by Amy Brent
My hand jolted to my mouth. Shocked bile coiled in me, and I raced for the bathroom just in time to spew whatever I’d had last night, which I couldn’t now remember, into the toilet. It looked like carrots and maybe chips.
Liza’s comforting hand rubbed at my back.
“This isn’t a total catastrophe.”
Wiping off my lips with the back of my still-shaking hand, I said, “You’re right. It’s complete and utter devastation.”
Our intercom buzzer went off. Liza and I froze, exchanging a look. Who could that have been? We didn’t give out our flat address to many people, and the few we did give it to, such as employers or Ron, weren’t the types to just show up unannounced. Unless…
The intercom buzzer shrilled again.
“I’ll get that,” Liza said, although she didn’t budge.
To her questioning glance, I nodded. Whoever it was at the door couldn’t possibly be worse than what was here in the bathroom with us.
As Liza walked off, closing the door behind her, I crawled closer so I could hear better.
After the creak of a door opening, voices sounded. They started out quiet, but then gradually got louder and louder. Pealing my ears to hear who or what had come hardly helped. Our walls were apparently surprisingly thick. I could make out the low sound enough to ascertain the speaker was probably a male, and he sounded determined.
Suddenly, the front door closed and there was silence. A sigh of relief escaped my lips. Maybe it had been a political canvasser or a strong-minded door-to-door salesman. They weren’t unheard of in Britain, were they?
“Who was that?” I asked Liza as the bathroom door creaked open.
As soon as her face was visible, I gulped. It had a look that meant “extreme danger.”
“Who is it,” she corrected me in a whisper. “It’s Charles.”
Amid the jumping up and down my stomach was doing, my heart started crumpling too. No. Not him. Not now. Now when I just found out about this whole tabloid debacle.
What in the hell was I supposed to say to him when I still hadn’t fully made sense of it myself?
“I can tell him you won’t see him,” Liza said quietly, “but that didn’t go well back at the door. He demanded to come in and wouldn’t be turned away.”
Tears misted my sight. Liza looked like a fuzzy blob. What I had to do now, which was go out there and talk to him, seemed obvious—and yet impossible.
Liza wrapped me in her protective, sturdy arms.
“I’m sorry, Heidi. I’m so, so sorry.”
I said nothing, just let myself enjoy this calm before the storm. I let the side of my head sink into her comforting arms. I breathed in her familiar scent, some silly drugstore cotton candy perfume she’d gotten addicted to a few years back. Right now, things were okay. Unreasonably, it almost felt like being in Liza’s arms was like being in a sanctuary, like nothing could get to me if I just stayed here long enough.
But then I heard the creak of our wooden floor outside and the peace was obliterated.
Outside, probably fuming, was the father of my child, the man I’d known things were impossible with from the start. And now, sooner than I’d ever hoped, our relationship was coming to its natural conclusion.
Drawing away, I wiped off my tears. At least I was getting this over with. At least, after this next encounter, I wouldn’t have to worry about how Charles would take the truth about the baby anymore.
“I’ll be okay,” I told her. “I’ll just talk to him alone for a couple minutes after I wash my face. Thanks for trying.”
As I twisted the wheel-like handle of the sink, behind me in the bathroom mirror, Liza paused. Clearly, there was more she wanted to say, but there was no time now. There was no time for me to do anything but what I was doing now, dipping my hands in the sink’s cool stream and then placing my wet hands to my cheeks and the back of my neck. When I glanced at the mirror again, Liza was gone.
Turning off the sink and walking out of the bathroom seemed to take an eternity. I felt each step with heightened awareness on my bare feet. The cool slick tile of the bathroom. The smooth wood of the main room. Then I looked up, and there he was.
It was with morbid curiosity that I noted his attire: green and red pajama pants, a low-slung navy blue tee, and a big straw farmer’s hat that was clearly meant as a disguise. It worked, too. I wouldn’t have known this bedraggled man in front of me was Charles, England’s future monarch, if it hadn’t been for his eyes.
His piercing blue sapphires never left my face as he spoke.
“Is it true?”
There was no point in feigning obliviousness, in asking what he meant. Right now, with him here like this, there was only room for the truth. The absolute, horrible truth.
I nodded miserably. A sharp exhale of breath shot out of his lips.
“How long have you known?”
This question was harsher, more insistent.
It demanded words, words I could give him, but not while looking him in the eye. I made for the couch, then settled into it, enjoying how low its scratchy orange cushions sunk me. Part of me wished it could sink me right down through the floor, down and away from here.
“A week.”
After I spoke, chancing a glance at his face was a bad idea. It was twisted due to my words.
“I was going to tell you,” I said quickly. “I wanted to tell you.”
He took one step toward the couch, then paused, as if he had just realized he couldn’t stand the thought of even being on the same couch as me.
“Oh yeah? You could’ve fooled me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said desperately, tears welling in my eyes. “I just didn’t know how to tell you. I was going to. Soon. But then this whole tabloid thing happened, and I just found out this morning.”
Charles’s laugh was low, hateful.
