The Royal’s Pretend Wife

by Sophia Lynn

  “I drop down to one knee. I had a speech planned, but it goes out of my head. I simply offer you the ring, and I look up into your eyes.”

  “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes. Yes, for the rest of our lives, yes.”

  In the silence that followed, Trinity had to remind herself that they had created the story together; it wasn’t something she was watching or something that had truly happened. She took a deep breath and then another, startled by how her heart was beating.

  “I like that, I think it'll work,” she said after a moment.

  “Yes,” he said, and she was a little gratified that he seemed a little uncertain as well. If she was thrown off balance, at least she wasn't alone.

  They continued to eat for a little longer, and in fairly short order, Trinity felt a deep sleepiness come over her. She stifled a yawn, but Apolo looked up.

  “You said that you've been up since three a.m. Los Angeles time,” he said.

  “No, I was up earlier. The flight was at three…”

  He nodded decisively. “You're tired, and you're also suffering from jet lag. It's time to put you to bed.”

  She started to protest automatically, but when she thought about it, she knew that he was right. She had stayed up for almost a full twenty-four hours, and if she was lucky, sleeping at this point might help her get over her jet lag.

  “All right,” she said, yawning again. “Where am I sleeping?”

  “The room next to mine,” he responded, giving her a hand up. “That's where I put your bags. You travel light.”

  She smiled.

  “You haven't seen the half of it,” she said. “When we get to London, there's a whole wardrobe waiting for me that your assistant has purchased.”

  Trinity started to say good night at the door, but then something occurred to her.

  “So what did the ring look like?”

  “Wait for just a moment, I can show you.”

  He disappeared into his own room for a moment, and he came out with something sparkling in his hand. When he showed it to her, she gasped.

  It was a gorgeous star sapphire, the blue of the gem and the white of the star achingly clear. It was surrounded by a ring of what she knew must be blue diamonds and set in a narrow platinum band.

  “Here, let me have your hand.”

  Without thinking about what he intended to do with it, she offered him her hand. With a single smooth motion, he slipped it on her finger.

  “And there you are, little gata. We're both in.”

  She felt that same funny thrill run through her at his pet name. She held her hand out, examining the ring.

  “How beautiful,” she said. “I have to say, you have perfect taste…”

  “I do my best,” he said with an easy grin. “Do I get a kiss goodnight?”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say no. It felt…vulnerable somehow. She was going to be acting as this man's devoted wife for almost a month, and before it began, she wanted some time to be herself, just for another night.

  Then she found herself nodding, because her body had no interest in preserving her space and every interest in kissing this man.

  “Good night, Apolo,” she whispered, tilting her face up.

  With a gentle deliberation, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. Through the thick muffle of their clothes, she could feel the warmth of his body and the power of his frame. Reflexively, she ran her hands down his sides, settling them on his narrow hips.

  When he kissed her, there was nothing hurried or timid about it. Instead, his warm mouth slanted over hers as if they had been kissing since the beginning of time. It was a soft kiss, sweet even, with the slight brush of his tongue along her lower lip. She could taste the salt of the olives on his lips and the sweetness of the bread. Without thinking about what she was doing, she leaned in, deepening the kiss even more.

  They crossed some kind of line together. Suddenly, she was clinging to him harder, and his arms around her tightened. There was something demanding about the way he was kissing her, and she could feel the need inside her, quiet for the last little while, rise up again. She had felt the beginning of it when she first took his arm, but now this was the real thing, a desire that swept through her like a forest fire.

  She didn't realize that they were moving until her back hit the door behind her. Their mouths had grown ravenous, as if they would devour each other, and she found her hands sliding up his chest, marveling at the muscle there.

  She didn't know how far things might have gone if he hadn’t pulled away. For a moment, she didn't recognize the man in front of her as the cool sophisticated man she had spent the evening with. There was something wild in his eyes, something needy in the way his hands reached for her before he forced them down to his sides.

  “That was…unexpected,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, of course, I am,” she said, but she knew how unsteady her own words sounded. “I am,” Trinity said with a little more confidence. “That was unexpected though.”

  “You're a very good actress,” he said, and though there was no hint of censure in his voice, she felt a slight pang at that. There had been no acting on her part, nothing but a genuine heat she had never felt before.

  “Thank you,” she said after a moment. “But perhaps we should wait until the cameras are rolling before we do that again…”

  “I don't know,” he said. “I was thinking that practicing might be important…”

  She looked up, startled before she saw the slight humorous quirk in his lips.

  “But you're right,” he said with regret. “We…we shouldn't forget ourselves. Goodnight, gata.”

  “Good night, Apolo,” she said, slipping into her bedroom.

  Closing the door behind her was surprisingly hard. As she undressed and got ready for bed, she realized that the only thing that separated her from Apolo was a wall—a wall with a door in it.

