CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER SEVEN
Whatever trajectory his life had been on when he had boarded that cargo plane two weeks ago, it was not that now.
And as he stood there in the small, humble house at the top of a mountain in rural Montana, having just proposed to the most unlikely woman on earth, he felt for the first time that his life was not entirely in his control.
Yes, there had always been the crown, the inevitability of it. But he had vowed to himself as his father had aged that he would do what needed to be done to preserve the integrity of Olympus, and when his father had gotten ill he’d realized the time for change had come.
He had sown his wild oats until it was time to reap responsibility, and then he had agreed to marry a woman who was suitable to the position as princess.
But two weeks ago, it hadn’t been Stevie.
And now, Stevie was the only choice.
Seeing her was a gut punch he hadn’t anticipated. She was more beautiful than he remembered, even here in this tiny little house, with bare feet.
Perhaps she was even more beautiful.
But that wasn’t why he had chosen her.
The media frenzy surrounding the plane crash was incredible. It was a storm. Speculation and sensationalized headlines. There were endless fan edits of pictures with him and… Women who were mainly not Stevie, but photographs that had been taken from stock photography sites of female pilots, with love songs playing in the background, and it made absolutely no sense to him, but they were going around the internet with alacrity.
But there wasn’t much to be done about that.
Still, the action that he had to take in response to it had become abundantly clear.
Stevie was, for lack of a better way of thinking of it, the people’s choice.
She had saved his life. And the world was entranced by the idea that this scrappy American girl had been all that separated a prince from his untimely doom.
Yes, he could’ve gone on and married Drusilla. But there was no point to it. It would never accomplish what marrying Stevie would. And, his marriage to Stevie would end all of her problems. He had enjoyed listening to her talk. About how she would change the world. He had decided that she would be good for his country.
Good for him.
“I… Was that a proposal?”
“Yes.”
“It came across as more of a demand,” she said.
“Stevie, I think you and I know there is no question.”
While he could not allow his attraction to her to be the driving force behind his decision, surely she must feel it now? Surely she must…
He was offering her a life of luxury and there was no shortage of chemistry between them. Why would she refuse him?
“Well, there is,” she said, crossing her arms and looking up at him, her expression filled with mutiny. “Because I am not a yes-woman. And I’m not a plaything. I have a life. Here. In this house. I have a garden. I have a business.”
“Currently your garden is under a foot of snow, and I imagine your business is not operational considering you don’t have a functional plane.”
“That’s just a season,” she said. “All around. Time changes things.”
“This could change things more than just seasonally.”
It was then he realized that her sisters were standing there. Staring.
“Stevie,” one of them said, her voice a breathless rush.
“I think your sister thinks you should marry me,” he said.
“Don’t speak for me,” she said.
“My apologies.”
“I’m Daisy,” she said.
She looked to be about five years younger than Stevie.
The other girls were…girls still. And he imagined that Daisy was doing a lot of the day-to-day caregiving.
“My apologies,” he said, again. “But, I do think that you can agree becoming a princess would dramatically improve your sister’s life.” He looked at the girls. “And yours.”
“Money is just money,” said Stevie. “And if I didn’t earn it, I don’t know how I feel about it.”
“You were willing to take a reward from me.”
“That I had earned ,” she said.
“You’ve earned this. Surely you’ve seen the media reports.”
“Yes. All the speculation that we… That we somehow had a torrid affair in the snow when you had a massive cut in your leg.”
“Yes. Those rumors.”
“I’ve been being hounded by the press. And I refused to tell them anything.”
“Another thing that makes you perfect. You haven’t played into their hands, and it is extremely refreshing. Most people would have tried to profit off the nature of the stories, but you did not. Further proving your worthiness.”
“I’m not a hunk of beef that you can try to evaluate. Or grade. I’m a woman. And I am not a prize in the bottom of your cereal box.”
“I’m not certain what the context of that is.”
“You’ve probably never had a box of cereal, have you?”
“No.”
She simply stared at him. “I like my life.”
He didn’t know what to do with this. It had not occurred to him that Stevie might resist his demand.
“You might like your life, but your life is also a struggle. If you could simply…exclude yourself from the struggle, why wouldn’t you?”
