The Wild Heir(42)

I let out a chuckle. “You’re in what, third year of university, living in a dorm, in Scotland of all places, the only other place I know that can match Norwegians for their drinking prowess, and you aren’t interested in drinking games? Please tell me you have a fun bone in your body.”

Now I have her attention. She snaps her eyes onto me and I can’t help but smile at the sparks flying out of them, which probably only angers her more.

“Just because I’m not out boozing and cruising with everyone else at school doesn’t mean I’m not fun. I’m fun.”

“Okay, so tell me your idea of fun.”

“Oh no,” she says, shaking her head. “Not with you. Your idea of fun is jumping off a cliff or racing a motorbike. Or filming a sex tape. Or getting herpes. My idea of fun will always pale in comparison to yours.”

“Okay, first of all, herpes?” I scoff, leaning forward in my seat. “You don’t seem to play very fair.”

She shrugs. “You started it. You said I wasn’t fun.”

“For the record, I don’t have herpes,” I tell her. “I’m clean as a whistle.”

She snort-laughs. At any other time it would have been adorable.

“It’s true,” I protest. “I have the tests to prove it. And by the way, I think that’s a big plus going into this marriage.”

She fixes her eyes on me with a pleading look. “Oh, please. Come on, Magnus, we both know this marriage isn’t happening.”

I still. That catches me off-guard. “What do you mean?”

She sighs and looks down at her glass as she swirls the liquid around. “I mean…let’s be reasonable here. This can’t possibly happen.”

“Why not? You said you’d give it two weeks.”

“I’m just buying time,” she says. “I mean, I meant it, but at the same time, now that I’m here…how is this even going to work? Do you really think in two weeks I’ll be able to look at you and agree to spend the rest of my life with you?”

It shouldn’t sting but it cuts pretty deep. Thankfully my face shows nothing.

“And you,” she goes on, “how can you think the same about me? If you do, it’s only because you have to. That’s the only reason we’re both here now. Because you have to be.”

I clear my throat, feeling the wind taken out of my sails.

She’s right.

Or at least she was. If suddenly my father decided to call the whole thing off, said, I didn’t need to do this, if it was no longer his wish, would I part ways and never think about Ella again? Or would I pursue her relentlessly because there’s something inside me that’s determined to uncover who she really is? I joked that she didn’t have a fun bone in her body but the truth is I think she does. I think she’s just waiting for it to be exposed.

“So I have to because it’s what my father wants,” I tell her. “And you have to because you don’t want to disappoint your own father. It doesn’t mean that we can’t have a little fun over the next two weeks.”

She chews on her lip for a moment. “I thought you said I wasn’t fun.”

“Prove me wrong then, Princess.”

She doesn’t say anything but takes a rather large gulp of her scotch, coughing as it goes down.

“Well, that’s step one,” I tell her. “Step two is playing the game. And no, don’t worry, it’s not a drinking game. It’s a getting to know you game. I call it…question tiiiiime!” I sing that last bit like it’s part of a game show.

She cocks a brow. “Question time?”

“Question tiiiiime! You have to sing it.”

“And how do you play?”

I’m actually making this game up on the spot and my mind wants to run with it in a million different directions with dares and stunts and pop quizzes and verbal shoot-outs, but I decide to keep it deceptively simple.

“I ask you a question. It can be any question I choose. You have to answer it honestly. There is no lying, no evading, no avoiding the question, no matter what it is. In return, you then get to ask me one question, only it can’t be a question I’ve previously asked you.”

She wiggles her mouth in thought and makes a “hmmmm” sound.

I go on. “We can play two times a day, morning, night, whenever the person wants to call it. And the most questions we can ask at a time are three. If you have more than three, you have to save it for later. But if I ask you three, you have to ask me three. If I ask you one, you have to ask me one.”

“Sounds simple enough,” she says carefully.

“Hey, you said you wanted to get to know me. I think by the time these two weeks are up, you’ll know me pretty well. And vice versa. Providing you’re not a liar.”

“I’m not a liar,” she says haughtily.

“Don’t get all high and mighty. According to your father, we’re currently engaged. What did you tell him anyway? You must have spoken to him after?”

“Does this count as a question?”

“No,” I tell her. “If it’s question time, you have to sing it. This is just me being curious.”

She sighs long and hard and has another sip of her scotch. When I’m done with this woman she’s going to be drinking like a fish. “I didn’t speak to him. I spoke to Schnell. His butler. And I told Schnell to tell my father to keep things on the downlow because we are hammering out the details.”