“This tabloid thing. Henry was the one who showed me this, you know. Even he is freaking out. My brother, the wild one, is freaking out.” His eyes flashed. “And he’s right, too. Do you realize that if who the father is gets out, if it gets out that we were together, my whole career is finished? I’ll never be able to be England’s king then.”
I nodded dully. Each of his word was another kick to my already aching gut.
“I’m going home soon anyway,” I reminded him. “In a few weeks. No one has to know. I won’t be telling anyone, and I won’t be asking anything of you either. As soon as you walk out that door, it will be as good as though we never knew each other.”
Charles looked at me as if for the first time.
“What are you saying?”
Puzzled, I lifted my gaze and found his face even more livid than before.
“What you want,” I said simply. “The baby and me out of your life. I’m keeping it, but I’ll just take it and leave you alone.”
A smile kinked on my lips as I said it. Part of me had always known I couldn’t get rid of a creature so intrinsically already a part of me, but now that I’d said it, there was no doubt in my heart that it was true.
My words threw Charles into a steady pace. Back and forth he went, his face becoming more and more enraged until it almost resembled a caricature.
Finally, he stopped in front of me with accusing eyes.
“And where do you get the gall to presume to know what I want?”
As I gaped at him, he continued. “That is my child you’re carrying in your belly, and you’re my girlfriend. Unless there’s someone else you haven’t been telling me about.”
His eyes were challenging, and I shook my head.
“You know you’re the only one I’ve been dating. And obviously I care about you tremendously, and these last two months have been the best of my life, but we both knew from the start this had an expiry date.”
“Did we?” Charles snapped.
He started pacing again. The floor creaked as he did. I could only wonder what our downstairs neighbors must think, although that was least of my worries right
now. Charles was being absurd. He was so used to doing the noble thing that he was actually fooling himself into thinking for a second that this time he was going to do it too.
“It’s fine,” I assured him, getting to my feet and reaching out a hand. “You don’t owe me anything. I’ll always be grateful for the time we had together.”
Charles’s downturned eyes settled on my hand, his face tortured with indecision. Abruptly, he wrenched away.
“There are two people involved in this decision. Two.”
A creak came from farther down the hallway. Liza.
With a questioning expression on her face, she pointed a finger to her taffy-pink duffel bag. I had a matching popsicle-blue one. Our model bags.
A groan spilled out of my lips.
The shoot this afternoon. I’d completely forgotten. It was this huge fashion-packed one for Zara, which featured Liza and me in at least ten different chic outfits and countless different coy poses. In no uncertain terms, Ron had informed us this would garner us the kind of exposure that only Victoria’s Secret models got. I’d been all but counting down the days to it—until the whole tabloid catastrophe this morning, that was.
A glance at Charles revealed he was as frantic as ever. He didn’t even seem to have noticed Liza’s entrance.
“We can talk about this later,” I told him. “I have to go.”
His head jerked in my direction.
“I have a shoot in an hour,” I explained. “I’m going to be late as it is. It’s a really important one too.”
All my words were as good as water droplets being flung at his face. He shook his head as if to disengage them.
“I stand by what I said,” he said angrily. “That is my child you’re carrying, and you’re still my girlfriend. I’m not about to throw that all away because of some stupid tabloid story.”
My head turned to my bedroom door, the one I had to go through to get ready, the one I couldn’t make it through just yet.
My heart was completely in Charles’s hands. If I didn’t know better, if I didn’t know how the world really worked, I would’ve thought he was telling the truth, that we really could make this work. That somehow, a prince and a top model could have a happy little baby and be happy together while keeping their lives perfect and pristine. But this wasn’t some fantasy rom-com; this was real life. I was a model. I made money on my reputation and the fit state of my body, both of which were going to be destroyed by this scandal.
Not to mention Charles was a prince with an almost spotless reputation that was going to be completely obliterated if this scandal broke. We couldn’t make us work. We just couldn’t.
“We’ll talk later,” I said in a small voice so we wouldn’t argue further.
Charles didn’t move. I glared at him desperately, but he didn’t move.
Finally, forcing my limbs into unwilling action, I turned my back on him and went into my room. Throwing myself into the first reasonable clothes I came across only took a minute or so, as did grabbing my blue duffel bag of supplies.
When I came back out, it was only Liza waiting for me on the couch. I ignored the pang of regret in my stomach. Right now, there was no time to think about it, let alone mourn that I may have just seen Charles for the last time.
Regardless of his words and promises, if my gut was right, we’d parted for the final time without ever saying good-bye.
My gaze settled on Liza. Her lips were drawn in an expression that I was probably wearing too. After all, this morning I had just found out that my life as I knew it was completely ruined. Who knew what the future held?
--
Liza and I were all of three feet on the set when Ron bustled in between us.
“Heidi. We need to talk ASAP.”
Without any other introduction, his muscled forearm hustled me back in the direction I’d come from. All I had time for was a quick wave to Liza before I was out of the room and into another.
Ron threw himself in a black chair, and I took the only other free one.
“It’s not true,” he said, cracking a toothy grin that made me shudder.