“Because life doesn’t work that way,” she said. “If you go cutting corners it’s always at the expense of somebody else.”
“I’m not asking you to cut corners. I need a wife.”
“Two weeks ago you were about to have a different one, which you did not tell me about, by the way and had you…” She looked at her sisters, then cut off her sentence. “What did you do, stash her in your attic?”
Ah. So this was the issue. She was stressed about being seen as the other woman.
“I told her very regretfully that she is no longer the ideal choice to be princess of Olympus.”
“That poor woman. Also, how murderous is she? Is she going to kill me in my sleep?”
“Drusilla is fine. Believe me when I tell you, she will have already found another prospect for a rich husband. We were not in love. My marriage was always going to be a dynastic choice. You know who I am now, Stevie, and you understand that my reputation has not always been the best.”
“That would be because your actions haven’t always been the best.”
“Granted,” he agreed. “But, I have a certain amount of popularity with the youth in my country. It is the older generation I have trouble with. But everyone is captivated by you. Everyone is captivated by the mere thought of you. And that is something that I wish to make the most of.”
“It’s something you want to exploit,” she said. “And I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with that. It’s…craven at best.”
“Perhaps it is. But the world is craven. As you said, when corners are cut, someone pays. But you have an innate sense of justice, and a desire to see things change. Not only will you have money, Stevie, but you will have power. Not only will your family want for nothing, you will be responsible for making decisions that have an impact on a nation of people.”
“But I didn’t even go to college.”
“And what difference does that make? College doesn’t speak to intelligence, but privilege. Just as my position as Prince speaks to the very same. You have something. Something different. You are who I want by my side.”
“It’s not a very romantic proposal.”
He turned and looked at one of the younger girls, who was probably about twelve. He was not an expert on children. “It was not meant to be. I did not get the impression that Stevie is a romantic.”
“She’s not,” one of the other girls said. “But maybe if you treated her like she was, she would soften up a little bit.”
“Hush, Opal,” said Stevie. “I don’t want romance. Especially not from him.”
But her cheeks went pink. And he wondered if that was strictly true. They were no longer stuck on the side of a mountain in a hollowed-out plane.
Perhaps then she did see things a bit differently between them.
Of course, they would have to have children. They had already proved there was fire between them in the bedroom. The idea of taking her in a soft bed, without worry of frostbite or potentially bleeding to death, was an appealing one.
That was something he was very much looking forward to.
She was as beautiful as ever. This beacon of glory unlike any other and he craved her touch again. He wanted to feel what he had that first time.
“I am offering you the greatest promotion you will ever receive,” he said.
And then, Stevie did something he did not expect at all. She bent over at the waist, and was silent for a moment, before she reared back and revealed that she was gasping, choking on her laughter. “Oh. My promotion from nobody to your wife is simply the greatest thing that will ever happen to me. How can I ever refuse you, Your Royal Highness?”
“It is not funny. It is simply true.”
She hiccupped. In a rather unladylike fashion. “Your ego is astonishing,” she said.
“My name is Adonis. I have done my level best to live up to the name. Many would say I have done so indisputably.”
“I can’t believe you. You are… You deserve to be told no. That’s what you want to get. You’re used to people simpering and falling down at your feet. I can tell. Women especially. But not me. I’m not simply going to give you whatever you want after you lied to me then vanished for two weeks, and then showed up like I haven’t been navigating this insanity by myself.”
“I thought you wanted your reward,” he said.
“I’ll live without it. I’ve been managing just fine this whole time, and I’ll keep on managing.”
“Stevie!” Her sisters were grumbling. And it was clear why. Of course they wanted her to marry him. It would be a key to a much easier life for them. Everything would be different. They would be happier. They would be well-fed. They would live in luxury.
They would not be eating beans and sharing a bedroom in a dilapidated cabin.
“I will be here for one more night. Should you change your mind, come and find me.”
He gave her the card of the hotel that he was staying at, pressing it into her palm. She looked at it, and him, and then cast it onto the ground. “Don’t wait around.”
He turned around, and walked toward the door, maneuvering it open while hanging on to his cane. And then he stepped outside into the freezing cold, as the door slammed shut behind him.
He had been refused. By a peasant.
It was nearly as shocking as the plane crash.