CHAPTER SEVEN
"How are you doing?" Princess Alea asked as she walked into the room. Alea was a lovely woman with sun-kissed skin and blue-black hair. She grinned down at her son and got to her knees to give the toddler a kiss on the forehead.
Tori looked up and sighed. Everyone asked her that question. It was the most popular query in the palace these days. Since that morning two weeks before when she'd snuck out of her building in the early morning hours and gone to her sister's flat in London, it seemed the royal family had made it their hobby to worry about her. "I'm good."
She was physically fine. Her period had come and gone, and with it any hope of having a piece of the Thurston-Hughes brothers.
She tried to tell herself that was a good thing.
Alea sat on the floor, picking up a block and setting it down in front of her son. All three of the royal boys were crawling across the playroom floor, though the youngest, Michael, was just starting out. He did that super-cute baby thing where he managed to roll over and then push himself up to his knees, then he pulsed back and forth like he was going to take off any minute and it would be so cool.
God, she loved those babies and she worried she would never have her own. She would forever be their sad maiden aunt because she loved three men who were too stupid to live. She dreamed about beating some sense into them, but then the dream always turned carnal and she woke up aching for them.
"I don't believe you," Alea said with a frown as she petted her son's head. "I know heartache when I see it and you've got it written all over your face. You haven't even tried to ditch your guard once while you've been here. That's my first bit of evidence."
"Shouldn't a smart girl know the guard is there for a reason?" She could still remember that robber in the lobby of her building telling her what he intended to do to her.
But every time she thought about that, she thought about Oliver rescuing her … and the act that had led to. For all the pain it had caused her, Tori was glad that her first time had been her choice and no one else's.
"I don't know. I still try to ditch my husbands every now and then. They drive me crazy. Love you, baby." Alea winked Landon's way. He was standing by the door, a forbidding look on his handsome face.
"I'll remember that when you want me to change diapers." His lips curled up in the sweetest grin and he winked his wife's way.
No one would wink her way. Tori was alone and she would remain that way unless she could find some way to move on. "Well, when I go back to the States next week, I won't have to worry about guards."
She had plenty of other things to worry about. Like a job. Where she would live. All of her things were in storage, and she'd given up her apartment when she'd agreed to work for a year in London.
She also had to figure out how to pay back her brothers-in-law for the large check they had undoubtedly written to Thurston-Hughes, Inc. because Tori had been too impatient to read her contract. Wherever she was going to be living, it would have to be cheap.
"Tal wants to send two guards with you when you return home." Alea helped her boy stack some blocks.
"I've told him no and I meant it." She wasn't going to be caged in. She understood why Piper needed a guard. Why Alea needed one. But Tori wasn't royal. Once she returned to Texas, no one would even know her name. There was no reason for her to have a dedicated guard who would curb her personal freedom.
Not that it mattered. She wasn't sure when she would be ready to try dating again.
"My cousin usually gets what he wants and he wants you safe," Alea explained. "You might find yourself with an at-distance guard you don't even know is there."
"As long as they stay away, I don't care."
Alea sighed and seemed to change her tactic. "Have you thought about meeting my al Bashir cousins?"
Tori shook her head vigorously. "Absolutely not. I can't handle five men. No way. No how. I thought briefly about trying with three and that blew up in my face. I can't try it with five brothers."
She hadn't even figured out where she would put five men. During sex, that is. Oh, she'd quite vividly figured out where the Thurston-Hughes brothers would go, but five seemed out of her grasp. She was a traditionalist when it came to her fantasy ménage.
"Sometimes people from outside our world don't understand it." Alea's eyes were wide and sympathetic.
"I'm not from your world. I don't always understand it, either." She definitely didn't understand how to make it work in the real world. Real was a crappy word. Bezakistan was real. It just wasn't the norm.