Rothman Royals Series Bundle

They say some children are born with silver spoons in their mouths. I wasn’t one of those children.

I am Amalie Rothman, and I was born with a crown on my head.

I assume those silver spoons are figurative, unless there are strange goings-on in certain quarters involving newborns and high-end cutlery. But the crown on my head was entirely literal. My mother has a photograph of me, only one hour old and wearing a tiara, in her private lounge to prove it.

She had the same picture made of my older brother and my two younger sisters. She’s very proud of my father’s royal lineage. My parents kept having children, hoping for a spare heir after my brother Henry, but they only ended up with more daughters. Not that extra princesses of Villemont are useless. After all, there are plenty of dull, unattractive men of distinction to marry us off to.
For centuries that has been the primary royal duty of a princess of Villemont—to marry whomever is most advantageous to their family and country.

My mother had a certain Edward Farmingham Channing IV in mind for my future husband. He wasn’t noble, but he was the heir to a multibillion-dollar fortune. Noble blood is well and good, but money is even better.

At least it is if you are a Rothman.

Four years ago, when I was twenty, I dug in my heels and told my mother I wasn’t going to marry the man. I wanted to go to university and study art instead. After endless rounds of debate and argument, I finally announced I was leaving whether she wanted me to or not. She still says I ran away, although all I did was move to Minneapolis for college to study under a specific art history professor who’d published books I loved. I’d always assumed I’d return home when I graduated.

That was how I ended up getting whistled at in the hallway of my apartment building.

I was unlocking my door, but I paused when I heard the wolf whistle. It was so out of place and so unexpected that it took me a minute to even recognize.

I finally turned my head to see Jack Watson grinning at me from down the hall.

“Did you whistle at me?” I asked, trying not to smile back as he approached.

Jack lived in the apartment next door, and he wasn’t anything like the men I was used to, who were all well-groomed, overeducated, and oozing a kind of privileged ennui. Jack was big and handsome with rough edges and a blunt candor that always surprised me. I’d known him since he moved into the building last year although we only ever interacted in the hall or the parking garage.
“I did,” he admitted, his eyes traveling up and down my body with open appreciation. “You look good.”

It was an unseasonably warm day for April, so I was wearing a little green sundress. I thought I’d looked pretty when I finished dressing that morning, and it was nice that Jack thought so too. “But why did you whistle?”