I scan for my name, hoping I’ll be sitting with Mykel Hawke. He seems pretty cool. Actually, anyone but Dylan or Bear would be good. He and I haven’t spoken yet, but he certainly gave me a look in the airport that showed he most definitely heard what I had said about his backpacks during the show. Awkward.
I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to see Veronica is still with me. “Look, we’re sitting together!” She points to our seats about halfway along the plane.
“Brilliant,” I say. “Window or aisle for you?”
“I’m totally an aisle girl,” she says. “I just love talking to people.”
“Perfect because I’m a window guy.”
We make our way to our row where I stow both our bags and take my seat.
Veronica sits next to me and leans in, lowering her voice. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are things okay with you and Arabella? I have a source at the palace who said they haven’t seen you there in weeks and that the princess has been absolutely miserable.”
My body goes numb, but I fight to look totally happy. “Well, we’ve both been so busy, but things are absolutely fine. Just as they should be.”
Narrowing her eyes, Veronica says, “You sure there isn’t something going on? My source said she’s been extremely quiet, totally distracted, and ordering giant amounts of desserts for herself every evening. It has all the hallmarks of a breakup.”
Before I’m forced to answer, Veronica gets distracted by one of the producers, who needs her to go to the back of the plane and talk about some planning thing. I stare out the window, trying to absorb what I just heard. She’s miserable. That shouldn’t ignite a fiery hope in my belly, but it does. She’s not over me, which works out well because I’m not even close to being over her.
I think about the promise I made to her that she would never be without a date again, and I can picture her now, getting ready, feeling like a complete loser, even though she’ll be the most beautiful woman there. And there will be about a hundred eligible men all vying for her attention, now that they’ve seen how boring she’s not. The thought makes my blood run cold.
Dylan comes down the aisle, shouting instructions with an open-mouthed grin.
She stops next to me and says, “Isn’t this amazing?! Can you believe I put this together when only six months ago, I had never directed anything in my entire life? In fact, I had never even worked at a television network? I have to say, I’m quite pleased with myself.”
How unusual for you. “Well done,” I say, forcing a smile on my face.
She grins at me and points. “My money’s on you, Will Banks, my protégé.”
Then, she turns and starts yelling again, causing everyone within a three-metre radius to wince visibly. “Now, do not worry about getting up early tomorrow because the plan is to party it up tonight, get to know each other, and have the best time of our lives. The next two days are just to relax and recover for the competitors while the crew starts setting up. You can do some sightseeing or working out or whatever. Just make sure you forget about the cameras and have an epic time!”
Suddenly, the thought of staying on this plane for the next ten hours feels like it’s going to suffocate me. I can’t do this. I cannot leave things the way they are with Arabella, not when there’s even the tiniest possibility she may still love me. Not when I’m so desperately in love with her. The truth is, I don’t want any of this without her. Not fame, not the money, not the next sixty years on this planet. Nothing.
I need to get the hell off this plane. Now. But that would be career suicide, no?
My heart pounds in my chest, and I pull my mobile out of my pocket and dial Dwight’s number.
Dwight picks up on the third ring. “Yes, I’ll book you the next flight to Nuuk. It leaves in twenty-two hours, so you’ll have to make up with her fast.”
I laugh, feeling genuinely excited for the first time in over a month. “I was hoping you’d talk me out of getting off the plane.”
Sighing, Dwight says, “That’s what a good agent would do, but I’m afraid you’re turning me into an exceptionally awful one.”
“But a really amazing friend.”
“Should I take the ring out of the freezer?”
I consider it, my heart beating like it does when I’m about to base jump off a cliff. “No, I think that would be a little presumptuous.”
“Good point.”
“This is the right call, isn’t it?” I ask him.
“Only if you want to be happy,” Dwight says.
“I do, but even more than that, I want her to be,” I say, standing and opening the overhead bin. “Do you think I can make her happy?”
“Probably,” he says, sounding slightly disgusted. “Women seem to like muscle-bound, daring men who are also really thoughtful and caring.”
“Aww, thanks, Dwight.”
“If you ever tell anyone I said that, I’ll go public with that poem you wrote her.”
My cheeks go instantly hot at the memory. “Duly noted.”
“Okay, now get going. Your princess is on her way to a ball without her Prince Charming.”
“I’m on it.” I stand and get my bag, then quickly start toward the exit.
Dylan calls to me, “Will, what are you doing? Everyone needs to sit in their assigned seats.”
I turn back. “I’m not changing seats. I’m getting off the plane. There’s something I have to do that can’t wait.”
“No,” she says in a stern tone. “You have to stay on the flight. Filming starts now.”
“Sorry, Dylan. I’ll be there in time for the actual competition, I promise.”
“But I need to have footage of you on the plane with everybody else,” she says, squeezing her way around some of the other people so she’s now standing in front of me.
