The Prince I Love to Hate: A Steamy Romantic Comedy (The Heir Affair Book 1)

by Iris Morland

  “I’m busy,” I said, which was true. “Besides, the time difference means you keep trying to call me in the middle of the night.”

  “Not true. I’ve always called you in the morning here, which would be the afternoon your time.” He peered at me, like he could make out all of my secrets. “You look tired.”

  “Wow, thanks, bro. You always know how to make a girl feel good.”

  “I told you I didn’t want you going over there by yourself. Is it too much? Maybe you should come home.” He upped the guilt trip by adding, “Your nieces miss you.”

  Liam and his wife Mari had two daughters. Fiona had just turned four, while Dahlia was almost two. They were both hellions, and I missed them terribly.

  I heard something that sounded like a crash in the background. “Are they setting the house on fire?” I asked.

  Liam turned his head to yell, “Leave your mother’s makeup alone!” He turned back to me. “She’ll rip me limb from limb if they destroy her makeup again.”

  “Maybe you should go make sure they aren’t ruining your marriage and end this call with me.”

  He laughed darkly. “You wish.” He got up, and I got to experience walking with him, which made me a little seasick. I waited for him to deal with my nieces, who’d apparently gotten into one of Mari’s expensive eyeshadow palettes but had yet to start using it.

  “What did I tell you, Fi?” Liam’s voice was frustrated, but I could hear amusement in it, too. “You can’t keep using your little sister like a baby doll to practice makeup.”

  “Aw, Daddy, please!”

  You’d have to have a heart of stone to ignore that plea. My brother, who’d become a total squish of a man since he’d married and started a family, wasn’t impervious to that plea.

  “Hey, let me talk to them,” I said.

  Liam switched his phone so I could see my nieces. Fiona was a redhead like Mari, while Dahlia had my brother’s dark hair, similar to mine. Fiona had always been a daredevil. With Dahlia, she had someone to drag along and use as a baby doll. Dahlia was too sweet-natured to protest, at least for now.

  “Hi, Aunt Niamh!” said Fiona. She held up a giant necklace she’d probably pilfered from Mari, too. “Do you like my necklace?”

  “It’s very pretty.”

  “Did your mother say you could wear that?” was Liam’s question.

  Fiona, too smart for a four-year-old, merely batted her lashes and said, “We can put it back before she gets home.”

  Liam harrumphed. Dahlia waved to me and said something in Two-Year-Old that I couldn’t understand but that sounded like, “I peed in the corner,” which I was sure Liam was thrilled to hear.

  “We’re working on potty training,” said Liam after he’d hustled the girls back to the living room to watch some TV for a bit. “But Dahlia is stubborn where she isn’t loud.”

  “Mmm, she sounds like me.”

  Liam laughed. “You were just as stubborn when you were her age. Christ, I was just a dumb kid and had no idea what I was doing, potty-training my little sister. I tried to convince you to just wear diapers for another year, but you’d just take them off and run around arse naked.”

  I smiled. “Sounds about right.”

  Liam had pretty much raised me. Our da had run out when Mam had been pregnant with me, and then Mam had passed when I’d been two. Liam, seventeen years older than me, had been thrust into the role of father at way too young of an age. Although I’d grown up with my aunt and uncle, since Liam had felt he wasn’t able to take care of me, he’d always been a fatherly figure to me.

  Sometimes to the point that he was overprotective. Like right now.

  “Back to our conversation,” he said brusquely. “How is everything going there? Are you getting enough sleep? Eating right? You’re not going to pubs every night, are you?”

  “If you’re afraid I’m going to get knocked up like Kate, don’t worry. I always use condoms.”

  Liam scowled. Kate was Mari’s younger sister, who had a one-night stand in Ireland with Liam’s cousin Lochlann. Kate and Lochlann now lived in Dublin with their daughter. Despite a rocky beginning, things had worked out for them.

  “Some things a brother doesn’t need to know,” he said.

  “You’re the one being nosy.”

