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“So, how many was that again?” I ask from where I’m lying in bed, propped up on an elbow watching Lola pack.
“Five.” She fires a pair of jean cut-offs at my face. “But the last two don’t count because they were overtime.”
“You could crawl back in here. I could try again—see if I can get my time down. Practice makes perfect, or so they say.”
“And here the gossip rags always say Kian’s the sex maniac. I think they’ve had the wrong brother all along.”
“Yeah, well, he’s settled down quite a bit since falling for Savvy and taking on the mantle of leadership. Someone’s got to give the gossip rags something to write about.”
“Yes, God forbid they don’t have the exploits of at least one of Wildemar’s Royal Hotnesses to write about. Whatever would they do?”
“Start making up shit about how Savvy and Kian’s relationship is in trouble, probably. Publish pics of him and some random women that were taken years ago and attribute them to the present. The paps excel at shit like that.”
“Wow. Bitter much?”
I think about all the stories they ran about my abduction, about the conjecture regarding what kind of torture I suffered and how a soft guy like myself probably gave up all the state secrets without much of a fight. After all, who can trust royalty? All that inbreeding makes us dodgy. I’m pretty sure it was the Daily Inquirer that ran that last story…“Maybe a little bitter.”
“Just maybe, huh?” She picks up the last piece of clothing on the floor and folds it neatly into her suitcase.
As she snatches back the cut-offs and shoves it in with the rest, I reluctantly roll out of bed and start to get dressed. If we’re going to argue, I’d prefer to be dressed when we do it.
“What do you say you stick around Wildemar for a few more days instead of going to Paris this afternoon?” I ask as I shrug into my shirt.
“I thought we already covered this.” Her answer is mild as she zips up her behemoth of a suitcase, like she thinks I’m still joking around.
“I’m serious. I want you to stay and I can make it worth your while.”
That gets her attention. “Are you offering to pay me to stay here and sleep with you?” She still sounds amused.
“Not exactly. I was just thinking that—”
“Not…exactly?” she interrupts. And now the amusement has faded significantly, her blue eyes clouding up with annoyance and something else as she narrows them at me. “Which part?”
“Which…part?” It’s beginning to sound like there’s an echo in here.
“Which part didn’t you mean, exactly?” Lola asks, her tone so syrupy sweet I have to fight the urge to check for a knife between my ribs. “The paying me to stay here or the paying me to sleep with you?”
The DANGER signs are big and loud and blinking bright red behind my eyes now, but it’s too late to walk away. Besides, I may be a lot of things, but a coward isn’t one of them. “Both. Neither.”
“Well? Which one is it?” Her eyes are nothing but slits at this point. “Both? Or neither?”
“I really don’t want you to go to Paris. I want you to stay here so we can see what this thing between us is.” The words come out before I know I’m going to say them, which almost never happens to me. I was taught at an early age to always think before I speak—one of those necessary traits in a future king—and I’ve never had a problem with it before.
But there’s something about Lola that loosens my tongue, that makes me say what I really feel. Then again, I do a lot of things around Lola that I don’t do with anyone else.
“You…don’t want me to go?” Her eyes are wide, which is far from unexpected considering this thing between us is
supposed to be just for publicity. And considering the way my heart just started beating like a jackhammer.
Which, okay. Maybe there’s a little coward buried deep…I start to backtrack. “I mean, if you run off to Paris, how are we going to sell our new relationship to the press?”
“Like it’s a real relationship? One where both people have work commitments and other responsibilities and parts of their lives that exist separate from each other?”
I can’t help laughing. “You obviously don’t get how this paparazzi thing works.”
“If you think pointing out my lack of knowledge is going to upset me, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I was fine living my whole life without attracting the attention of overzealous paps.”
“And then you met me.”
