Page 1 of Duke for the Summer

1.

For years, Nate Schafer had dreamed of being discovered. As a kid, doing kickflips, as a teenager, loitering in Hot Topic, trying to look the exact right combination of bored and dissolute, even in his early twenties, hoping that some cute guy on the bus would compliment his tattoos or ask him what he was listening to. Hoping that somebody, someday, would look at him and say,you’re special, you’re perfect, instead of dismissing him as a weird little guy with no career prospects and only average looks.

So it felt especially insulting when the scam emails started coming, telling him that he, Nate Schafer, was the sole inheritor of a castle on a tiny island near Sicily. Hilarious. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble, too. They’d designed a family crest and gotten somebody to write the emails in formal English, and it was almost convincing enough that he allowed himself to hope…

Except that was stupid. His dad, by all accounts, had been some druggie rando with no ties to Italy, let alone royalty, and his mom was as midwestern German-American as they came, and so Nate just blocked the address of the sender and marveled briefly at the creativity of internet scammers before forgetting about the whole thing.

That is, until a very handsome, very annoyed Italian man showed up on his doorstep, brandishing a binder full of papers.

“You are Nate Schafer.” It wasn’t a question, but his name sounded so fancy in this guy’s accent that Nate did an auditory double-take. Maybe he actuallywasn’tNate Schafer. At least not the right one.

“Yeah?” he said cautiously.

“You didn’t answer my emails. I had no choice but to come here myself.”

Nate’s hand twitched on the doorknob. “Look, I make fifteen dollars an hour, so if you want me to, like, transfer money to some offshore account to buy a castle or whatever–”

“It’syourcastle. You have no need to buy it.” Mr. Tall, Dark, and Officious opened the binder, showing him what looked like a photocopy of an antique document. For all Nate knew, it could be some Italian noble’s shopping list. There was a seal of some kind on it, and he realized that it looked familiar: the emails had had a similar graphic. “Castello di Carmosino, historic seat of your father’s ancestors. I had almost given up hope that there were any heirs left, and then I found you. I’m Jacopo Brunetti. My family have always been caretakers of your estate.”

He held out his hand. It was a nice hand, strong and large, with no rings on the fingers.

Nate didn’t shake it.

“Yeah, you must have made a mistake. I don’t even know my dad’s name. There’s no way he was connected to some noble family.” He shrugged, adding, “Sorry.”

“It’s impossible that I made a mistake.” Jacopo scowled, his eyebrows dark V’s. There were little threads of silver at his temples. “You took a DNA test recently, yes? Twenty Three and I, or something.”

“Yeah?” An early gift to himself for his thirtieth birthday. Nate tried to remember what it had said. Nothing too interesting. European mutt across the board, right?

“Before your great-great uncle, the last Duca di Carmosino, passed away years ago, we were able to save his DNA profile.” Jacopo tapped the binder importantly. “You’re a match.”

Nate had a chill sense of surreality, and he realized he wassweating. Absurdly, his brain asked,the dookie de Carmosino?Butducameant duke, of course, it must, because of all the paperwork, and he was obviously going insane, because–

“My great-great uncle is a duke.”

“Youare a duke. You are the last surviving member of the famiglia di Carmosino.”

“I, um.” Nate rubbed a hand over his face. A thousand thoughts were clambering over each other in his head, and somehow the only one that came to the surface was an intense awareness that he was wearing ratty basketball shorts and a t-shirt that had barely passed the smell test, and he felt like that on its own disqualified him from inheriting a dukedom. “Shit,” he said. “Uh. Well. I guess you’d better come in.”

*

“Do you want coffee?” Nate held up a Keurig pod. “I’ve got, uh, caramel brulee or apple cinnamon?” Jacopo was looking at him like he’d grown a second head, but he blundered on. “They’re the only flavors left. My mom buys them at Costco?”

“Sorry,” Jacopo said slowly. “I’ve studied English extensively, but sometimes the, uh, idioms escape me. What is this–”

“Costco? Yeah, it’s a huge store where you can buy, like, a gallon of mayonnaise or a year’s supply of toilet paper or whatever. My parents are borderline doomsday preppers, so it’s kind of their favorite place.” Nate stared at Jacopo, willing himself to stop talking. This man didn’t fit in his shabby living room, with its faded floral sofa (a hand-me-down from his stepsister) and seldom-vacuumed carpet. He was tweedy, professorial, mysterious, his black hair slicked back, his strong eyebrows skeptical. His clothes were somewhat dated but had the look of being well-made and well cared-for. And the stubble beginning to come in along the line of his jaw made Natesuppress a shiver.

“Um,” he concluded. “Coffee?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so, I’m very tired.” Jacopo rubbed at his temples. “Your airports are stressful. And there was a man on the bus who seemed agitated about something called the Area 51? I hope it is not near here. It sounds very dangerous.”

“Oh God, did you take the Greyhound?” Nate set a mug down in front of him. “All that duke money didn’t pay for a hired car or something?”

Jacopo took a sip of the coffee and slid the mug away, coughing slightly. “There isn’t–that is, the caretaker only receives, how do you call it? A stipend. I could not hire a car.”

Right. The caretaker only received a stipend. Because there was a castle, and the castle had a caretaker, and it all belonged to Nate.

The castle, he amended. The castle belonged to him. Nate cleared his throat.

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