A Prince on Paper (Reluctant Royals #3)(7)

Control.

But when he’d asked her to come to bed, his joke had been a need beyond his control, and it hadn’t been funny. It had been ungentlemanly, rude, and if another man had done the same in his presence Johan would have decked him, or at least embarrassed the hell out of him. He was left feeling a bit disoriented. Bad Boy Jo-Jo was a persona that he used to protect himself and those he loved; he didn’t like how easily he had slipped on that mask with Nya, how reflexively he’d reached for crassness and ended up hurting her.

Maybe it was the stress. Or maybe he’d really needed a cuddle right then, and Bulgom Pamplemousse von Bearstein simply hadn’t been enough.

It was that day. D-day, and not the Normandy one. Death Day.

He grabbed a lock of hair and twisted, the movement a tic he’d never outgrown but had learned to mask with a seductive sweep of his fingers through his carefully tousled mane.

There were few things that upset him—or rather, there were few things he allowed himself to be upset about—but even he couldn’t fake cool detachment from something as brutal as this.

Back home, the news would be replaying snippets from his mother’s funeral, and ten years wasn’t nearly enough time to make reliving that bearable. When, at seventeen, his life had fallen apart—and the adhesive that had joined him to his blended family had been suddenly ripped away—he’d been told that it would hurt less with time. Even then he’d known it was a lie. You couldn’t love someone as much as he’d loved his mother—you couldn’t be loved by someone as much as he’d been loved by her—and ever stop hurting at their loss. He managed, but he never moved on.

He’d usually spend this day distracting his brother, Lukas, the actual heir to the Liechtienbourgian crown, who had been only seven when their mother passed away. Johan had dedicated his life to making sure that Lukas was loved as Johan had been loved and was protected how Johan hadn’t been. He’d taught Lukas all the ways to be liked and accepted by his peers, how to be the right kind of boy, one who didn’t cry and prefer books to people. He’d pushed Lukas from under the constant burden of the spotlight shone by voracious royal watchers, taking it onto himself. But Lukas was seventeen now, old enough to make his own plans, and had decided he wanted to hold a memorial for their mother.

Johan wasn’t going to display his pain for public consumption ever again, and he couldn’t put on his Bad Boy Jo-Jo act at his mother’s memorial, so he’d been relieved when Thabiso’s wedding festivities had provided him with an out.

In the plane’s bedroom, when he’d awoken with the ragged wound of loss gaping within him and the woman he desired in his arms, that infuriatingly needy part of him had decided to shoot its shot in the worst way possible.

He groaned and sank deeper into his seat.

All for the best. He could certainly avoid her over the next few days, but ignoring her would be next to impossible. Repelling her would have to suffice. She’d lashed out at him in anger, but she’d been ready to forgive him, by the end. He’d watched her for long enough to know that she was too good, too gentle, for a man like him.

He knew what could happen to women like that.

I’ll be okay, Jo-Jo. It’s just a bit of fatigue. All I need is some vitamin C, jah?

He pulled his tablet from the travel bag he’d stashed in an overhead compartment when he’d boarded, then logged into the spreadsheet he shared with Greta, the assistant in charge of handling his jet-setting playboy schedule, his official social media presence, his paparazzi herding—and his charitable enterprises.

Johan’s mother hadn’t been wealthy; that was what had made her and King Linus’s love story such irresistible fodder for highbrow journals and tabloids alike. But between the insurance payout for her untimely death, the money she’d arranged to be bequeathed to him since he wasn’t entitled to the royal riches, the allowance given to him by Linus, and a fantastic financial advisor, Johan had more assets than he would ever know what to do with.

Some of that went toward his expensive clothing, personal trainers, and top-of-the-line hair care products, but he received many things for free—he was a trend disseminator, which was apparently the “manly” term for influencer.

Most of his money was used to fund the growing network of charitable organizations he contributed to and the employees who helped him with the endeavor, like his assistant Greta. Much of his travel was attending fund-raisers for those charities, but when he was on the front page every week for some new possible scandal, those events were usually seen as PR stunts to make up for his misdeeds. And that was how he preferred it.

We do not do good to be praised for it, Jo-Jo, but because one good deed is like a ripple in the water. You have no idea how far one ripple will spread, or who it will reach.

The familiar anger at the unfairness of his mother’s passing lunged up in him at the memory of her words, at the reality that her ripples had been stilled forever, but he tamped it down with practiced efficiency.

The charities were something he didn’t share with the press, and he’d publicly deny any such schmaltzy sentiment behind his link to them, of course, but his mother’s words had never left him. He wasn’t trying to make her proud, even if she was looking down on him from somewhere. She didn’t—hadn’t—believed in kindness for the accolades they would bring, and neither did he. He was making ripples for the same reason Mother had: because the world needed ripples—in the absence of her kindness, it needed waves—and he would do what he could to create them.