None of the photos are from our pap walk today, obviously, but I would totally have preferred that. That version of me—of us—was prepared for the public to be spying on us. Hell, we were courting the paps. But the pics they’ve got, which, to be fair, were probably the only ones available when they went to print? They’re of the two of us on our date the other night, when we didn’t have a clue we were being watched by anyone but a few locals, let alone that we were about to bring a shitstorm of massive proportions down on our heads.
“What the hell?” I demand, all wide-eyed and wild, as I reach for a copy of People. People, for crying out loud, who usually only have massive celebrities on the cover. “How?”
“We hit the news cycle at just the right time,” Garrett tells me as he endeavors to steer me toward the small medicine aisle—and as far away from the magazines as we can get. Which isn’t very far, considering they’re everywhere in this place. Which means I’m everywhere.
The mind boggles—and not in a good way.
“The right time?” I respond when I finally find my voice again. “Is that what you call it?”
“Not usually, but think of the plan. Considering how much coverage these photos are getting, not to mention”—he holds up his phone—“the fact that every gossip site in the Western world has picked up our airport stroll this afternoon, the bright side is we are way ahead of schedule.”
“Yay.”
“Not actually caring about the schedule right now, huh?”
I grab for the closest magazine and hold it up so Garrett can see the pic of me on the cover—along with the headline asking if I’m having His Royal Hotness, Prince Garrett’s, alien baby.
He grimaces. “Okay, I admit. That’s not one of the better ones.”
“There are better ones?” I’m doing my best not to shriek, but I’m pretty sure it’s a losing battle. Especially when I hold up a British rag that has somehow managed to get a pic of me from Halloween a couple of years ago—a pic that they’ve captioned “Is Prince Garrett a Va Voom Vintage Sex Slave?”
This time he winces. “Yeah, that one’s bad too. But you make a really hot dominatrix.”
“It was a retro party. I was dressed as Elvira!”
“Who?”
“Oh. My. God! Now is really not the time to discuss the divide between American and Wildemarian pop culture!”
“You might have a point.” He nods toward the medicine. “Why don’t we just get your Tylenol and then we’ll go to the room and forget all about the fact that you’re carrying my alien love child?”
“Seriously?”
“Too soon?”
“Way, way too soon.”
He wraps an arm around me, then leans down to drop a kiss on the top of my head. “It’s going to be okay, you know. They didn’t have much info so they ran with stupid stuff, just to get a story about us out there. We’re giving them pictures and a narrative now—that’s what most of them will go with from here on out.”
I know he’s right, but I’m still not quite ready to let go of the panic. “There’s a lot of them.” Twenty that I can count just standing here, and that doesn’t include magazines and newspapers the shop doesn’t cover. Or all the online gossip sites that are carrying the story too.
“There are. But the good news is, we’re getting a ton of exposure right out of the gate. We’ll be old hat in a couple of weeks.”
“A couple of weeks?” I squawk. Right now a couple of hours seems like too long.
“A couple of days?” he tries, but this time he sounds a lot less confident.
I snatch a packet of two Tylenol off the shelf and tear it open right in the middle of the store. I down them with a water bottle from the glass-fronted refrigerator in the corner, then tell the shop’s assistant to charge the Presidential Suite. The least Garrett can do after getting me into this mess is to keep me in headache medication.
“I can’t go upstairs right now,” I tell him as he leads me from the store. “I need to walk.”
For a second it looks like he wants to argue, but then he just nods. “Okay. We can walk.”
“No. Not we.” I take a step back. “Me.”
“What? You mean alone?” He sounds horrified.
I roll my eyes. “No, I mean with your whole entourage, so we can attract as much attention as humanly possible.”
“I’m not my entourage.”
“No, but didn’t you just get through explaining to me how important security is for you when you’re abroad? Besides, I’ve paid attention the last few days. There’s no way you’re leaving this hotel without a five-man security detail and we both know it. That’s not what I want.”
“We can go for a drive—”
“I don’t want to go for a drive. I want to walk. By myself. Like a normal person.” I push onto my tiptoes and press a hard kiss to his very displeased mouth. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours, and then we can do the whole gazillion-foot-long bathtub thing. I promise.”
He looks like he wants to argue, but in the end he just sighs. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?”
“Nope. Sorry.” I give him my most charming grin.
“Okay. Xavier’s going with you.” When he sees I’m about to argue, he presses a finger to my lips. “Didn’t we just finish discussing how many websites and magazine covers your beautiful face is gracing right now? It’s not safe for you to wander around on your own.”
I’m pretty sure that no one will even look twice at me if he’s not with me—especially if I do something to tame down my crazy hair. But Garrett’s got that look in his eyes, the same one he had in the car when we were talking about his abduction, and I don’t have it in me to push him any farther. Not when the nightmare is still so real to him.
