Bad to the Throne

by Gardiner, Jenny

  Andi muttered a spate of vulgarities just under her breath, biding her time while trying to decide how to handle this.

  Meanwhile, Zander pulled her closer, leaning in till his nose was buried in her long, blond hair. He took a deep breath. “You smell amazing,” he said, barely audible above the din of the crowd and music but loud enough for his dance partner to hear it.

  “Yep. Six months’ worth or dirt and sweat built up. Just for you.” She couldn’t help but get that dig in.

  Andi was torn between wanting to knee the man in the crotch and maybe possibly kinda sorta considering yielding to the moment. After all, she had prejudged him to be a total asshole. And while he very well could be one still, he seemed like he was trying. But then again, he could have just handed her the phone and been done with it. But then again, he could have just handed her the phone and then she’d have been done with this. Clearly neither of those endings satisfied him. Or her, for that matter.

  As Zander pulled her in a little tighter, she felt her body soften and mold to his. Zander was no longer trying to pen her in to keep her from breaking away; rather, his warm hands were settled on her lower back, his face still nestled in her hair, his mouth so close to her ear she could hear him breathing. It was soothing, this feeling she’d almost forgotten about. It had been so long since a man had held her close.

  The two stayed like that for a minute or two. While the crowd danced on around them, they seemed lost in their own music.

  Weird, Andi thought. Two minutes ago I wanted to kill him, but now...

  Zander pressed himself into Andi and suddenly she was aware of the unmistakable proof that he was feeling as aroused as she was. Well, maybe even more so.

  Zander leaned his head back for a minute and cupped Andi’s chin in his hands. As he fixed his eyes on her pale blue ones, he brushed at a tiny cut on the side of her face with his thumb. “From today? When you fell?”

  Andi nodded.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” he said. “It all happened so quickly, then you yelled at me, and then you ran off.”

  Andi just stared, not knowing what to say, barely remembering why she’d yelled at him in the first place. She totally saw how women fell under his spell. Zander leaned down and pressed his lips gently to the cut on her cheek, which was all it took for Andi to melt.

  And then Zander moved a little farther south, gently seeking her lips, and when he found them, he settled his mouth on hers, licking the seam of her mouth while pressing her hips even closer against his body with his large hands.

  Andi couldn’t help but think there was no way she’d be able to do a quick grab and go with the phone at this point. No hand was going to get into that pocket with the size of what he was packing. And how embarrassing would it be to even try at this point? Not that she actually minded it. She was struggling to remember the last time she’d been with a man, even just to kiss one. It had to have been a couple of years! And to think she’d gotten Prince Charming this turned on that he had a bulge in his pants, thus imprisoning her phone.

  Andi thought back to the first time she’d seen Zander’s bulge, minus the protective clothing. Which of course almost made her laugh out loud—who even has a first time to see someone naked like that, under such weird circumstances? Ugh, but that brought to mind all those stupid women who’d stripped down to nothing right beside him. Which made her think of the Slut Sisters who’d been hovering nearby, a hundred times more beautiful and sexy than she was. And then she started thinking about what she was doing.

  Good Lord! I’m pressed up against the very cock that got me fired, she thought. But really, did his dick get her fired? Or did her own impulsivity do it? To be fair, she had to accept she had a role in it. Plus, well, without that prompt, she’d have been spinning her wheels in Vegas, waitressing and taking classes, and would never have set out to discover the world as she had. So maybe she owed him a bit of gratitude rather than her undying ire.

  Andi let her lips part a little as Zander deepened the kiss, their tongues twining as they explored one another further. Andi pressed her hand to Zander’s head, encouraging him.

  Maybe it was okay to let go for once, she thought. To just go with the flow and not overthink things and to let bygones be bygones. For that matter, she was struggling to remember what her bygones even were. Because, man, this guy could kiss like nobody’s business. Between the music and the moment and the man, his body pressed to hers, his tongue working wonders with hers, that little friend of his just about rolling out the red carpet for Andi to come out and play, it was all so intoxicating.

  She felt a tap on her shoulder.

  “Mi dispiace, Andi,” a voice said from behind her. “I am most sorry to interrupt you, but we are leaving now.” Rafaele and Elisabetta stood nearby, anxious to get going.

  With the hovering hoes staring daggers, poor Andi felt like she was the feature performer in a strip club and wanted to die from embarrassment. So out of character for her.

  And like a needle scratching abruptly across the vinyl grooves of an LP record, the spell was broken. Andi pulled back, staring up at Zander, disoriented. And Zander stared back at her, a grin slicing across his face despite himself.

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out her phone, and handed it to her. Andi pressed it on, and there, magically, in front of her (and their audience), was the screensaver Zander had substituted on her telephone. The man, naked, in all his glory.

  “You messed with my phone!” she said as loudly as she could, just as she drew back her hand. “How dare you? You, you, you pig!”

  With that, she slapped him across the face and stormed off the dance floor, leaving Zander rubbing his sore cheek, having suddenly gone from boner to bonehead in the blink of an eye.

  Chapter Seven

  ANDI was livid. How dare he snoop through her phone. It was akin to poking around in someone’s medicine cabinet at a party or—worse still—her underwear drawer.