  “Not nosy. Concerned. I don’t like you going off on your own like this.” His expression turned serious. “After you come home, what happens? What are you going to do with your life? I’m worried about you. It seems like there’s not much that holds your interest lately.”

  I hated how right he was. As a teenager, I’d enjoyed working on cars, but that passion had since faded. Mostly because of the sexism and how I’d been treated too often like a piece of meat around the guys in the workshop. When I’d just wanted to learn how to flush out a transmission, too many of the guys would assume I was too stupid to learn how to do it.

  I’d finished college, of course, but the job prospects were scarce. I’d considered staying in New York and living with Rachel and Maddie, but it was way too expensive working a minimum wage job.

  So when this whole letter and estate thing had fallen into my lap, I’d jumped at it. It had given me a purpose, something I hadn’t realized I’d been seriously lacking.

  “I’m only twenty-two,” I said, shrugging. “Who knows what they want at this age? You didn’t.”

  “I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about you.”

  I felt all of ten years old at the moment. My brother had a way of making me feel very young and stupid, even unintentionally. Probably because for my entire life, I’d wanted to make him proud, and at times I’d felt like he’d been too distracted with his own life to notice his annoying little sister.

  “I’ll figure it out. I always do.” My voice was too cheery. “I just graduated from Harvard, and now I’m abroad. I think I’m doing pretty well, all told.”

  Liam looked unconvinced. “And then what? You’ll be thirty, wasting your life at some shite job, alone—”

  “What, that’s all a guarantee? Come on, don’t be stupid. Besides, ending up a spinster with thirty cats wouldn’t be that bad.” My voice had an edge to it now.

  Liam sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just want you to be happy and fulfilled.”

  “Well, yeah. That’s the goal, isn’t it? But not everyone can be as stupidly happy as you and Mari. Not everybody can have the perfect wife, perfect life, perfect job…” I shrugged. “Sometimes you have to take what you can get.”

  “My life isn’t perfect,” he groused. When a crash sounded in the background followed by giggles, he added, “Case in point.”

  It was right then that I desperately wanted to tell him about how I was searching for our da. That that was what was important to me right now. But I knew that Liam would try to convince me it was a stupid idea. And if he knew I wasn’t even in Ireland but in Paris now with a strange guy, well, he’d probably hop on the next flight and carry me bodily home.

  Liam and I were saying our goodbyes when the door to my hotel room opened. To my horror, Olivier came inside—an hour earlier than he’d said he’d be.

  “Is someone there?” said Liam, suspicious.

  Olivier wandered into the room, but I moved my phone so Liam couldn’t see him. “It’s just housekeeping. I forgot to put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door.”

  “Housekeeping?” Olivier sounded offended. “At this hour?”

  “Niamh, who is that?” Liam’s voice was rising.

  “Um, it’s no one, I’ll talk to you later, bye!” I said the words in a rush and quickly disconnected the call.

  I turned to see Olivier, his arms crossed, an amused expression on his face.

  “I’m a secret now, am I? How quaint. I have to say, it’s the first time someone has wanted to flout that they know a prince,” he said.

  “Oh my God, shut up. It’s not about you. It’s about this whole thing.” I made a vague gesture.

  Olivier cocked
his head to the side. “Who was that? Your boyfriend?”

  I made a gagging sound. “Okay, no. He’s my brother. Ew. No. Not my boyfriend.” I shuddered.

  “Ah.” Olivier just watched me put on my shoes. “It’d be immensely awkward, if a lover of yours discovered our agreement.”

  I stilled. “I don’t have any lovers. At least not at the moment.” I tied the laces overly tightly, my foot protesting. I unloosed them and tried again.

  “But you don’t want to tell your brother about us.”

  “No, I don’t. He’s overprotective, and he’ll just throw a hissy fit, and who has time for that? No, it’s better he doesn’t know.”

  “What happens if you find your father? I’m assuming he’s your brother’s father as well.”

  Okay, I hadn’t thought about that important point. I’d pushed it away, because there was no guarantee we would find my da. But if we did, well, I’d figure that part out later.

