couldn’t resist him murmuring her name in that tone of voice. She just didn’t have it in her. Meg sighed and met his gaze. “It’s been three months, Theo. You said you’d be gone a couple weeks, tops. Even if I was interested, and that’s a big if at this point, the opportunity has passed.”
“I’d like to take you out for dinner. Or a drink.”
His ability to steamroll right over what she’d just said was a neat trick, but not one she planned on indulging. “Goodbye, Theo.”
“Wait. Fuck, Meg, just … wait.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and, for the first time since he appeared, she noticed the dark circles under his eyes. As if maybe he hadn’t slept much since she’d seen him last. Doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. He let his hand drop and pinned her with a look. “Shit got complicated after we left New York, and we had to jump through some hoops until things calmed down. I wasn’t going to come back here or risk contacting you until I knew it was safe.”
She splashed water onto the floor and got back to scrubbing. “Theo, I had fun that night. So much fun. But that’s all it was—fun. Your life is complicated. My life is complicated. There is such a disconnect between the two, it’s absurd.”
“Who the fuck cares about the disconnect? We connected. You and me and Galen.”
She couldn’t argue that, so she didn’t try. This Theo was hard to deny, but she remembered all too well how he got when those blue eyes went calculating. He’d been raised the Crown Prince of Thalania, which meant he’d been raised to lie from birth. He wanted her, and he’d say whatever it took to claim her like some kind of trophy. She was a girl who grew up in a trailer, and he was a guy who’d grown up in a palace. There was no way he could see her as anything other than a trophy.
He sure as hell didn’t see her as an equal.
What could she say to get through to him? “Theo, what does that apartment cost you a month?”
His gaze went shuttered. “I don’t see how that matters.”
“That answers my question.” She laughed a little, the sound as broken and sad as the room they currently stood in. “I’m a year away from getting my master’s degree and I can’t even pay my tuition no matter how hard I hustle. I have no doubt that your problems are real and present and more than valid, but it’s like worrying about how to fly a rocket to the moon when I can’t even afford a car. We live in two different worlds.”
“Princess—”
“No.” Meg held up a hand, forestalling whatever argument he’d prepared. “I’m not a princess any more than you’re a pauper. And that’s okay, but let’s be honest right now. You’re standing there wearing designer right down to your skin and I’m cleaning up someone else’s puke for barely more than minimum wage. We’re too different, Theo. No matter how good the sex is, it would fall apart at some point, and it would fall apart ugly. I’m choosing to keep the memory of that night a happy one without all the emotional baggage three people would bring to any relationship.” She shook her head, barely believing the words out of her mouth. Three people. Hot as hell in the bedroom for a single night, but in a relati
onship?
A recipe for disaster.
Theo sighed. “You’re not going to get anywhere the way you’re doing it.”
She blinked. “Actually—”
He was already moving. He snagged the mop from her hands and nudged her out of the way. He curled those perfect lips at the mess on the floor and muttered something about idiot drunks, but before she could say anything, he started scrubbing the floor with a vigor she hadn’t been able to muster.
Meg should stop him.
Any moment now, she’d step in, demand the mop back, and finish the job she started.
But the strange sight of Theo doing manual labor kept her rooted in place. What was he playing at? Meg didn’t know, and the not knowing twisted something up inside her. No matter what his goal in coming here, she was being reasonable, damn it.
Reason always prevailed.
He finished in half the time it would have taken her. Neither of them spoke as he carried the bucket to the utility sink and washed it out. What was there to say? No matter what plans Theo held when he showed up, this was goodbye. It had to be.
He dried his hands and turned to face her. “What else do you have to do before you lock up?”
“I’m nearly done.” She’d saved the worst task for last, which was just as well. The last thing Meg needed was him hovering while she tried to count out the till or something that required actual concentration. She cleared her throat. “You should leave.”
“I’ll walk you out.”