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“That’s all I have,” I said, closing my notebook. “Thank you for making the time for me, I know this isn’t something you do regularly.”
“I couldn’t say no,” he said, and I froze for a moment, notebook halfway to my bag. “It’s the least I could do for Natalie.”
Of course.Whatever that thing we had shared at the gala was–the sparklers under my skin, his wide eyes when our hands touched–it didn’t extend tohereandnowandme. It wasn’t forElla.
He walked me to the door, carefully distant as I tried to surreptitiously peer into the doorways we passed: a dark library, with shelves and shelves of mismatched books; a dining room, the table set with an unusual seven chairs; a bright living room with an elegant chess set displayed on a side table. I was not sad, exactly, to be leaving my interview, but… resigned, maybe. My one night of playing princess hadn’t led me to my prince charming–I cringed at the bad pun–after all.
At the door, he paused, his eyes seeking out mine, a flicker of light caught in them as his polite smile faded, just for a moment. “Thankyou, Ms. Booker. For agreeing to do the interview. I… I wasn’t sure if I would see you again, after the gala.”
What am I supposed to say to that?I wondered, but I didn’t have to respond. He had already turned to the door, pulling it open slightly with one hand as he reached for mine with his other. I put my own hand out, unthinking, instinctually, and–
Electricity. That same feeling of sparklers, of fizzing champagne, of warmth and heat and rightness–
And I could tell that he felt it too, it was in the part of his lips, in his softening face, his widening pupils. I was leaning in toward him once again. What was it about him that drew me like a magnet? Like I was a spinning compass, and he was true north? Whatever it was… and the thought brought a flutter of hope to my chest–it was the same for him. The polite and professional persona from the interview had melted away under the incandescent heat of our touch, leaving just… Charlie.
But I, too, was stilljust Ella. I pulled my hand away, knowing it would hurt, but still took me unawares. I felt the loss of his touch as if my hand had come away with his, the end of my limb feeling empty and lost. I clenched my fist at my side, willing away the tingling sensation that still lingered, as if encouraging me to press my hand back into his, to entwine our fingers. To step closer to him, to wrap my arms around his enticing torso, to tilt my face up and feel that heat and spark on my lips as they pressed to his…
I needed to leave. Sooner rather than later. Preferably now. As he stood stunned, I pushed through the half-opened door and into the brisk evening air. The sun hung low in the sky and made his blond hair glow as he stepped onto the stoop after me, his body crowding mine, the space between us both too little and too much.
“Wait, Ms. Booker–Ella,”he said, my name sounding like a sigh from his lips. “I know I’m overstepping here, but–” my heart stopped. “Would you–actually, I don’t know if your professional ethics say you can’t, and if so, I respect that. But would you be interested in dinner? Tomorrow night?”
With the palm and fingers of my right hand still sparkling from his touch, and despite my better judgment, I did the only thing I could bear to do.
I said yes.
Charlie
I knewI had miscalculated as soon as Lara–Ella–Ms. Booker–showed up at the townhouse.
I had thought that it would be more comfortable to meet here, in the privacy of my own home, rather than at a coffee shop or rented conference room, but it only took a moment for me to realize how wrong I had been. Specifically the moment just after I picked my jaw up off the floor but before I redirected us from the living room, where I had originally intended to do the interview, to the kitchen, hoping for fewer antiques and fine art.Thatwas the moment in which I saw Ella’s eyes widen for the second time in the span of a few minutes as she sawmy fucking house.
Or, rather–my family’s house. And everything that meant.
Because, yeah, this wasn’t Jack’sestate, but as with everything Prince Brothers, this had been–still was–a shared space, a family space. Ourpack den, as it were: big enough for eight people to live comfortably, and fancy enough to entertain royalty, thanks to my mother’s interior decorating.
And it was a house befitting the name I had made for myself in the press, I guessed. Seen from an outsider, it probably did look like the home of aThirty under Thirty tech mogul, arising star,whatever else they called me. Ella, I’m sure, thought that this wasmyhouse, she had no way of knowing otherwise. Didn’t know that, left to my own devices, I would never have picked the gaudy gold-framed modern art or the antique velvet sofas, it was just that we’d never redecorated after my father had died. Was it Jack’s tendency (this, also inherited from our father) to preserve all things John Prince Sr. for some unknown posterity? Or was it just inertia that kept the house this way? After all, the pieces here were just background noise to me now, I barely saw them. She didn’t know the house wasn’tme.
