“Yeah, but you meant as a holiday, I meant as…”
Frankie stilled and blinked at me. “As friends?” she asked quietly. “I mean, would you tell your parents you were taking me as a friend so I could protect you from all the women throwing themselves at you?”
I dropped my eyes, finding the label of the bottle extremely fascinating. “We could pretend to be engaged,” I mumbled.
“Pardon?” Frankie asked. “That sounded a lot like you were asking me to pretend to be your fiancée.”
I groaned and looked up. “See? I told you. It’s a terrible idea.”
“Now hang on a minute,” Frankie said, leaning a hip against the bar, her shirt riding up to expose a sliver of tanned skin that I found ridiculously fascinating.
Frankie on the beach in Kalopsia in a bikini? I was suddenly eager for that to be a thing. It wasn’t like I’d never seen Frankie in a swimsuit before, but I’d never really taken notice. Okay, that was a lie. It was more that Frankie was so far out of my league I didn’t think we were even playing the same game. I’d firmly settled into our friendship and hadn’t once thought about moving beyond that. Okay, that was a lie too, but I’d always known it was pure fantasy and shut it down quick smart.
“Tell me exactly what you had in mind,” she said and my gaze snapped up from that sliver of skin to her dark eyes that were assessing me.
I swallowed. “Um, well, I just thought we could pretend to be engaged, thereby bypassing the whole parental permission thing and then we could go to Kalopsia and I could meet with the king and then we could…stage a break up. Tell people we were better off as friends.”
“Okay. What do I get out of it?” she asked.
“A free trip to Kalopsia? A tour of the palace?”
Frankie pursed her lips and tapped her chin with a finger. Her dark purple nail polish was chipped, and I knew she’d been biting her nails. I wondered why? She only did that when she was worried.
“Oh man,” I said. “You had your dissertation meeting today. How did it go?”
Frankie grimaced. “Badly,” she said. “And stop trying to change the subject.”
A light bulb went off in my head. Maybe I needed to drink scotch more often. The outstanding ideas were coming fast and furious right now.
“You could do your dissertation on Kalopsia,” I proclaimed.
“What?”
“You could write your dissertation on Kalopsia,” I repeated. “They’re a reemerging nation facing lots of social and economic issues after spending a decade under a despot and now trying to establish themselves as a developed and financially stable monarchy.”
Frankie’s eyes glowed as the idea took hold. “I could interview the king,” she said.
“I could make that happen for you,” I agreed. “Especially if you’re there as my fiancée.”
“It would certainly be a unique research paper,” she said thoughtfully.
I reached across the bar and took her hand.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Come around here,” I said, pulling her down the length of the bar so she could walk around to my side of it. I dropped to one knee and pulled out the ring I was still carrying around in my pocket.
“Lucas,” she gasped, looking around the bar.
There were still a few patrons who looked on in interest, not that I cared. I was past caring at this point, and I was desperate.
I flicked open the ring box and Frankie gasped again, her free hand going to her mouth as her eyes widened at the diamond sparkling under the dim bar lights.
“Francesca Davenport, we have been best friends forever and you are literally my favorite person in the world. Please do me the honor of accepting my fake proposal. Please be my fake fiancée.”
“Lucas, I don’t know what to say,” she breathed, looking from me to the ring and back again. “Are you sure about this?”
“More sure than anything else I’ve ever done,” I said, tugging the ring out of the box. “Say yes.”
“Yes,” she said, and I slipped the ring on her finger. It fit perfectly and I blinked at how right it looked on her.
The bar broke out into spontaneous applause and I jumped up, grabbing her and swinging her around before placing a smacking kiss on her lips. It was awkward and weird to kiss my best friend and she laughed as she pushed me away.
“Happy?” she asked.
“Ecstatic,” I replied.
Chapter 4
Francesca
I couldn’t stop staring at the sparkling diamond on my finger. I was lying on my back in my bed and holding my hand out in front of me, turning it back and forth and letting the morning sun send refracted rainbows spinning around my room. The solitaire was huge and then there were all those little diamonds set into the platinum band…it was stunning and completely not me…and meant for Clarissa.
I sighed. Yeah. This was the ring Lucas had used to propose to Clarissa. That he turned around and fake proposed to me using it was understandable and completely fiscally responsible, something that Lucas would definitely care about, but not romantic in the least.
Nothing about the situation was romantic. The drunken fake proposal, the second-hand ring, the fact that Lucas had only proposed to me because he needed a fake fiancée so he could escape his parents for a few weeks…or longer.
Huh. Did Lucas’ decision to go to Kalopsia mean he was leaving Boston for good? My gut clenched at the thought of losing him permanently. All these years I’d kept my ridiculous crush on him locked down so I could keep him in my life. Having Lucas as my best friend was better than not having him in my life at all. But now, by agreeing to pose as his fake fiancée, had I inadvertently given him a way to escape not just his family, but me too?
And just what exactly did it mean to be a part of the royal court of Kalopsia? What did it entail? Did he have to live in Kalopsia? Would he have a job? There were so many questions I didn’t have answers to and I was too scared to ask Lucas for the answers. I didn’t want to know if wearing this ring meant I would lose him.
“Frankie? Are you awake?”
“I’m up!” I called back to my mom.
“Breakfast is ready.”
I groaned and pushed myself up to a sitting position and took another look at the ring on my finger. Reluctantly, I pulled it off and crossed to my dresser to stash the very expensive ring in my junk jewelry box.
I pulled on a pair of yoga pants and an over-sized t-shirt and headed downstairs.
Yes, I still lived with my parents, so what? So did pretty much everyone else in their early- to mid-twenties. My parents owned a three-story brownstone in downtown Boston and I had the entire top floor to myself. I even had a kitchenette, but it was just as easy to eat with Mom and Dad. Besides, they had a cleaner come in three days a week and cleaned the place from top to bottom, and a cook who came in twice a week did a whole lot of meal prep for us. Mom and Dad lived busy lives, but when we got the chance to share a meal together, we did. I enjoyed spending time with my parents. They were cool and always gave excellent advice whenever I needed it. As long as I was working and studying in Boston, I didn’t see a reason to move out.