Page 49 of Royally Knocked Up
The response came quickly.I thought you weren’t free until after the coronation?
The hell with the coronation.
Luca started and stopped typing several times, and Enzo was sure he was worried about that response. Maybe he would insist on some kind of heart-to-heart. Enzo hoped not. The last thing he wanted right now was to get stuck talking about his feelings.
But Luca could always be counted upon.Come by my place. We’ll go out.
Enzo knew that he shouldn’t.
He also knew that he no longer cared. He no longer felt as though it mattered what his father thought of him — he didn’t need the man’s approval. He would live the life he wanted. He had tried to live according to what the crown wanted from him, and just look how that had turned out. The result couldn’t possibly have been any worse.
So he was done trying. He was going to live as he liked from now on, and his father would just have to deal with that.
Really, he should be thanking me on bended knee. This could have been a huge scandal for him to deal with — his son’s baby with an un-vetted American woman! Now he can just give her some money and make the whole thing disappear quietly.
He wondered whether that was what Hailey had wanted all along. If she had come here to do a job, maybe she had seen an opportunity to earn herself a little bonus. Maybe she had realized that by getting pregnant, she would be able to make the crown pay her to go away.
It made him feel sick to even think such a thing. How could that be true of Hailey, the woman he had come to know and care so much about? She couldn’t have done that.
But he didn’t know her. That was the whole problem. He wanted to believe that she was who he had thought she was, but it would have been irresponsible and foolish to put his faith in that. She had been lying to him the whole time. Nothing she had ever told him had been true — it had all been a part of her con, designed to win his trust when she knew perfectly well that she didn’t deserve to have it.
“I’m glad you were able to come out tonight,” Luca said happily as he and Enzo took seats at their favorite bar. “I didn’t think I was going to see you again until after the coronation — and maybe not even then, given the leash your father likes to keep you on.”
“Oh, stop it.” Enzo couldn’t keep a scowl off his face. “I’m not on a leash.”
“I’m not trying to be rude,” Luca said. “But hedoescontrol you. I mean, be honest, that’s why you were off at the resort, right? He wanted you out of town until the coronation. That’s why you’re coming back now — because you need to be here while he assumes the throne. I just thought for sure that he’d forbid you from doing anything fun.”
“He doesn’t have the power to forbid me.”
“Sure he does,” Luca said. “He’s the king.”
“Not yet,” Enzo said. “Right now, he’s only the acting king.”
“I don’t think that would stop him from trying to order you around, though,” Luca said. “And he’s powerful enough to issue threats.”
“He is the reason I went out to Vista Piccola,” Enzo conceded. “He didn’t want me around. You had it right.”
“I kept thinking you were going to ask me to break you out.”
“I thought about it,” Luca told him. “But every time I was about to pull the trigger, something held me back. I guess I thought that maybe if I went along with what my father wanted for once, when I got back, he would actually respect me. But I should have known that was foolish.”
“Uh-oh. Something happen between the two of you?”
“We got into it again, as usual,” Enzo said. “It’s not a big deal. But I think I’ve learned my lesson about trying to impress him. It’s impossible to do, so why should I bother?”
“That’s more like it,” Luca said heartily. “Glad to hear you’ve finally come to your senses. I say we drink in celebration!”
He signaled the bartender, who came over, and ordered a whole row of shots for the two of them. Lifting the first one, he grinned. “To giving up on our fathers’ expectations for us.”
“You’re drinking to that as well?”
“Oh, yeah. For sure. My father can’t get enough of pushing me into his business ventures. Every other day, he’s offering me some job.”
“And you don’t want to take them? I thought you liked the idea of working for your father,” Enzo said. He’d always had the impression that Luca thought it was a perk to be able to get a job at his father’s company, not to have to seek out employment on his own.
But Luca rolled his eyes. “Why would I want to spend day after day in board meetings or worrying about profit margins? Would you want to do that? I can’t think of anything more boring.”
“So then, what do you want to do?” Enzo asked.
