Forbidden Prince

by Zoey Oliver

  “Do you want to race?” she asks me.

  “No, you go ahead.”

  “It’s not a race if it’s just one person,” she huffs.

  “Not gonna race you, Ava.”

  She quirks one eyebrow at me in challenge, an expression that is both adorable and tempting. I’m not even sure why it’s making me reconsider jumping in the pool with her, but it is.

  “Are you scared I’ll beat you?”

  I just shake my head. “That’s not the issue.”

  She twists, looking at the pool over her shoulder. Then she turns back to me, thinking.

  “How did you hear about Mark Sheppard?”

  “I hear a lot of things,” I explain. “Or maybe I’m keeping an eye on you, did you ever think of that?”

  She giggles shyly. “Keeping an eye on me? Why would you do that?”

  “Because you’re my best friend’s little sister, I guess. Somebody needs to keep an eye on you.”

  “Yeah, well, it certainly won’t be Mark.”

  “Was he bad to you? Do you need me to have him killed?”

  She giggles again. I can’t help but watch the muscles in her stomach ripple as she laughs. I like the sound too, even though I shouldn’t.

  “When I was in the Marines, I learned a lot of things. You just say the word, Ava, and I’ll get him taken care of for you.”

  She laughs, waving her hand in the air. “No, no… he’s just your average jerk. Nobody special. Certainly not worth killing.”

  I can hear the weight in her sigh. The disappointment. Makes me feel kinda bad for the kid.

  “One day, Ava, guys won’t all be jerks. I promise. Somebody will treat you like you deserve.”

  “Oh yeah? How can you be so sure?”

  “I just know. If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get. Just don’t stop looking until you find him.”

  She stands swaying for little bit, digging her toes against her flip-flops.

  “Yeah, well… we’ll see,” she says finally. Then she walks away, kicking her flip-flops off as she goes. I watch her until she climbs the diving board, bouncing once, and then executing a perfect pike dive into the water. She starts swimming laps, barely even making a splash.

  “Jeez, our parents must be planning some kind of coup,” Aden mumbles as he comes back. “They’ve been in there a long time, haven’t they?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “My dad looks mad. Because of the restaurant? Have you heard anything?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know anything. I keep out of their business as much as possible. I’ve got my own stuff to worry about.”

  “Yeah, like Jessie,” he teases. “Just kidding, man.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “They all go for you anyway. Rich motherfucker. They don’t know you like I know you.”

  I have to nod. He’s totally right. Aden gets me, always has. Jessie did not. And he’s right, I shouldn’t have been with her. He did sort of call dibs. It was kind of a shitty thing for me to do.

  “You know who I think you might like?” I ask him. “Barbie Newsom. Do you know her?”

  “Barbie Newsom,” Aden repeats dreamily. “Yeah, I know her. She’s some kind of model or something. Do you know her?”

  “I think you would like her,” I continue. “I think she would like you too. Want to go out? I could set it up.”

  “Shit, man, are you serious? Yeah, that would be great.”

  “Yeah, let’s get out of here. I’ll see if she can meet us at the Presidio, okay?”

  “Absolutely! Thanks, Ethan. A lot.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I say, scowling into the pool room. Ethan’s dad’s hands are up around his shoulders, gesturing with a chopping motion as he speaks. No one in that room is happy. I’ve got a bad feeling about that.

  Chapter Two

  AVA

  The ballroom is packed with recent graduates shuffling from booth to booth under the extravagant chandeliers of the Fairmont Hotel. I clutch my printed resumes close to my chest with my arms folded, squinting down the row of potential employers. Dozens of my peers in nearly identical “business professional” outfits—cheap suits and striped ties for the boys, conservative pencil skirts with white, button-down blouses for the ladies—push their way to the front of the best employers, trying to snag some of those on-site interviews.

  I shift from foot to foot, realizing just how uncomfortable these heels are. If this is the sort of thing I have to wear for corporate life, I don’t think I want any part of it.

