The Little Barmaid

by Holloway, Taylor

  I shrugged my shoulders at him. “Maybe in a little while,” I answered. “I don’t want to take time away from the paying customers.”

  “Nobody ever told you that you can’t pay for your drinks or your songs,” my uncle interjected, dropping off a refill of our drinks with a wink. “Just that you don’t have to pay.”

  I smirked at him. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Besides,” he added, grinning. “You’re singing brings in the patrons. Especially lately.”

  I doubted it was my singing so much as Derek’s A-list movie star presence, but I appreciated the thought. Sebastian’s was legitimately a lot busier these days. Ever since Derek Prince had started hanging out here more regularly, it was attracting a much more affluent and influential crowd. Sebastian had even stopped taking the rowdy bachelorette parties that he’d always hated. That change was one of many.

  In the ten weeks since ‘She Done Him Wrong’ released, my entire life had been transformed for the better. The movie was a huge commercial success. It was even doing well overseas. Some critics were annoyed that Ursula didn’t do her own singing, but the public didn’t care much about that at all. It wasn’t apparent that she was lip-syncing, since everyone lip-syncs in movie musicals. The regular people of the world just loved the story, the dancing, and the music.

  It seemed like people were loving me, too. I really hadn’t thought they would. But I was receiving film and musical offers and fan mail all of a sudden. I’d even had to find an agent. Thankfully my dad had come around and, along with Derek, was helping me to navigate my newfound fame.

  Part of me had been terrified that the general public would view me negatively given the method of my, um, debut, but the sudden release of some bombshells about Ursula’s covert activities with a certain foreign media baron and a bizarre conspiracy against the Prince family had turned public opinion the other way. Ursula was getting her just desserts in the press. She was being painted as conniving, scheming, lying, and backstabbing, all of which were entirely accurate. She was Hollywood’s biggest villain at the moment, although really that honor should have gone elsewhere, at least according to Meg Butler. By virtue of his vast fortune and some plausible deniability, Dante Malcolm had escaped any negative repercussions. But Ursula was in the thick of it.

  Ursula’s career wasn’t going so great these days either. It turns out that even in Hollywood nobody wants to work with a known blackmailer. The fact that in her taped confession she had all but admitted to conspiring to drop a stage light on me, she was also facing some legal troubles. I wasn’t losing any sleep over it.

  And neither was Meg. As Derek and I sipped our drinks and enjoyed the scenery, none other than Meg Butler stepped out on stage to sing. We’d sort of become friends with the former paparazzo in recent weeks. Derek didn’t trust her, and I wasn’t entirely convinced either, but her help had been invaluable. She’d been the one to tell Derek that Clint was the go-between and had given us our opportunity to turn the tides. If it hadn’t been for her intervention, our lives could have been very different at this moment.

  So, because of her help, when Meg started singing the loudest, most off-key, tone deaf version of ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow,’ I resisted the urge to wince at the sound. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to put a smile on my face and watch politely as Meg absolutely butchered the song.

  She fucking destroyed it. I’d heard bad versions of the song before. But I’d never heard anything this bad. Meg couldn’t stay on tone for two notes. It sounded a little bit like she was screaming and singing at the same time. Truly painful. Derek and I exchanged a look that quickly dissolved into suppressed laughter.

  By the time that Meg was on the “oh why oh why can’t I’s,” the whole karaoke bar was grateful that the song was over. The bar broke into joyful applause as Meg’s voice faded away. We all exhaled in relief.

  After her performance, Meg came over and sat down at our table.

  “Hi Meg,” I said, still surprised to see her. “You didn’t tell us you’d be here tonight.”

  She smiled. “Did you like my performance?”

  Derek turned his laugh into a cough.

  “It was lovely,” I choked out.

  Meg laughed uproariously. “It wasn’t mine,” Meg said, grinning. “That song you just listened to was me lip syncing to Ursula Jones’ original demo tape. The one she gave to just her agent. The one that convinced them both that Ursula should use a voice double.”

