Her face softens. “I’m not trying to be ungrateful,” she says. “It’s just that everything has happened so fast. And you already knew about the engagement. I was the only one in that room that had the news sprung on her.”
“Well, it was a surprise to me when I got back from Afghanistan,” I say. “I haven’t been back here that long, you know. The Vegas trip was to blow off steam with my friends, American-style.”
“You were in Afghanistan?” she asks.
“In the military,” I say. “The Royal Protrovian Army.”
She studies my face for a moment. “I didn’t know they sent people like you to Afghanistan,” she says.
“People like me?” I ask, laughing.
“That is not the way I meant it,” she says, and her face colors, the flush on her cheeks deepening to an entirely different shade of red.
“Oh?” I ask. “So you meant it in a non-condescending, non-pejorative way, then.”
“I meant royal,” she says. “You know that’s what I meant. You just like giving me grief.”
That’s not all I’d like to give her. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but I don’t speak them. Not getting laid for over two weeks since I was in Vegas has me so horny I can hardly focus. That’s the problem. That’s why I’m standing here with a rock-hard cock, in front of this girl who looks at me, her face upturned, eyes telegraphing her irritation with me.
“I’ll admit that giving you grief, as you so elegantly put it, does hold a certain appeal,” I say, being deliberately patronizing.
“Sorry that I’m not as elegant as you are,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“There’s an American embassy in Protrovia,” I say. “You can get a new passport, if you need to.”
“Attempting to get rid of me now?” she asks. “You’re not going to try to convince me to stay?”
“You’re a grown woman,” I say. “If you don’t want to stick around for the fireworks this summer, I’m sure you have better things to do with your time.”
“The fireworks?” she asks, as I turn to leave. “You mean, all the drama with the wedding?”
I wasn’t referring to the wedding.
“Sure,” I say. “That, too.”
I watch as that same flush rises to her cheeks again.
I turn, leaving her standing in the hallway, whistling as I walk away.
If Belle stays for the summer, fireworks are definitely on the agenda.
CHAPTER SIX
Belle
I’m hiding out in my room. Room is an incredible understatement. I'm staying in one of the family residences in the palace – a huge suite the size of an apartment, with a ridiculous walk-in closet, filled with designer clothes and shoes that are all my size. It's everything you'd expect from a palace – opulent beyond belief, antique furniture and wine-colored fabrics and gold-gilded accessories.
I slept like the dead last night, longer than I’ve slept in years. And I’ve spent all day holed up in my room, doing my best to pretend none of this is actually happening.
I’ve avoided everything on the agenda today.
There is literally an agenda – an actual program, like you’d get at a wedding or a graduation. It’s printed on delicate cream-colored paper and embossed with the royal crest in the background.
I wonder if they do this every day, whether if they pass out an itinerary, a schedule of events to be adhered to, expectations to be met.
It’s completely and utterly ridiculous.
This entire thing is ludicrous.
I’m not a princess, not even close. Sure, I’m a Kensington – my family's name is recognizable in certain circles – but I'm nowhere near being royalty.
My father was the child of Polish immigrants who changed their family name from Kedzierski to Kensington when they arrived in America. Oliver Kensington started working when he was eight, a shoeshine business on a New York sidewalk before going to school in the mornings. He made his first million dollars before he was twenty. By then, it was real estate, not shoe shining.
My mother was his high school sweetheart. When I was a kid, I remember them having late night candlelit dinners every Friday night in our living room. Sometimes it would be after an event – charity or business something-or-other -- and sometimes there was no event at all. I'd sneak out of my room and hide around the corner, watching them as they held hands and my mother giggled like a schoolgirl, talking to him.
"You get one great love in life, kiddo," he told me once. "If you're lucky. So you have to make it count. Remember that."
Everything changed after my father died. My mother threw herself into charities, social functions, her status. She dived into advancing the Kensington name. I thought it was her way of remembering him, but at some point all of that stuff became an end in and of itself.