“With me?” Johan looked at Nya and explained, “Herr Wagner is the neighbor who keeps Grand-mère updated on my exploits and how much he disapproves of them. My bad behavior is judged on the Wagner scale around here.”

“Well, he was all set to vote no in the referendum, but he said he appreciates a royal who wasn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves and get his fists bruised. He’s reconsidering now.”

“Really?” Johan ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not as if I’m even part of the monarchy. I’m just—”

Grand-mère waved her hand through the air over the cookies, as if waving away an annoying insect.

“Enough of this, Johan. When people think of Liechtienbourg they think of two people first—your mother and then you. Stop doing her memory a disservice by saying you are not a part of the family she created, and acting like you don’t carry on her legacy.” She shook her head. “Just like your father, you know that? Always acting like he was some outsider who didn’t fit in, when if he paid attention he would have seen—”

She slammed her mouth shut, shaking her head in annoyance as she rocked back and forth in her seat.

“Let me get a snowpack for your hand,” she said suddenly, which seemed to mean she wasn’t mad anymore but also regretted having shown emotion in front of guests and was searching for an excuse to leave.

“I’m fine, Grand-mère. Thank you.” He bit into one of the gingerbread cookies she’d baked. “Well, I’m not exactly proud of my outburst but I guess it hasn’t completely ruined everything.”

Grand-mère scowled at his knuckles as he reached for a slice of ham. “Why did you do it?”

“I thought Nya and Lukas were in danger,” he said.

“Nya and Lukas?” She looked at Nya and her features softened. “When is the wedding?”

“SHE SEEMED TO like me,” Nya said on the ride back. It was afternoon, but beginning to darken in this more wooded mountainous area.

“Better than your grandmother liked me,” he said, expecting Nya to smile. But she looked deep in thought, as she had been since they’d left.

“Our grandparents think we’re really engaged,” she said quietly. “I hate knowing how upset they’ll be if they find out we lied.”

Johan had been thinking the same. He didn’t lie to people he cared about, but he’d let Grand-mère believe Nya was really his. It had felt too good, too real. He could have taken Nya anywhere, but he’d wanted his grandmother to meet her, had wanted Nya to see this one part of his life that had nothing to do with being a tabloid prince. He’d wanted them to get along, and they’d spent a lunch laughing and talking, not even needing Johan to keep the conversation going.

It had felt like . . . a happy ending. And it had been a lie.

“Then don’t let them find out,” he said. His voice was all prickly wit, no gentleness—he could feel her need for comfort, for something more, but there was no way for him to safely respond without revealing too much.

Because underneath their happy meeting with Grand-mère was the unpleasant fact that he couldn’t stop thinking of the heart-stopping fear that had lanced him when he saw Arschlocher looming over Nya. A million awful scenarios had flashed in his mind, each ending with loss.

Johan didn’t think his heart could take that loss. He knew it couldn’t. It was why he’d run from Nya from the start, and why he needed to run again.

“Okay,” she said.

He focused on the road in front of him, on the clutch and the stick, anything but the unignorable fact that he didn’t want to lose her, and yet he would.

“What will you do if the people vote you out?” she asked, somehow undeterred by his behavior.

“Well, I’ve had several offers to join those celebrity bachelor shows, and they pay well,” he said flippantly. This was the moment where she learned he wasn’t nice after all, despite her insistence. Where he picked up the kryptonite that was his affection for her and finally hurled it toward the sun. “It seems like a perfect match for my skill set.”

“Yes. Very popular, those shows.” This wasn’t her normal cheeriness. It was forced. “You would bring in many ratings. And you are quite good at pretending to care for people.”

“That I am.” Johan wished that the opposition leader he’d fought earlier had gotten a punch in because he deserved one.

They’d gone from laughing comfortably in his grandmother’s small dining room to this stifling tension in the car. This was why he didn’t do love. This was why he shouldn’t have followed her to that gazebo.

“I suppose I’ll find a teaching job somewhere,” she said. “Maybe in America, or one of those other countries where the educational system is being torn down.”

“Do you really want to teach?” he asked. “You won’t shock very many people with that.”

“Not as much as you want to be surrounded by women vying for your . . . eggplant emoji!” Nya turned so that she was facing out of the window, away from him. “What is your problem?”

Her anger was sudden and knocked his legs from under him like one of his grand-mère’s rampaging pigs.

“I’m an ass,” he said, then sighed. “I don’t know what I’ll do. My main priority is Lukas, and that’s hard for me to talk about right now so I just—”