by Holly Jaymes
Then there was a knock on my door.
“Dad, I have to go,” I hissed in the phone.
“Of course, of course, honey. Go to him. But we should talk soon. Make plans.”
I ended the call quickly and rushed to the door, my heart thumping maniacally in my chest. When I pulled open the door, I saw Bas standing in the corridor.
“Can we talk?” he asked, looking sheepishly from side to side. I felt like I wanted to cry the moment I saw him.
The look on his face had changed completely since last night. Last night when he was carrying me to bed and when he lay down beside me. How had so much changed overnight?
Chapter 20
Sebastian
I could sense Ava knew something about this already. She let me come into the room, and my eyes happened to fall on the crumpled up bed where were asleep just a few hours ago.
“They’ve left. I told them you weren’t feeling too well,” I said. Ava stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at me.
“My dad heard…about us. How is that even possible?” she asked, ignoring what I just said about my family. Her brown eyes had become smaller and angry. She had every right to be upset of course, but I was in as much of a pickle as she was.
“Yeah, it was my father and aunt. They got the PR team to take charge of the situation. They seem to think it would be best that the public finds out about this as soon as possible to divert attention from the other scandal.”
Ava rubbed a hand over her face. I could sense she was losing her calm.
“Your scandal. Seriously, Bas? What about my reputation? We were supposed to keep this between the family, just for a few weeks. Just to keep them off your back.”
“Yes, I know! Exactly. That was the plan!”
“And now what? What happens when we announce our separation? I’m going to be that Hollywood has-been who got dumped by a Prince because she wasn’t good enough!”
Ava’s temper was rising, but so was mine now.
“That is not how it has to go,” I said, and she shook her head.
“And you think your PR people are going to spin any other story out of this? You think they’re going to take it lying down if I claim I broke up with you?”
“It doesn’t have to turn into a wrestling match of who dumped who, Ava! We could just announce it as a mutual agreement to separate,” I said.
“But that is not how it will be perceived! Don’t you see that, Bas? Nobody is going to take me seriously. I’m going to be tagged as a gold digger. I know how these tabloids work. The kind of shit they spew just to get a story!” Ava was shouting now. Her cheeks had turned red but not in that adorable way I loved. I knew she had a point, but I didn’t want to argue with her.
“Things will die down soon,” I said, and Ava whipped away from me, she marched over to the tall windows in her room, flipping the curtains open to let some light in.
“It’s easy for you to say, isn’t it? You have very little to lose. You will always have the love and adoration of your country no matter what you do. You don’t have a career to think about. Some of us have to earn a living!” she said, crossing her arms over her breasts. Her back was straight, her chin was up. She looked so damn sexy, even when she was mad at me. But now she was making me angry.
“Thanks for the reminder,” I quipped, and she barely glanced at me over her shoulder.
“I apologize if I don’t feel sorry enough for you,” she added.
“You don’t have to say anything more, Ava. You’ve said enough already,” I snapped but now she was supercharged to keep talking.
“But you belong to a royal family. You have everything in the world you could possibly want. In fact, you could have anybody!”
She had no idea what she was talking about.
“You should stop talking now, Ava.”
“Is that a royal command?” she hissed.
I lunged at her, grabbing her by her waist and pulling her to my chest. Despite how angry she made me, I wanted to kiss her, ravage her body on that bed. She was glaring up into my eyes, daring me to kiss her again. Maybe she knew just how weak I was around her. Perhaps she enjoyed the power she had over me.
“This is not what I planned for,” I said in a softer voice, and I let her go. Ava stepped away from me, her nostrils were flared, and her eyes looked wild now.
“I don’t know how I’m going to recover from this kind of a scandal. I will have to hire people, I need some professional advice before it ruins my life and career,” she said.
She wouldn’t even look at me anymore. I reached for her hand, trying to pull her back to me again, but she whipped her hand away.
“Please, Bas, I need to go home. I need to go back to LA. We need to put some distance between us so I can think. I have to come up with a plan for my sake.”
Her voice broke as she spoke. I wanted to console her, hold her and tell her I would do anything to make this better. But Ava was glaring at me now.
“Please leave me alone,” she said.
I stared at her for a few more moments before I nodded and backed away. If this was what she needed, this was what I would have to give her.
I walked to her door and turned to look one last time.
“We should talk when you’re feeling better,” I said. Ava was still standing by the window, her hands clasped together now, she was looking at me, but she wasn’t really seeing.
“Over the phone maybe. I’m going to leave this place today, as soon as a car can be arranged and you don’t need to see me off. We can stop pretending now,” she said.
I didn’t want to hear anymore, so I shut the door and stepped out in the corridor. Two men from my staff were waiting there for me, maybe they’d heard everything. It wasn’t like I had any private conversations with anyone anyway.
