Will You (Not) Marry Me

WILL YOU (NOT) MARRY ME A Royal Baby Romance HOLLY RAYNER CONTENTS Copyright 1. Eva 2. Eva 3. Finn 4. Eva 5. Eva 6. Finn 7. Finn 8. Eva 9. Finn 10. Eva 11. Finn 12. Eva 13. Eva 14. Eva 15. Eva 16. Eva 17. Finn 18. Eva 19. Finn 20. Eva Epilogue Also by Holly Rayner Copyright 2023 by Holly Rayner All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author. All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental. CHAPTER 1 EVA Eva trudged home with a grin on her face, her camera bag slung over one shoulder and a heavy lighting stand in each hand. Pedestrians didn’t move out of her way as she wove her way along the sidewalk. They were New Yorkers. They had places to be too, after all, so she did her best not to accidentally smack any passersby in the face with her equipment. She’d just finished her first ever professional shoot as a photographer and was wrecked from setting up and pulling everything down herself in record time, and she may have fractured her finger from getting jammed in a C-stand that had been holding up a backdrop; she wasn’t sure yet. She was grinning anyway because it had been her first ever paid shoot. Had she been paid a lot? No. But still, it was something. It was a foot in the door and a legitimate job to add to her resume. A job that she had gotten through hard work, not through family connections or her background. Eva had done it all on her own. So even though it had been a long day and she was carrying all of her equipment home by hand, she couldn’t stop the smile lighting up her face. Would it have been easier and wiser to just get a cab home? Yes. A thousand times yes. But the meager fee she’d made on the shoot would have gone straight to cab fare, and she was determined to make the most of every penny. She was determined, overall, to be self-sufficient. Every labored step back to her apartment was a step that she had decided to take herself. Just like every other normal person. An independent, self-funded step. Eva had spent the last four years studying photography at the New York Academy of Fine Arts and Film. NYAFAF was an unfortunate acronym, but it was one of the best schools out there for learning her craft. She’d dabbled in painting, sculpture and computer graphics along the way to earn credit, but her heart had been set on photography ever since her twelfth birthday, when her uncle had gifted her a camera. It was the first time she’d realized she could have a job, a career, that she enjoyed and not just follow the well-trodden path laid out before her by her family. Her royal family. That one little word in the middle always tended to make a world of difference. Eva was the second child of the king of Skärov. Her older brother, Magnus, was the one in line for the throne, but Eva had been raised with her own sense of duty to her family and country. The Littlest Princess is what the press had dubbed her twenty-four years ago when she’d been born prematurely in the private wing of the hospital, photographers literally camping outside on the street hoping to capture an image of her and her parents leaving for home. Maybe that’s why she loved photography so much; she’d heard the click and flash of cameras since her earliest moments. It’s just that she preferred to be behind the camera, not in front of it. Even though she wasn’t first in line, and quite frankly it was never likely that she’d be crowned leader of their tiny little country, towards the end of her teens the public exposure and duty had started to wear on her. In a fit of independence, she’d applied to the arts academy of her dreams to learn photography, not expecting to get in but feeling rebellious in just doing something without asking permission first. Her dad was a Skärov native, of course, but her mother had been born and raised in the US, the daughter of a stupidly wealthy business magnate who was royalty in his own way. So Eva had dual citizenship, and there was no reason she couldn’t leave Skärov to go study in the States. Those were the arguments she’d prepared for her parents anyway when they actually let her into the school. So getting into the arts college had been relatively straightforward… The tricky part had been figuring out how to tell her family that she wanted to move, on her own, halfway across the world to get a degree that they all saw as essentially useless. It had gone down surprisingly well, if a little underwhelming. It wasn’t that her family had been against her going to New York to do an arts degree. But they hadn’t exactly been congratulatory about it either. To them, Eva was just killing time in her early twenties until she was required to take part in the usual lineup of royal duties that awaited them all. Hosting and attending charity events and galas. Touring around opening buildings or giving speeches and press releases. Eva had been prepared her whole life for it, but since moving out on her own, she’d learned how big the world really was. How many different opportunities there were. Not that she’d begrudge donning the role of dutiful princess now and again, but… now