The Reluctant Royal

by Eleanor Harkstead

  “Sergeant Wenlock, welcome to my—” Alejandro’s voice fell silent as he descended the stairs at a clip, a tall, slender figure resplendent in a long dressing gown of flowing red silk. In the middle of the morning. He paused on the second riser and pursed his lips, then smiled. “Hello, Sergeant.”

  Joe came forward, hand held out to shake. He tried to ignore the fact that Alejandro’s prettiness, as evident in the photos inside his file, was extraordinarily attractive in the flesh.

  For God’s sake, Wenlock. Stay professional. You’ve got to live under the same roof.

  “Do you have a first name, or are you strictly Sergeant?” Alejandro took Joe’s hand.

  Joe realised he was gazing into the depths of Alejandro’s dark eyes. He cleared his throat and reminded himself, This man has been through two CPOs in a month. Watch your step. Joe stood a little taller.

  “My friends call me Joe, sir. But officially I am Sergeant Wenlock.” Alejandro’s mother had called him Joe. Not only called him it, but purred it. And after a few drinks, he would become José and sometimes even Pepe. But in front of dignitaries, he was Wenlock once more.

  “Sergeant Wenlock is the officer who protected your mother,” Patrick told him, as proud as a father. “You couldn’t be in better hands.”

  “You may call me Alejandro, and I shall call you Joe.” The young man withdrew his hand then looked to Patrick. “I shall take good care of him, never fear!”

  Joe glanced down at his feet, as if expecting to see a trapdoor beneath them. Alejandro was doing a very good job of being friendly, but Joe had to wonder. Was this how he got rid of the other CPOs? Being as charming as the duchess, until it was convenient to run away? “Very well, Alejandro.”

  Joe didn’t think he did too bad a job of his soft Spanish j and subtly rolled r.

  “Make sure you do.” Patrick laughed. “His wife will be pleased to know he’s in safe hands.”

  Joe wasn’t sure Wendy would care all that much, but he grinned at Alejandro anyway, as if agreeing with Patrick’s observation. Alejandro returned the smile, but his mouth looked suddenly very hard and Joe knew straight away that this wasn’t going to be easy. It was the face of a child who had just been told there are no more sweets until tomorrow.

  “I’m sure Mrs Sergeant will be delighted.” He tossed his hair and turned to Patrick. “I’m sorry, he just won’t do.”

  “I worked for your mother, remember,” Joe interjected. He wasn’t going to be told he wouldn’t do by someone who flounced about in a silk dressing gown when normal people were up and about. “I would have continued to had I not—had that case not come to an end.”

  “No.” Peanut shook his head and said, “I want to exchange this one for another. One in a less generic suit, if you would.”

  “Mr Fuente.” Patrick smiled very slightly, clearly marshalling the diplomatic skill he’d inherited from his father. “Sergeant Wenlock is the officer who saved Her Grace during the incident earlier this year. He’s highly commended, highly decorated and the pride of the unit. Your mother has specifically requested that he be placed on this detail. There’s to be no exchange, regardless of your opinion on his suit.”

  “This is my first day back at work,” Joe told Alejandro, hoping to appear more human. More relatable. Not just a body in a suit who occasionally wore an earpiece.

  And never a silk dressing gown.

  Alejandro rolled his large eyes and gave a theatrical sigh of annoyance. He fixed Joe with his gaze, clearly appraising him and finding him wanting.

  “No,” was all he said, sliding his gaze to Patrick.

  Joe turned away from Alejandro and bent to pick up his luggage. Then he said, “I’ve studied the floorplans of the house. Which bedroom am I in? I’ll unpack.”

  “Top of the stairs, second door on the right,” Patrick replied. “Mr Fuente has decorated in honour of his newest CPO. Well, I shall leave you two gents alone. I’m sure you’ll get along splendidly once you get to know each other.”

  “Thank you, Commander.” Joe nodded to Patrick. Now he had to deal with Alejandro blocking his route to the stairs. “Mr Fuente—Alejandro? If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “I hope you like feathers,” Alejandro said in a voice dripping with sweetness. He stood aside. “And bright colours.”

  You’d be surprised.

  Joe tamped down the grin that was rising to his lips. So this was how Alejandro liked to wind up his CPOs? Turning up the camp as far as he could to make the strait-laced heterosexuals feel uncomfortable?