  “I’m doing this for me, not Liam. Liam hates our da. He probably wouldn’t want to see him, anyway.”

  Olivier had sat down in a chair and crossed his ankles, like he had nowhere to be. “Your brother cares about you,” he said.

  “Um. Is that a question?”

  His gaze turned faraway, like I wasn’t even in the room anymore. “I always wished I’d had a sibling. It’s lonely, being the only child. And my parents always had their duties to occupy them.”

  “My mom is dead. My da might as well have been.” I didn’t mean the words to sound bitter; it was simply a statement of fact. But Olivier grimaced anyway.

  “Yes, I realize this.” He rose. “I didn’t mean to sound as though I were fishing for sympathy. My apologies.”

  Well, now I felt like a gigantic asshole. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just…” I struggled to explain. “Just that at least you can still talk to your parents, see them, ask them questions. I don’t even know if my da really is alive. For most of my entire life, both of my parents have been dead, you know? It was just me and Liam.”

  “You’re lucky.” Olivier’s voice was soft. “To have someone like your brother, who cares for you so much. I’d give anything…” He trailed off. “Never mind. We need to plan for our trip tomorrow. Let’s get dinner and discuss it.”

  I followed Olivier out of the hotel into a taxi, not caring where we were going. My mind was whirling, though. It was one of the first times I’d seen Olivier vulnerable.

  Had he been ignored by his parents as a child? Given off to a nanny while his parents had their own lives? If so, I could imagine it had been a very lonely way to grow up. Although I’d felt abandoned when Liam had asked our aunt and uncle to raise me, I’d always known he’d done it out of love. And he’d been in his early twenties—my age. He hadn’t been capable of raising a young child at that age, and I could relate. I could barely keep myself together, let alone think about a kid.

  But I’d always known Liam loved me. I’d known Mam had loved me, that Aunt Siobhan and Uncle Henry had, too. Had Olivier ever felt that? Or had his parents’ love been frigid, kept at arm’s length, while he was raised to be this golden prince who wasn’t allowed to be human?

  You’re more than some arrogant rich boy, aren’t you? I thought. I gazed at him as he watched raindrops patter against the taxi window, and I knew that that thought alone was very, very dangerous.

  Chapter Twelve

  The drive to Jeanne Durand’s home took longer than either of us expected. Despite only being a few miles outside of Paris, the traffic crawled at the slowest possible pace. By the time we’d left the city, we were both hungry for lunch and had stupidly not packed anything to eat. I’d almost asked our taxi driver if he had any food, but I hadn’t yet gotten that desperate.

  When we arrived at our destination, Olivier paid the driver and headed straight for the front door. As for me, I was enjoying taking in the beauty of the French countryside. The address was a little cottage that looked like it had been built centuries ago, although for all I knew it had been built within the twenty-first century. A lovely little garden took us down a path to the front door of the cottage, hanging vines nearly covering the door number.

  It was idyllic, straight out of a fairy tale. The bees buzzing, the smell of fresh, blooming flowers, the warm sun. All of it together made me antsy, like an axe murderer was going to jump out of the cottage and run us off of the property. It just seemed way too lovely.

  “You look like you’re going to vomit,” said Olivier blandly after he’d knocked on the front door.

  “This place is way too cute.”

  “And that’s why you’re looking ill?”

  “Yes. I don’t trust it.” I glanced over my shoulder. I’d tried to peer inside the window nearest the front door, but a curtain had obscured the view.

  “I had no idea you were so paranoid.” He motioned at me. “Get behind me, then. I’ll protect you.”

  That line made my paranoia disappear, because the image of Olivier protecting my person from some serial killer was hilarious. Olivier could probably hold his own in some fancy-schmancy fencing match, but I really doubted he could take out somebody with an axe.

  I was laughing heartily, Olivier glowering at me, when the front door opened. A middle-aged woman with dark hair in a messy bun asked something in French. Olivier asked if she was Jeanne Durand, and the woman, after a moment’s hesitation, nodded.

  “Do you speak English?” asked Olivier. He gestured at me. “My companion doesn’t speak French, I’m afraid.”