  “Okay, I think I got everybody in this row,” my best friend Bea says, magically appearing right next to me. She tucks a curly strand of hair behind her ear and scowls at the sheaf of papers in her hands.

  “What do you mean, you got everybody?” I shake my head.

  She glances at me, raising her eyebrows like the answer is supposed to be obvious.

  “I gave everybody a resume? The whole reason we’re here? Now I just have to wait for the job offers to roll in. I may make a spreadsheet to keep track of everybody. You know how to do that, right?”

  “Wait… you gave everybody a resume? As in, everybody?”

  She nods, craning her head toward the next aisle and riffling through her resume copies again, apparently counting them.

  “Yes, everybody. I figure I should have a job by tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think that’s how that works, Bea,” I mumble, glancing at my own resumes. Ava Harrison, it says at the top. Then Objective: to find a job with long-term prospects and potential for advancement where I will be able to use my skills and ambition in a mutually beneficial way.

  In other words, completely generic baloney.

  “Of course it’s how it works,” she continues. “It’s like dating. You get as many digits as possible, even from guys you don’t even like. The more guys you have in the running, the better your odds of finding somebody worth banging. It’s a numbers game.”

  “This doesn’t feel anything like dating,” I remark, trying not to sound too sarcastic. This was my idea, after all. Now that we have both graduated from Cal State, supposedly we are serious adults. On our own. Ready to face the future with a smile, or so the valedictorian told us at graduation.

  “Sure it does,” she quips, popping her glossed lips dramatically. “Just slightly more literal. You size them up, they size you up. You do the fakey-fake dance and each tell each other some bull crap about how great we are, and by the time either one of you figures it out, it’s too late. You’re knocked up and married. Metaphorically speaking.”

  “I guess you have a point…”

  “Of course I do,” she snaps. “How are you doing, anyway? How many resumes did you give out?”

  “Well…”

  I let the word drift off, and her attention gradually snaps back to me. She cocks her head to the side, scowling. I see her start to chew on the inside of her cheek.

  “Fifteen? A dozen? Ten?”

  I just shrug.

  “Help me out here, Ava. Six? Three… no, two? Wait, none?” she asks, her voice rising with every word. “Hold the phone. Are you seriously going to tell me that you have given out zero resumes?”

  I wince, unsure what to tell her.

  “I just don’t know if I see myself as a medical biller, or veterinary lab assistant, or management trainee for San Francisco’s largest dry goods importer. I don’t know if those jobs are my future or not.”

  She looks completely puzzled. Her eyebrows are arched so high, I’m afraid she’s going to get some permanent forehead wrinkles.

  “You don’t know if that’s your future…” she repeats, incredulous. “How are you going to know what your future is unless you actually start doing something, Ava?”

  “Well, I’m not just going to take the first thing that comes along, you know.”

  Bea turns on her heel, stalking toward the farthest cluster of employer booths. I hurry behind her, mostly because I don’t w
ant to be left there looking stupid at the end of the row. At least this way, I have a mission: trying to keep up with Bea.

  She zigzags back and forth, dropping a resume and a bright, friendly smile at each booth, one right after another. Men in short sleeves and ties or ladies in tired-looking sweater sets take her resumes with bland, unfocused eyes.

  By the time we get to the end of the row, Bea is completely out of paper. She turns around to face me, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at my still-intact stack of resumes.

  “Not even one?” she huffs.

  I look down uncertainly. “I guess I was just watching you,” I explain meekly.

  “You’re really going to just wait for something to, what, drop into your lap?”

  “No, of course not,” I protest. “But I just wanted to think about it a little bit; is that so weird? It’s a big decision, Bea. I’ll know when it’s right. And we have all weekend at this conference to poke around and figure stuff out, right? Maybe inspiration will strike me in one of the group sessions or career counseling breakout groups or something.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she rolls her eyes. “So, I guess we should just check in to our rooms then? Pick out which panels we’re going to attend?”

