by Erin Hayes
The Royal Treatment
A Billionaire Prince Romance
Erin Hayes
Erin Hayes Books
THE ROYAL TREATMENT:
A Billionaire Prince Romance
by Erin Hayes
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidences are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2019 Erin Hayes
Cover by ProMorearty
Editing by Lindsay Galloway of Contagious Edits
No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Prologue
1. Ferdinand
2. Ferdinand
3. Alexandra
4. Alexandra
5. Ferdinand
6. Alexandra
7. Alexandra
8. Alexandra
9. Ferdinand
10. Alexandra
11. Ferdinand
12. Ferdinand
13. Alexandra
14. Ferdinand
15. Alexandra
16. Alexandra
17. Ferdinand
18. Alexandra
19. Ferdinand
20. Alexandra
21. Alexandra
22. Alexandra
23. Ferdinand
24. Alexandra
25. Alexandra
26. Ferdinand
Epilogue
Did you love The Royal Treatment?
About the Author
Prologue
Ferdinand
What good is being a prince when you can’t do anything to help the ones you love? I’ve asked myself that many, many times in the last twenty-four hours, because just when I think things will be all right, they get worse.
And I think this is the worst yet.
“I don’t want you to leave,” I whisper to Lex. “Please, please don’t leave me.” My voice is rough and cracked with emotion. Broken like the rest of me.
I twine my fingers in hers and give her dainty hand a squeeze, but I can feel that she’s already pulling back. Away from me. Away from everything we planned.
So what if it went to shit in the last twenty-four hours?
I can be there for her. I can help her out, provide for her, do everything that we had been talking about. Even with the ache still fresh in my chest, even with the loss, I know that these wounds on my soul will heal in time.
But only if it’s with her. Alexandra Daae, the girl I’ve loved since childhood.
She looks so small on the hospital bed as her green eyes meet mine. She looks as shattered as I feel in this moment; like she’s aged ten years, even though she’s only eighteen like me. Her cheeks are hollowed out, her gaze is blank, and her once milky-white skin is ashen.
She looks like hell. Because she’s been dragged through hell, and I’m the one pulling her along behind me. After all, it was my stupidity that got us into this mess in the first place. If only I’d been more careful in Japan, we could have avoided this altogether.
Fuck, I hate thinking that way. Because we were both so excited up to this point, and it feels like a betrayal to the baby we just lost.
Surely—surely—there’s something I can do to fix this. I’m a prince, I have the world at my command. I never wanted to use my position for any selfish reasons, but now, I just want to snap my fingers and have someone else fix this.
“Ferdie,” she says with a hiccup, using the nickname she’s used for me since we were kids. “I…”
Her voice trails off as I reach out to cup her cheek. She sighs and leans into my palm, closing her long lashes and looking like the princess I know she is. The princess I promised her she’d be.
“I can’t…” she whispers.
The world around me shatters. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way. It wasn’t supposed to be like this at all.
“Lex,” I whisper. “Don’t do this.”
Her eyes open, and she frowns slightly as she searches my face. For what, I don’t know, but she must not have found it, because she settles back onto the hospital pillow and closes her eyes with a sigh. My hand no longer touches her cheek.
Only our hands are clasped.
“Maybe it’s a sign,” she says softly, turning her attention to the window. “Maybe it’s punishment for being so damn foolish.” She looks down at her hand, where the engagement ring I gave her sparkles in the morning sun.
“You don’t really believe that,” I say with a scoff. But she doesn’t look back at me or reassure me otherwise. “Do you?”
Lex has always had more belief in a higher power. She has always found more meaning in things than me.
Still, I can’t help the twist in my gut that she feels this way. That what we feel for each other could be considered anything other than beautiful.
Anything other than meant to be.
Instead, her dismissal of what I feel for her kindles something else deep within my chest. Anger. And to my horror, I’m angry at…
Her.
For giving up. For not fighting harder for us. Can’t she see that I would give up everything for her in a heartbeat?
Apparently not.
I grit my teeth, quelling the flame that’s burning me from the inside out. “Please, Lex. Please, don’t throw it all away. I’d be lost without you. We can make this right. We can stay together.”
She turns to me, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Ferdie,” she whispers. “I can’t do this.”
“What are you saying?” But I know exactly where she’s going.
She doesn’t say a word as she tugs off the ring and puts it in my hands. I’m so shocked and hurt, I don’t even protest as she curls my fingers around the band.
“I can’t marry you.”
My world, which has been barely held together throughout all of this, shatters around me. I look down at our clasped hands, where I’m holding the ring I gave her with the promise that I’d love and cherish her my whole life.
And now she wants to throw it all away.