  “A little bit,” Jeanne said in a heavy accent. “Are you American?” she asked me.

  “Guilty as charged.”

  At Jeanne’s confused expression, Olivier translated into French. She nodded, and after wiping her hands on her apron, she gestured us inside.

  “Come, come, have some coffee. We will speak,” she said briskly.

  Despite the dim light inside Jeanne’s cottage, I could make out what could only be dozens of antiques: vases, bowls, statues, clocks. Artwork hung from the walls, while the furniture was heavy and old-fashioned but beautiful. I couldn’t help but wonder how much all of this was worth.

  Jeanne brought out coffee and some pastries before settling onto a red chair. “How can I help you?” she said.

  I looked at Olivier. He looked at me. I finally began. “Olivier says he sold an antique clock to your husband.”

  At the mention of her husband, Jeanne’s expression turned sad. “Many people sold many things to him. But I’m no longer in the business.”

  “We’re merely seeking information. Who did your husband sell it to?” said Olivier.

  I brought out the documents that my da had sent to the estate, showing Jeanne the photo of the clock that was enclosed. “Do you recognize it?”

  Jeanne peered closely. “Non, I do not.” She shrugged, returning the papers. “My husband, he sold and bought so many things. He would know, if he were here.”

  “Is there any possible way we could have you look for any information regarding who he sold the clock to?” Olivier leaned forward. “It’s extremely important.”

  “I can’t disclose private information,” Jeanne said, rather sadly.

  I took a deep breath, my hands shaking a little. “Olivier here is searching for the clock because his mother wants it back. I’m searching for it because we have reason to believe my father has it.” I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “I thought for my entire life that my da was dead, but in the last year I’ve discovered that he’s not. Finding this clock will mean reuniting with him.”

  I gazed into Jeanne’s eyes. “If you could have one more day with your husband,” I said softly, “wouldn’t you do anything to make that happen?”

  Olivier stilled next to me. This was a gamble I was taking. Either Jeanne would find it in her heart to help us, or she’d tell us to go to hell and get out of her house.

  As the silence lengthened, I worried that Jeanne was considering how she’d throw us out.
Or she hadn’t understood what I’d said. I was about to ask Olivier to translate when Jeanne rose from her seat and gestured for us to follow her.

  Olivier shot me a look. “You’re full of surprises today,” he leaned down to whisper in my ear.

  I didn’t have the brain capacity for a clever reply. I was just praying that Jeanne was going to help us, not take us to the back room to be mauled by a rabid bear or something.

  “Do you think she understood?” I said quietly to Olivier.

  Apparently, my voice wasn’t as quiet as I thought, because Jeanne replied, “Yes, I understood.”

  I blushed scarlet. Olivier chuckled, which made me elbow him in the side. He let out an annoyed “oof,” and we were nearly about to start wrestling in this poor woman’s hallway when Jeanne led us into a tiny room that functioned as part office, part guest room.

  “I don’t know if my husband bought or sold this clock of yours,” she said, “but I can look in my files.”

  Olivier replied in rapid French. I could tell by how quickly he was talking how excited he was. After explaining that he’d sold the clock to her late husband Charles, Jeanne began to look through her files.

  It took little time to find the information. It seemed way too easy, just like this cottage was way too pretty.

  Stop looking for monsters that aren’t there, I admonished myself. Be happy it was this simple.

  “Here,” she said briskly, handing Olivier a single piece of paper.

  I stood over Olivier’s shoulder. The document was in French, of course, but even I couldn’t make out any identifying information. “Wait, is there a name on this thing?” I asked.

  Olivier let out a sigh. “It gives the name of an antiques dealer in Berlin.” He pointed. “But no name.” He looked to Jeanne. “Is this all you have?”

  She shrugged. “Oui,” was all she said.

  When we left Jeanne’s cottage after thanking her profusely, we headed back to our hotel. On our respective phones, we began researching the dealer located in Berlin. Despite our best efforts, though, all we could find was a phone number that was disconnected along with an address.