The Prince's Triplet Baby Surprise

by Lara Hunter

  She eyed the caller ID, sighing audibly. She leaned against a brick wall on the corner, near Wall Street, plastering a false smile upon her face. “Rocco,” she said. “Great to hear from you. How’ve you been?”

  “Don’t give me that,” Rocco said, scoffing. “I’ve been calling you all morning. Did you drop off the face of the planet for a little while and only now decide to join us?”

  Lisa felt her smile falter. She eyed a homeless man on the corner, scuffling forward with bags attached to him, his expression grim. “I’m sorry, Rocco. I was tied up with work,” she said, flailing. “It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re damn right it won’t happen again,” her editor said. “We don’t tolerate that kind of behavior in this business. Our readers want what they want, when they want it. And that means you can just disappear on me whenever you get the urge. The Prince and Princess were at the restaurant yesterday evening, as you reported, correct?”

  “Yes,” Lisa breathed. “They were there. They bought out the entire restaurant.”

  “Wonderful. And I’m assuming you captured some shots for us?”

  Lisa didn’t respond. She felt her heart skipping in her chest, the oxygen depleting in her head. The rain had picked up and a huge puddle began to form in the road. Cars splashed by without care, sending sprays of dirty brown liquid in Lisa’s direction.

  “Garcia? You got the shots? Did they fight? Did you get any gossip, any juice, whatsoever?” Rocco ranted at her, his voice blistering her ears. “Hello? Am I speaking to a brick wall?”

  But Lisa couldn’t speak. She remembered the beautiful way the Prince had knelt down to her, kissing her cheek, her neck, her shoulder blades. He’d told her that something within her seemed to cry out to him, to tell him that everything was going to be all right. “Do you believe in soulmates?” he’d whispered, his wide eyes animalistic, making her crave him.

  “I didn’t get any information,” Lisa finally spoke, interrupting Rocco’s rant. “I didn’t get a single photo, and I didn’t overhear anything of interest.” The lies poured from her mouth.

  “So, you’re saying you failed,” Rocco said, his words heavy with disbelief. “You’ve failed us all.”

  “I suppose so,” she whispered. As she spoke, a weight was lifted from her shoulders. The realization that she didn’t have to ruin the man she’d come to know over the previous twelve hours thrilled her. She wasn’t the garbage person he’d thought her to be. Not any longer.

  “You have to be kidding me,” Rocco said. “You’re telling me you infiltrated the restaurant, served the Prince and Princess, and then came out with nothing? Are you stupid or something?”

  “Not stupid. Just not a good fit for this job,” Lisa said, lifting her chin to feel the rain on her cheeks. “I guess that means I won’t be working for you any longer, doesn’t it?”

  Rocco took a moment, breathing heavily, before he spoke again. “Look, Garcia. I don’t want to be rash. You’ve done good work for us in the past… Let me think about your situation and get back to you. But in the meantime, know you won’t receive a dollar of payment. You’ve wasted both my time, and your own. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal,” Lisa said, stabbing her finger on the “End call” button and standing in silence, her ears and eyes focused on the city around her. She had half a mind to toss her phone in the gutter, to watch it fall down the drain. Disconnecting herself from her tabloid reality, and cleansing herself once more. Perhaps that’s what it would take.

  ***

  Lisa began a slow walk back to her apartment building, feeling reaffirmed in herself and her artistic integrity. She stopped at a coffee shop, delivering a large smile to the barista, and then sipping her cappuccino slowly by the window, brimming with the realization that she needed to chart a course for a better life. The steam swept up over her cheeks, lifting her spirits.

  As she sipped, she thought of Francesco. She could almost sense him pacing around his apartment, riddled with anger. She lifted her camera from her bag and glanced through the photographs she’d taken of the Prince and Princess, pausing to gaze at the Prince, at the darkness in his eyes, at the way his smile grew adorably crooked when he spoke.

  She considered deleting all of them, thinking that she owed it to this man to leave him alone. She knew about his past, just as he knew about hers. And she didn’t want to taint his memories of her further, nor make his relationship with the press even worse.

  But something made her keep them. Almost like she wanted to cling onto these memories of him, knowing she couldn’t get him back.

  With the rain pattering against the windowpane of the café, she reasoned that she could call the Prince and tell him she would delete the photos, if he asked her to. “I know you think I’m working against you,” she’d say. “But I’m on your side. I think I could even love you, if given the chance. Please don’t force me out. This is worth our effort. I just know it.”

  But as she sat, spinning this fake conversation through her mind, she realized that she didn’t have the Prince’s phone number. The only form of contact she had with him was through the driver, Sergio, who’d just confronted her on the street corner. Her stomach churned with displeasure. “Damn,” she mumbled, shoving her phone back into her purse.

  “Having an off-day?” A man appeared next to her, holding a coffee cup, his blond hair plastered down his forehead from the rain. His eyes were bright, and he looked pleased to be speaking to Lisa—a beautiful, if somewhat harassed-looking woman, with mascara running down her cheeks.

  “Isn’t every day an off-day?” she asked, giving him a fake smile. “You win some, you lose some. Right?”