“No,” I say through dry lips. “No.”
She leans over and kisses me, and it’s tender and sweet and so damn heartbreaking. “We can’t move on from this, Ferdie. Not with our families the way they are. Not with what just happened. We were kidding ourselves to think this would work.”
And she looks out the window again, crossing her arms like she’s putting up a physical wall between us. She feels far away, so damn far away, like I’m on a different continent than her.
I look down at the ring and know that there’s now an ocean separating us. One that can never be crossed.
And I know that I’ve lost the only two things in my life that ever mattered to me.
1
Ferdinand
Present day
As a therapist, I would have a field day if someone came to me with such conflicting feelings.
But right now, I could do with seeing a therapist myself.
Is it jealousy that I’m feeling? Or regret? Sorrow? So many damn feelings, and I don’t have the time to sort through all of them, especially since things are moving so fast.
But there is one thought I have that I can’t deny.
Holy shit, I’m an uncle.
For the first time ever.
My kid brother is about to have a baby girl with his fiancée Catherine, and our families are rejoicing at the impending arrival. My cousins are ecstatic. M
y aunt, Queen Victoria of Dubreva, who is usually a stern old woman, is already declaring the day a national holiday in honor of the first child born of this generation of our line.
The country is happy.
But what’s most important—Henry and Cat are happy and excited.
And I’m happy for them. Really, I am.
But there’s also this massive hole in my heart that hasn’t healed in fifteen years. I’m the eldest. I’m supposed to be the first to give my mother grandchildren—while she was still alive. Because I had that chance.
And I was supposed to be as joyous back then as Henry seems right now.
I suck in a deep breath and loosen my tie, since the waiting room is suddenly blisteringly hot. I didn’t expect the waiting part to take so long. They don’t really go into obstetrics as part of the curriculum for therapists, so this is the first time I’m experiencing it firsthand. I’ve been out here with Eric and Phillip, and their wives and partners, Cara and Jessica, watching the hours go by, waiting for the arrival of Henry’s daughter.
So is the whole country, and everyone is going mental now that a royal baby is about to be born. A security detail is having to keep the paparazzi at bay a good thirty meters from the hospital door. I’d hate to have a medical emergency in Dubreva right now and have to navigate that mess.
I’ve rubbed my face about a million times now, trying to get the image out of my head that I was supposed to be here fifteen years ago if we hadn’t had complications. Jealousy raises its head, because no one had the chance to be excited for that baby.
Then again, no one but me and Lex knew about it.
You can’t think that way, Ferdinand. What’s done is done.
Even though I regret it every day of my life.
“Hey.”
I look over and see Jessica sitting next to me. Jessica is Phillip’s wife and Catherine’s boss. Or, was—I’m not sure exactly what’s happening now with their working relationship. A smart, strong-willed businesswoman, Jessica has always been intimidating, even to me. Even sitting in the hospital, she’s regal with her high-heeled shoes, hair pinned back, and her intense gaze as she surveys the place. She’s the most queenly woman I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something, considering that my aunt disowned Phillip after he chose her over the crown.
Then again, Queen Victoria would do anything to make a point. I’m sure it will pass soon.
Jessica certainly keeps Phillip in his place, which is surprising. The untamable has been tamed by the love of his life.
She reaches out and gives my knee a comforting squeeze. “Are you okay?”
I gulp back a self-deprecating laugh. “Yeah. It’s…a lot.”
She watches me curiously, her full, rouged lips pressed into a thin line before she breaks into a smile. “Yes,” she agrees in her clipped American accent. “Yes, it is. But you’re here now, and that’s what matters most to Henry.”
Right. Especially since I wasn’t there when he needed me most. Our mother died after a long battle with cancer while I was overseas in the Air Force, and I was too full of myself to even ask for leave. It caused a rift so bad between Henry and me that my brother lived in Australia until recently.
Until he met Catherine.
“Ferdie!”
I fight my cringe at the nickname and instead, plaster a smile across my lips as Henry appears in the doorway. He looks like he just came out of a hazmat area, wearing a set of blue scrubs with his dark hair tied underneath a cap the shade of mint. But once I see his smile—and just how damn excited he looks—I find that I’m not faking my own expression now.
I’m genuinely grinning back at him as I rise from my seat. We all are. Eric and Cara. Phillip and Jessica. Cat’s parents are here too, having just arrived from America a few days before.
We’re all here, but it’s me Henry runs up to, his limp from a broken leg he got from a race car crash almost indiscernible in his near jog.
“Congratulations, Daddy!” I say with real enthusiasm.
My baby brother outweighs me by a good ten kilos, and he’s a few centimeters taller, so when he throws his arms around me and squeezes, the air whooshes out of my lungs. I stifle a grunt at the intensity of it. He doesn’t seem to notice my discomfort, because he just keeps hugging.