  Derek and I exchanged a dumbfounded look.

  “Are you serious?” Derek asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “That’s what her singing voice sounds like?” He laughed. “No wonder she needed to use Ariel’s voice. She isn’t just a bad singer, she’s a terrible singer. The worst.”

  Meg giggled at us. She looked delighted.

  “I thought you might like to hear it,” she said after her laughs died down. “Since you two are on an honesty kick these days.”

  “What about you?” I asked Meg. “Aren’t you on an honesty kick?”

  She blinked at us and then smiled. Not her usual smile, either. Not the overconfident, sly smile of a paparazzo. A genuine smile. “I suppose I am. Dropping that gigantic bombshell about Dante Malcolm was a thrill, but he didn’t even get in trouble. Sure, Ursula got screwed, but it feels a little bit like there’s no justice in the world.”

  “You can say that again,” Derek grumbled. He’d been particularly annoyed that Malcolm faced no consequences. He was still out there, probably twice as determined to take down the Prince family now that Derek had escaped his clutches. Derek had put his entire family on high alert. It was only a matter of time before Malcolm would do something to another member of the Prince family.

  Meg shrugged her shoulders. “Anyway, now that I’m out of the gossip game, I’m trying to figure out what’s next for me.” She paused. “What about you two? What’s next for you?” Derek and I exchanged another glance. “Oh please,” Meg groused. “I’m not going to leak anything. I’m out, remember?”

  “Broadway,” I said. “But first a vacation.”

  “Oh? Where to?”

  Derek frowned. “A vacation locale.”

  Meg smirked. “Riiiight.” She replied. “Where?”

  “Somewhere tropical,” Derek said.

  “Hawaii,” I clarified.

  I was really looking forward to sandy white beaches and blue skies. Not that we didn’t have those in LA. But these would be Hawaiian sandy white beaches and blue skies.

  “Have a great time,” Meg told us. “I’ll let my old contacts know you’re going to Alaska.” She winked.

  * * *

  If you enjoyed ‘The Little Barmaid’, you’re going to love the next book in the Princes of Hollywood series ‘Let Down Your Hair’. Fall in love with nerdy, plucky Ainsley as she breaks free from her oppressive, uptight academic world with help from bad boy movie director Holden Prince.

  A pre-order is coming soon or turn the page for an exclusive teaser.

  Let Down Your Hair

  Special Teaser

  ‘Let Down Your Hair’ is the fourth book in the Princes of Hollywood series, featuring Ainsley and Holden. Please excuse any typos. This text has not been edited yet.

  * * *

  Chapter 1: Ainsley

  “There’s no way,” the undergrad hissed. “I don’t believe you. Not her.”

  He probably thought he was being subtle. He was wrong.

  I attempted to keep my face impassive and ignore them. If I ignored them, maybe they’d go away faster. As much as I enjoyed telling people off, we were in a library. Libraries are sacred. Plus Mrs. Butterworth, the librarian might ban me. I’d seen her do it before. I couldn’t risk it.

  “No really,” his buddy said. They were standing just a few feet away from the table I was trying to work at. They thought I was completely absorbed in my work. That had been true before they started talking about me. “That cute girl over there works here. The little blonde w
ith the glasses and the legs? She’s my freakin’ physics professor. Not a TA. The actual professor.”

  With the glasses and the legs? Were my legs not perfectly professional legs today? I looked down at my skirt to see. They were perfectly professional legs. My skirt wasn’t even short. The red and black plaid pencil skirt hit the bottom of my knee, which happened to be covered by hose. Paired with my demure white blouse, black sweater, patent leather heels, and prim bun, I was not exactly dressed to seduce.

  But it never seemed to matter. I could be wearing a fat suit with a trash bag burka on top and I’d still get hit on at this campus. The horny undergrads seemed to have x-ray vision. Or they were just that horny. In all likelihood, it was probably that.

  The first guy scoffed, and I could almost feel the pressure of their stares on my skin. It burned, or maybe that was my irritation. They were both still looking at me.

