Page 17 of The King's Fake Bride

“Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel better.”

We reach the top of the stairs and head down a short hall before Daphne presses against a small switch hidden between two stones. A door clicks open, and she eases it to the side before pushing curtains out of the way. We step into another hallway, but this one is lined with doors.

“Your room is right here.”

As soon as she swings open the door, I’m met with three men in suits and a stack of paper nearly as thick as my forearm.

Daphne plants her hands on her hips. “Surely this can wait until later.”

The shorter of the three men holds a stack of papers out to me. “You need to sign these.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “It’s going to take some time to read through them all.”

Stepping forward, Daphne snags the papers from them and sets the stack down on the intricately carved table in the sitting area of the bedroom. “Really, Amy, you don’t have to look at these right now.”

“It’s fine — even if it’s a little rude.” I give a pointed glare to the men before sitting down in one of the armchairs and starting to flip through the papers. I take a deep breath, trying to make sense of them all, but the words start to blur before me.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I take a moment before diving back in, flipping through every page until I know without a doubt that I can’t tell anyone this is fake.

And that I’m going to get the money to open my bakery in two years and six months.

That’s only nine hundred and twelve days.

I only have to keep up the act for that long, and then everything is going to be fine. Finally, I’m going to get to open the bakery.

If only Grandma could have been here to see it.

She was always my biggest champion. If there was a single person who believed I could do anything I set my mind to, it was her.

What would she think of me marrying a man I don’t know for a bunch of money?

Shaking the thought away, I finish signing the papers and hand them back to the lawyers, who file out of the room without another word.

Daphne shuts the door behind them, twisting the lock into place before turning to me. “We have to get you ready for dinnertonight. Xander messaged me your sizes earlier, so I may have gone creeping through your social media to find out what you like wearing.”

“Should I be scared about that?” I watch her walk across the room, throwing open a set of double doors to reveal a massive closet.

With her arms stretched out to both sides, she beams at me over her shoulder. “There’s a perk to pretending to be the future queen, and one of those perks is a hefty clothing budget.”

I cross to the other side of the room, ignoring the massive bed in the middle for now. It looks like it’s calling my name with the puffy white duvet and the canopy that hangs around it, but dinner is in less than two hours.

“This is more clothing than I think I’ve ever owned. In my entire lifetime.”

We step inside the closet, and Daphne goes to a rack of what looks like midi dresses. “Xander mentioned you were wearing something like this on the beach when you met.”

“So you went out and bought a dozen of them?”

She pulls out an emerald-green dress made of a soft ribbed material. “This one is going to pop with your hair and your eyes. He’s not going to know what hit him when he gets a look at you.”

“I don’t think we need to worry about him knowing what hit him. I just need to be presentable. Or whatever a future queen has to be.”

My stomach ties itself into a knot as I sink down onto the tufted beige ottoman in the middle of the room.

Daphne hangs the dress on a hook and crouches down in front of me. “You just have to breathe. Everything is going to be okay. Now, we’re going to get you dressed. Then you’re going to put one foot in front of the other and figure this out as you go.”

Xander stands as I enter the formal dining room, glancing at the worn oak table that looks long enough to seat at least two dozen people. “You look beautiful tonight.”

My cheeks warm as he pulls out a chair for me. “Thank you. You look good too.”

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