Shock gripped my windpipe and squeezed. Which was weird, because I didn’t do shock. I didn’t do emotion, period. Not since the accident.

But here I was, getting light headed as I locked eyes with Emily Kilpatrick. I took in the familiar lines of her face. The pert nose. Wide mouth. Mischievous, intelligent eyes. The hint of weariness I saw in them—that was new. I didn’t like it.

It was like seeing a ghost. Emily belonged to the “before” part of my life. The part before my parents died. I didn’t revisit those years much. What was the point? It only hurt.

As heir to the throne and my parents’ legacy as well—and older brother to three grieving siblings—I didn’t have time for hurt.

I wanted to look away from Emily. I needed to. But the girl was a knockout. Same as always.

“Kit, you know Emily?” Jane asked, breaking my trance.

I licked my lips. “I do. Miss Kilpatrick was one of my best students before…well.”

Emily cleared her throat. “I was very sorry to hear about your parents. We missed you in class. A lot.”

I had a stable of rote answers for moments like these. Thank you for your sympathy. We miss them. We appreciate your concern.

But I hesitated. Maybe because I’d missed being in class, too. That first week after the accident, all I’d wanted was to hear Emily’s voice. I’d needed her reassurances, the confidence she’d always had in me.

“That is kind of you.” I said the words like I always did. Automatically. But now they sounded stiff and strange. Like someone else—someone who was obviously and embarrassingly full of shit—was saying them.

Emily’s brow furrowed. Was she as confused as I felt?

“Christopher.” The Queen was looking at me intently. Oh no. I knew that gleam in her eye. She had a plan brewing, and I had the funniest feeling it involved me. “Walk with me. Carlton, go back to your offices—I’ll deal with you later. We shall leave the ladies in peace to continue their interview. Miss Kilpatrick, it was lovely to make your acquaintance. I do sincerely hope you’ll accept my apology on behalf of my family.”

Emily’s eyes met mine one last time. All the people I’d met, the hundred countries I’d been to, and I’d yet to find a prettier shade of green. My mind drifted. Had she started that business she’d talked so much about? Where did she live? Had she settled down with a forever someone? She’d made that strange comment about her married name. Maybe she was divorced.

I pushed the thoughts aside. It didn’t matter. I had to work to do, and that work did not include Emily Kilpatrick.

* * *

I followed my grandmother to her private apartments on the first floor of the north wing. My brothers and sister and I had lived up here after my parents passed. I liked it. More than the rest of the palace, anyway. It was quieter. Less stuffy.

We settled in her sitting room, the least formal of all the spaces in the apartment save for Her Majesty’s bedroom. It was where she caught the evening news and, on Sunday afternoons, Sherlock (like every other red blooded Englishwoman, the Queen was currently enamored with Benedict Cumberbatch).

She rang for tea, and politely but firmly shooed away the maid who brought it up from the kitchens. Sitting up in her chair, she lifted the pot and poured each of us a cup.

“I’m sorry about all that,” I said. “Carlton can be such a bully.”

“I know. It still does not excuse you shouting like a lunatic in front of guests.” She set down the teapot with a clink. “So what are you going to do?”

I smoothed my tie. “I assume you’re referring to Jane?”

It seemed the media couldn’t get enough of my sister’s missteps. First, she’d married a loudmouthed city boy with a drinking problem and an extravagant spending habit. She’d left him when he cheated on her—or she cheated on him, the story wasn’t quite clear. Their separation had been bitter from the start. Now she was rebounding. Hard. As in, she was drunkenly humping everything in sight. And she was doing it in front of the cameras.

Which was a big problem. The people had loved my parents for their work and their common touch. Now that my siblings and I had taken up that work, people loved us, too. That was probably the biggest reason why the Queen named me her heir.

But that love had limits. Limits that Jane was seriously testing with her antics. Trawling all over London, pissed out of her mind, she looked like an entitled, careless child.

The Queen pinched the handle of her teacup, pinkie up. “Indeed. It should be clear to you by now that we only have power and influence if the people give it to us. The people must love our family, Christopher, otherwise we are nothing.”

“Of course,” I replied. That fact had been drilled into me from a young age. Still, I wasn’t entirely sure what my grandmother was getting at.

“I know Jane means well. But as the future King of England, you need to take action. You need to save her from herself.”

“You think we could toss her in the Tower?” I joked. “That idiot ex-husband of hers, too. That would keep them out of the papers.”

“Heavens, don’t I wish,” the Queen replied. “Would serve them right. Imagine how delighted the tourists would be to see an actual prisoner it the Tower of London. I daresay Jane would be a more popular attraction than the crown jewels.”

“She’d chain-smoke cigarettes out of her arrow slit and shout insults down at them,” I said. “They’d love it.”

The Queen laughed, the throaty, satisfied laugh she only let out in private. It made her face light up, if only for a moment.

“But seriously.” I picked up a pair of silver tongs, engraved with the family crest of course, and used them to drop a slice of lemon into my tea. “I’ve spoken with Jane. She’s promised to keep it in her pants from now on. Pardon the expression.”

My grandmother’s smile faded. “If you spoke to her, then why is that picture all over the papers today? You need to do more, Christopher.”

The Queen was right. As usual. I didn’t even bother to defend myself.

“As someone who has worn the crown for sixty years now, I’m going to give you some advice,” she continued. “You need to create a distraction. Something that will draw attention away from Jane until her divorce is finalized and she’s on more of an even keel.”

I sipped my tea. It was scalding hot. “How would you do that? I can’t imagine anything short of a major news story would distract the people from this.”

The Queen peered at me over the rim of her teacup. “Do you remember the engagement between your cousin Anne and Justin Teach? That footballer chap?”

