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Chapter 21
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“No,” he said flatly, an answer I was getting far too used to hearing.
“Iskandar, I can’t date someone from the confines of this one apartment!”
“You have been doing well so far.”
“You cannot be serious!”
He lifted his phone to me so I could see it, and I half expected Arty to be on the line, waiting to lecture me as well. But instead, it was a newspaper from back home. The headline reading, “Where is Prince Galahad?” They had even chosen to use a very large, very unflattering photo of me slightly drunk from almost two years ago because nothing was ever in the past with these people.
“Over the last few weeks, no one has been able to account for the prince’s whereabouts, nor has he been seen frequenting regular hot spots,” Iskandar read for me when I didn’t even bother to look any longer. “This week, the prince was not in attendance for Her Majesty’s—”
“I understand your point. There is no need to keep reading.”
“That is why you must think of something that either requires limited social interaction or remain indoors.”
“I said I understood your point, but that does not mean I will agree,” I replied, and his shoulders fell as if he were utterly tried of me.
He very might well have been. But I did not care.
Things had been going well with Odette and I—really well—and I wanted her to have fun with me before the rest of the world only saw her as my soon-to-be bride, before the newspapers and tabloids were following us everywhere.
“I already know what it is I want us to do—”
“Well, someone looks excited.”
I had turned my back away from him for less than five seconds. There was no way it could be longer than that. And yet when I turned back to see the voice that had spoken to me, knowing it was not Iskandar’s, I came face-to-face with my brother, now on a video call on Iskandar’s phone.
“Are you serious?” I gaped now, my shoulders dropping. “You gave up and called my brother.”
“I called him,” Arty said on the line.
“Really?” I questioned, taking the phone and moving to the windows that overlooked the city. “Then, I am now positive you have cameras installed because your timing can not be this impeccable.”
“Why is that? What is the matter, little brother?” he questioned as he flipped through the papers on his desk within the very same study he’d kicked me out of the country from. There had to be at least a good thirty stacks of folders, the contents of which, only he, God, and his assistant knew. How in the world had he found the time to call me?
“Gale?”
I felt rather dumb and childish complaining as he was working, but what else could I do?
“The spy you sent with me refuses to allow me outside. Do you know how hard it is to date a woman, going around in wigs and glasses and avoiding social gatherings?”
“I thought you all went to the movies?”
I groaned, wanting to bang my head on the glass. “Arty, I am a prince! In what world is taking her to the movies significant enough? How many romance novels have you read where all the main characters do is sit around and talk in a penthouse all day? It is not even my penthouse. I go from here to her mother’s house, to maybe one other event outside under cover of darkness like I am running from the law. This is not romantic.”
“You are not a character in a romance novel, and not every day needs to be romantic.”
“Arty—”