  Good luck with that.

  “It won’t matter too much, I’ll be asleep,” Joe assured him. He looked over his shoulder at Patrick. “Thanks, Commander. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Go easy on him, Mr Fuente.” Patrick opened the front door, about to make good his escape. “Expect the unexpected, Sergeant, good luck!”

  Sometimes Joe envied Patrick his desk job. But he knew he wouldn’t be happy working like that. Just as well he’d made a full recovery from the accident.

  “Very nice carpet, Alejandro,” Joe remarked as he went up the stairs. They were wooden with a runner up the middle, Bohemian and expensive all at once. He heard the front door close and Alejandro’s bare feet padding after him, accompanied by a heady cloud of exotic perfume.

  “Everything here is very nice. Apart from your suit.”

  “I have a job that involves breaking into a run at unexpected moments, rolling onto the floor occasionally, and sometimes even getting shot at.” And run down by a car. “I can’t wear expensive gear. I do apologise if that offends your sense of style.”

  “Style doesn’t have to mean expensive,” Alejandro informed him. “You literally look like an undertaker. A miserable undertaker, not a cheerful one. Why, with so many wonderfully coloured suits available, would you even think about wearing black? Doesn’t the marital home have a mirror?”

  “Several,” Joe replied, tight-lipped. Why was Alejandro so bloody rude when his mother was utterly charming? But clearly CPOs in generic suits cramped his style.

  Joe had reached the landing. Somewhere among the vases of peacock feathers was the door to his bedroom. “Right, where am I going, Alejo? I mean, Alejandro?”

  “That one.” Alejandro pointed one slender finger along the landing, his sleeve falling back to reveal an equally slender forearm. “If you have a mirror, why don’t you look in it? Who made that suit?”

  “I have no idea.” Joe could hear the sigh in his voice and knew Alejandro must too. He headed over the landing to his new home. “I got it in a department store, not Saville Row. I’m a copper, if you haven’t forgotten.”

  “Can we get a selfie? I want to ask my followers what they think of you.” Alejandro took a phone from the pocket of his robe. “My very own James Bond. Mark three.”

  “You want to advertise the fact you’ve got a bodyguard?” Joe opened the door of his room and headed inside, but his attention was on Alejandro. The man’s unbelievable! But then again… “Do you know, that’s not such a bad idea. Your troll might think twice if they see me with you. Especially if they don’t want to tangle with my terrible suit.”

  “Who would? So much polyester, so little time.” Alejandro rested his chin on Joe’s shoulder and reached out his arm in front of them. “Pull a suitably mean business face, Sergeant. The same one you pull when the lovely Mrs Sergeant asks you to put the rubbish out?”

  Having Alejandro stand so near to him reminded Joe of his initial assessment of him. He was an extremely attractive man. But also eye-wateringly rude. So not that attractive, Joe told himself.

  “The face I pull when Mrs Sergeant makes me carry all her shopping?” Joe frowned at the camera, his head slightly to one side as if he were about to spring into action. On the phone’s screen he could see them pictured, Alejandro sucking in his cheeks and widening his already large eyes as though awaiting the answer to a question. At least he didn’t pull a duckface, that was something.

  The shutt
er sound clicked and Alejandro stepped back, looking at the photo. “Perfect.” Then he began to type, murmuring as he did. “James Bond came to see me today. What do you think? Should I keep him? Hashtag hot men in bad suits.”

  Hot men. A blush began to creep over Joe’s face.

  Oh, come along, Sergeant! Don’t be so bloody stupid.

  Joe threw his suit bag down onto his bed—quite a comfy-looking double—then realised just how Alejandro had decorated the room. An enormous poster of sulking, sultry Querelle reared up above the bed, jostling for wall space with Tom of Finland’s firm-thighed men. Pierre et Gilles prints covered the other walls, with Liza Minelli pouting between them. And feathers had been right, with a bright blue boa twirled around the curtain pole and another, this one red, draped over a full-length mirror. Just in case the message hadn’t been hammered home, a little rainbow flag proudly flew from the neck of a Bollinger bottle.

  Feathers and rainbow flags. He really thinks this is going to be the worst a CPO has faced?

