Lucky Prince_A Fake Fiance, Real Royal Wedding Romance

by Eva Luxe

  “Oh, there’s really no time involved here,” I told her, leaning back on the patch of grass. “We have done our part. Now, we can’t worry about what happens here. It’s all up to the fish.”

  She frowned a little, looking out at the red and white bob floating far out in the distance that was attached to her line. She sat down, resting her hands in her chin. After a few minutes, she opened her beer and took a few sips. She sat it down and looked down at me. I could feel her staring at me, so I opened up an eye.

  “Yes?”

  “So, we really are just gonna wait out here? Like, there’s nothing else to do??” She was beginning to fidget, like she was eager to find something to do with her hands. I was partially amused at her eagerness and partially saddened that even away from everything with nothing else to do that she was having a hard time relaxing.

  “Here, lay down next to me. I want to give you a massage,” I told her, sitting up. She shifted uneasily, still standing and staring off in the distance. I beckoned to her with my hand for her to lay next to me. After a lot of internal debate, she finally decided to try it.

  She laid down and I went to work, running my hand first up and down the length of her arms. I could feel the tension in little knots coming undone as my fingers worked. Her back was pristine, yet balls were sprinkled here and there. She moaned and “ah”ed as my carefully made my way across every inch of her frame. I was starting to really get turned on. And I could tell that she was, too.

  Before I had a chance to even finish the massage, she got a pull on her line. She had caught a fish and from the way that the line was pulling, it was a pretty big one. I leaned over to where I had dug the rod into the ground and grabbed it just as it was being pulled out of the ground.

  “Oh my god! Did I catch a shark?”

  The seriousness in her voice and on her face was laughable. I didn’t have time to laugh, though. I worked fast to reel it in before it took the bait and swam off. I pulled it in and it was a trout that looked like it was nearly two feet long.

  Talia jumped back as I pulled him out of the water, his tail sending a spray of salty water in our direction.

  “Wow! It IS a shark,” she joked.

  I laughed, extending the rod in her direction.

  “Do you want to take a picture of your first catch?” I asked.

  She leaned back, almost stepping into the water. I had to remind her that we were in the middle of deep water and that she had to be prepared to swim if she stepped out.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s okay. I’ll sit this one out.”

  I tossed him into a bucket of water that I had nearby for our catch.

  “Well, you caught your first fish,” I told her. “Now, let’s see what I catch.”

  She seemed pleased with herself, as if her casting the line out had been the sole reason for her catch. Maybe it had been. Either way, it was nice to see her so contented and relaxed.

  “Okay, so now I need to throw out my line again, right?” she asked. She caught on very fast.

  “Yep, you’re right. Did you want to try putting the bait on the line this time, you old pro you?” I asked jokingly, raising my eyebrows at her.

  She covered her mouth and laughed.

  “Um, no, I’ll let you handle that part. I’ll be happy to throw out the line, though. Seems I know the sweet spot in the water.”

  I put the worm on the hook and handed her the rod.

  “You sure you can handle it or do you need my help?”

  She paused for a beat before she answered.

  “I should be able to handle this,” she said, standing up straight, putting her shoulders back, extending her right arm, and hurling the line across the water. That one went out even further. I whistled.

  “You ever play baseball? With an arm like that, it seems like there’s a league out there that’s missing one if its star players.”

  “You know, that’s funny that you should say that,” she said. “I actually used to pitch softball in high…”

  She stopped talking and started to look off in the far distance, like she was lost in her thoughts.

  “Well, you’re really good,” hoping that she wouldn’t wander off too far and would stay present with me long enough to enjoy what was happening right then and there.

  “Thanks,” she said, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. We sat there for about thirty more minutes. The sun was beginning to wane in the sky.

  “Well, it doesn’t look like the fish are biting much today,” I told her. “Let’s get back on the boat and head back to shore.”

  “With just one fish?” she asked, incredulously.

  “Yeah,” I said, rubbing my hand through my hair. “I mean, a shark should be plenty for both of us to eat.”

  “Is it really a shark?” she asked, clutching her chest with her hand in shock. “I was only joking.”

  “No, it’s not a shark,” I smirked, pulling both rods out of the ground and throwing them into the back of the boat. “It’s a trout. But, actually, after we cook this, there will be plenty left over for us to eat off of for a while. So, kudos to you.”

  Talia clapped, cheering for herself, flashing me a smile with all of her pearly white teeth. Seeing the glow in her eyes made me excited to have brought her out on the trip.

  We take the short trip back to shore and I unpack all of the fishing gear, dumping it in a pile on the beach. I went to work right away making a bonfire. I found some sticks and leaves and fashioned a spit. I put the fish on the spit and slowly roasted it, spinning it so that it would cook evenly. After a few minutes, the delicious smell of cooked fish wafted up into our noses, making our bellies gurgle with hunger.

  “I can’t wait to tear into this,” said Talia, rubbing her hands together.

  “Me, either,” I admitted, feeling like my belly had taken a nosedive into my shoes.