  I smile, glad she’s not going to keep berating me on this point. Sometimes Bea can be a little bit overbearing. She calls it enthusiasm. It’s more like a charging bull.

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea. I think the lobby is this way.”

  We head out to the opulent lobby, immediately dropping our voices. Between the lush, tufted sofas and potted palms, recent college graduates mingle with minor celebrities and business owners. The place is so beautiful, it feels like a library or church or something. Like we should be quiet.

  “I think that the check-in desk is over here,” I mumble, turning 180 degrees and looking for some kind of sign. “I left our bags just over here, next to the, oh my God—”

  I stop up short, momentarily startled. A poster for the event swims in front of my eyes, almost refusing to come into focus.

  Bea shuffles up next to me, gasping slightly.

  “Ava, isn’t that… don’t you know him?”

  I swallow, or try to. That dirty blond, shiny, wavy hair. Those sky-blue eyes. It has to be him.

  “He’s the keynote speaker? Yikes,” Bea mutters. “Awkward.”

  I scowl, trying to get a hold of myself. Try as I might, I can’t really see him. It’s like looking into the sun.

  “It’s not awkward,” I sniff. “What’s awkward about it? We probably won’t even see him in person. Besides, he probably doesn’t even remember me.”

  Bea gets her suitcase from the check-in area, rolling it quietly across the marble tiles while suspiciously looking me over.

  “Sure looks like you remember him,” she observes.

  “Only barely,” I huff, trying to make my voice sound less defensive, less irritated, less of everything. “Water under the bridge. He is some billionaire investor now anyway. Doesn’t even breathe the same air as we mere mortals do.”

  “Probably has it shipped in special from his secret lair,” Bea agrees, nodding.

  “Yeah, ha-ha, probably,” I chuckle, glad her attention is not completely focused on me now.

  But those eyes… I have to glance back. It’s definitely him. Those bright, intense eyes that always seemed to stare right through to the middle of me are now in the middle of that life-sized poster. I’m having a hard time looking away. It’s just some publicist’s photo, and I know it is not looking right at me, but it almost feels exactly the same.

  “We should get checked in,” I mumble, forcing myself to turn around. Bea goes all businesslike again, striding importantly across the lobby toward an alcove where four young women stand in matching outfits. I hurry behind her, happy to put some distance between me and the soul-piercing gaze of Ethan Mercer.

  “What do you mean, you don’t have our rooms? But we have reservations?” I hear Bea saying to the frightened-looking young woman as I walk up.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  The woman Bea’s talking to looks about my age, with a healthy, freckled glow and perfectly white teeth. Tiny strands of ginger hair have escaped from her conservative bun and are haloing her reddening cheeks as she taps nervously on her laptop.

  “Well, with the conference, we’re booked, and it appears your reservation… I mean, I see it here but… I mean—”

  “What’s wrong?” I ask Bea. “Is there a problem with our rooms?”

  “Just take a breath,” Bea tells her, holding up her long, slender fingers. She has a Jedi-like ability to manage stressful situations that I am immediately grateful for. “You see the reservation there, right? Two rooms? Queens? Adjoining?”

  The girl gets more flustered as she taps. “I mean, yes, I see them. It’s just that they’re not here."

  “They’re not here,” Bea repeats, somehow keeping her voice from getting snippy.

  The woman shrugs helplessly. “No… they’re not here anymore. I mean they were here? But someone gave them away.”

  “Okay,” Bea says with a smile, her voice calm and friendly. I think she would make a really good hostage negotiator. “So what are we going to do about this… Linda? What are our options?”

  “Options?” Linda repeats. “Well… I mean… there’s only one room left available. But it’s a double. Two beds? Would that work?”

  Bea looks at me, shrugging. “You want to be roommates?”

  “Do we really have a choice?” I ask, trying to be polite but not entirely thrilled. Being in the room next to her sounded all right, but actually shacking up with her is a little intense. Bea snores, for one thing. And she likes to hook up with strange men, for another.