  Deliberately light, Joe commented, “Okay, so the bit in your file about being gay. They’d got that right, I see?”

  “Gay.” He nodded. “Not bi-curious, not confused, not married trade. Gay.”

  If you only you knew.

  “Great. That’s one thing cleared up then.” Joe was very tempted to drape one of the feather boas around his neck and sashay about the room, but he resisted. He unzipped his suitcase and started to unpack. “So now I’m here, some house rules. Starting with, I open the front door. Pretty basic rule. Can’t be too careful. There’s panic alarms in the house, I believe?”

  “Everywhere.” Alejandro nodded. “And I have a little thing that tells you where I am—when I choose to carry it. And CCTV infringing on my privacy every time I step into the garden. And all this because some hater can’t keep a lid on it. You can’t be fabulous and not have haters, ask anyone.”

  “We’re taking the threats against you seriously,” Joe told him. Although he couldn’t silence the little voice in his mind which said maybe he ended up with a troll because he insulted his suit too? “And I will do whatever I can, within the law, to keep you safe, but you’ve got to do something for me. Okay?”

  “I’m not going to wear that suit, so don’t ask.” He looked down at his phone. “Insta loves you, Mr Bond!”

  Paloma had made the jokey nickname sound charming, Joe remembered with a pang. Alejandro just drowned it in venom.

  As tempted as Joe was to see if the troll had reacted to the visible presence of a CPO, he carried on. “No running off. If you want to go out somewhere, I come with you. Your mother took me to a very dodgy flamenco bar in Madrid which I actually think was someone’s front room. But I checked it out first, then your mother had a safe and enjoyable evening. I cannot uphold my side of the deal and keep you safe if I don’t know where you are.”

  “You’re not coming out with me in that suit,” Alejandro said. “Show me the label.”

  “Is this what people mean by fashion victim?” Joe wasn’t usually sarcastic to his principals, but it seemed to be the way to reach through to Alejandro as the official route clearly wouldn’t work. “You’re so horrified by my suit that you’d risk facing your troll without your bodyguard?”

  “Babysitter.” He shrugged one shoulder. “None of you people understand my world, it’s off-putting for my friends to be glared at over cocktails. That’s all the other two did. Sat there in their generic suits and glared. I bet you glare, don’t you, Sergeant?”

  “I don’t glare. Unless someone’s rude about my suit.” Touché! Joe flashed Alejandro a sarcastic grin. And there was an answering smile, which escaped before Alejandro could catch it.

  “Is that the only house rule? That you follow me around like a lovesick twink?” The scowl returned to his face. “Anything else? Do you taste my food? Do you check under my bed at night?”

  Lovesick twink?

  “You carry your GPS at all times.” Joe folded his hands in front of him. “If I find out it’s been tied to an urban fox who’s running laps of Hampstead Heath, I will not be impressed. And by the way, if you do run off, you don’t just risk your safety, you risk me my job.”

  “Are you really Mamá’s Joe?” Alejandro asked, as though this might all be some elaborate ruse.

  “Her Pepito after one too many cavas.” Joe realised he’d got to the boxer short stratum of his suitcase and brought down the lid. And now I look like I was his mother’s gigolo. “I don’t mean…she was very friendly.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to be the one to say Pepito.” This time Alejandro’s smile was more playful, less icy than before. “She’s very fond of you and so is Pop. I suppose I should say thank you for that, for making sure I still have a mamá at all.”

  “Just doing my job.” Joe opened his suitcase again and took out a handful of underwear which he proceeded to fold neatly in a drawer. “Look, that happened even with me at her side. So please. Think what would have happened if she’d nipped off that evening without me. Or don’t think about it, because it wouldn’t have been very nice.”

  “Your shorts look far better quality than your suit.” Alejandro’s gaze dropped to the suitcase, then returned to Joe. “A man must have his priorities, I guess! Let me guess, you choose the suit, Mrs Sergeant chooses the shorts? Or perhaps the other way round, and you’re not quite the generic copper you want us to think you are!”

  If Joe had ever doubted his sexuality, secret as it was, the fact that a gay man as picky as Alejandro found nothing objectionable about his smalls confirmed it.