When I said nothing, he repeated, more forcefully, “That article on the Daily Mail, it’s not true.”
I glanced down at my hands and found they were bearing the brunt of my stress. As usual, whenever I was overly upset, they got hideously splotchy, like they were now. Pink and white and even a little bit of rosy red in there.
Ron was still gawking at me so hard that it looked like his eyes might roll out of their sockets and onto the ground.
“What you want me to say, Ron?” I asked in a low voice.
Ron’s whole body jerked, as if my words had been a sucker punch straight to the groin.
“Shit.”
Pressing the tips of his fingers together, his bulging neck twisted so that his oval head was facing the wall. There, judging by the way his close-set eyes were furiously moving, he was coming up with some master plan to fix things. Or at least trying to.
When he turned back to face me, his expression was inconclusive.
“But you are getting rid of it.”
A simple headshake sufficed to express my response. Ron twisted away again, then back to me.
“Who’s the father?”
“I can’t say,” I told him.
Another twisting of his head sent my stomach churning. What if Ron fired me on the spot? Had I really kissed good-bye my whole career, years of hard work? I could almost picture it now: me clad in one of those hideous McDonald’s polo shirts, serving fries to some pimply teenager who, lips sneering, asked, “Hey, aren’t you that model Heidi Sommers who got pregnant?”
I shivered.
Ron turned to face me again.
“It isn’t a complete disaster,” he said to his himself mostly. “This can be fixed.”
I frowned. I wished people would stop saying that. First Liza and now him. It actually served the opposite effect and made me even more convinced than ever that I was screwing up my life for good.
Ron stretched out his huge, muscled arms as if to physically stretch out his brain so it could brainstorm better. When he crossed them in front of his chest again, he had an idea. I could see it in the decided set of his lips.
“We’ll say you were buying the pregnancy test for another model, whose identity we won’t disclose. Then you can work for at least a few more months until you have the baby. Then…”
His eyes shifted to me, and I nodded. Then I had probably half a year at most to get my body and mind back in gear. Otherwise, I was on my own.
I felt like I had dodged a bullet, like it had grazed my shoulder and while there had been blood, at least it hadn’t been fatal.
“And if things go well,” Ron said, his brain quickly clicking into overdrive again, “we could even, eventually, maybe include the baby in some shots. The only things the general public loves more than babies are good-looking babies.”
A half smile lifted his face with that.
He kept on talking, but I hardly heard what he said next. While I was grateful he had thought of an admittedly genius story to cover for me temporarily, my troubles were far from over. The biggest problem of all still hadn’t been solved.
Charles. I still had to talk to and figure things out with Charles.
Chapter 19
Charles
The blonde twined around the pole like a squirrel around a tree. Her ass was naked, her generous curves coated with shine, but all I could do was stare past her and across the club to see if Henry was one of the fellows staring up at her like she was God. So far, the clientele of this strip club had been as dubious as you’d expect in one that was open during the daytime. It was only 6 p.m. after all.
“In Pandora” had been the brief text Henry had sent in response when I’d asked to meet.
And now here I was, in Pandora, the box of questionable men and lovely ladies. Walking from the front of the club to the back, I passed girls of all types and tastes: black,
white, curvy, thin—all sexy, of course. Some eyed me curiously while one—dark-haired with a butterfly tattoo on her upper thigh—licked her lips. I could barely give them a passing nod as I went by.
My dick twitch with irritation. I knew I was supposed to be attracted to them, but there was one thing on my mind and one thing only: getting advice from Henry about the whole Heidi situation.
I found my dear brother lounging in the curtained-off back room. His legs were spread and his mouth was agape, probably because inches away from his face was the freckled ass of a sexy redhead.
Although Henry’s eyes didn’t move from their ass-bound position, he somehow still saw me. His hand waved me over onto the cushy velvet seat he was currently slumped on. I grudgingly sat down beside him.
“Can we do this somewhere else?”
Henry only shook his head, not breaking eye contact with the two backside mounds that were now bouncing up and down exuberantly. He spoke in clipped chunks.
“No can do. If Mother wants to nag me using you again, I’m certainly not going to change my plans. Not for that.”
I cast a skeptical look around the room, with its black satin curtains and low orange lights.
“You specifically made plans for…this?”
Henry smiled. “Course I did.” He gave the redhead’s ass a good whap. “Tequila invited me herself.”
Rolling my eyes, I said nothing. Nor did I humor Henry by asking where or how he’d met Miss “Tequila.” I’d heard the same story enough times by now: at the club, in the bar, just running around the streets in the middle of the night.
“I meant it when I said this was important,” I said in a curt tone.
When that garnered no response from him, I continued. “I went to see Heidi.”
For the first time, Henry’s shocked eyes found mine.
“You what?”
“That’s not all,” I continued.
This time, when I glanced pointedly at the redhead, who was still working that ass away, Henry gave it a different sort of slap.
“Thanks, but my brother and I need to talk.”
He handed her a stack of twenties and she left. Henry watched her go with a sad sort of twinkle in his eyes.