  She leaned back in the sand, stared up at the sky, and sighed.

  “The sun looks so beautiful tonight. This is truly a perfect little piece of paradise,” she said happily. She looked over at me, smiling a smile that warmed me up from the inside out. It gave me a feeling that I hadn’t felt in such a long time, since before I’d gotten married. It was that excited, happy love feeling that I had when my wife Sophia and I had been dating. That kind of feeling when you wake up excited to see someone and you hate to close your eyes because you can’t see them while you sleep.

  That feeling was taking me over more than I cared to admit.

  “I had no idea that you would be so perfect,” I said, looking at her. “For my ad, that is.”

  I added the last phrase as a way to try to clean up what I said. I didn’t want her to know how I truly felt, that I was beginning to develop feelings deeper than I knew what to do with for her.

  For a brief moment, I could have sworn that I saw her look a little sad. But, just as quickly as the look came, it was gone.

  “Well, let me show you exactly why I’m the perfect girl for your ad,” she said in the throatiest voice, licking her plump lips. I could feel myself starting to get turned on.

  She definitely was the perfect girl.

  Chapter 10 – Talia

  One day, a few weeks back, I woke up from a dream so vivid, so jarring, so satisfying that I had the cheesiest grin on my face.

  I had been in the house for just a few months and Blake barged into my room with news that he couldn’t hold in any longer. He looked eager like a little kid that had to go the bathroom really bad.

  “What is it?” dream me asked, almost worried about what he was going to say.

  “I know that we got into this arrangment with the idea that neither one of us would develop feelings and that it would just be a companionship thing with sex included. Well, I can’t do that anymore. I am falling for you hard and fast and I don’t know what to do about it other than…”

  He dropped to one knee, pulled a gray velvet box out of his pocket, looked up
with me with loving eyes, and asked, “Will you marry me?”

  It had been so unexpected, but the way that I had been feeling in the dream, I started to toy with the idea. So, I said yes. And from there, we lived happily ever after, had a huge family with lots of children and laughter and happy memories.

  But, even though I woke up in such a happy mood, part of me knew that that could never happen. I had dismissed the dream as silly, something that I would never have to come to terms with. I hadn’t considered that maybe there was a part of me that wanted the dream to be true.

  Until today.

  As soon as I heard him speak the words, I felt stupid.

  The perfect girl for the ad.

  It sounded so clinical, so cold. Like there were no feelings involved.

  I knew that there wasn’t supposed to be. That was the reason why both of them had entered into the arrangement. Both of us wanted to get what we wanted and to be able to walk away unscathed, in one piece, with no messy feelings left behind for either of us to sort through.

  The perfect girl for the ad.

  He kept right on talking like he hadn’t said much of anything, like it was the most natural thing ever. I pretended to keep listening, but in my head, it was as if a silent alarm was ringing and there was no off switch. I knew that I had to get away from him as soon as I could.

  I found a reason to dismiss myself and walked into the house and headed to the bathroom.

  I needed a moment to think things through away from him and his charm and wit and amazing cooking and everything that was making me fall head over heels. And fast.

  Had I read too much into things? Part of what made me drawn to Blake was the fact that he was so attentive. I thought for a while that just like I was starting to change what I was wanting and how I viewed him and our whole arrangement, that maybe he was, too.

  Why did his words upset me so much if I knew that they were right? I had been struggling to keep things together so that we could spend time together, have amazing sex, but without all of the messy feelings.

  Obviously, I had failed on my end.

  And his words were like a slap in the face because, in my mind, they could only mean one thing: the feelings that I had for him were stronger than the feelings that he had for me.

  I thought about my mother, the hopeless romantic mess left with remnants of a family that was the product of such a love.

  I remembered coming home one day and seeing her sitting in the dark in her bedroom, the loud noise of the TV her only companion.

  She would always play her soaps really loud so that the blaring of the TV was the only sound that could be heard probably for miles. The loud violins and the dramatic dialogue would pierce the air as I moved about doing whatever it was that I was doing. My mother used to ask me to sit and watch with her, but I could never stomach the sad story lines and syrupy sweet plot twists that often had her on the edge of her seat or that would deduce her to a puddle of tears.

  And when, inevitably, one of her favorite characters would get their heart shattered into a million tiny pieces, she would cluck her tongue and shake her head.

  “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” she would say aloud. She said it quite often. I didn’t know if she was saying it in hopes that I would believe it or if she was trying to convince herself. Whatever the case, I took those moments are clear confirmation that love was never something that I wanted to be held captive by.

  And yet here I was, like an immature teenager with a pointless crush on my employer.

  Because, that’s who he was despite the story that my overactive imagination liked to paint. He was the guy who paid me money so that I could pay the bills that would be waiting for me in the inevitable moment that I finally returned home.

  This wasn’t someone that I had met randomly, someone that I met with hopes of building a future with. He was a guy who paid me for sex in exchange for a studio.

  I shuddered to have to think of it that way, but it was necessary. Not only was it completely true, it was also necessary for me to keep my own emotions in check so that I wouldn’t be tempted to keep diving off of the deep end.

