Page 30 of The King's Fake Bride

Xander leads me through the steps several times, and by the end of it, my feet are aching, and I still have no clue what I’m doing.

It’s lively and full of switching partners — nothing I can do while standing on Xander’s feet.

We sit on the ground, chests heaving and sweat sticking hair to the back of my neck. The corners of my eyes feel prickly as I lay back and stare at the painted ceiling and the towering bookshelves that stretch up to it.

“This charity event is going to be a nightmare if it hinges on my dancing,” I say. “Xander, maybe you should rethink this and find someone who can keep up with everything the job requires. That person isn’t me.”

Xander pushes to his feet. “I think we might just be starting in the wrong place.”

“I don’t think there is a right place. I think that this entire thing is going to blow up in our faces.”

“Getting someone else isn’t an option because I don’t want anyone else.”

And there it is, that damn fluttering of attraction that I stuff back down into the pits of the earth where it belongs.

I roll back my shoulders as I stand, blinking the tears away. “I still don’t know if I can do this. I don’t have the first clue about how to do anything a royal does.”

He grins and bows low, throwing his arm out to the side. “I’m at your service.”

When he gives me that charming smile, I’m sure that our business-only arrangement is going to be the death of me.

Xander straightens and grabs one of the books from the shelf, holding it out in front of me. “The next lesson is going to be the history of Katastinia.”

I groan, running my hand through my hair. “Are you sure that’s where we should go next? I still have no clue how to dance, and after the interview yesterday, it’s clear that I have no idea how to talk to the press either.”

“Nobody has any idea how to talk to the press,” he says, tucking the book beneath his arm and pulling another off the shelf. “You should’ve seen me when I first started doing interviews.”

“You were probably a child.”

“I’m talking about the ones I started doing once I was twenty. You would think after ten years of being made to do interviews, I would’ve been better at speaking in front of people, but I used to have this stammer when I got nervous. Spent years working with a speech therapist to get rid of it.”

“You did?”

He grabs a third book before heading to a table with two cream armchairs near the windows. “I did. It used to be the talk of the country. All of them were glad that Yorgos was going to be king since he was the one who had it together.”

“Must’ve hurt to hear that.” I sit down in a chair, tucking one leg beneath me.

Xander drags the other chair over beside me, dropping two of the books onto the coffee table and opening the other one. “It wasn’t great. I swear, I used to find new ways to embarrass myself in front of the media multiple times a week back then.”

“As bad as being called a gold-digging orphan on live television?”

“I told you that we were going to have to use the orphan card eventually.” Xander smirks and opens the book, handing it to me. “We’re going to have to start back at the beginning, when Katastinia was a baby country in the grand scheme of things. It’s nearly nine hundred years since my family took the throne.”

“How the hell do you hold onto power in a country for nine hundred years?” I grab the book, skimming through the first few paragraphs on the page.

Sure enough, he’s telling the truth.

Xander shrugs and shifts closer to me. “From what I’ve been told, my family has always seen the value in their people and doing right by them. Now, maybe that didn’t apply to everyone who has sat on the throne, but the family isn’t afraid to force the issue of abdication either.”

I hum, flipping through more of the pages, skimming through the history. “I can read these before bed. I want to know how to do the other things. Ones that aren’t going to get me dragged through the media.”

“It gets old eventually. They find someone else to latch onto.”

I close the book with a dull thud and set it on top of the others. “I don’t think you understand how bad this is for me.”

He hesitates like he’s reaching for me before pulling his hand back. “I’m never going to understand exactly what they’re putting you through, and I wish that I did. However, I do know how bad it was for me.”

“Yeah?”

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