Page 62 of Royally Arranged

“I’m fixing what you won’t,” he answered.

The man in the middle put his arms out. “Leave him,” he said, his eyebrows drawing low. “He’s a sad old man making a fool of himself in the middle of the street.”

The three of them watched for a few more seconds. Kinsey shook his head angrily. “Fuck him. Let’s go get some lunch.” Together they crossed the street, entering a café, essentially crossing my father out of their minds. His desperate show of force meant nothing to them.

But it did to me.

I was transfixed. My father was a huge man, I knew he was strong. When I was younger he would work out in the private gym on our estate. I’d seen him bench over two hundred pounds with ease. One day, when I couldn’t have been more than thirteen, I’d snuck into the gym after he’d finished. He hadn’t unloaded the bar yet.

Curious, and full of stupid teenage hormones that demanded I prove I was better than my father, I’d stretched out on the bench and tried to lift the weight that he’d finished with. I had to call for help when I became pinned beneath it.

It had been some time since I’d seen my father do anything so physical. Only a few minutes had passed, and while he wasn’t slowing down, sweat was starting to darken parts of his black shirt.

Glen came forward, his face glistening in the raging sun. “Maverick, what the hell are you thinking?”

My father breathed heavily, sticking the pickax into the cement. He stared at his friend while catching his breath. “It’s fucking obvious that those guys aren’t going to help this charity, no matter what we do. The amount of corruption in the city is too much for any one of us to untangle. It will take months to figure out who to remove and who to replace just to get things on track again.” He looked back at the hole he’d created. “In the meantime, I’m not about to let a bunch of locals go hungry.”

His determination fueled me to step forward. “Thorne?” Nova said as I slipped past her and out of the crowd. Most of it had thinned now that the drama was over. Watching my father chop at the street was only interesting for so long.

Maverick saw me coming; Glen followed his eyes. Scooping up a shovel, I flashed a sideways grin. “This job is too big for just one person. Definitely too much for one old man.” Bracing myself, I tossed a scoop of dirt out of the hole and into the truck bed. “Besides, I can’t let my dad get all the good press. How embarrassing would that be for the new king?”

He stared at me. “I’ve never seen you doing any kind of hard labor.”

Flexing my arms, I tossed more broken concrete into the bin. “That’s a weird way to say, ‘Thanks for helping out, son.’”

My dad chuckled, then he went back to work. Glen shook his head. “Do either of you know anything about plumbing?”

“No,” Dad said. “But I think we can figure it out faster than those jackasses would change their minds and do it for us.”

Laughing, Glen snatched up a pickax and joined my father in breaking up the street. Nova’s eyes shone with pride as she looked on. From the truck she grabbed a stack of orange cones, placing them around us. “Using this stuff is fine, right?” she asked. “I mean, we’re the royal family. Public Works like this technically belongs to us, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll assume yes,” I said, wiping my brow.

That was how I spent the rest of my afternoon: tearing up a road, fixing something with my own two hands. It was a new thing for me. I appreciated how my muscles burned, the exertion robbing me of the unease I’d felt earlier as I approached the scene and looked at my father.

Sweltering in the growing hours, I stole glances at Maverick, wondering what was going through his head. Was this the same food bank he’d gone to with his mother all those years ago? Was he thinking about her right now?

The crowd ebbed, and it wasn’t until we’d uncovered the pipes, minutes before the plumbing team returned, that people took notice again. When the Larsons came back, they were genuinely shocked to see what we’d managed to do. But they said nothing. They didn’t try to take back their tools, either.

I think they were actually ashamed. Here we were, doing something good in a city that desperately needed a hint of generosity.

A news crew showed up before the sun went down, speaking to my father as he rubbed dirt from his palms. It wouldn’t be the last time my father showed up in the local news.

Together he and Glen roped in volunteers, going out of their way to fix every labor-intensive project they could. It was very clear that the city needed tons of infrastructure. The number of jobs that had fallen by the wayside thanks to politicians who wanted to force buildings to foreclose so they could tear them down and replace them with things that would fatten their wallets was immense.

After only a few days of their efforts, no one heckled my father. The media attention when they reopened the food bank was especially effective for his image. My father even managed to smile in the photo.

What a world.

- CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR -

HAWTHORNE

Nova and I left the castle more often than not. I didn’t want to be around her family; her brothers and sister spent too much time skulking through the hallways. I could recognize the greed in their eyes whenever I caught them staring hungrily at the locked cases on display full of old jewels and other expensive bits and bobs.

As for me, I hadn’t even looked in the royal vault yet. I like money, don’t get me wrong. But I’d had plenty of it before I became king. What I wanted was to spend time with the woman who was curling ever closer around my heart.

Whenever I grazed my wedding ring with my thumb, I started to smile. It was an absentminded thing that I caught myself doing. But that little metal band was a constant reminder that I was connected to her.

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