He’s truly happy.
The Henry before all this would be an arrogant prick, call me an “arsehole” in his hybrid Australian accent, and clap me hard enough on the back to make me cough. Instead, he just holds onto me, tighter and tighter.
I guess having your first child will do that to you.
Not that I would know.
“She’s so beautiful,” Henry says into my shoulder. His voice is rough and cracking with emotion, something that he’d never show in such a public place. “So damn beautiful.”
I give him a few thumps on the back to let him know that I’m here. “I bet.”
He steps back and holds me at arm’s length. “Cat did amazing. She really did.”
I barely contain a snicker. “I’m sure she blamed you for the whole thing.” Catherine, after all, has a fiery temper. She is a good match for him. The circumstances for their meeting and finding each other may have been a little…unconventional.
But who says love has to be conventional?
That merits a laugh from him. “Yeah. Well, I guess it was my fault.”
We look at each other, two brothers grinning stupidly at each other for a brief moment before it’s interrupted by everyone. One of the worst things about being part of the royal family is that you never have alone time.
Ever.
We’re wrapped up in another embrace by our cousin Eric, the crown prince of Dubreva, who rivals Henry in muscle mass and height, and once again, the air is whooshed out of me. I laugh despite myself.
“Who would have thought you could be a daddy?” he shouts. “Hopefully she didn’t get your genes!”
His wife Cara rolls her eyes playfully. “Some of those are your genes, too, idiot.” Cara keeps Eric in check as well.
“Which is why I’m so glad my brand-new niece doesn’t have them.” Eric winks at her, his cheeks flushed. He’s obviously been sneaking in some drinks in the waiting area. I think the nurses and staff would have asked him to stop if he were anyone else, because he’s gotten a little rowdy.
But you don’t ever ask a prince to stop acting like a prince. Especially one who gets his way all the time. The nurses know better than that unless they want their faces plastered over the news for having told off a prince.
“Do you want to see her?” Henry asks, his voice cracking with emotion.
The answer is obvious, and he ushers us into the room where Catherine is propped up in a hospital bed, looking down at a swaddled bundle in her arms. She doesn’t even look up as her gaze is completely entranced by her daughter.
Something twists inside my chest, and I give a hard swallow as I step in.
Don’t think this way, Ferdinand. Just don’t.
The special moment between Catherine and the baby breaks, and she looks over to us, her eyes shining in delight. Her smile is brilliant, her joy palpable. “She’s so precious,” she says. Her voice is soft, reverent. “She’s just perfect.”
Henry leans against the bed and coos at the baby, while Cara and Jessica rush up to them, talking in excited, hushed tones with Catherine. Eric and Phillip stand at the foot of the bed, asking Henry questions, poking fun at him. And my brother takes it in stride, because this is his moment to shine, and I’ve never seen him happier.
And me? Well, I just stand in the doorway of the hospital room as that muscle in my chest refuses to stop clenching. Like it’s wrapping around a hole where something is missing, and that hole just keeps sucking my heart in farther and farther.
Shit, I need to remember to breathe.
I get my first look at my infant niece. Despite Eric’s assessment regarding her genes, she has a shock of dark hair that she undoubtedly inherited from our side of the fam
ily. I can already bet that she’ll be a beauty when she’s older. And she’s already captured the hearts of a nation.
Including my own heart. Even if it feels so fucking empty right now.
Something itches at the corner of my eyes, and I have to blink it away. There’s no time for sorrow or what-ifs.
“Ferdinand?”
I blink a few more times to focus on the voice that spoke to me. Henry is watching me, a hint of concern peeking through his exuberance. What’s he concerned about?
Oh, right. Me.
“What’s her name?” I ask. To my credit, my voice is even and not too rough.
Henry’s eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles. “Elizabeth Jessica Spencer di’Vale.”
Elizabeth.
The name of our mother.
It’s a name that I should have had the chance to use first. The name that we wanted to give our unborn child. And no, I’m not jealous at my niece for having that name—it’s hers, and looking at her sleeping face—fuck, she’s so beautiful—she will wear it well.
It’s more for my sorrow at the possibilities of what could have been.
I must have moved toward the bed, because I’m closer to the little family now. I can almost feel their joy coming off Catherine and Henry in waves.
I waggle a finger at the baby. “Hey there, Elizabeth. I knew a good woman named Elizabeth once. I think you’ll do just fine.”
Henry’s breath hitches in his throat, and I hide my smile. It was my way of telling him that I’m perfectly fine with their choice in their daughter’s name. It’s my own way of telling myself that.
