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“Of course,” Teresa replied. “And, obviously, I know you’re aware of my situation with my family.”
Alex gave her a short nod, hoping Teresa would fill in the blanks.
“My ex-wife and my children?”
“Oh, right,” Alex said.
“We share custody. She has them Monday through Thursday, and I get them Friday through Sunday most weeks. It’s new and complicated, but we’re working through it. I’ll have them for the match as I’d planned to bring them.”
“All right,” Alex said.
“Would that still be okay? They’d love to meet the Princess. I have a nanny who will take them home after, so we can go for our drink if your schedule permits.”
“Of course,” Alex told her, and Teresa’s smile widened before she took another drink.
Alex really should be having a better time. She’d known about Teresa’s ex-wife and their children. Teresa had been married for eleven years and had a nine-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl. Alex couldn’t remember their names at the moment, and surprisingly, Teresa hadn’t brought them up all night until right now. Alex had suspected their entire night would be filled with talk of the woman’s ex, since the divorce had only been finalized nine months prior, or of her children. In retrospect, that might have been better than what she’d actually spent all night talking about. Teresa didn’t work. She didn’t have to as a Duchess, which Alex didn’t mind. Technically,shedidn’t work, either, and neither would her future wife. Teresa ran events for various charities in her role as patron, and she’d spent much of their dinner talking about florists she loved and hated and the proper color palette for events based on the events themselves. For example, she’d never suggest beige for any event, and black and white were overplayed for their casino nights.
Alex had had enough of those events. She’d been attending them for as long as she could remember, and as the heir to the throne, she’d be attending them for the rest of her life. She didn’t really want a first-date discussion to be about the behind-the-scenes, but she hadn’t really presented her own topics for discussion, either, so this whole miserable attempt at a date, which had been her mother’s idea, had been all her fault.
When Alex returned to her house that night and crawled into bed, she wasn’t thinking about Teresa, the beautiful Duchess who was clearly interested in her. She was thinking about baby spit-up and the look on Bexley’s face when she’d realized it was all over her sweater. Alex was thinking about how she’d been so close to taking that towel and helping Bexley wipe it off.
“What is wrong with me?” she voiced into the silence with an exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes at herself.
CHAPTER 2
Bexley did love her job, but her recent promotion to oversee research for the Kansas Center for Speech Therapy meant that she had less time to spend with the kids she so enjoyed helping. Ever since she had earned her master’s degree, she loved helping kids who just wanted to be able to get their words out. She’d helped so many in her young career, and even though it hadn’t been necessary for her to get a job, Bexley had wanted to go for her Ph.D. She had always loved learning about her field and knew she could make even more of a difference if she earned her doctorate. It had taken a lot of work and a lot of time, but the doctorate had given her the opportunities she’d wanted. There were six centers in the entire state, and she was the clinical researcher they’d put in charge of all of them.
She had a team of six that she managed, but they really managed themselves, which meant she didn’t have to do too much of that. While they were a privately funded center, they did often require grants and government funding to help the people who couldn’t afford their services otherwise. In many ways, speech therapy was a forgotten field, but it had such a positive impact on someone’s life.
Bexley, herself, had fallen in love with the idea of being a speech therapist when she was young. She remembered being nine years old when she’d been sent to the nurse’s office because she’d been stung by a bee during recess. Although she wasn’t allergic, they’d still kept her in there for a bit just to make sure she wouldn’t have any kind of reaction. She’d also gotten one of those ice packs that had really been a frozen sponge inside a plastic bag to put on the spot. She’d sat there, bored and wishing she could go back to playing with her friends, when she’d overheard people talking in the room next to her. She’d stood up and, being a nosy nine-year-old, gone to the door that had been open just a little to eavesdrop. She had recognized one of the voices as her classmate’s. The other voice she hadn’t known but could tell it belonged to an adult. Bexley had listened as the boy tried to sound out words. When he’d stop and stutter for a second, the adult would coach him on what to do next. For whatever reason, Bexley had thought that was so cool. She’d known the boy had a stutter; she’d heard him whenever he was asked to read something in class. She’d also heard the other kids snickering at him when he couldn’t get through the paragraph.
In that moment, Bexley had decided she wouldn’t let the others make fun of him ever again. The next day in class, she’d moved to sit by the boy during reading time. The teacher had gone around the room, asking each kid to read one paragraph in turn. When the time had come for the boy to read, Bexley had heard another boy begin to laugh. She’d turned to him and given her best glare. He’d stopped. The boy sitting next to her had started to read the first sentence, and Bexley had continued to give looks to every kid that had laughed or made a comment.
Later during recess, she’d found the boy, and they’d talked a bit. He’d quickly become her best friend after that, and now, Bexley was looking at a picture of him standing next to Alice and her outside of his very own bar. Stan had managed to lose the stutter a long time ago, and having watched that happen, Bexley had known what she wanted to do. As she smiled at the picture of her two best friends in the world, wishing she didn’t have as much paperwork in this job as she did, her phone rang. She glanced at the readout and saw Holly’s name on the screen. That was a surprise. She hadn’t spoken to her ex-girlfriend in months. She was pretty sure Holly hadn’t left anything at her place, and she knew she’d gotten all of her stuff back. Also, why didn’t Holly just text? Who actually called their ex-girlfriend after all this time?
“Hello?” Bexley said.
“Bex?”
“Yeah, hey.”
“Hey,” Holly greeted in that sweet southern drawl that had pulled Bexley into her orbit to begin with.
“Is everything okay?” Bexley asked.
“Yeah. It’s just good to hear your voice.”
“Yeah, yours too,” Bexley agreed because itwasgood to hear her voice.
Prior to this day, the last time she heard it had been when Holly had left that morning. They’d fallen in love quickly, and Bexley had thought she might have found the one. They’d even talked about moving in together for a while, but neither of them had actually made the move to do anything about it. That probably should’ve been telling, but it hadn’t been to Bexley. One night, Holly had come over, and they’d sat on the sofa, watching a movie. Bexley couldn’t remember how the conversation had started, but somehow, by the end of that night, they’d broken up. They wanted different things. Their communication wasn’t great. The sexwas, but neither of them wanted to stay in the relationship just for that. Oddly enough, they’d also ended up having sex that night. It had been their last time. Holly had slept over, and the next morning, Bexley had watched her go with a box of her things and a lot of questions as to how it had happened.
“Are you at work?” Holly asked.
“Yeah, about to go into a meeting,” she lied.
“Oh, I’m sorry about calling during the workday. I just had a few minutes, and I was thinking about you.”
“You were?” Bexley leaned back in her chair at that.