  “Isn’t that the old cliché?” he asked, flirting with her. “As my dad used to say: ‘you can’t win ‘em all kid.’”

  “What about ‘you miss all the shots you don’t take?’” Lisa asked, finding a bit of laughter within her. She sipped her coffee, eyeing him in a friendly way, hoping she wasn’t leading him on. “I’m Lisa, by the way.”

  “Connor,” the man said, shaking her hand. “Full disclosure, I know who you are.”

  Lisa’s eyes nearly popped from her skull. “What?” she asked harshly.

  “I followed you from the Prince’s apartment,” he said, sitting cockily beside her. His bright, youthful face had been replaced by a snake’s. “I assumed the two of you would be coming out together. I had my camera ready. But you know all about that.”

  “You mean you’re paparazzi?” she whispered, eyeing him fiercely. There was no camera, nothing that gave him away; there was no way she could have known he wasn’t just a guy trying to pick her up for a date. “What the hell, man? I’m just trying to enjoy this coffee.”

  “Isn’t that what they’re all doing?” Connor asked cheekily. “Just trying to walk their kids to school. Just trying to go to yoga. Just trying to live their lives with as much normalcy as possible, and yet—we’re always there to take the shots.” He winked at her. “You know, I read up on you last night, Lisa. You’ve had a few good shots published. That one of that basketballer—”

  “And the ice cream. Yeah,” Lisa sighed, placing her face in her hands. She suddenly felt the weight of the world upon her shoulders.

  “Remarkable work, to say you don’t even have a degree.”

  “I was trying to save up for one,” Lisa whispered. “I was working my ass off.”

  “And then, all of a sudden, you met the Prince,” Connor said, his teeth flashing in the coffee house light. Lisa had half a mind to shove him from the wonky stool on which he sat, teetering back and forth.

  “No. I know your game,” Lisa said. “I’m not going to tell you anything.”

  “Not even how you met? Not even an affirmation of whether you were with him at the jazz club last night? Not even that you bribed his driver to learn about his dinner at the Matador, and then snuck your way onto the wait staff, only to be taken home by him?” Connor was practically sweating with excitement, lifting h
is note pad from his pocket in anticipation.

  Lisa felt trapped, like a rat in a cage, the snake coiling around her. “I didn’t,” she murmured. “I didn’t spend the night at the Prince’s, and I definitely didn’t go to the jazz club with him. I don’t even know which prince you’re talking about. The Prince of Wales? The Prince of Monaco? The Prince of—”

  But Connor lifted his hand, halting her. “That’s about enough,” he stammered. “You know quite well. Look at you. You’re on your walk of shame, soaking wet. If you can just confirm that you went back to his place last night, I can guarantee that your name won’t appear, and I’ll name a different source. Is that clear?”

  “And let me guess,” Lisa murmured. “You’ll pay me a small fee for my trouble.”

  “But of course, Lisa. I looked that up about you, as well. What a dismal credit score. Looks like you’re in need of money pretty badly. How about five hundred dollars now, and five hundred dollars after it prints?” He reached for his pocket book, ready to buy her off.

  But Lisa just gave him a sarcastic smile, lifting herself from her stool. “I could have sold my own story to my editor for much, much more than that. You just followed me fifteen blocks, through the fall rain, and you’re going to get nothing but a head cold.” She felt contempt throttle through her. “Enjoy your day, sir. I hope the door doesn’t hit you on your way out.”

  She fled from the café, then, and high-tailed it into the subway, throwing furtive glances behind her as she went. Connor hadn’t run after her, but could others have followed her? Was she now a target of her own grimy troupe of paparazzi?

  She pushed into the subway car and allowed herself to be enveloped by the crowd of lunchtime commuters, the swarm of people enabling her to forget, momentarily, that this was the single-worst day of her life. She gripped the pole of the subway car each time the train halted, thrusting her body forward like a rag doll’s, and resolved to shove all thoughts of Prince Francesco—of the way he held her, of the way he kissed her—from her mind. She deserved a chance at a life, and she couldn’t do it knowing that the Prince was out there, living, not needing her. Not wanting her.

  NINE

  Two months later, it was early December. Lisa checked her watch as she slipped on her black heels, missing once and staggering through her apartment. “Shoot,” she grumbled, shoving her foot back into the shoe. “I can’t do this.”

  Not long after Lisa first moved to New York City, as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed 21-year-old, she’d met Nancy—a photographer herself. The two of them had been close friends until a couple years ago, when Nancy quit the paparazzi business, got married, and settled with her husband in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, where she spent her days knitting things and waiting to get pregnant.

  Lisa had been spending more time with the now-pregnant Nancy since her falling-out with Rocco. The editor still tossed her the occasional bone, including a children’s bonfire at which an A-lister’s niece and nephew had roasted marshmallows and giggled. Lisa had hated herself as she’d snapped the shot, but she had eaten heartily that evening, feeling like a hunter-gatherer, always just days away from hunger.

