Keeping Her

by Holly Hart

  Dad snorts a laugh.

  “I have you to thank for that,” Dante continues. “Amanda has utterly captured my heart, and I deeply appreciate your blessing on our marriage. I also beg your forgiveness for speeding the wedding along so quickly.”

  “He always talk like that?” Dad asks, looking at me.

  “Most of the time,” I chuckle.

  “Probably doesn’t cuss, either,” he says, laying a hand on Dante’s shoulder. “Look, son, I appreciate what you’re sayin.’ But you don’t have to use big words to convince me you’re good enough for my daughter. I trust her. If she says you’re the one, that’s all I need.”

  Dante glances at me, then back at Dad.

  “Well,” he shrugs. “Fuck the both of you, then.”

  Dad’s eyes go wide. So do mine.

  “Just messin’ with you,” Dante says with a grin.

  The limo rings out with laughter as it pulls onto the deck of the hovercraft that will ferry us over to the shores of an island that doesn’t know what’s about to hit it.

  Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Six

  31. DANTE

  “So what d’you boys think of this stuff?” Ike asks, draining the remaining half of his Budweiser in a single pull.

  “It’s quite good,” I say. “I’ve never had an American lager before.”

  Emilio’s eyebrows go up. He’s been making a face since he downed his first swallow.

  “It’s quite … unique,” he says with a pained smile.

  “King of beers,” Ike says as he pulls another bottle from the Falcon’s fridge and pops the cap with the twist of two sausage fingers. “Should be good enough for a prince, hey?”

  He’s got his bulk in the lounger next to mine while Emilio takes up the sofa. My cousin still hasn’t told us where we’re going for the bachelor party, and I couldn’t cajole it out of Marco or the pilots.

  “I gotta say, this get-up is pretty comfortable,” Ike says, picking at the collar of his silk shirt. “Feels weird havin’ so many buttons open on m’shirt, though.”

  Amanda and I managed to fill a whole new wardrobe for him at Renco, one of the top big-and-tall stores in Milan. The rest of today’s outfit consists of a stone-color jacket and khakis with a dark brown Zegna belt. He refused the scarf, and chose to stick with his custom-made cowboy boots, which I have to admit look remarkably stylish with the ensemble.

  It’s probably for the best, since we couldn’t find any size twenty Gucci loafers anywhere.

  “There will be plenty of ladies at the party tonight,” I say. “Once they find out you’re a real cowboy, you’ll have to beat them off with a stick.”

  Ike chuckles but shakes his head.

  “I got my eye on a gal back home,” he says. “We’re not really datin’ just yet, but we always talk awhile whenever we run into each other.”

  “How long has this been going on?” I ask.

  “Oh, couple years now, I guess.”

  “Why don’t you make a move?” Emilio asks.

  Ike takes another pull from his beer. “Can’t all be like Speedy Gonzalez here,” he says, tilting his bottle at me.

  His acceptance of this whole crazy scheme still amazes me. The wedding is still on the front pages of every newspaper in Europe: we’re moving too fast, Amanda is pregnant, it’s irresponsible. And I don’t even want to think about the chatter behind closed doors in Morovan high society.

  But Ike couldn’t care less. All he wants is for his daughter to be happy.

  “What can I say?” I shrug. “I didn’t want her to slip through my fingers.”

  He drops a wink. “Good answer, kid.”

  The slight hissing sound of the cockpit radio fills the cabin as the captain informs us we’ll be starting our final descent in about fifteen minutes.

  “Final descent into where?” I ask Emilio.

  He’s already up and walking through the cabin, pulling down the shades in every window. This may be maddening, but it will certainly be a surprise. We’ve only been in the air less than two hours, so there are a limited number of places we could be.

  “This is crazy,” Ike says with a grin. “I never flew anywhere before a few days ago and now I’m on a private jet headin’ someplace I don’t even know.”

  “Welcome to the life of a prince,” I sigh. “The bloom falls off the rose very quickly.”