“I do,” I said, nodding. “I was sad to hear it didn’t work out. I was a big fan of Teach’s.”

“Well.” The Queen’s eyes glimmered again. “That engagement was fake.”

I was so surprised I nearly spit out my tea. I saved myself just in time by keeping my mouth locked shut. The tea shot up my nose instead. Shit that burned.

“Pardon?” I said, blinking hard.

“Carlton’s first wife had just died. He was in an absolute state.” Her Majesty shrugged. “I had no other options.”

“And that worked?”

She nodded solemnly. “It certainly did.”

I leaned back. Tapped my finger against my teacup. Wow.

Just…wow. I’d known my grandmother was a shrewd dealmaker. A plotter. You had to be if you’d lasted sixty years on the throne. But this was plotting on a whole new level.

“You’re going to be King, Christopher. You and your siblings are in the spotlight now more than ever.” She nodded in my direction. “You need to get engaged. Fake engaged, of course. But engaged nonetheless.”

My stomach dipped. “Me?”

The Queen nodded.

“But I haven’t—I’m not—I’m single at the moment,” I stuttered. “I’m not dating anyone.”

Not for lack of trying. But it was always the same old song and dance. I’d meet a girl—someone who was perfect royal material. Beautiful, well-bred, polite. We’d go on a few dates, have tepid conversations and mediocre sex. I’d get bored, she’d get hurt, and the relationship would fizzle out. It happened every damn time.

I knew I wasn’t exactly emotionally available. But there was something about these girls that just didn’t click with me.

The Queen grinned. “I know. Which is why you’re perfect. The single prince, finally settling down with the girl who tamed him.”

“A fake engagement.” I cleared my throat. “I mean this with all respect, Majesty, but have you lost your marbles?”

“I’m ninety-one years old,” she said cheerily. “It’s entirely possible.”

I tugged at my collar. It had gotten hot in here all of the sudden.

“So I’m going to be fake engaged,” I said. “To who? Who would draw the interest of the press away from Jane?”

My grandmother set down her cup and folded her hands on her lap. Leave it to her to be calm and collected while hatching a stunt like this.

“You’ll be engaged to a person the people can relate to. And I have a feeling we just met her downstairs in your sister’s office.”

The edges of my vision dimmed. She couldn’t be talking about—

“Emily Kilpatrick,” the Queen said, “would be perfect for the role. She’s obviously a hard-working girl if she’s interviewing for the foundation. I’m sure she’s got bills to pay, and she told us she’s got a family to deal with. It’d be a total Cinderella story. People will love living out their fantasies through her. We’ll run a background check on her, of course. But I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”

Spiders of disbelief—or was it anxiety?—crawled through my belly.

“This is crazy,” I managed. I set my cup on its saucer and held it there. “You can’t be serious.”

My grandmother speared me with a look that had brought greater men to their knees. “Son, I am the Queen of England. I have loads of experience with people doing what we ask if you give them the right reasons. Find out what Emily Kilpatrick wants. Give it to her in exchange for pretending to be your fiancée.”

I hadn’t realized my hands were shaking until my teacup began to clatter against the saucer. I dropped it on the table and ran my palms over my knees. I felt itchy all over. Panicked.

“But this is crazy.” On top of everything else, my brain was apparently short-circuiting. Perfect.

“I named you my heir for a reason, Christopher,” she said. “It’s time to prove you deserve it. You’re not doing this for me. You’re doing it for your family. Your sister. The foundation you love so much.”

I stared at her. I don’t know what freaked me out more—the fact that my grandmother was asking me to fake an engagement in front of the entire world, or that she wanted me to fake it with Emily Kilpatrick. The girl who’d made a complete and utter fool of me ten years ago.

The day Emily and I had been together in my office, I’d been off kilter. I wasn’t in control of my feelings or actions. She was. She’d held me in the palm of her hand. I’d have done anything she asked. Hell, I had sex with her right there on my desk.

Emily had been the only girl who’d ever made me reckless. Which was fine back then—I was just a PhD student. But I couldn’t be reckless now. I was next in line to the British throne. I was head of The Prince’s Foundation. My family was depending on me, not to mention the countless others who worked for us or depended on the money and awareness we raised for our causes. My every mood and move was scrutinized. I had to be incredibly careful in all things at all times. If I wasn’t, I risked hurting the people—and the country—I loved more than anything else.

I’d been blindsided by the things Emily had made me feel. What if…God, what if the same thing happened again? What if she made me reckless? She’d gotten under my skin once without me realizing it. Not until it was too late, anyway.

I speared a hand through my hair. Keep calm. Breathe.

I repeated the words in my head. On cue my heart rate came down. One of the benefits of locking away my emotions was the ability to manipulate them at will. Control them. I’d had a decade of practice now. I’d built the walls inside my chest nice and high.

Maybe they were high enough to keep even Emily Kilpatrick out. It had been ten years. I was a much different bloke than I’d been back then. I imagined the same was true of Emily.

If our engagement was just for show, she and I wouldn’t have to hang out that much anyway. I was a professional at keeping my distance. One of the perks of being emotionally unavailable.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

The Queen grinned. “Good answer. I have faith in you, Christopher.”

I nodded. If there was one thing I’d kept faith in all these years, it was myself. I’d risen to every challenge that came my way. I took care of business. My family, too.

I’d take care of this. And when it was over, I’d go my way, and Emily Kilpatrick would go hers. Simple enough.

Only Emily had never been simple. Neither had my feelings for her.

Whatever. I was a mind over matter sort of bloke. I’d make it simple.

Duty over desire.

Nothing was simpler than that.