  “Well, yeah, I buy my own underwear. And Wendy—well, she helped me choose the suit. I said it wanted it to be like a uniform.” Joe popped his cuffs. Just because he could. “Although I’ve got a much better uniform at home with shiny buttons on it. Not too covert, though.”

  “I love a man who keeps his buttons polished. Does it have lots of braid?” Alejandro peered at his phone again, then the icy grin returned to his full lips. “Wendy Wenlock, how sweet! The happiest couple anyone could meet, I bet.”

  Something cold ran up Joe’s spine, as if he’d been caught in a draught. “More or less. Anyway, has your troll come out to play yet on that photo of us?”

  “Not yet, but you’ve got fans already. Look!” He turned the phone screen towards Joe. “Four hundred likes and counting! And some of those comments are…well.”

  Joe avoided putting photos of himself about online, for security reasons. But this was legitimate. Patrick would understand, surely. And he’d never been so popular. He peered at the screen. “Hunky? I don’t get called that very often!”

  “Prime Brit beef,” Alejandro read. “If you don’t want him, I’ll take him off your hands. Popular with the ladies and some of the gents. Not that the gents would be your style, I’m sure.”

  “Is that so? They’ll make Mrs Sergeant jealous!” Joe busied himself stowing his suitcase under the bed, emptied except for Paloma’s rose, which he had hidden in the shoe pocket inside. Had she kept his handkerchief? Joe hoped so, even though they’d never see each other again. “Each to their own, that’s what I say.”

  “I have house rules too, here in my house.” Alejandro perched on the edge of Joe’s bed. “I choose the music and the television downstairs. You have a TV of your own here for football or whatever it is that policemen watch. I don’t like a lot of noise before nine in the morning and I can’t abide a messy kitchen. The bathroom over the hallway is for your exclusive use and the house is cleaned every Thursday. Don’t leave odours in the kitchen or anywhere else and please don’t glare at Zak because it’s me who gets ranted at, not you. I’m really very easy to look after, Sergeant.”

  Joe’d had an easier time when he was at police college. Air hissed through his teeth in a whistle before he replied. “Right, shoes off on the stairs, too? Wet umbrellas in the stand? Look, about your cleaner. That was mentioned in the file, and I’m sure my colleagues have checked, but we need to make sur
e that’s watertight. No risk that your troll could get at you that way.”

  “I don’t have a cleaner anymore.” Alejandro frowned. “I didn’t like having someone run around tidying up my mess, so I clean for myself. Every Thursday. You can help though, since you’ll be here anyway, for as long as you can bear it!”

  Joe could almost hear Wendy’s gasp of horror at the thought of anyone cleaning their own house. Even Joe was forbidden from putting the washing away.

  He could hear, too, the gasps of horror of his colleagues who would’ve fumed at Alejandro demanding they clean. But Joe was relieved. At least that guaranteed some time when Alejandro would be safely indoors.

  “I’ll carry the Hoover upstairs for you,” Joe promised.

  “It’s rather heavy.” Alejandro blinked up at him. “But you look as though you could manage it.”

  “If I can’t get to the gym, household appliances will have to do.” Joe sighed. “Don’t suppose there’s a cup of tea on the go. I’ll make it.”

  “I’ll show you to the kitchen, then I need to get dressed. I was with Abuelita this morning and the dog hair gets everywhere—I always have to change as soon as I get home!” Abuelita. The head of state and her dog-hair problem. Alejandro rose to his feet again, the movement curiously balletic. “If you have pictures of Mrs Sergeant, feel free to put them up. Make the room your own, you’ll only be here a couple of weeks. The others haven’t hung around!”

  Only in the early days of their marriage had Joe taken a framed photo of Wendy with him when he had to stay away from home on a case. He shrugged. “I’ve got some photos of her on my phone if I get desperate.”

  “Can I see?” He held out his phone again to show Joe another batch of messages beneath their selfie. “I like this one best, it’s to the point. ‘You lucky fucker’!”

  Joe was taken aback by that, but covered his surprise with a chuckle. “Who’s the lucky one according to them? You or me?” Or neither of us. He took out his phone and pulled up the group photo he’d taken on Wendy’s birthday and showed the phone to Alejandro. “If you ever wondered what a bunch of solicitors look like down the pub, Wendy’s that one. With the short hair.”