Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
EMMA
Leo’s side of the bed was cold when she awoke the next morning.
She sat up, and panic flared in her chest. He had left. He had flown to New York to have sex with her one last time and then just left. Had he even really been here the day before, or had she hallucinated everything?
But no. There was his banged-up suitcase, sitting in the corner of her room.
The luggage was an undeniable reminder of the horror they had faced the day before.
If Leo hadn’t arrived when he did, there was no telling what amount of damage her father would have done.
He’d never kicked the door in before. He was escalating, and since they still lived in the same apartment, they were sitting ducks.
At least Leo had reinforced the doorframe.
There was nothing she could do about it for the time being.
Maybe as a thank you, she could start helping Leo stitch his life back together.
This was just a temporary setback, she was sure of it.
They would find a way to get his project off the ground.
They didn’t need the crown’s jerk money anyway.
Unless he didn’t want to go back. Maybe he had had enough of his mom’s shenanigans and his father’s blatant disinterest in anything not related to football. What if he moved here?
She ran a hand over his pillow. The night before they had clung to each other, speaking words their mouths were too afraid to say with every kiss.
It was exciting, fooling around as quietly as they could with her mother and hypervigilant service dog in the next room.
But more than that, it felt different from any sexual experience she had ever known.
Leo was gentle, patient, and generous. Almost worshipful of her body. There was an intensity that no other man had ever given her.
It was like they had known each other for years. Maybe even multiple lives.
But that was insane. He was honorable and duty-bound, and his people needed him. Even if he didn’t realize it yet, there was no way he was going to move to New York.
To take her mind off the situation she was quickly losing control of, she let the dogs out and entered her mother’s room. Lisa was awake and had her e-reader on.
“Morning,” Emma said. “Sleep okay?”
“Don’t tell anyone,” her mom began as she heaved herself out of bed, “but I slept a lot better with a man in the house.”
Emma smiled and supported Lisa’s arm as she held on to her walker. “Me too.”
“Is he here?” her mom whispered.
Emma shook her head.
“So, what’s going on between the two of you?”
Emma looked over her shoulder. “I don’t know. I’m afraid to ask.”
“Do you want to be with him?”
“Are you kidding me? Of course I do. But it could never work. What would we do, a long-distance relationship? See each other twice a year? He’s a whole-ass prince. And my life is here. Our life is here,” she corrected.
“Sweetheart,” her mom said. A shadow crossed over her face, and it seemed she was choosing her words carefully.
“It’s not your job to take care of me. I’m not going to allow you to limit yourself and make your life small because you think you have to carry the entire weight of our family on your shoulders.
I’ve been looking into assisted living facilities. ”
“No,” Emma said sharply. “I’m not putting you in a home. Are you crazy? You’re only fifty-five.”
“It would make your life so much simpler,” Lisa said as they shuffled to the bathroom. “You could go anywhere, live anywhere without worrying about me falling or choking on a friggen noodle.”
“I will always worry about you. That’s my job.” Emma lowered her mom onto the toilet, then left the room.
“No, that’s my job,” Lisa said through the door. “Emma, honey, you have such a beautiful future ahead of you. I’ve already held you back for too long.”
“Why are you talking like I’m going somewhere? I’m not going anywhere.”
“We’ll see.”
There was a knock at the front door, and Emma silently cursed before picking up the baseball bat again.
Leo stood on the stoop, shopping bags in hand and a concerned look on his face.
“Wow, you really do always answer the door with violence,” he said.
“Do you blame me?”
“Of course not.” He pulled her in for a hug.
She breathed in the scent of his leather jacket. How was this real? Two weeks ago, she was slaving away at Crumb and Get It with no end in sight. Now she was unemployed with a prince for a boyfriend. Well, not boyfriend. International booty call? Situationship? Whatever.
“What did you find?” she asked when she pulled back. She peered into his bags.
“Just some breakfast and a couple more things for the apartment. A thank you for the hospitality while I figure out what comes next.”
The toilet flushed, and Emma returned to the bathroom.
“About that,” she said as she walked her mother to the living room, “now that I have all this free time, I’m going to help you get your new post-royal life in order.”
Leo raised his eyebrows and set a bakery bag on the kitchen table.
“New place to live, new bank account, an emergency budget, job hunting, whatever. We’ll do it all today.” She shook some pills out of the organizer on the kitchen countertop and brought them to Lisa with a glass of water.
“We should be working on your new job,” he said. “Since I destroyed the last one.”
She waved a hand. “I have a couple inquiries out to businesses I’ve worked with before.”
“For what? Baking?”
“No, I’m not allowed to bake for profit for a year because of the damned noncompete.
I managed all the social media for the bakery, so my plan is to freelance during the waiting period.
And if that doesn’t cut it, I’ll look into serving at the diner down the street. Or start an OnlyFans,” she joked.
Leo frowned, but he didn’t say anything.
“Now, I assume I should be looking for apartments in Lynoria?” Her hands shook with nerves, even though she already knew the answer.
He hesitated. “I think so. For now, at least. I just don’t think I can give up completely yet.”
Emma squeezed his shoulder, then returned to the kitchen and turned on their ancient coffeepot. A rich earthiness flooded the space, and she breathed it in before stealing a glance at Leo as he cleared out the drying rack and set the table.
She had feelings. There was no use denying it. Leo probably had some too, or he wouldn’t have chased her thousands of miles.
Where could they go from here? They were practically from different dimensions. Even if he formally left the royal family, his family’s drama would always be in the background. And she would never be enough for them, all because of where she grew up.