Well–it was. In many ways, it was more me than any anonymous penthouse apartment or suburban McMansion could ever be. I had never, even in my most surly teenage years, even during my college years, when most of my classmates were slumming in shitty apartments or dorms, considered moving out of the townhouse. It was my home. But, I was quickly realizing, watching Ella’s reporter eyeballs swivel from gilt-framed painting to antique french side chair, that was forthem.For my brothers, who had also grown up here, for whom this house was just… the townhouse. The place we did homework, and fought, and all the other stupid shit a bunch of boys left to themselves get up to. Even if I occasionally–okay, often–felt stifled by my brothers and our family name, they were still myfamily. I had always felt lucky to have them all so close. But now, they had all moved out, Jack to the old house, Rose and Richard to their cottage, Philip and Margaret to their penthouse, and the townhouse was, for all intents and purposes, my house.
I couldn’t focus on the interview, my brain already scattered. There was an omega–myomega–in my kitchen, her subtle peachy scent slowly filling the room, her hair pulled neatly away from her face allowing me to see her minute expressions. And then there was my own mortification at our surroundings, that we were sitting in this kitchen in this house that had never felt more like my dad’s house and less like mine.
And then she started asking me her damn questions, and my mouth got all tangled up and I insulted her fucking magazine right to her gorgeous face and–I just couldn’t. I hid. I spewed my rote answers, told my little charming anecdotes, and drank Philip’s expensive imported-from-France glass-bottle mineral water and Ifit right into my fucking house. Here I was, Charlie Prince, youngest of the Prince brothers, in the Prince brothers’ townhouse, drinking stupid water and telling stupid jokes.
The worst part was that at leastI knewthat Ella had lied.
She didn’t know I was as bad as her. That I didn’t have to give a false name to be someone I wasn’t. I did it all the fucking time.
When Philip had warned me–she lied to you, she’s a reporter, she works atCityStyle–I had shrugged him off, but his intimation that Elizabeth wasn’t quite right had been nagging at me. I knew she was the one. I could feel it. But that didn’t mean thatsheknew. People weren’t brought up to believe in true mates and fate and fairytale love anymore. As a culture we believed inprogress, infact, and inindependenceabove all else. In the routine prescription of suppressants, and scent blocking/volumizing/moisturizing shampoos. We had foregone packs, and replaced the close ties of packmates with colleagues and drinking buddies and “office wives” and only saw our far-flung families at weddings and funerals.
So although my brothers and I found strength in our pack bond, found comfort in the structure of head alpha, head omega, pack hierarchy, found hope and joy in the promise of a true mate, I knew that to someone not brought up this way, it was… weird. Backwards. Even… dangerous. Our family had always toed the line of respectability. Money helped, of course–although my parent’s money, now ours, had also always had an air of “not-quite-respectable” itself, having come from my mother’s family in France, wherethey did things differently, polite onlookers would say. I had seen pictures of her and had blushed at the low cut dresses she wore even with a toddler holding one hand, a slightly older child holding the other, not to mention theveryvisible mating mark.
And now, having Ella, areporter, asking me questions at my kitchen island with pencil and notebook in hand, felt much more real–more dangerous–than flirting with Lara, magazine editor, at a gala. Had Philip been right? Shehadlied to me, after all, and although I knew she could feel what I felt, I could see in her expression when I opened the door, I had no way of knowing if she knew what that feeling meant. What if she was just a reporter, and was leveraging the way she made me feel to…
To do what? Get the dirt on my family? The thought was absurd, and yet, there it was, lodged in the back of my skull even as I pasted a likable smile on my face and prattled on about Natalie, her successes, our relationship.
I was so stuck in my head that I almost didn’t realize that I was showing her out, that we had gotten to the door. That I was thanking her for the interview, still in Charlie Prince mode, holding out my hand to shake hers.
All of it fell away as her hand met mine, and I experienced that brilliant, blinding clarity of our bodies touching.