  “That girl?” the undergrad asked after a moment. “No. That girl is not your professor. You’re just messing with me. She’s clearly our age. She’s probably the president of Tri Delta and you’re trying to confuse me.”

  I kept my eyes focused on my laptop. The undergrads probably thought I was listening to music through my EarPods and unable to hear them, but they’d run out of battery juice about twenty minutes back. I was stuck listening to them chit-chatting inappropriately about me instead. I was meant to be working on my research, but now I was subjected to their rivetingly crass conversation.

  “I know. I know. But she’s really my physics professor,” my student protested. “I swear to God.”

  “Damn. How come my physics professor doesn’t look like that?” The other guy grumbled. “You’ve got all the luck.”

  My student laughed ruefully. “Man, you’re lucky you got old, weird Dr. Bertrand. He looks like Eddie Murphy in the Nutty Professor and he sounds like Elmer Fudd. That’s what professors are supposed to be like—comically unsexy. You try concentrating on the three-body problem when you have to stare at her perky ass bouncing back and forth as she goes around the room to check on us. Or when she bends down to grab the chalk and I’m not supposed to stare at her big round tits? It’s impossible.”

  Eww. Is that what my male students thought of me? They were just thinking about boinking me the whole time while I was attempting to teach them physics? I wished I could unhear their commentary, but it just kept coming.

  “Yeah, whatever,” the other student replied. “I’d trade Dr. Sexy over there for Dr. Bertrand any day. Some days I’m not even sure if he’s awake in class. Or even alive. And he’s an impossibly hard grader. I think he just docks points off for my bad handwriting. I’d rather have a professor that makes me hard than a hard professor any day of the week.”

  There were several things wrong with that statement. One. My name was not Dr. Sexy. It wasn’t Dr. Anything. Not yet, anyway. I was just a professor for now. Two, Dr. Bertrand wasn’t a difficult grader. He gave everybody with a pulse an A minus. I was much harder. If this guy thought Dr. Bertrand was hard, he clearly didn’t have two brain cells to rub together, although given his other statements, that was hardly a surprise.

  “I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the show,” my student replied. “And she’s actually a pretty good instructor.” Aww, gee thanks creepy dude! “But I’d rather be solving the two-body problem with Professor Smith than the three-body problem if you know what I mean.”

  The other guy clearly knew what he meant. He laughed.

  “Let me guess, you want her to do the thing where she takes off the glasses and shakes out the bun all sexy-like while unbuttoning her blouse?”

  “Exactly! And then she tells me what a bad, bad boy I’ve been?”

  They both chortled. A genuine chortle. The sort of guttural, nasty chortle that I associated with Bevis and Butthead.

  Ugh. Disgusting. Concentrating on my research while my students cast me in a fantasy porno was impossible.

  This was supposed to be a freakin’ library. Not the sexual harassment gallery. Apparently today it was going to be both. This whole day was basically a wash. I shouldn’t even be surprised.

  My Friday afternoon class had been a disaster. The students may have been in their seats and taking notes, but they were elsewhere mentally. I wasn’t sure where they were, but it wasn’t Applied Physics and Calculus 202. It wasn’t even UCLA. In fact, by the time I was halfway through my lecture, a number of them seemed to have shuffled right off to dreamland.

  At least when I was staring at my lovely calculations and lecturing, I could pretend my students were paying attention. But when I turned around to see the class, the reality was very different. A super majority of them were glazed over, staring slack-jawed and glassy-eyed at the whiteboard. A tiny sliver of them were on the edge of their seats, scribbling furiously and enthralled. The last group were just fucking around on their phones because their tuition dollars probably grew on the evergreen mommy-daddy tree. So, an average undergraduate classroom, normally distributed as if on a bell curve. So much for my incredible lecture.

  I decided to make them do group work because the lecture clearly wasn’t cutting it. But group work was a ballsy move for late Friday afternoon.

  The students blinked at me tiredly and reluctantly turned to their neighbors. They could do it. I believed in them. After all, if they didn’t practice these problems now, they were going to have a hell of a time doing their homework later. Or taking the test next Tuesday. I was helping them whether they liked it or not.