  “I’ll bet,” he says, finishing his Budweiser. “I suppose this kinda stuff would start to wear on me after awhile, too.”

  He reaches into the fridge and pulls out three more beers. He hands one to Emilio and me and pops his own.

  “But for right now,” he says with a toast, “let’s git ‘er done!”

  Turns out the secret destination was Ibiza. It’s not like I haven’t been here before, but as Ike is so fond of saying, he’s never been anywhere, so it’s cool.

  Even now, after sundown, the beach is still hot, so we’ve taken the party into an air-conditioned beachside nightclub called Loco. As with all Ibiza clubs, it’s frenetic and over-full, but the music is good and the company is great.

  “I can’t believe you got the old gang back together,” I say to Emilio. We’re in the largest of the VIP rooms, overlooking the dance floor, but shielded from the throbbing music, so we can still hear each other.

  I won’t name names, but a lot of the people in this room routinely make the Forbes list, and several are on the list of the world’s most eligible royals. All of them grew up in the same circumstances as Emilio and I, under the burden of wealth and titles. It sounds like a first-world problem, but when your fate is tied to that of your nation, sometimes you just need to let off some steam.

  There’s even a prime minister here. I won’t say which country, but I will say he likes to have his picture taken. And a certain Oscar winner who seems to think people can’t recognize him if he has a beard.

  “It was the right time of the year,” says Emilio, downing his fifth shot of tequila in as many minutes. “After Royal Ascot but before the Art Basel show. A lot of people were nearby and had nothing better to do tonight.”

  I salute him with my own shot. “As always, Cousin, I can rely on you to feed my ego.”

  My head is starting to swim a bit with the booze. I’m surprised at how much Emilio is putting away; if I didn’t know better, I’d think he had developed a drinking problem in the last few weeks.

  Maybe it’s the alcohol that’s making me feel so blasé about the night. It’s hard to believe that even a month ago, this kind of night was a regular part of my lifestyle. Talking with my so-called friends tonight has left me feeling like we no longer have anything in common.

  Like Ike says, let’s git ‘er done so I can get back to Morova and my beautiful bride-to-be.

  Speaking of Ike, he’s been holding court since we got here. Everyone in the room is enamored of the big man with the easy smile and the real cowboy boots.

  “You’re a peckerhead,” he slurs to the inebriated son of a shipping tycoon.

  “Why?” the kid asks snidely, weaving in his seat. “All I said was that eating meat is murder.”

  “I don’t give a flyin’ fuck if you’re a vegan, that’s your choice. But don’t go pushin’ your beliefs on me, just like I don’t push mine on you, all right?”

  “I still don’t see how that makes me a peckerhead.”

  “Whaddaya think them Jell-O shots you’re sucking back are made out of?”

  The shipping heir blinks his bloodshot eyes a few times. “Uh, Jell-O.”

  “Gelatin,” Ike says. “Look it up on your fuckin’ phone thing there if you want to know what you been eatin.’”

  The kid does, and as he reads the text on the screen, his face goes white.

  “Oh my God…” he breathes.

  Ike drapes a gorilla arm over the kid’s shoulders. “Ah, you’re all right, I’m just yankin’ your chain,” he says. “Hey, you need a beer?”

  He holds up four fingers to the waitress, which I assume mean
s three for him and one for Shipping Boy. As he does, I catch his eye.

  “Dante!” he bellows. “Come hang out with your old man. Sort of. I mean after the wedding I’ll be your old man.”

  I take the seat vacated by Shipping Boy, who wanders off like a lost puppy with his new knowledge of Jell-O. Not that long ago, I probably would have felt sorry for him. Now I kind of see him as an insufferable prick.

  Suddenly a lot of the people in this room seem like insufferable pricks.

  Ike drops a bottle of beer in front of me and pops it open.

  “This shit’s not bad,” he says, taking a swig. “It ain’t Bud, but it’ll do.”

  I do the same. It’s actually a German caramel malt beer aged in brandy casks that sells in the club for eighty-seven euros a bottle. But he doesn’t need to know that.