  Ugh. So that whole time he knew I’d seen him and snapped a shot of the event, no less. If she was being honest, maybe she was a bit embarrassed at herself. After all, she was the one who’d taken the picture. And she was the one who’d kept it on her phone. Granted, she’d done that as a reminder of how far she’d come. And also for the laugh of it. After all, it’s not often you get to snap off a picture of a hot naked man, let alone a prince. But that was none of his business! And if he didn’t want it on her phone, well, then, he shouldn’t have stripped down to nothing in broad daylight with all those witnesses.

  Getting back to that reminder of how far she’d come... Sure, she’d kept Zander’s picture on her phone for that general reason. And it didn’t hurt that this gave her a perfect excuse to refer back to it. Each time she got a little homesick, all she had to do was open up her phone and look at that image, and she knew she was on the right course. She wasn’t still stuck in some two-bit job, slinging drinks for sloppy-drunk patrons, with a surly boss willing to dump her on her ass for a minor transgression. She was, all things considered, free. Untethered by a demanding career in some crap cubicle. Not stuck with a lease and a car and a pile of bills to pay each month. Granted, it wasn’t always easy to figure out how to sustain her itinerant lifestyle, but she’d managed so far. And she’d continue to do so until the pull of stability started to tug on her, which hadn’t even crossed her mind at that point.

  Andi paused for a second as her thoughts erupted in her angry mind. If he was upset about that picture being there, wouldn’t he have just deleted it from her photos? Instead, he’d made it her screen saver. Was he mocking her by doing that? Or was he just the world’s biggest egotist and perfectly happy to flaunt it?

  And what about that dance, if you could call it that? The two of them, lost in that ever-so-protracted slow dance while everyone else was very much not slow dancing, because it was electronica being played after all. It was loud and throbbing, the type of music you could feel as much as hear.

  Speaking of feeling,
she hadn’t imagined that, that was for sure. Of course, it hadn’t been the first time she’d witnessed that thing of his in action. Well, not in action—thank God he hadn’t put it to work in the swimming pool in Vegas!—but in its more, uh, active state. Andi could probably count on one hand the number of times she’d even borne witness to one of those things, let alone had an active role in its, well, activity. And twice it was his. Correction: this second time she hadn’t seen it, per se. But boy, had she felt it. And she wasn’t complaining. Yet.

  Because one thing Andi was good at doing was figuring out how to make something good seem particularly bad. Like blaming Zander in the first place. Or never forgiving her one-time best friend Tamara Greely for snaking her boyfriend Matthew O’Connell from her in college, even though she really hadn’t seen much of a future with Matt beyond their shared interest in working at a soup kitchen together. Aside from that, they’d pretty much run out of things to talk about.

  After all, Tamara and he did get married, which sort of gave credibility to their then-nascent relationship. Maybe the two of them had just known. Which made her wonder if she was supposed to just know. And did “just knowing” mean getting all hot and bothered when slow-dancing with a decidedly stunning specimen of male-dom, taking comfort in knowing she played a role in his getting equally hot and bothered? Andi made a mental note to reach out to her ex-friend someday and bury the hatchet. Which she could do now that she had her phone back, but nah. Maybe later. She was too busy stewing. Or mulling. Or maybe kicking herself for her perhaps overly dramatic exit strategy. Which of course was not so much a grand plan but rather maybe more of an impulsive response to her own embarrassment.

  Andi thought back to the old woman. The prince has what you need, she’d said. Had she seen him pick up the phone? Is that was that meant? Or was it some deeper meaning? Maybe she somehow knew that Andi hadn’t gotten laid in a good long while. Nah, impossible. Maybe that was just a weird coincidence and Andi should move on. Which was fine, because she hadn’t exactly left things in a state in which they could get together ever again. Pretty much that thwack across the face left no options. Besides, they hadn’t exchanged contact information. She tucked that away in her head and decided to contact her mother just to let her know she was reachable again.

  She typed to her mom, Wanted to let you know I found my phone!

  Her mother replied, That nice young man found you?

  What nice young man?

  Why, that Alexander fellow. He texted me earlier tonight to let me know he’d found the phone! He was concerned you’d be worried about it. He said you’d fallen. Are you all right?

  Andi rolled her eyes. Prince Charming already had her mother in his thrall. He was a damned maestro.

  I’m fine, Mom. It was a little spill. Don’t worry about it.

  Of course I’m worrying. You’re my only baby and you’re far from home. Thank heavens that nice man was looking after you.

  Andi suppressed a little shriek. She didn’t want to wake Rafaele, though from the sounds of it he and Elisabetta weren’t exactly snoring away in their room...

  He’s not a nice man, Mom.

  He’s a bad boy and his kisses were about the most perfectly bad boy kisses imaginable.

  He seemed the perfect gentleman to me, her mom replied. Seemed that he was very concerned about your welfare. I hope you thanked him appropriately.

  Oh, yeah, I did that and then some.

  Of course I used my manners. But it’s no big deal. I won’t see him again, so all good.

  Maybe you should look for him. A good man is hard to find, you know.

