All she cared about was her cars.
According to her family, cars were all she had ever cared about.
But if she and the Prince were planning a marriage with an expiration date, she was getting it down in writing that her babies stayed with her when that date arrived.
“My private fleet is a collection of priceless one-of-a-kind vehicles. How do I know this isn’t just some elaborate scheme to take them from me?”
Just because he was wealthy beyond limit and royal did not mean that he was above trickery.
For years now, Rita had worked among the rich and famous, and in those years and from those people, she had seen some of the most outrageous attempts to get more than their fair share out of her for free. Worse yet, were those who had outright tried to steal from her.
Reluctant as she was to think cynically about the people she met, as a young brown female innovator operating in mostly male-dominated realms, Rita had learned that a vast majority of the powerful men that she encountered were, at the very least, going to try to intimidate her, and that the only way to combat it was to look past their facades, speak clearly and firmly, and stand up for herself.
The suspicious edge leaving him, the Prince’s eyes heated once again. “If you want one, I’ll have one drawn up immediately, ensuring that every single one of your vehicles, sans the Ferrari, which is mine, and the one I select, as you so generously offered, remains your own.”
Rita frowned, unsurprised that he would hold her to the offer of his choice from her selection, even after he had raised her offer to this more audacious deal himself.
“I must continue my work,” she said, the outcome of the entire agreement hinging on this one point.
She had not let her future husband and in-laws, nor her own father, bar her from pursuing her calling, and she would not let the Prince do so, either.
He nodded without hesitation. “Of course. Your work is the thing that makes any of this make sense. You will have your own garage in Hayat, preferably equipped to your most extravagant and expensive whim and delight.”
He didn’t have to know her well to know that he offered her the kind of thing that only a very few men in the world could—and that she would have a hard time resisting.
Her kind of garage didn’t come cheap.
But he doesn’t know you, a cautionary internal voice reiterated.
But for the first sixteen years of her life, she had known that there was a great possibility that her husband would not know her until their wedding day, as had been the case for her own parents.
The Prince might be a stranger, but unlike the marriage she had thought she was going to have back then, beyond residence and legal status, he was not asking her to make any significant changes to her life or person.
And while romance might not be on the table, whatwas, was a marriage that did not expect her to sacrifice herself to anything but a tepid dynamic.
That was certainly more appealing than familiarity or love.
In Rita’s experience, love demanded too much—was conditional and controlling. Love clipped the wings and drained the batteries, using the heart to trap and coerce. Love left no room for creativity or innovation or freedom.
Instead of intimacy with an overbearing known, she could marry a stranger and continue her life of celibacy and fulfilling work alongside.
She could marry a man who was content to let her remain entirely as she was right now.
“In sum,” the Prince concluded his offer, his voice as convincing as any shaitan’s, “if you agree to be my bride, you remain free to continue your work, your body remains your own, and you retain all but the agreed-upon vehicles in your fleet. And, following a few lavish years abroad, your life will once again be your own. Only you will have gained invaluable contacts and an incredible story to tell.”
When she had been given the choice as a young woman between the cold comfort of trying to change the world and the warmth and love and devotion of starting her own family, Rita had chosen the former.
Now she was faced with a similar choice: a cold marriage that came with a real shot at changing the world, or staying right where she was as NECTAR, chipping away at her dream alone, one commission at a time.
Licking her lips, Rita drew in a deep breath and said, “I’ll do it.”
Like a pair of Venuses in the night sky, triumph lit the prince’s already-glowing eyes further still. His lips carried his mouth into a genuine, uncontrolled, smile—one that revealed bright, straight teeth.
And then he laughed.
The sound was round and full and echoed in her garage, swirling around Rita like a fairy godmother’s magic, changing her irrevocably as if this were the beginning of an adventure and not a marriage of strangers.
When his mini solar flare began to settle, his eyes still glowing, his smile still wide, he said, “To Rita, the motorhead princess.” Raising an invisible glass to her, he added, “I am certain that this is the beginning of a beautiful arrangement.”