“Fine. Xavier can come. But that’s it.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
He lifts a brow. “Are you going to keep saying that? Because I would suggest you get going before I change my mind.”
“Change your mind? I’m a grown woman! You can’t tell me what to do.”
“I’d never dream of telling you what to do. But I might just decide that I need a walk too. In the same exact direction that you’re planning on going, and then where will you be?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You are a very sneaky man, Gorgeous Garrett.”
“Only because you are a very stubborn woman, Luscious Lola.”
“Luscious Lola?” Suddenly I’m torn between horror and amusement—which is what he was aiming for. The bastard.
“Yeah. It’s my new nickname for you. What do you think?”
“I think you should leave the nicknaming to someone with a talent for it.”
“Wow. Critical much?”
“Only when it’s deserved.” I reach up and pat his cheek. As I do, I see the worry in his eyes, and it’s almost enough to make me say fuck it to the whole walk idea. Almost. But I can barely breathe in here and my skin feels like it’s way too tight. I just need some fresh air and a few minutes to myself.
Still, seeing the concern in his eyes knocks the teasing—and the annoyance—out of me in a hurry. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon. I just need…”
“To be you for a few minutes, not the new girlfriend to Wildemar’s ex–crown prince.”
“Yes. My God, yes. I mean, except for the ‘ex–crown prince’ part, because we’re totally going to fix that.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he says with a shake of his head. “Just go. And be careful.”
“Didn’t you know? Careful is my middle name.” I put my arms out to my sides in an obviously kind of gesture.
“I think you’ve got the definition for careful confused with the one for ‘reckless as all fuck.’ ”
“Aww, look at you. We??
?ve only been dating for a few days and already you know me so well.”
“Seeing it is no great shakes, sweetheart,” he says with a snort. “You wear reckless like French women wear lipstick. Subtle some days, red hot on others, but always, always, always essential.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Chapter 23
Garrett
Goddammit. We’ve been in France for exactly an hour and a half and already I’ve fucked things up royally with Lola, no pun intended. Could I be any more of an asshole?
I slam into the suite with a roar of annoyance—as close to that temper tantrum Michael wanted to see as I’ve ever been in my adult life. But this time it’s not my captors I’m mad at. Not my father, not the press, not the bullshit circumstances that led me here.
No, right now, all the rage roiling around inside of me is directed at only one target: myself. What the fuck was I thinking?
Tagging along on this trip, pretty much without Lola’s permission.
Courting the press to advance my own agenda.
Dragging Lola to a hotel that obviously makes her uncomfortable and refusing to let her go to the one she likes.
Insisting she take a bodyguard with her when her body language was screaming that she just wanted to be alone.
So, to answer my earlier question, no. I couldn’t have been any bigger of an asshole if I’d tried. Merde. What the fuck was I thinking?
I wasn’t thinking. Obviously. Sure, most of what I’ve done has been for her safety, but I could have at least talked to her about it instead of being such a fucking autocrat and just presenting her with a fait accompli. It will be a miracle if she doesn’t just keep walking until she gets to the Pullman and decides to hell with me and this whole harebrained plot of Kian’s.
I’m reaching for my phone—ready to order Xavier to do whatever he has to do to make sure that doesn’t happen—when the damn thing rings. It’s my twin, and for a second I think about not picking it up. He’s the asshole that got me into this mess, after all.
But duty runs deep. He had a meeting with Parliament today over the Pacific Rim treaty I brokered two years ago and I want to make sure it went okay. They’ve been trying to weasel out of it pretty much since it became law, but I’ve always managed to stay a couple of steps ahead of their plotting. I just hope Kian can say the same.
“How’d the meeting with Parliament go?” I demand as soon as I swipe to accept the call.
“Well, good to talk to you, too, brother. Especially since you ran off to another country without even mentioning it to me.”
“I’m in France, not Patagonia. I can be home in an hour if you need me—not that you will.”
“Poor Garrett. All dressed up and no one to strong-arm. It must be a sad day for you.”
“Yeah, yeah. If you called to harangue me, I’ve got better things to do.” Like check in incessantly with Xavier to make sure Lola is okay. And that she hasn’t made a run for it.
“I bet you do,” Kian says, insinuation ripe in his tone.
It pisses me off all over again. “Seriously? Are we fucking twelve here?”
“Geez, who pissed in your café au lait? I’m calling to give you good news and this is what I get? So much for brotherly love.”
“Good news? So the meeting with Parliament went well?”
“What? Fuck, no. It was an absolute shit show, per your predictions. I tried to talk them around, but they pretty much ignored me. They plan on holding a vote to withdraw from the treaty sometime in the next two weeks.”
“What? Are you fucking kidding me? How could you let that happen?”
“Let it happen? Dude, I studied the hell out of your notes on the treaty, but they kicked my ass. You know I’m no good at this shit. Plain and simple, they outmaneuvered me.”