It figured. The first time she caught feelings for a guy since Dylan, and it was an impossible situation.
After breakfast, Leo took all the paintings off the wall in the hallway and started sanding and spackling. Cooper supervised.
A couple hours passed as Leo painted and Emma hammered away at her laptop, browser filled with windows of apartments and jobs in Lynoria. Lisa regaled them all with fun facts from the bee documentary she’d recently watched and worked on her physical therapy plan.
Leo appeared in the kitchen, spackling dust dotting his T-shirt and paint splatters on his hand. The sight of him had awakened something in Emma’s pants, but she couldn’t do anything about it with her mom right there.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about zookeeping?” she asked as he washed his hands.
“Not particularly,” he said over his shoulder. “Is that a career option?”
“Yes. But it seems like a lot of the duties include shoveling excrement.”
“Huh. It would be great exercise. And I’d love to know how enclosures are built. Keep it on the list.”
“Great. How much is your monthly trust payment again?”
He told her, and she grimaced.
“You might need a roommate.”
“That bad?” He looked scandalized.
“All the jobs are in Avolis. The city is expensive.”
“So I’d have to leave the village?”
“Well, there is one apartment available in the village. But I don’t know that it would suit your…needs.”
She turned the laptop so that he could see it. A studio apartment with only the barest of amenities, but it was charming nonetheless. It would be an uncomfortable adjustment for someone coming from a two-thousand-square-foot suite in a castle though.
He clicked through a couple pictures, then pulled out his phone. He dialed a number and disappeared into the hallway.
Emma and Lisa made eye contact, and Emma shrugged.
He came back a moment later. “Right, that’s settled.”
“You took the apartment? Without going to see it first?” Emma raised her eyebrows.
“Of course. I’d like to still be near Ruby before she leaves for school. It’s only a year lease.”
“What’s your mom going to say when she learns you’re living in a studio apartment?”
“I don’t care what she thinks. They’ve controlled everything for long enough. What I do, where I live, who I’m allowed to date. I don’t want it. Any of it.”
She sat up straight. “What are you going to do? Renounce your title? Is that a thing?”
“Maybe,” he said thoughtfully.
“Can you run for parliament? Or local office?” Lisa asked from the living room. “I’ve been reading up on the Lynorian government. Really boring stuff.”
He frowned. “I actually don’t know. No member of the royal family has ever held a nonroyal office before.”
“And who better to be the first than you? You don’t need them,” Emma said, pointing generally east toward Lynoria. “We can get your project built without the crown’s money.”
“How? I’m cut off, remember?”
She leaned back and pulled out her phone. “We call in the big guns.”
“The big guns?”
In a moment, Lola was on-screen.
“Oh my god,” Lola said. “Leo in the flesh. You’re real. I can’t believe it. I thought Emma was having wet fever dreams.”
Leo smiled. “I’m real.”
“Great,” she said. “Now what’s going on? Are you getting married? Because I will absolutely be your maid of honor. How’s October?”
“Whoa,” Emma said sternly. “We’re just calling for some advice, because you’re a brilliant genius grant writer and fundraiser.”
Leo gave a brief overview of the project, and Lola considered for a moment.
“Okay,” she said. “Give me twenty-four hours, and I’ll get you a list of the biggest donors in Lynoria and a strategy. Emma said you have a presentation already?”
He nodded.
“Send it to me and I’ll spruce it up. There is one other thing.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Trust me when I say you need to get your ass back to Lynoria and start knocking on doors. Big companies need to get all their charitable giving done before the end of the year for tax purposes. You don’t have a lot of time, and you’re going to have to be hella charming.”
“He can handle that,” Emma said.
“You think it’s possible though?” he asked. For the first time since the queen’s dismissal, he felt a glimmer of hope.
“It’s possible. The goal is going to be to find big businesses with soft, squishy CEOs who actually give a shit about Lynoria. You’re going to tug on a lot of heartstrings. You don’t need those royal bastards. No offense,” Lola added.
“About payment for your services—” Leo began, but Lola shook her head vehemently.
“It’s Christmas. This is pro bono. Though I do expect a wing of the new library to be named after me. Kidding. Mostly,” she added as an afterthought.
“I can’t thank you enough.”
“You can do this. You will do this,” she said firmly. “One other thing. If you can get a survivor to share her story and how one of the shelters changed her life, it’ll really make a difference. Donors remember stories, not statistics.”
Lola straightened up and glanced over her shoulder. “Shit. I’ve gotta run, I think Mateo just set a pan on fire.”
After the call ended, Leo turned to Emma. “I kind of feel like I could do anything right now. No wonder you love her so much.”
“Right? I always tell her she should’ve been a life coach.”
He frowned and was silent for a moment. “I don’t feel comfortable asking a victim to tell her story on camera. How would I even find someone willing to share? And what if their abusers are still out there and they use the video somehow to track them down?”
Emma sighed, then squared her shoulders. There was only one fast solution to this problem. “I’ll help you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know I’m not from Lynoria, but I remember what it was like to grow up with an abusive father. The shelter that took us in could have been the difference between life and death for me and my mom.”
“No. I would never ask you to relive that experience,” he said. “There has to be another way.”
She looked up at him. “If my story has the power to help even one other woman or child, I’ll do it. And when I’m a little more financially stable and your shelter has been built—because it will be built—I’ll help you organize donation drives.”
“I would be honored to have your help.”
She squeezed his hand, then stood up. Her stomach twisted with nerves. “I should take a shower if I’m going to be on camera.”