  “So, are you havin’ fun?” he asks. For all the beer he’s drank since we left Morova, it’s actually quite amazing he’s still upright. In fact, he’s probably in better shape than half the people in this room.

  “Sure,” I say. “I have good booze, I have friends, I have my new almost-old man by my side. Couldn’t ask for more.”

  “Huh,” he grunts. “All right, if you say so.”

  What’s he getting at? This is my bachelor party. Of course it’s a good time.

  “I get the sense that you don’t share my opinion,” I say.

  “Me? Don’t matter what I think.” He lets out a Herculean belch that draws giggles from some of the girls in the room. A couple of them come dancing over to where we’re sitting.

  “My friend and I hear you’re a real cowboy,” one of them – a willowy blonde who I think might be a singer – asks Ike. “Is that true?”

  He holds up his bottle in a toast.

  “Born n’ bred in Montana cattle country,” he says.

  “Oh my god, that is so hot,” says a brunette in her early thirties. “I want to just do you right here on the table.”

  Ike’s eyes widen.

  “’Scuse me?”

  “It would absolutely kill my husband if he found out,” she slurs, red wine splashing from her glass on to the table.

  “I’m flattered, miss, but I’m afraid I’m taken,” he says with an apologetic smile. “And even if I wasn’t, I ain’t the kind of man who runs with another man’s filly. Sorry.”

  The women turn to me, instantly forgetting Ike.

  “What about you, Your Highness?” the blonde coos in her best Marilyn Monroe voice. “Care to go out on a high note before you’re taken off the market?”

  I don’t know if it’s my mood, the booze or being around Ike, but my practiced royal charm is eluding me right now.

  “Ladies,” I say. “I’m already off the market. But if you’re hell-bent on giving it away, you should really head into the kitchen. I imagine the male staff in there have a much more difficult time getting laid than the billionaires in this room.”

  I turn to the brunette. “In your case, perhaps you should give your husband a second chance instead of inflicting yourself on some poor, unsuspecting soul.”

  Blood rushes into their faces and they scamper away, fuming. Within moments, they’re over on the other side of the room, telling everyone their side of the story.

  And, as Ike would say, I don’t give a flying fuck.

  I shake my head before noticing that Ike is staring at me. I hope I haven’t angered him. If you’d told me a month ago that, out of all the people in this room, the one whose opinion I cared about most was the American, I would have laughed at you.

  Now it’s all I can think about.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I lost my temper. Please forgive me.”

  “Son, losin’ your temper is when you brawl with someone out into the street,” he says. “That thing you just did was plain old puttin’ someone in their place. They deserved every bit of it.”

  Have I mentioned how much I like this man?

  We down another drink each before Emilio slides into the seat beside me.

  “You’re ignoring the rest of the party,” he says. His eyes are glowing red now.

  “The party’s right here, boy,” Ike says, cracking another beer. “Whether they got the sense to come over and join it is up to them.”

  Emilio glowers at us and heads back to the other side of the room. None of them has actually congratulated me on my upcoming wedding.

  “So listen, Your Highness,” Ike says blearily.

  “Dante, please. We’re almost family.”

  “A’right then, Dante. I’m not one to offer an opinion ‘less someone asks, but I gotta say, it seems to me that most of the people in here ain’t your friends.”

  He takes what I’ve been feeling all night and compresses it into a single sentence.

  “May I ask why you say that?”

  “Look at ‘em,” he says. “They’re all here for them, not you. Where I come from, that’s not your friend.”

  I nod, unable to think of anything to say.

  “Son, lemme tell you a little story,” he says, leaning in close. “Couple summers ago, a farmer buddy of mine out by Three Forks drowned in the dugout behind his house. It was right at harvest time, an’ his widow didn’t have a hired man. So her sister got on the horn and put out the word to a few neighbors, and they called a few more, and within two hours, there were combines on her land harvesting her wheat. Buryin’ her husband was hard enough; she didn’t need to be worryin’ about her crops, too.