“They outmaneuvered you because you’ve spent your life fucking around instead of figuring out how politics really work. Maybe if you hadn’t tried to cram for this like a damn final exam—”
“Sorry, but cramming is pretty much all I’ve got open to me, since I’m trying to learn a hundred years of modern policy on the fly. Which is why we need to get you back into Daddy Dearest’s good graces and fast, before I end up giving away the treasury.”
I snort. “Yeah, well, that’d be one way to lose your position as the King’s favorite.”
“Yes, well, I’ve got another way—which is why I called. We just got the first polling data back—”
“Polling data? What are we polling?”
“You and Lola, obviously. And guess what? The people love you guys. I mean, like they’re one step away from creeping into your bedroom, dude.”
What the fuck? It takes me a minute to even try to wrap my head around what he’s saying. “What the hell are you talking about? You had them do a poll on Lola and me?” The fuck?
“It was Liese’s idea, actually, but it’s obviously a good one. I’m going to float the numbers to the King later today, let him see what’s up. But don’t worry, it’s totally going to put pressure on him to do the right thing.”
“Wait a minute. Just wait…a minute. Let me get this straight. You polled Lola and me as a couple and the people like us?”
“Are you not listening? They don’t like you. They love you. Seriously. Ask me the approval rating. Go ahead. Ask me.”
“I don’t give a shit about the approval rating. You can’t just boil Lola’s and my relationship down to a bunch of numbers—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Can you just give me a minute to catch up here? What relationship? The last I heard, this was all an act. I thought you two didn’t really hit it off.”
“We didn’t. But now we do and it’s…”
“What? Now it’s what?” He’s so excited, he’s pretty much crowing at this point. “I told Savvy there was something going on here—something about those last pictures of you guys in the airport raised a flag for me.” He is crowing now. “So you two are actually in a relationship now? For our purposes, that’s so much better than faking it. Tell me everything.”
“I will not.”
He makes a dismissive sound. “You’re such a fucking Boy Scout. Fine, tell me something, then. Anything. When did you two decide you wanted to be together for real?”
Shit. I knew better than to open my mouth. Now there’s no way Kian’s going to back off until I give him something. He doesn’t have it in him to walk away from anything empty-handed—with the exception of parliamentary meetings, apparently.
Still, what’s between Lola and me is new and fragile. I want to keep it just between us until we figure out what’s going on—well, between us and a few million of our closest fans, apparently. Damn it. “We haven’t decided anything yet.”
“What? I thought you just said—”
“We haven’t actually talked about whatever this thing between us is, okay?”
“Well, why the fuck not?”
“You’re asking me that? The original man-whore?”
“Reformed man-whore, thank you very much. True love has changed me.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Do you know how ridiculous you sound right now?”
“Not as ridiculous as a guy who’s obviously got feelings for a girl but is too afraid to tell her.”
“I never said I was afraid.”
“Dude, I’m your twin. You didn’t have to say it.”
“Really? You’re playing the twin card here?”
“I’m just calling it like I see it. You worry so much about what might happen that you totally miss out on what would happen if you just got your head out of your ass. You should fix that.”
“Well, thank you so much for the analysis. I’ll be sure to share it with my therapist. I’m sure it will clear things right up for him. In the meantime, can we get back to the treaty?”
/> “That’s what I’m trying to do. Play your cards right and you’ll be back in the favorite seat in a week. Then you can storm Parliament and do whatever magic you do that gets those cagey bastards to follow your lead.”
“You had one job, Kian.”
“Actually, I used to have one job. Now I have a hundred jobs and that’s just for today. So do what you need to do to get Lola on board, bring her home, and flaunt her—and your ninety-one percent approval rating—in the King’s face. And take back the throne. Please, God. Take back the damn throne.”
“It’s really not normal for anyone to hate being the crown prince as much as you do.” I pause as the rest of his words finally click in. “Ninety-one percent approval rating? Are you fucking with me?”
“No! That’s what I’m telling you. The country loves the two of you together. The women went all googly-eyed at how protective you were of her in the airport shots and the men are overwhelmingly impressed with your fence-hopping ability. ‘No pussy prince for us’ seems to be the general consensus among them.”
“Ninety-one percent?” I say again, because I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. Numbers like that are unheard of. No one in the public eye has a 91 percent approval rating ever, let alone in the middle of a media firestorm.
“Yes!” Kian says with an excited half-laugh. “With an approval rating like that, you can do anything! And get this: since the poll was being authorized by me and not our father, the pollsters had a little more leeway with the questions they asked. Turns out the country is hurting over your abduction, but not the way the King thinks. Eighty-seven percent of people think more highly of you since you were rescued. And eighty-nine percent think you’re the perfect choice to run the country. Eighty-seven percent trust you more. They recognize how much strength it took to go through what you did and come out on the other side of it.”