LITMIR.BIZ

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      Why not? Because it wasn’t quite true.

      Marriage, for Nick, had always seemed something others did. From the time he first remembered, it had been as if he was on the outside looking in. Happy families? How did you go about achieving that? He had six foster brothers and they’d all come from disasters—partnerships that had imploded. Even Ruby, his beloved foster mother, had suffered tragedy.

      He’d dated many women—of course he had—but the step toward commitment had always seemed insurmountable. But this…

      ‘You’re only committing for a month, right?’ Blake asked.

      ‘The general idea is that we stay married for as long as we need to. Minimum a month. Once Rose is firmly entrenched, there’s no need for me to stay.’

      ‘But the thought of helping get the country on its feet again turns you on?’

      ‘It does, yeah,’ he admitted.

      ‘And the thought of being married to Rose?’

      He grinned and didn’t answer. But the bubble of excitement was becoming a tidal wave. This was a challenge. It was potentially beneficial for a whole country. And he’d be marrying Rose. If it worked out…

      See, there was the scary bit. For some dumb reason, that was the thing that gave him pause. The way he felt about her.

      She was gorgeous. Her smile made him gasp. She felt…

      She didn’t feel anything. What had she said? ‘The last thing I want is more attachments. I’ve done family for life. I am free’.

      That should make him feel better about the whole deal. Instead, it only made him feel more uncertain.

      The thought of taking on a country’s direction didn’t worry him. The thought of marrying Rose did. Or, it didn’t worry him as much as unsettle him. It made him feel like he was teetering on the edge of something he didn’t understand.

      But Blake didn’t see that. No one did. He himself decided it was dumb, and as a week passed without seeing Rose he thought, okay, he was being a romantic fool. This was hardly a romantic wedding. It seemed more like a military operation, and he had to treat it as such.

      Erhard was on the phone constantly, organising every tiny detail—when they’d arrive, when the wedding would take place, accommodation, transport, meetings with the council to take place as soon as the wedding was over, the ascendancy claim. The legal documents Erhard faxed for signature made even Nick’s eyes water.

      What was Rose thinking? But he couldn’t know.

      ‘I have a mountain of organisation to get through before I leave,’ she’d told him in their one brief phone-call. ‘I’m dealing with mass hysteria here. You sort the legal stuff. I know it’s dumb, but I’ll sign whatever needs to be signed. I have to trust you on this, Nick. You and Erhard.’

      A later phone call elicited a bit more background. Instead of Rose, his call was answered by her mother-in-law.

      ‘You have no right to do this,’ the woman hissed down the phone. ‘The whole town depends on her. She’s saying the district will have to join the vet co-operative in the next town. She says with the money they pay we’ll be well off, but we don’t want money. My poor son would turn in his grave. How dare that man tell her she has no choice? How dare…?’

      She became almost venomous, and in the end Nick had put down the phone, and thought he could understand another of Rose’s conditions. She didn’t want any press release until she was out of the country.

      Erhard agreed with that reluctantly, but Nick thought that was fine. The juggernaut that was royal ascension rolled on.

      Then, in the last few days before he and Rose were due to fly out, Nick’s contact with Erhard had faltered. There was one stilted phone-call. ‘Nikolai, things are in place for you to take over. I need to fade into the background. Good luck to you and to Rose.’

      He didn’t explain, but by the sound of his voice Nick thought that his health was probably a factor. Erhard had launched them, and was depending on them to take it from here.

      Good luck to you and to Rose.

      That caused another of those moments when panic seemed to overwhelm him. But there was no reason for panic. No logical reason.

      A royal marriage of convenience. Why not?

      So he went on planning for this strange wedding, and the world didn’t crash on his head.

      But on that last day, when he walked out of his office before taking a month off, and he found the whole of the office decorated with bridal nonsense, he was forced to see this for the reality it was. It was Saturday. The office should have been deserted, but people had obviously come in especially. Obviously Blake and the partners had decided that today they’d break their silence. Champagne was flowing. The girls from the typing pool were handing round wedding-cake. Blake had found a picture of Rose in a local newspaper’s weddings column, detailing Rose’s wedding to Max years ago. Someone had blown her image up to banner size. Posters of a grainy, bridal Rose were plastered from one end of the office to another.

      ‘She’s gorgeous,’ everyone agreed, and even Rose, laughing down from every wall, seemed to concur.

      Rose’s image unsettled him as nothing else could. This was a Rose without the care lines around her eyes. Rose before…life?

      It felt weird that he could think of marrying this woman, he decided, trying to smile as he accepted congratulations. It even seemed dangerous. But he’d gone too far to back out now, and finally he escaped, under a shower of confetti and good-natured banter.

      ‘There goes the groom to collect his bride. Or the prince to collect his princess,’ they called after him, and he had to smile and concur.

      ‘You’ll be the second of Ruby’s foster sons to get leg-shackled,’ Blake said as he walked with his foster brother to the firm’s car-park. He and Blake had gone through a lot together. They’d come from similar dysfunctional backgrounds, ending up under Ruby’s care. They’d both been ambitious, and they’d made it through law school together. Nick had started work with this firm first, and Blake had followed the year after. They were about as close as brothers could be, which gave Blake the right to say what he liked. Which he intended to do right now.

      ‘You’re not looking happy,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Bridal jitters getting to you?’

      ‘You know this isn’t a real wedding,’ Nick growled, unnerved, but Blake smiled and shrugged.

      ‘You make the vows. It’s all the wedding the likes of us can do. What have you told Ruby?’

      ‘That I’ve agreed to be married for a month in order for Rose to ascend the throne. That it’s business only. That she needn’t worry about anything, and I’ll come over and pay her a visit when it’s all over.

      ‘And she said?’ Blake said cautiously.

      ‘She…um…sounded a little irate. I thought she might have phoned you.’

      ‘When did you tell her?’

      ‘This morning.’

      ‘You have to be kidding.’ He and Blake were pushing their way through a crowd of photographers on the pavement. The press had arrived seemingly out of nowhere. Someone must have told them what was happening, and they were now documenting every step. ‘She’ll probably have tried to phone me twenty times already.’

      ‘Just assure her it’s business,’ Nick said. ‘She shouldn’t worry about it. It’s nothing.’

      ‘Nothing.’ Blake stopped dead, his face a picture of incredulity. ‘You want me to explain to Ruby you’re marrying a princess but it’s nothing? I’d be lucky to get off with burst eardrums.’

      ‘Then don’t. Ruby’s agreed to do some babysitting

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