I put my hands on her shoulders and smile down at her. “You of all people can spin this into something amazing. I will see you in a couple of days.” With that, I pivot and press on down the aisle as fast as I can.
34
Octogenarians Showing Too Much Cleavage…
Arabella
“Which one do you think is sexier?” Gran asks, standing in her slip, holding up two dresses—one of them a sparkly black and the other a royal blue with a plunging neckline (which I’m not convinced is meant for an octogenarian, but I’m not going to tell her that). “The black is very sparkly. I quite love it.”
“You just don’t want to see me with the plunging neckline,” Gran says. “But I’ll have you know, my cleavage is quite youthful. At least, that’s what the men say.”
“Brilliant.” I sit down on the tufted bench in her dressing room while she disappears behind the screen. “You’re going with the blue one, aren’t you?”
“But don’t take it as an insult, dear,” she says. “It’s not your fault that you’ve gone back to being completely dull. Old habits are hard to break and all that.”
“I have not gone back to being boring,” I say, then glance down only to realize that my beige shoe is poking out from under my dress. I quickly tuck my feet under the bench to hide them. “I’ve just gotten very busy doing extremely important things.”
“If it makes you feel better, just continue to tell yourself that.” Gran appears from behind the screen, wearing the blue dress of course. Good God, that’s a lot of old lady cleavage. She turns and points to her back. “Zip me up.”
I stand and do as she asked, a sense of utter doom coming over me as I realize this is going to be it for me for the rest of my life—or even worse, only for the rest of hers.
She turns and stares at me for a second, then shakes her head in disgust. “Christ, you’re miserable.”
“I am not. I just have a lot on my mind, but I’m really quite happy.”
“Whatever for?” she asks. “If I had your life, I would be utterly despondent.”
“Thanks for that,” I say.
“Ridiculous,” she says, walking over to her wall of cubbies and
selecting a gold clutch. “Here you are in your prime acting like an old lady—one without any imagination or adventure in her bones whatsoever.”
“That’s not true. You’re the one that told me to hear my own voice, and my voice told me that I was better off on my own than with someone who was going to treat me like a child.”
“That wasn’t your voice. That was your fear talking,” she says, “What I was hoping you’d get from my speech that day was that you need to listen to your heart, your gut, and your brain.”
“Well, you could’ve bloody well said that,” I snap. “I’ve gone and dumped my one shot at any type of excitement in this life because I thought I was meant to be doing the sensible thing.”
“I never once said to be sensible,” she says quickly. “In fact, I’ve been trying to tell you the exact opposite for years now, only you’re too frightened to try.”
“That’s not true. Look at my speech at the UN. That was quite the departure from proper decorum, and it worked too,” I say. “Because the new slogan is ‘Unstoppable. United. Uplifting.’”
“I quite like that,” Gran says with a nod of approval. She walks over to her dressing table, where a large velvet box waits for her. Opening it, she picks up a pearl and diamond necklace and holds it up to me. “Be a dear and help me get this on. My date will be here soon.”
“Your date?” I ask.
“Yes. My heart surgeon retired, so he was free to ask me out finally.”
“Dr. Clarke?”
“Yes, he’s such a doll.”
And he’s likely twenty years younger than her. I sigh, feeling a surge of irritation welling up in my gut. “Well, you might have mentioned that. Now, I have to go by myself, which is far more embarrassing than going with you.”
She wrinkles up her nose at me. “Is it?”
“Of course, it is,” I snap. “People think it’s sweet that we go together.”
“That’s only what they say to your face,” she says, making a clicking sound with her teeth. “The truth is, you were always going to stand me up tonight because, in a few minutes, you’re going to realize you’ve made the biggest mistake of your life and you’re going to rush to the airport to try to catch your man before he takes off with all those fit women to Greenland.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I scoff. “You really think that I’m so silly and jealous that I’m going to rush off and beg him to come back just because he might end up with someone else?”
“No,” she says. “The silly and ridiculous part has been how you’ve been behaving over the last month. But you’re about to pull your head out of your arse because generally that’s what people do when the doomsday clock on your relationship is about to strike midnight.”
“I’m not… there’s just simply no way… It’s too late.”
Then why is my heart beating so fast right now?
“It will be if you don’t hurry.”
“He’ll never take me back,” I say. “Not after how I treated him.”
“Of course he will,” she says, plucking a tube of lipstick off her table and popping the lid off. “You’re going to find him and tell him the truth, which is that you got very scared.”
“I wasn’t scared. I was furious.”
“Liar,” she says, smearing the red lipstick on her bottom lip. “You were terrified that if you stayed with him, you’d let him replace your brother as the person who calls the shots in your life. But the irony of it is that, by dumping him, you proved you’ll be just fine with a strong man by your side. Although, because you’re too stupid to have figured it out, it could very well be too late by now.”
I sit back down on the bench, feeling my entire body grow slightly weak at the revelation. “Oh my God, you’re right.”
“Of course I am,” she says.