  “I think that would be lovely, Linda,” Bea finally coos supportively. “Thank you so much for working this out for us.”

  “Well, I’ll just reverse the other charges… We’ll get this all set… And you know what? I’ll get you a really good price. Okay? I’m so sorry for the inconvenience.”

  After Linda slides us the room key cards, we turn away, finally able to roll our eyes.

  “You handled that really well,” I marvel. “Is that part of your career plan? Were you just interviewing for a job?”

  Bea emphatically thumbs the elevator button. “I was trying out that Power of Yes theory that guy gave us in us that speech this morning, you remember? And it totally worked! I seriously thought she was going to have us staying at the Motel 8.”

  “You were listening to that guy?” I mumble as we get into the elevator, dragging our luggage behind us. It was first thing this morning: a man giving a lecture in a droning voice over the PA when we had first arrived. I didn’t even listen to him. I was so focused on trying to tune everything out and wait for my coffee to start working.

  “Yeah, Ava, how could you avoid it? It was over the speakers. But I guess he was right. Smiling and thinking yes yes yes really does seem to have a positive impact on people.”

  I hold out the paper folder Linda gave me.

  “Bea, is this right? Is this number on a top floor?”

  Bea looks down, scowling at the folded brochure with our room number on it. She glances at the buttons in the elevator.

  “I guess so,” she mutters. “I mean… let’s just try it and see what happens.”

  When the elevator doors open, we step tentatively out into the hallway, unsure if we’re really supposed to be here. The signage on the walls points to the left, with the words Executive Suite.

  “Well, would you look at that?”

  We practically tiptoe down the hallway, excited and nervous. Bea goes faster as she gets closer, rolling her suitcase behind her with the key card outstretched. When she gets to the door, she slides the card in. I hear the bolts unlock and she flings open the door triumphantly. White, cool light floods the hallway as she stands there, her arms outstretched, making excited noises.

  “Bea, wait up, why
are you getting so... OHH!”

  I bark my shin on her discarded overnight bag, almost face planting with my hands flying out blindly in front of me. Just before I hit the textured carpet, I feel something strong, firm, and quick sweep me up like a rag doll.

  Confused, I flinch backward, almost stumbling again. He stands in front of me, concern clouding his features. Charcoal-gray silk stretches over his broad shoulders. His firm hands cup under my elbows protectively. I stare up into his bright, sky-blue eyes, seeing all his details at once: the silken sheen of his hair, the slight stubble along his square jaw, the sensual curl of his upper lip.

  “Are you all right, miss?”

  My mouth opens for just a second, then clamps closed again. I nod, panicked. I want to say something, but nothing wants to come out.

  Bea hears us and comes to the door. “Hey, are you okay? What’s going—oh! Well, hello?”

  “Hello,” he repeats, without looking over at her. His eyes search mine, but he doesn’t seem to recognize me at all. Still, he’s not looking away. I feel frozen, as though trapped in amber.

  “Oh, did I just leave my bag out there? Silly me!” Bea babbles, trying to cover for me. I feel her fingers snake around my elbow as she tugs me toward the room, breaking me out of my trance.

  “Yeah, I think I nearly tripped…”

  “Where is my head at?” she laughs, a little too loud. “We’re so sorry to bother you, um, sir…”

  “You’re sure you’re all right?” he asks. His voice is thick and smooth, like something sweet. Like something delicious to eat.

  I somehow manage to nod and pull away slightly, thankful that I’m still standing upright, hopeful that I’m not actually bleeding or anything like that.

  “Totally fine, just didn’t see the bag. The light was so bright I guess.”

  “Well, if you’re sure,” he says, straightening up and releasing me. He gives us each a polite nod and another glimpse of his smile before walking away. Bea halfway hangs out in the hallway, watching his thighs and buttocks churn in his Armani slacks.