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“Well, I’ll continue to count on that luck to keep you around,” Leo said, straightening a pile of papers on his desk. “At least until I find the perfect wife.”
His father sighed. “I’ve been warned you are in a foul mood. Is this true?”
“It is.”
“Why?” his father inquired, coming across the office slower than he normally would have.
Leo rubbed his jaw and came around the front of the desk, perching on it. His father sat in the leather chair he’d had placed for visitors, settling in carefully and looking every inch his age in that moment. It took all Leo’s self-control to keep his hands to himself and not assist his father. “I didn’t sleep well last night. Couldn’t shut my mind off.”
“And did something trigger this night of unease?” he asked, his voice soft as he rubbed his wrinkled forehead. “A woman, perhaps?”
Leave it to his father to be spot on, like usual. “I spoke with Alicia again.”
And she confused the hell out of him, in more ways than one, again.
“Ah.” The other man nodded. “I take it the conversation did not go as expected?”
“Oh, it went as expected.” Leo let out a small laugh. “I expected it to be a failure, and it was. She has no desire to get to know me again, not after I brought her here under duress, and not after I betrayed her.”
His father frowned. “How did you betray her?”
“She thinks I left her sitting at an airport, from what I can tell.” Leo sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I have no idea what happened there, or how she got letters from me that I never wrote, but I can’t fix something I never did in the first place.”
“I see.” His father nodded slowly, looking far too worried for a problem that wasn’t even his. “She told you as much?”
“Yes. Over dinner.”
“Then you need to try harder,” his father said, tapping a hand on the arm of the chair. “Do something to win her over to your side.”
“Or I could let her go, and hope that someday she can look back on me fondly, despite my attempts at keeping her here against her will,” he said drily, knowing that even that was a far stretch. “I think that’s the only wise course of action at this point.”
“You know it’s too late for that. Our customs—”
“Are sexist and outdated.” He gripped the edge of the desk so tightly his fingers ached. “And you know it as well as I do.”
“True. But it is what it is. She’s not the first woman to suffer her fate, and she won’t be the last, I’m certain.” Father shrugged. “Your own mother—”
“Was once in her shoes. Yes, I know.” He gritted his teeth. “She was from our country, and understood our customs. Alicia does not.”
His father stood, wobbling slightly. “You still like this woman?”
Leo hesitated, but nodded, watching his father closely for any other signs of unsteadiness. It wasn’t like him to show his exhaustion so clearly. “Of course.”
“Maybe she’s the woman you’re waiting for?” his father asked slowly, rubbing his forehead again, as if he had a headache. “The woman you intend to marry?”
He liked Alicia, sure. But enough to marry her? To give up his freedom? To relinquish the one thing that was actually in his control, because his father said so?
Nope. Not happening.
He wasn’t ready for that.
“She’s not a princess,” Leo pointed out, latching on to that one fact. “Are you so desperate to see me married off that you’ll forget your rich Princess Genevieve plan?”
That was the princess his father really wanted him to marry. She came from a country that had loads of money and a huge army.
Not that they needed either. Randovia was healthier than most of its European neighbors, because his father was brilliant and a great king.
A legacy Leo hoped like hell to live up to.