  The other night, I was up thinking about things like would my life could be like if I decided to stay on the island.

  As if that were a decision that I could just unanimously make when Blake had made it clear that having a long term relationship was not an interest of his.

  The perfect girl for the ad.

  That’s who he said that I was.

  While I was busying piecing together a life that we would live together, he was busy thinking about the business arrangement that we had struck.

  I had turned into one of the very girls that I would have pitied, ones who were willing to do anything even literally sell their soul for a few dollars. I used Harvey and the showcase as an excuse, dangling a proverbial carrot in front of my own nose as incentive for me to stay. I tried to tell myself that the sexual part of our relationship was only a byproduct of the real reason that I was there: to work on my craft in a way that I had never had the chance and quite possibly may never have the chance again.

  But, if I were to sit and be completely honest with myself, I would have to admit that all of that was a lie. I was no different than one of the common women who stood on random street corners trading their bodies for whatever vice they were hooked on.

  I was ashamed.

  The more I thought about it, the more the sad realization set in about what I had to do.

  I was going to have to leave the island right away.

  I really didn’t see how I could stay when our minds and hearts were in two completely separate places. And I knew that if I shared how I felt, it would hasten the very thing that we both were not looking to: breaking each other’s hearts.

  And not only that, I started to think about the actual agreement. Maybe the reason why I started to develop such strong feelings for him is that I had basically deduced myself down to being his whore. And not even one that made any money. It all felt dirty and I couldn’t take it anymore.

  The tears began to burn the back of my eyelids and flow before I had the chance to stop them. I stood there, letting them flow, feeling like pieces of my soul were coming out in shards. It burned. It stung. This was the pain that I had been avoided and just like an unsuspecting animal walking into a trap, I had managed to get my own self mangled inside of it and couldn’t really see too many viable options for escape.

  I threw open the door of the bathroom and bounded down the hallway, running as fast as my legs would take me. Once I got to the room that I had called my own for week, I grabbed my floral bag and began throwing my clothes into them. I moved as quickly as I could so that I could put this place in my rearview. I hoped that once I was gone, the memory of this place would be just like a bad dream that I had somehow managed to wake up from, one that would make me shudder and do everything in my power to make sure that it wouldn’t be a reoccuring nightmare.

  “What are you doing?”

  I whirled around and saw Blake standing in the doorway. I didn’t even know that he had come inside the house and somehow he had managed to sneak into the room without me noticing. Part of me wondered how long he had been standing their watching me.

  “I can’t really get into it right now. I need to leave right now. You can keep all of the rest of the art. I’m only going to take the ones that I feel are best. I really do appreciate all that you have done to help me, though,” I said, moving toward the wall to gather my art pieces that I was going to take for the showcase, trying hard not to make eye contact with him. I didn’t want him to notice that I had been crying.

  He walked over to where I stood in the middle of the room. He reached out his head to try steadying me, to get me to stop moving long enough for him to try to piece together exactly what was happening.

  “Talia, talk to me. Whatever it is, I’m sure that we can fix it. I’ve done everything that I could possi
bly think of to make you comfortable and happy here. If there’s something that I don’t know about that’s bothering you, just let me know and I will fix it. I promise. Now, what is it?”

  I looked up at him. His eyes looked worried, a still sadness filling them more and more by the minute.

  I couldn’t tell him. I moved toward my things and started walking out of the room.

  “I’m done,” I announced, taking large steps through the doorway. “I need you to call the plane right away.”

  He sighed, shaking his fists heavenward, and yelled.

  “So, this is it? After everything? You aren’t even going to give me an explanation of what went wrong? You’re just going to sail off into the sunset, so to speak? Alright. Fine. I don’t want to make you stay somewhere you don’t want to be.”

  I couldn’t hold back the tears. They started like a slow leak and then picked up to a speed much like a running faucet.

  “I…can’t…stay…” I said, struggling to get the words out between hiccups. “I think that I’m falling in love with you.”

  I turned my back to him, sure that he would be backing away, running off in the opposite direction to call the plane.

  Peeling the band-aid off fast was the best and only option at this point and I knew it.

  It was just a matter of doing it.

  Chapter 11 – Blake

  I sat down on the edge of the bed to try processing what I was hearing.

  She was falling for me. And because of that, she wanted to leave. It was almost ironic how the logical side of me told me that she was right. We had both agreed, for very good reasons, not to overcomplicate things with our messy feelings. And now, here she was, confessing to me how she was feeling. She was telling me that her feelings for me was deeper than the confines of our simple agreement. I should have felt betrayed. I should have been hurrying to call my pilot to be on his way right away to usher her out of my life as quickly as she had entered.

  But, I didn’t. I was actually more in a state of shock than anything else. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But, I needed to hear it.

  The fact of the matter was that I had been running from the same feelings myself. And hearing her say them brought my feelings to light. And instead of being ugly and immature, I felt like I had been right to think that maybe I wasn’t the only one who had been starting to feel that things were a lot deeper than just having a contractual agreement.