Chapter 21
Ava
One week later
I was in the supermarket at eight in the morning, just minutes after they opened their door. It was the small one around the corner from my LA apartment. I used to be able to walk to it and back without any trouble usually, no cameras followed me to the store before the Aspen trip, but now, ever since news of Bas and me being in a relationship broke, I couldn’t go anywhere other than in the safety of my car.
It was parked outside now, even though I was barely a minute’s drive away from my apartment building. I was wearing sunglasses, a scarf covered pretty much every inch of my face, and I was wearing an old tracksuit just so that nobody would be writing long articles about my fashion choices.
They would no doubt find something to write about either way. Even though it was eight in the morning, I was sure that when I stepped out of the store, there would be cameras waiting there to hound me, all the way to my car.
It was like living in constant Hell.
I was trapped inside my apartment. I couldn’t go anywhere without being chased. The only way I could handle any of this was if I had a full team of security with me at all times. I was working on putting together a team of PR people who might be able to handle the mess I was in. I just didn’t have that kind of resources. I didn’t belong to a mega-powerful family like Bas’.
Now I was trying to discreetly add things to my shopping trolley before some guy with a phone camera clicked images of the stuff I bought and posted it online. Before I knew it someone would be writing a blog post about what kind of milk I drank.
Even though Bas had initially tried to call me and get in touch, I ignored him, responding only with texts. I didn’t need his help. I feared that if we were seen together any more if we gave fuel to this fire at all, I would have no escape from it.
For the time being, I had agreed to the press release that we were engaged, that things hadn’t been made official with a ring ye. I would let them know that we had no date for the wedding and we were just trying to take things slow and easy.
Thankfully Bas had taken the hint that I wanted minimal to no contact with him, so he’d stopped calling. I hadn
’t heard from him in over three days now. I had no idea what he was telling his family, and I didn’t care.
Maybe they knew the truth already. Right now, the only thing I wanted to deal with was what I was going to do with my life. How was I going to recover from this?
Done with my shopping for the next few days, I darted out of the store and into my car. Just as predicted, the cameras were poised and ready, falling over my car door as I backed out of the parking lot in a mad rush. It was like these people never slept! Behind my sunglasses, I could feel hot tears stinging the back of my eyelids.
I had been hounded by the press before, usually after some big film release or if I’d delivered a controversial speech at an award show regarding the issues, I stood up for. But nothing had been like this, and never so bad.
Clearly, being engaged to a British Prince garnered much more attention than my normal celebrity life.
I drove to the apartment in a hurry, barely getting a chance to lock my car before I was running into the building. I didn’t know how much longer I was going to be able to keep this up before cracking.
Over email, Bas and I had set a date. It was for the twentieth of July. That would be two months from now. We were going to release a joint statement to the public, which his team of advisors would chart for us of course. It would declare we had decided to call off the wedding and part ways, amicably.
Of course, Bas could expect some attention from the press over this, but I knew the real hurricane would hit me. There would be speculative pieces, blog posts bashing me, people continually calling me for interviews, cameras outside my door, everyone would want to know exactly what happened.
They were not going to just sit down and take my excuse of ‘no comment.’ Everyone would want all the gory details of our breakup. If I wasn’t going to be willing to drag Bas’ name through the mud, the tabloids would be willing to do it to me. They were all just waiting with bated breath for any little piece of information about our relationship, and none of them were happy we were keeping it all hush hush.
Finally, back in my apartment, I locked the door behind me. All the windows were shut, the curtains rolled down. No natural light entered my place for fear of being photographed.
I felt all alone, I had no real friends, I didn’t even seem to have a career anymore and no game plan. Once Bas was gone from my life I didn’t know what I would do to move forward. It had been a week, and I already missed him. I wished we never met so that I hadn’t fallen so hard for him and made this bad decision.
Agreeing to be his fake fiancé was way worse than sleeping with him. Nothing else even came close.
I was never going to get over this, and he had probably already found someone new to sleep with behind everyone’s backs.
All I could do was sit alone in my dark apartment and watch reruns on TV and eat popcorn. Things were much worse now than before Aspen. Nobody should go to Aspen in the summer!
Chapter 22
Sebastian
In our family home in England, which the immediate family shared and where my brother James and Louisa had decided to raise their children; I quarantined myself to my old room for as long as I could.
I usually liked to spend as little time in this house as possible, preferring to spend more time traveling from one place to another and avoiding the responsibility of building a working relationship with my family.
Now things had changed.
I was supposedly engaged. More importantly, I wanted to avoid the media. I didn’t want to have to answer any questions about Ava or the fake relationship.
Even though the family was still under the assumption that Ava and I were the real deal, I could sense there was some air of misgiving in the house. I hadn’t spent this much time at home since I turned eighteen. I was keeping to myself, and Ava was nowhere in sight.