  I was not one of those professors who didn’t try to teach or just read through lectures like an automaton. I cared. I wanted my students to learn and I prided myself on actually making an effort. After all, there were a lot of people in the world who wanted my position at this university. I’d beaten them for my spot and now I had to deserve it. I had to write the bet dissertation. Be the best teacher. Be the best, period.

  But not one student made it through the problem because the fire alarms went off yet again. We’d had a rash of that lately, all false alarms. The entire class bolted like the building was engulfed in flames. It was five p.m. on a Friday. They had lives to get to thirty minutes early. Me? Not so much. But I did have an emergency. I ran to the bathroom, scrubbed my hands for twenty minutes until they were raw, came back, erased the white board, and moseyed on over to the library.

  I had big plans for the evening. Friday nights meant the library was extra quiet. Dead quiet. Just how I liked it for pouring through columns of numbers and trying to see the magic of the universe in the digits.

  Except now my usual Friday afternoon routine was ruined because these two bozos were talking about how much they wanted me to provide them strict discipline. When I began an accelerated doctoral program here, I’d never thought my biggest challenge would be horny undergrads with teacher domination fantasies.

  At least the all-male faculty members in my department were relatively subtle about their sexual harassment. I could handle the low-grade, sidelong crap from a bunch of doddering old fools. But the students? They hadn’t developed any subtlety yet. They put their grossness on front street.

  When I began my doctoral program in applied physics at UCLA, I’d been twenty years old. Now, and one masters-in-passing later, I was well on my way. I was teaching classes, doing research, working on my dissertation, and leaving as little time as possible in my life to spend reflecting on anything else. But as I stared across the deserted stacks and project tables in the library that evening, a chilling loneliness started to creep in.

  That never used to happen. I used to be excited about my path in life. But somehow, as I approached twenty-five, things were changing. I had doubts I’d never had before. I knew my mom wanted me to have tenure by twenty-nine, but it hadn’t occurred to me until recently that it might not be what I wanted. My constant, familiar dedication was wavering, and I had no idea what it meant. Was I lonely? I’d never been lonely before. Or at least, I never noticed.

  The morons finally wand
ered off, excited to spend the evening ‘slaying some pussy’ which sounded far more threatening than I think they realized. I’d never been ‘normal’ though, so what did I know? I completed my undergrad in two years, intent on having he very best grades and living at home the entire time. I was now approaching twenty-five as a lonely, germophobic, workaholic virgin. Oh, and I lived with my mother. What a fun combo.

  My mom had raised me with one goal in mind. I’d always thought it was my goal too. But what if it wasn’t? Then what?

  Chapter 2: Holden

  “She’s not here,” I told Tommy. My voice sounded as despondent as I felt. My brother had suggested his sprawling UCLA campus for my urgent casting needs, but clearly, he overestimated the talent pool here. It was more of a talent puddle. “There is officially no woman at this school that can play Princess Amaranth.”

  It was time to declare defeat. I’d tried. I really had.

  It wasn’t every day a major Hollywood director came to a college campus for an open casting call. The turnout to see me had been sky high. I’d now seen every sorority girl and theater geek the school had to offer, but it had all been a waste. I was tired, hungry, and annoyed.

  Tommy raised an eyebrow at me and then he shrugged. My oldest brother had recently decided to say ‘fuck it’ to Hollywood and his entire life so far. He walked away from one of the most profoundly successful leading actor careers that the world had ever seen to go finish up his math degree with his wife. Oh, and he told the Academy to suck it on live, national TV. Seriously. What a waste.

  But if a math degree and a wife is what made him happy then I would be happy for him. Me? I’d rather win a bunch of Oscars and make a million amazing films. But even though he made choices that would drive me crazy, I loved him. However, as much as I enjoyed seeing him and his wife Cindy happy, this day had gotten me no closer to finding the elven princess for my next film. It had been a complete and total waste of time.