Chapter 1
Garrett
They say I’ll get used to this.
After all, what’s there to get used to, really?
Lounging around, doing whatever I want whenever I want, living a life of absolute luxury with absolutely no responsibility…
It’s a dream come true.
Or at least, that’s what everybody tells me. That this new life of mine—as the spare instead of the heir—is the best thing to ever happen to me.
Too bad it feels more like a nightmare than a dream.
Then again, almost everything about the last nine months has felt like a nightmare.
Being kidnapped.
Months of torture followed by months of rehabilitation.
Being ousted from my role in both my family and my country.
Definitely the stuff nightmares are made of, even if the playboy lifestyle I’ve had foisted on me isn’t.
And no one can say I haven’t given this lifestyle the old royal try, either…because I have. For more than a month now.
I’ve slept with half a dozen women in as many weeks.
Have drunk my weight in Bourbon and Champagne more times than I care to count.
Have raced the world’s fastest cars on the world’s fastest race tracks and frittered away copious amounts of money on absolutely nothing of value…
I’ve even hopped from one hot spot to the next—from Rio to the Azores to Patagonia, for God’s sake, which is pretty much at the end of the fucking world. I’ve been to more parties in the six weeks since I’ve gotten a clean bill of health than in the first twenty-eight years of my life. And that’s saying something, considering major galas have been a part of my existence since I learned how to walk. Maybe even longer.
And now I’m here, sunning myself on a rock near a secluded watering hole in the small village of Tournemire and whining to myself about how much I hate my new life. Could I be any more of a spoiled prick if I tried?
It’s obnoxious and I’m pathetic. Not to mention completely useless.
The man once trusted to rule the country now can’t even be trusted to be in control of himself—or so the anxiety medicine the King’s therapists keep insisting I take seems to imply. Well, that and the fact that I can’t even be in the royal palace—at least not when serious business is afoot.
King’s fucking orders.
Oh, that’s not what he or my brother, Kian, say to my face. But I am very aware of how often they’ve been showing me the door lately. Just like I’m aware of what meetings are going on at the palace when they do. I may have had a couple concussions too many in the three months I was missing, but my brain still functions better than most. Certainly well enough to know what my family is up to…even if they never say it.
I’ve become a liability, someone who can’t even be trusted with palace gossip, let alone state secrets.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Death has to be better than this. Then again, anything does. Because the distrust from my family, the forced idleness—and uselessness—that is now my life in some ways is just as torturous as those months I endured in that compound filled with anti-royal whack jobs.
Maybe even more so, because I didn’t give a shit about them and they felt the same way about me.
My family, though…My family, my country, thinks I’m a traitor. They think they can’t trust me, and there’s nothing I can do to prove otherwise.
The alarm on my phone goes off, interrupting my self-pity. I set it before I stretched out, in case I fell asleep and got caught in a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. But I’m too busy drowning in what-ifs to sleep, too busy making sure I flip over so my legs don’t burn to let myself drift off. Because that’s what my life has been reduced to. No meetings, no public appearances, no charity work. Just me, a bottle of sunscreen, and this very, very uncomfortable rock.
Maybe it didn’t interrupt the self-pity as much as I thought.
Because I’m boring myself with all the whining going on in my head, I shove off of the rock instead of merely flipping over. And dive headfirst into the small lake.
I swim back and forth, over and over again, determined to exhaust the demons inside of me since I can’t seem to vanquish them. Somewhere around lap thirty-four, I become aware of a commotion at the other end of the lake. And since the commotion involves a tiny redhead with a very big attitude going toe-to-toe with one-third of my security detail, I can’t help but settle back to watch the show.