Page 13 of The Bad Boy Prince in Love

“I’m sorry if you find it disappointing,” she added.

Luke opened his mouth slowly, deciding what to say.“I was supposed to be a pretend boyfriend?”

“Yes!”

“Me?”He scratched the back of his head, almost unable to cope with the situation.Of course, she didn’t know he was a royal prince, but still, a guy like him had never been used as a fake boyfriend before.In fact, women would kill to make him their real boyfriend, not that they ever could.Did she have no interest in him at all?

“There’s no one else standing here.”

That was true.They were in the middle of a green field with a few cows lazing here and there.How did his life come to this?True, being a cowboy had been his childhood dream, but not if it meant the local women were immune to his charm.

Maybe it was time to reconsider his playboy lifestyle, get back to work as the tireless Miss Santer would no doubt suggest, be more mature.

No, that sounded like a fate worse than death.

Hallie was still standing there, expecting him to say something.

“I agreed to this?”he asked, grimacing with disdain.

“Yeah, you were pretty out of it at the time.I’m really sorry.I was going to ask you to stay on, but you’re obviously not okay with this.”

“No, it’s fine,” he said, trying to regain some of his polish, at least on the outside.

“You can be honest,” Hallie entreated, “You’re probably thinking you want to get out of here.”

“There you go again, trying to guess what I’m thinking.I’m telling you, it’s fine.”

On the inside, he was seething.But he had lots of practice concealing his emotions, and his outward appearance of calm should have been fairly reassuring.

Hallie was still eyeing him with some doubt.

“Anyway,” he said, “My stuff won’t be delivered until tomorrow morning, so I’ll stay until then.”

“Great!”Hallie said, her face brightening.Maybe she was still hoping to rope him into being her fake boyfriend, but if that was her plan, she had another thing coming.

“I’m going to go look around the ranch, if you don’t mind,” he said.

“I’ll give you a tour,” she offered.

“Oh, thank you,” he replied in his most polite fashion, even though he couldn’t wait to be away from this annoying woman who had the audacity to reject him.

She took him through the big stables, where he met many horses, and Hallie pointed out some of her favorites.Here, he also met a couple of ranch hands, who were rolling wheelbarrows filled with straw into the stalls.

“This is Diego,” Hallie said, introducing a cheerful-looking guy in his thirties.“And Johnny,” she pointed out a stocky teenager in a tattered hat.“Guys, this is Luke, he’ll be staying with us for a while.”

Not if I can help it, Luke thought.

Hallie’s sister and her husband walked in, though it didn’t look like they were doing anything useful.

“You’ve already met Terry and Bill,” Hallie continued.“They have their own house over there.”

She pointed to a smaller house, built from the same cream-colored limestone as the main family home.

“Would you like to go for a ride around the property?”Hallie asked.

“No, thank you, I don’t have any riding clothes,” Luke said.“Besides, you probably can’t wait to tell your mother about the successful deal you made.”

“I can’t believe mama asked you to buy cattle,” Terry grumbled.“I thought I was going to do it.”