  For a moment, Trinity wondered what it would be like to open the door that joined the rooms. She wondered if he would be startled as she appeared in the doorway, wearing only her silk nightie. Perhaps he would be stunned silent as she crossed the floor, or perhaps he would only smile at her with a knowing look…

  Trinity shook her head hard. She had always prided herself on her professional ability and her ability to separate herself from the role that she was playing. She knew that Apolo was a wildly desirable man, but she needed to remember that she wasn't really in love with him. It was fine to desire him, to flirt and to be loving, but to be in love was a mistake of epic proportions.

  “Get your head in the game,” she said to her reflection.

  Her platinum hair had started to come out of its tidy plait. Her green eyes were dark with remembered desire, and her cheeks were rosy. She looked like a woman who had been teased or perhaps a woman on her way to a dire fate.

  “I will be in control,” Trinity told herself. “This will be the role of a lifetime!”

  Chapter Four

  The next morning, she woke up bright and early. Trinity lay still, savoring the cool light that suffused her room. She could hear Apolo stirring in the next room, which told her she should get up and face the day. She showered and brushed out her hair. Today, she gathered it into a loose bun that gave her a startlingly sweet look. It went well with the bottle green linen sheath dress she wore. After a moment of deliberation, she left her shoes off.

  When she made her way down to the kitchen, she realized that Apolo had beaten her there. He stood at the stove, dressed in loose linen pants that hung almost shockingly low around his hips. He glanced up when she approached, and then she saw him tear his eyes away.

  “I didn't think I looked that good,” she said teasingly, taking a seat at the marble kitchen island.

  “Then you didn't look in the mirror,” Apolo said lightly. “You look like a nymph who has come out of the water to play on dry land.”

  “Romant
ic. What are you cooking that smells so good?”

  “Well, there are plenty of eggs, so I thought I'd try my hand at a breakfast that I had in Budapest years ago. It's an egg dish smothered in a yogurt, paprika, and butter sauce.”

  He served her breakfast with a chunk of dark rye bread, and she closed her eyes, inhaling the scent before digging in.

  “Smells as good as it looks,” she said. “This is so much better than my traditional breakfast of donuts and leftovers.”

  Apolo glanced at her curiously as he ate his own meal.

  “Have you always eaten donuts and leftovers for breakfast? I was led to believe, that, ah, you were used to accommodations like this.”

  She grinned at him, washing her bite down with a bit of fresh orange juice.

  “You mean donuts and leftovers don't sound like something fit for the wife of a prince? Don't worry. My own circumstances have only been rough for a little less than a year. Before that, I was a perfect Santa Clara girl, with daddy's credit cards and the whole world at my fingertips.”

  She was braced for questions, but instead he only nodded.

  “It was rude of me to ask,” he said. “I suppose that that's what the therapist is for. He'll be helping us get our story straight, and then we won't have to wonder.”

  They finished their breakfast in silence, but when they were done, she touched his hand gently. He looked up, slightly startled, and she saw that though his eyes looked black at a distance, they were truly a deep shade of chocolate brown.

  “Hey, don't worry about it,” she said gently. “I really don't have any secrets, which is a little weird since we’re working on building a great big one together for the cameras. I want this to work nearly as much as you do, so let's do our best to make it amazing, all right?”

  “And about last night?”

  She blinked. She hadn't been ready for him to bring that up.

  “What do you mean?”

  He raised a dark brow at her.

  “I know myself fairly well. I like to think that I am not bad at reading people, and I was getting your signals last night loud and clear. I…I know that what I felt was genuine. Perhaps I am being foolish here, and you think that I'm quite the rube…”

  “It was genuine on my part as well,” she said, her voice hushed.

  Apolo spread his hands as if resting his case. “The attraction between us…it is not something that appears every day. Once again, I might be a little sheltered, but it is unlike anything that I have ever felt before. What shall we do about that?”

  There it was, and he was leaving everything in her lap. Trinity reminded herself that she was doing a job. This was a paid position that she needed to be very clear about, especially to herself. When she glanced at Apolo, bare to the waist in those sinfully low-slung linen pants, she knew that if she weren't careful, her objectivity would go out the window.

  “Let's leave it up to the therapist,” she said finally. At least it was an answer, even if it wasn't a real answer. “He's the professional, so he should be the one who tells us what's what, right?”

  Apolo didn't look entirely happy with that statement, but he nodded.

  “And you'll stop me if I do anything you don't like?”

  She blinked at the worried tone in his voice.

  “Of course I will,” she said automatically. “I'm very clear about what I want and what I don't want. Don't worry about that.”

  He grinned, obviously relieved.

  “Good. I don't want to overstep my boundaries without knowing about it, after all.”

  She nodded, and then when she thought about some of those boundaries, she felt a pleasant shiver run up her spine. Trinity covered it up by turning back to her breakfast.

  “I think that this is going to be an interesting month,” she said thoughtfully.

  Apolo wasn't eating. Instead, he was watching her with those dark eyes. For a moment, it felt as if he could see straight down to her soul.