  Nancy had many friends, almost all of them with children, and they had piled into a rented restaurant space for Nancy’s baby shower. The parents sipped lattes and stared at each other big-eyed, telling tales of how cute their children were. Lisa mostly smiled and nodded, offering an occasional contribution to their conversations. “Oh wow, she’s really walking now? That’s amazing.” “He lost two teeth in the same day? He must have freaked out!”

  But soon, she found herself hovering by the counter, sipping her second coffee.

  “You okay there?” the barista asked, giving her a warm smile.

  “Oh, um, sure. I just really don’t like baby showers,” she echoed back.

  “Oh, darling. You’re here,” Nancy cried, finally noticing Lisa. She wrapped her arms around her friend’s neck from behind, nearly pouring Lisa’s coffee down her shirt. “I’m so glad you could make it. You know, we’re all kinds of worried about you.”

  Lisa’s eyebrows rose high as she turned to her friend, whose face and body were creamy with youth and vitality. Lisa assumed she’d begun to look tired and old in Nancy’s eyes.

  “Well, actually, you’re glowing,” Nancy said, her eyes widening. “What kind of face cream are you using these days? Wow. You look great.”

  Lisa sensed the lie in Nancy’s words, but she smiled and asked all the appropriate questions—how was she feeling, how was her husband doing, and so on. Soon, Nancy’s smile began to falter, and she turned her attention toward another woman near edge of the group, giving her a wide, soccer-mom smile.

  Left to her own devices again, Lisa felt oddly lost. She leaned heavily against one of the booths, her mind tracing thoughts of Francesco for what seemed like the tenth time that afternoon. It had been two months since she’d spent the night with him, two months since she’d smelled his delicious musk. And still, she awoke to dreams about him nearly every night. Dreams in which they stood on a beach, their hands clasped, gazing out at the horizon—a metaphor, she assumed, for a beautiful future together.

  Ugh.

  The reality was rather horrible. In the weeks that followed her affair with the Prince—if she could even call it that—Lisa had found herself living like a hermit in her apartment block, drinking endless cups of tea, and living off of granola bars. She’d eyed the news uneasily, hopeful that her face wouldn’t pop up. “Paparazzo Spotted with Prince—Is It Love?” She’d imagined the headlines.

  But nothing had come of it. Even Connor, that snake, hadn’t published a single note about her leaving the Prince’s apartment building. Perhaps he didn’t have proof that they’d spent the night together, or perhaps he’d sensed something unhinged within her, a clear signal that she wasn’t to be messed with; that she would bite back.

  Instead of seeing herself in the tabloids, Lisa saw plenty of Prince Francesco. He was an eternal figure, strolling through Manhattan, socializing with models and actors at awards shows. About two weeks after Lisa had met the Prince, rumors had surfaced that he and Princess Rose were breaking up.

  “Royal Family’s Horror as Prince Turns to Drink in Wake of Breakup”, one tabloid had spouted. “Princess Rose’s Affair with her Butler”, another had claimed. The photos had been wretched, taken by an unscrupulous, untalented photographer. And the copy had been even worse, making assumptions about where the Prince and Princess had been, and whether or not they were “on” or “off.”

  Lisa had wanted nothing more than to wipe her hands of the entire business. But, as it was her only income, she had clung to it.

  “Have you heard the latest about the Prince?”

  The voice of one of Nancy’s friends came ringing through Lisa’s ears. She turned rapidly, joining the conversation, plastering on a soccer-mom smile of her own.

  “What about him?” Lisa asked brightly. “Oh, don’t mind me. I am just obsessed with royalty.”

  “Me too,” another mom confessed. “I can’t get enough of his on-again, off-again relationship with Princess Rose. God, he seems too good for her, don’t you think?”

  Lisa took pleasure in everyone’s nods. She hated herself for it.

  “He’s simply gorgeous,” another mom affirmed. “And such fine taste, too. I saw in a magazine a few weeks back. His New York apartment, and his place in London. They were simply divine.”

  Lisa parted her lips, wanting to explain that she’d seen it all in the flesh. She’d gazed at the tapestries. She’d felt the emotions that design was meant to evoke. The mothers peered at her, sensing she was going to speak.

  “I mean. I saw that magazine as well,” Lisa said, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “Man, to be a fly on that wall.”

  “Right,” the mother said, raising her left eyebrow slightly. “Anyway. I read that he and the Princess are back together. Isn’t that just awful?”

  “When did they break up?” anothe
r woman piped.

  “Maybe a month ago?” another one replied.

  “Six weeks,” Lisa whispered, remembering the tabloid photograph—and the burst of hope that had come with it.

  “Boy, you really do know your Prince Francesco trivia,” the woman teased, jabbing her lightly with her elbow. Her flowery perfume wafted into Lisa’s nose.

  “I guess so,” Lisa murmured. “Why did it say they were back on? I read that they were really unhappy. Always bickering.”

  “Oh, you should see the latest photographs that were taken of the pair of them. Especially of Francesco’s abs, of course.” The woman leafed into her purse for her phone and began to flick through the photographs on the Daily Sneak app. She held it out so Lisa could see for herself.