Katie
And so modest too.
Tristan
Hot enough tomelt the icebergs.
Katie
Somehow, I don’t think that line is going to work tonight.
The security center is silent when I walk in at six a.m. on Monday. No messages on the phone. No alarms going off or anything on the security cameras that indicates a break-in. My shoulders lower as I sink into the chair in front of the wall of monitors.
The coffee maker finished five minutes before I walked in, just like it does every morning. I sip my first steaming cup of many and open my email. In the three days since Tristan broke the internet, the Prince Bourbon PR machine has gone into overdrive.
Their newly hired PR fixer, George, arrived from New York yesterday. All the siblings will do media training. Tristan will spend his time this summer meeting eligible candidates, all of whom will be extensively vetted by George and then by me for security reasons. Per Tristan, he’ll fund the winning candidate’s research or charitable work, and he wants the best and brightest.
Overnight, he has become the world’s number one topic of conversation.
Videos have spawned—How to Bag a Billionaire.He’s doing an interview today for a spread inVogue. A pop star joked yesterday about jilting her boyfriend for him.
As I start scrolling through Tristan’s DMs like I do every Monday, I realize precisely how many people want to marry him.
I blink at my phone. There are thousands of messages. Selfies, nudes, pictures of people’s pets. One woman has a tattoo of his name on her knuckles.That was fast.I save the message and make a note to tell Tristan not to respond toany of them without speaking to George or me first. People are already getting weird. A minor royal explains in his DM that his family really needs the money to pay off his uncle’s gambling debts.
My stomach sinks as I scroll. As the world wakes up, messages come in faster than I can read them. People as far away as India, Australia, and China want to marry Tristan. Sarah Hawthorne has flown all the way from McMurdo Station in Antarctica to meet him tonight.
George’s team flagged her days ago as a top candidate. There’s a weird twisting inside me as I look at her profile. They were right to flag her. She’s Tristan’s type. Brilliant, confident, beautiful. I shut my eyes briefly and imagine the next two months. Endless messages like this, more weirdness from his “fans,” increasingly aggressive paparazzi. I groan.
It’s going to be a long summer. And I’m going to need backup.
The Starboard Slideis packed that night, even though it’s already well past my bedtime. I shift against the wooden railing enclosing the bar’s massive outdoor terrace and sink my chin into my jacket. I look like a bodyguard even though Tristan demanded I wear somethingcasual so you fit in.When I asked what he meant, he texted me a picture of Angelina Jolie inTomb Raider. I responded with a big middle finger. He was still laughing about it when we got in the car earlier.
We compromised. I’m wearing a leather jacket and old jeans with faded high-tops. I still have a gun under my jacket. I’m still clearly not one of them. No one is comingover to talk to me. The Starboard Slide is a hookup bar. It’s where Tristan’s crowd goes during the summer to make out in dark corners and do shots off various limbs. The prices are astronomical and the seafood towers are legendary. They even let yachts pull up directly to the bar in the summer, and servers will bring buckets of champagne to the boats. You can see the sparklers in the magnums going off on clear nights from the old dock at Crownhaven.
It might only be May, but now that it’s open season on Tristan Prince, the bar is packed. I track his shiny head of hair as he leans against the bar and chats with Sarah. She seemed extraordinary on paper and is even more extraordinary in person. She has a PhD in molecular biology and she looks like a movie star, with deep auburn waves and a tall, curvy frame. Tristan grins at something she’s saying, and I look away to scan the crowd again.
Everyone is talking about Tristan. Every gossip site, every influencer, every person at this party. My mind spins through the risks, half assessing every person who walks through the door, half watching Tristan. I’ve learned over the years to split my attention like that, and I’ve become accustomed to triggers—people who look like they’re on a mission, people who look like they are deliberately trying to avoid notice, women with extra-large handbags, people who keep their hands in their pockets.
Anything that raises the siblings’ public profile is bad. Stalkers. Extortion. Kidnapping. Sienna already regularly gets death threats. Now Tristan will too. Crazies will come out of the woodwork.
This isn’t going to be a one-woman job anymore. I watch how closely the bar crowd presses in on him. He doesn’t seem to mind, but I do.
I mind more than a bodyguard should, maybe. I shakemy head. Of course I do. Tristan is my best friend. The day I started at Crownhaven, I was fresh off losing my adoptive father, David, and I had everything I owned in a backpack. It was mostly guns and shoes, which Tristan teases me about to this day.
I was so nervous I thought I was going to be sick. I’d never taken a job on my own before, and this one wasn’t meant to be mine, it was meant to beours.My stomach squeezes at the thought of David. Gruff, well-meaning, competent. The only dad I’ve ever known.
The only person I ever called home, until Crownhaven and Tristan. He nearly knocked me off a ladder my first day on the job, then he grinned at me and asked if I wanted to be friends.
And now I’m losing him.
I dig my fingers into my palms. It had to happen sometime.
“Oh my god,” a woman next to me exclaims. I dart her a glance, but she’s just showing her friend something on her phone. Another woman wanders over with two fresh drinks in her hands.
“Look at this,” says the first woman, a brunette in a green silk dress. “It says here that the website for the spouse applications for him went down due to too much traffic last night.”
“Course it did.” The woman next to her tosses back half her champagne in one gulp. “He’s crazy hot, rich, and has all his teeth. It’s more than I can say for any member of the royal family.”