  “You know, I believe I agree.”

  The therapist was a neat, graying man who appeared with a series of worksheets for them to complete. Apolo wondered where his assistant had found a man who was quite so unflappable and so unconcerned with anything except getting his clients where they needed to be.

  “It is none of my business what you are going to be doing with the information I give you,” Dr. Horne said pleasantly. “I only wish to make sure that you know what good couples know about each other.”

  “Of course, I assume that most couples don't have to fill out this many worksheets,” Trinity said with amused dismay.

  They sat on the terrace underneath the protection of a wide umbrella. Dr. Horne was working on more exercises for them, but now they were to fill out their worksheets and share the results with each other.

  “I don't know,” Apolo said absently, going over his own work. “I’ve known plenty of married royals who don't know each other's middle names or religious affiliations.”

  “And somehow they're still married?”

  He flashed her a white grin. “As a matter of fact, sometimes it seems as if the less they know, the more successful the marriage is.”

  Trinity snorted. “That's terrible. If I decide to spend the rest of my life with someone, I sure as hell want to know what their religious affiliations are and how they feel about things like politics. Though…I'm not sure about this section on siblings. What does it mean to answer what kind of effect a sibling has on you?”

  Apolo looked up, pen in his hand. “Oh that's simple. I'm the oldest, and my younger brother, while being someone that I love to the very end, has a singular ability to get under my skin. He's a good man, but we see eye to eye on very little. I suppose it has made me more interested in authority than I might be otherwise. Things like that.”

  “Oh, I always wanted a brother growing up,” Trinity said wistfully. “Or maybe a little sister. I grew up more than a little lonely in my father's house. He wouldn't let me play with the servants' children, and the other kids at my activities were more like competition than they were ever like friends. I suppose you know how it is?”

  “Not at all,” Apolo said, shaking his head. “My family is enormous, and getting time alone is actually the bigger issue. There are plenty of reasons why I might be angry with my family, but being isolated wasn't one of them.”

  He paused for a moment. There was a shadow across her face. If she had been a woman that he had met at the club or at one of the many fund-raising functions that he attended, he might not have pried, but after all, she was his wife.

  “You mentioned your father's house…was your mother not in the picture?”

  She shook her head, her lovely face very still. He was beginning to realize that for the most part, Trinity was very aware of what her face looked like and how she appeared. The moments when she looked unguarded, they were to be treasured as priceless beyond rubies. Even though his ruse depended on her being good at her work, he found himself longing for those moments more than he thought he would.

  “She died in a car accident when I was very young. I remember a few things about her. She had hair like mine. She smiled a lot, and I remember that her hands were very gentle. All I knew was that one day, she left and she never came back.”

  Impulsively, Apolo put down the pen and touched her hand. Her green eyes widened, and a blush crossed her face.

  “I don't know why I told you all of that,” she muttered.

  He met her eyes, letting her know as well as he could that there was no reason to hide from him, not now and not ever.

  “Because I wished to know and because you wished to tell me,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “You mentioned you have a big family,” she said, obviously changing the subject. “Do you think they like me?”

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “They may have been a little shocked that we married so quickly, and perhaps they wanted a Greek woman for me, but when they met you, t
hey instantly adopted you.”

  Trinity raised her eyebrow.

  “Isn't that awfully convenient?” she asked. “Doesn't it play better for television if there's conflict?”

  Apolo shook his head. He wasn't sure why he was so set on the matter, but there it was. Something in him simply did not like the idea of his family disliking Trinity, even in play. He didn't want to think about his mother or his father or his brother or his many cousins disliking the beautiful green-eyed girl who sat across from him.

  “I don't care,” he said. “I know that they would love you.”

  She laughed a little, giving way on the issue gratefully. “All right,” she said. “I'll put away my penchant for good writing. We probably do want to make sure that your family looks good. I'll keep it in mind.”

  Something about that bothered him. His family wouldn't accept her and love her because it was part of a script. They would adore her because she was, fundamentally, an adorable woman. He couldn't explain it to her; he wasn't even sure that he could explain it to himself.

  Trinity pushed herself back from the table, stretching luxuriously. Apolo found himself following the line of her body with his eyes, enjoying the casual but graceful nature of her movements.

  “All right, I need a quick tea break. Do you want me to make you a cup?”

  “Yes,” Apolo responded, startled out of his reverie. “Black, a drop of milk and plenty of sugar.”

  “Man after my own heart,” she said with a wink.

  Apolo realized that he was looking at her long after he should have stopped. It was strange. He wasn't sure he even really had a type, but he wouldn't have guessed that she was it. Still, there was no denying that she was beautiful, grace incarnate.

  He found himself frowning as he watched her talk with their therapist while the water was heating. He knew that it was a simple friendly exchange, but something in him tensed. The only name he could give to the feelings was territorial. He managed to stop it short before it became jealousy, but he could see it going there.

  “What is happening to me?” he asked the sky and the lake. “What in the world is going on?”