  “Those folks don’t know a damn thing about high finance, or royal whatchamacallit, but they know what friends are supposed to do. And son, what those people are doing over there ain’t that. Far as I can tell, they’re all talkin’ about themselves.”

  I can feel a lump rising in my throat. I tell myself it’s the booze. Amanda is going to kill me for what I’m about to do.

  “First,” I say, raising my bottle, “let’s have a toast: to better friends and new family.”

  “Hear, hear!” he hollers, kicking back the rest of his beer.

  “Second, let’s change the subject. Has Amanda talked to you yet about the bride’s price?”

  “The what’s what?”

  “Bride’s price. It’s an ancient Morovan custom. The royal family offers a price to the father of the bride in exchange for her hand.”

  “Whaddaya mean, a price?”

  “Compensation for losing your daughter to a new family.”

  “You mean like a dowry?”

  “Yes, but in reverse.”

  Ike leans back in his chair and drapes an arm over the back.

  “So, what’re we talkin’ about here? Like a ceremonial chicken or something? Or a cow? I could use a good bull, if that’s on the menu.”

  “Actually, it’s a sum of money in the form of annuity installments,” I say. “It’s the best way to minimize the tax burden.”

  “Tax burden?” He peers at me. “What kind of a sum are you talkin’ about here? I don’t need any tax problems.”

  “It’s twenty million euros. I believe that works out to about twenty-five million US dollars at current exchange rates.”

  That’s the part Amanda’s going to kill me over. It was supposed to be five million. But she’s not here right now and I am.

  Ike’s cheeks flush as his mouth drops open. His bleary eyes work heard to focus on me.

  “Don’t shit an old fella like that,” he says. “I’m gettin’ fat and my ticker ain’t what it used to be.”

  “I’m not shitting you,” I say. “And you’re not fat.”

  “That’s just crazy. Why the hell would you do that?”

  “Like I said before, my father taught me about worth and value. The Trentinis believe that the benefits we gain from having someone like Amanda join our family are invaluable, so we set a nominal price for the exchange.”

  His eyes narrow. “Twenty-five million bucks is nominal?”

  “When you have billions, yes. Imagine if I had ten thousand dollars and offered
you twenty-five.”

  Ike stares at the table for a full minute, swaying slightly. I can practically hear his thoughts, trying to figure out if this is real or some drunken dream.

  Finally, he looks me in the eye.

  “I dunno what to say, son.”

  “Then don’t say anything. Just give your son-in-law-to-be a hug.”

  We both stand and he wraps his tree-trunk arms around me in a bear hug that nearly stops my breathing.

  “This is too much,” he mutters in my ear. “This whole thing is crazy.”

  “It certainly is,” I say, blinking back tears. “And I’m very grateful to have you along for the ride.”

  Hm? Whassat?

  “Who…?”

  “Shhh. It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”

  Who’s giggling? Why is the bed moving? I think I’m going to throw up.

  Whassat light? I just wanna sleep…

  “All right, that’s enough.”

  “Wha…?”

  “Go back to sleep, Dante.”

  Click.

  Why are people coming in… my room…

  Blackness again.

  Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Seven

  32. AMANDA

  I can’t believe this. I mean, I literally can’t believe this. There has to be some kind of trick.

  “Am I dreaming?” I ask. “You don’t have to pinch me, just tell me.”

  Maria eyes me up and down with an appreciative smile.

  “You’re not dreaming, love,” she says. “It’s just Andreas Fortuna.”

  “It’s absolutely gorgeous!” Oriana beams.

  The mirror is telling me that my cowgirl body looks somehow perfect in this custom designed dress, and that it fits me perfectly, right off the dressing dummy, after only a single round of measurements.

  “This is un-fucking-believable,” I breathe as I marvel at my reflection.

  “Ahem…” Maria clears her throat loudly.

  Oh shit. Oriana.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” I say. “Grownups aren’t supposed to use words like that, especially royals. It’s unseemly.”

  “It’s okay,” Oriana says absently. “Uncle uses that word all the time. Well, he used to until you got here.”