  And a hard man is good to find, she couldn’t help but think as she heard the headboard banging in the next room over. While Couchsurfing was awfully convenient, sometimes it had its downside...

  Yes, Mother. Indeed that is true. A good man is hard to find. Good thing I’m not looking.

  She stared at the busy thought bubble on her phone, awaiting her mother’s reply to that one, knowing full well she’d be lowering the boom.

  Not to hurry things along or anything, but you’re not getting any younger. Those eggs aren’t going to preserve themselves, you know.

  Andi sighed. Her mother and those dying eggs. She loved nothing more than to remind Andi about the diminishing fertility of the adult woman.

  I’m taking my chances on my eggs, Mom. Pretty sure they’re not going anywhere in the next few months.

  Well, if you get a chance, maybe give him another try.

  Andi knew it was time to wrap up this convo.

  Roger that, Mom.

  Promise?

  Cross my heart and hope my eggs don’t die.

  You’ve always been a smart-ass, Andrea.

  That’s why you love me so.

  I do! Bunches and bunches. Be safe, my darling!

  Andi shut off her phone, turned over to one side on the pull-out couch, and piled her blanket and pillow atop her ears, hoping to muffle the sounds of the fertility dance being acted out by her genteel host and his Italian lover.

  It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter Eight

  THE next morning Zander kept rubbing his face where Andi’s hand had made contact with it ever so abruptly only hours earlier, as if revisiting the scene of the crime would somehow change the outcome.

  “What in the hell is the matter with that woman?” he said to Lorenzo.

  “I told you before absolutely no point in trying to make sense of them. They’re beyond our pay grade.”

  “Shit. Pay grade. They’re beyond every psychological study known to mankind.”

  “You should’ve stuck with Things One, Two, and Three. You had a sure bet with them.”

  Zander shrugged. “Yeah, but they were boring me.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were smitten with that black widow.”

  Zander laughed. “Black widow. Perfect description. I bet she’d eat her mate, that one. But yes, to make matters worse, I came up completely empty-handed when all I wanted was a little fun.”

  “Looked to me like you were having some fun,” Lorenzo said. “And don’t tell me I didn’t warn you about messing with her phone. Now see what you have to show for it.” He pointed to the faint red spot that a ring on her finger must have left behind, a subtle reminder on Zander’s cheek.

  “Before she wigged out on me, it was downright amazing,” Zander said. “It’s like we had some sort of connection. We barely talked, but it’s what we didn’t say...”

  “And I surely don’t want to know what the two of you didn’t say. But you were getting awfully up close and personal for this noncommunication communicating of yours. Just be glad that wasn’t a paparazzi moment for you. Imagine if that slap had been captured for the tabloids.” Lorenzo shook his head and scrubbed his face with his hands. “I’m sure as hell glad it wasn’t, because your mother would have my head on a platter for not keeping you out of trouble.”

  “You’re not my babysitter, Lorenzo.”

  “I know that and you know that, but let’s be honest, Zander. Sometimes it helps with you to have a voice of reason holding vigil over your shoulder.”

  “That’s what everyone thinks, but I am perfectly capable of making my own decisions. Besides, I’ll always only be Zander the Spare—a year late and a dollar short in birth order. Being the unnecessary backup prince means there’s nothing much left to do but be the black sheep. At least as royal bad boy I can have fun and provide a little amusement along the way. If royal reprobate is what they want, then I’m more than happy to accommodate them.”

  “I know you think that, but we all know you’re so much more than ‘the Spare,’ my friend. Don’t diminish yourself by believing that.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. But it doesn’t matter what I do, in people’s eyes I will always be second best.”

  Lorenzo got up and went over to his Nespresso machine to make two espressos. He popped a capsule in and started the machine.<
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  “What about your charity. You think that’s of no use? What if you weren’t here? Then where would the Prince’s Trust be? It’s nothing without you. Think about how many people all over the world have been helped by it: refugees in Africa, homeless people in many countries looking for a meal with which to survive, orphaned children in need of someone to care for them. Your work has meant a great deal to so many people. And these are the ones you likely will never hear a thank-you from. But you need to know in your own gut that you’ve had an impact on them.”

  He handed Zander a demitasse of espresso and quickly tossed back his own.

  “Okay, fine. You’ve got a point there. At least I have little children clamoring for my attention. But yet why do I have this bird smacking me? Here I am just minding my own business, trying to make nice with her.”

  “My bet is she was supremely embarrassed that you found that picture on her phone. Shame she ran out on you, as we’ll never know how she came to have it in the first place.”

  “Well, that’s one hell of a way to express your shame.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone to see that the battery had died. “Damn thing. Won’t hold a charge for anything. Mind if I use your charger? Hoping I haven’t missed any important messages about my standing in the royal family.” He rolled his eyes.

  Lorenzo handed him a charger, and Zander plugged the phone in a nearby socket. Within minutes the phone came alive and dinged to indicate he had a new text.

  “My luck it’ll be a nasty-gram from that cranky Andi woman.”

  “Clearly she was into you for a while, at any rate. Which shows that beneath that surly exterior there’s a beating pulse,” Lorenzo said. “You just have to figure out how to reach that again. While wearing protective gear.”