Eventually, I was going to have to disappoint the family. In two months the truth was going to come out, and they would figure out it had all been a setup. But for now, they were all seeming to leave me alone. I had pleased them with my choice of a fiancé.
For Ava’s sake, because I knew the pressure she was under—I wanted to set her free. I knew she was having a difficult time dealing with this. She was all alone in LA. She was being hounded by the press. It wasn’t like she could just hide away in a castle, surrounded by national security and armed guards.
I wanted to help her. I wanted to do something to make her feel safer, but every time we happened to have a conversation, which wasn’t very often, she made it clear that she didn’t want me to be a part of her life in any way. She didn’t want to see me or hear from me.
I knew she regretted her decision to help me.
I wanted to be someone else. I wished we could somehow have had a real relationship, and that things weren’t as complicated between us. But it was what it was, and even if Ava was the most perfect woman for me, I still wouldn’t be able to change the circumstances we were in or change her mind about me.
I knew she viewed me as a potential threat to the ruination of her entire professional and personal life. As for me, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I thought about her constantly and how romantic and perfect those few days alone with her in the resort had been.
I knew I had feelings for her, feelings that were new and strange to me but I knew now what they were and they made me afraid for my future. What if I never found happiness with anyone else?
James came to see me a few days later in my chambers. I hadn’t been doing an excellent job of keeping myself occupied. When he came into my parlor, I was just drinking tea from a bone china cup, staring out of the window at the gardeners working on the rose bushes.
“You’ve been awfully quiet these past days, bro,” James said, coming in with a rolled up newspaper under his arm. I turned to him and gave him a weak smile. Ava was on my mind of course.
“Quiet?”
“No parties. You’ve stayed at home all nights. Ava’s made a decent man out of you, eh?” James sat himself down with a flourish on one of the plush armchairs and started pouring himself some tea from the pot.
“It’s probably for the best that I remain indoors for a while, till the media hype dies down.”
“You think it’s going to die down any time soon? They’ve hardly gotten anything from the two of you. They are constantly hungry for more.” James spoke while he stirred some sugar in his teacup.
I sat down across from him. I had nothing much to say.
“Which brings me to the thing I came here to speak to you about. We must make arrangements for Ava’s visit soon. An official royal visit so the rest of the family can meet her too.”
“You mean so the Queen can meet her and approve?” I asked sardonically, and James sighed.
“You know how these things are, Bas. But let me remind you, we are all immensely pleased with your choice. Ava is a lovely woman and would make a great addition to the family. She's already won aunt Moira’s heart, which is saying something!” James was smirking. I wasn’t.
The more we talked about Ava, the more miserable I started to feel. I didn’t even know if I would ever see her again.
“I’m not sure how soon we can arrange this visit. She has some things going on with her work and her life. She needs some space.”
James was nodding but also looked a little disappointed.
“If she’s going to be a part of this family, there are going to be some social commitments she will have to keep, even before the actual wedding. I hope she’s prepared for that.”
I looked at my brother, forcing myself to agree with him knowing fully well that in less than two months, all this was going to unravel. I would be back to being a disappointment to the family again.
Nothing would have pleased me more than Ava being a permanent presence in this house. I knew now that she was the one, but that was not what she wanted, and I wasn’t about to force this life on her either.
For now, all I could do was agree with what my
brother had to say and just keep on pretending. Only a little more time and we could all return to normal again.
Chapter 23
Ava
20th July
It was the fateful day, and even though I rubbed my eyes and sat up in my bed like I had just woken up, I hadn’t really slept at all. Today was going to be the day of the big announcement. We decided on this date two months ago, and now I was expecting a phone call or an email from Bas to confirm it was done.
His PR team was supposed to release the joint statement first, after which, my personal statement which had been written by a PR agent I hired a few weeks ago and had then been approved by Bas’ people would be released.
After that, the protocol would be to not make any more comments. Bas had said in his last email that he was planning a trip to Africa, to get away from the madness and his family. While I couldn’t plan anything that crazy, I decided it would serve me well to get away too.
Maybe I would go to Hawaii or Alaska. I’d decided if things got bad in the next few hours and the media hounding escalated in any way, I would order a cab to take me to the airport and then I would get on the first flight out of LA.
The situation wasn’t ideal. Of course, I just wanted to be left alone, but the only thing to look forward to now, was that tomorrow it would all be over. I would finally be able to move on. These had been the longest two months of my life, and I felt exhausted.
I had never been this much in love with someone and miserable at the same time. I felt blessed to have shared those intimate and personal moments with him, and at the same time, I knew that I would probably have been better off if we never met at all.
Now I slipped out of bed, wrapped myself in my short silk kimono and tied my messy hair up.