“If you knew this, why would you keep it a secret? Don’t you think this would have been information that would’ve been useful to me, say, a month ago?”
“I’m rather busy, I can’t go around fixing everyone’s love lives all the time,” she says, standing and walking over to the mirror to double-check her lipstick. She smacks her lips together, then pops a finger in her mouth to wipe away the excess. “Besides, for once I thought I should leave you to it, so that you could figure something out on your own for once.”
“Such a disappointment. I always gave you credit for being smarter than this.” She walks over to me and pats me hard on the cheek while I close my eyes to avoid the view of her cleavage. “Now, you better get going. I’m hoping Dr. Clarke and I can have a few moments alone before we head down to the ball.” She waggles her eyebrows at me and grins.
I start to wrinkle up my nose, but she says, “Don’t be like that, dear. You’ll be my age someday too, and, with any luck, you and William will be together to enjoy a quick shag before you head off to these dreadfully boring events.”
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. Arthur has a car waiting out front for you, and he’s asked Ben to drive you since he’s really the best one at high speed car chases.”
I sit, my entire body feeling numb as my mind races through everything she’s just said. “Wait. Arthur?”
“Yes, total one-eighty when he found out what Will did for the family. He also may have felt bad because someone gave him a stern talking-to about interfering.”
She means her.
I smile for a second, then my heart jumps to my throat at the thought of rushing to him. “But I broke it off with him. He’s never going to take me back.”
“You need to learn the difference between a little fight and a real reason to end things,” Gran says. “What you and your young man had was called a fight. And, well done for standing your ground because that will do you well for the future, but poor show on breaking it off with him entirely and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”
“But he—”
“It was never really about him. And you know it.”
“If he wanted me back, he would’ve tried by now, no?”
“Why should he? Because he’s a man? How positively old-fashioned of you,” she says. “You broke it. You fix it.”
“Oh God,” I say, feeling slightly nauseous. “I did break it. And if I don’t fix it, I’ll never be happy again, will I?”
“Nope, you won’t.”
I rise to my feet, feeling slightly wobbly.
She taps me in the middle of my abdomen. “This is your gut. Right here. Listen to it. What is it telling you to do right now?”
“To go,” I say without thinking.
“Finally. That’s the first thing you’ve gotten right since you came back from Vienna.”
“Okay,” I say, excitement and terror building in my chest. “I’ll go!”
“You already said that.”
I grin at her, feeling suddenly very much alive. “I’m going to rush to him and see if he’s willing to give things another try.”
“Yes, I know you are,” she says, sounding completely irritated. “You don’t have to keep saying it.”
I start to hurry out of her dressing room, but then stop and turn back. “But what am I to say?”
“I don’t have the first fucking clue,” she says. “But you’ll have exactly twelve minutes in the car to think of something.”
35
Peggy the Five-Star Uber Driver
Will
“Are you Will?” the middle-aged woman in a two-door lime-green Prius asks me, pulling up to the sidewalk in front of the airport.
“I am. You’re Peggy?” I ask, rushing around to the passenger side.
I open the door and am about to get in the front seat when she says, “Please get in the back. It’s safer for both of us.”
I pause for a moment, then flip the seat forward and do my best to fold myself into the cramped backseat. Once I’m in, I pull the seat in front of me back and start to settle myself in, only to have her say, “Are you able to reach the door handle from back there?”
“Nice to have someone with long arms for a change,” she says. “You’ve no idea how exhausting it is to keep getting out of the car to shut the door. Now, before we embark on our journey together, I’d like to find out a little bit about your taste in music and preferred temperature settings.”
Oh, bloody hell. “Any music is absolutely fine with me, and I don’t really care about temperature. What I do care about is leaving right now.”
“Yes, I did notice that your request for a pickup did list this as urgent, but there’s always time for comfort, don’t you think?”
“Not always,” I say. “Sometimes you just have to rush. This, unfortunately is one of those times.”
“No water for you, then?”
“No,” I say, sounding impatient. I follow it up with, “Thank you, though.”
“All right then, I’m just going to check my mirrors again and make sure you’ve got your seatbelt on,” she says, turning back to me. “Very good. Now we can go.”
She turns on the signal light, then shoulder checks and I do the same. Oh God, please tell me she’s not waiting for that speck of a car coming in the distance.
Shit. She is.
Come on, come on, just pull out already, Peggy. You can do this.
“So, it says you want to go to Valcourt Palace. Isn’t there a gala there tonight?” she asks, the signal light still ticking away while she doesn’t pull out.
“Yes, there is, in fact.”
“If you don’t mind me saying, you don’t look like you’re dressed for a fancy ball.”
I glance down at my outfit—white tee, army green puffy vest and navy track pants. “Well, it’s a bit of a last-minute decision to go there.”
“I see.” She finally pulls out into the exit lane and slowly accelerates, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “You look awfully familiar. Have I picked you up before?”
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