Royally Jacked (Romantic Comedies, The)

by Burnham, Niki

  No, really. I’m not kidding. Dad picked out my shoes.

  And you wonder why, if I’d had to peg one of my parents as having gay tendencies, Dad came to mind before Mom.

  He brought me these totally fun strappy things to try on—they let him, because they could see me at the makeup counter from the shoe department, plus I think the shoe department lady thought my dad was cute—and even though the shoes were kind of sexy, they weren’t so high they were uncomfortable.

  It usually takes me trying on, like, ten pairs of heels to find a pair that fits and feels comfy. I’m much more the Skechers and Steve Madden shoe type than one of those girls who wears four-inch heels, and it’s usually obvious when I actually need a pair of heels how unnatural they are on me. But Dad found the perfect pair on his first try. And now that I’m looking at the whole thing in the full-length mirror, I realize how awesome they look with the dress.

  And that’s standing in the shower. I cannot imagine how kickin’ this is going to look once I’m in that big, fancy reception hall with chandeliers and candlelight.

  I might actually look like a girl who is pretty enough to go to dinner with a prince.

  When I finally walk out of the bathroom to show Dad, he’s standing in the living room wearing his tux. He doesn’t say anything. He just smiles.

  You’d think I was wearing white and standing at the back of a church about to take his arm, he’s so proud of himself.

  He has to leave for dinner earlier than me, since he needs to be available to Prince Manfred as soon as the British prime minister arrives at the palace, but I know he’s happy I got dressed an hour early, just so he could check me out before he has to leave.

  All I can do is tell him thanks. And that I am so, so glad I decided to come with him to Schwerinborg, even if I did have to leave all my friends and my entire social life a couple thousand miles away. Because I know he loves me and wants to do whatever it takes for me to be happy—even when that means making me study an extra hour for a geometry exam so I can be proud of how I’ve done.

  He shakes his head and laughs, but it’s not an altogether happy laugh. I can tell he wants to give me another warning about Georg. He’s totally worried that I’m getting into more than I can handle since Georg’s not your typical guy, no matter how much I want to believe it.

  Luckily, he knows I know that, and he leaves without saying anything.

  I walk back to the bathroom and look in the mirror again, trying to see what Georg will see.

  For the first time in my life, I so hope I’m going to get more than I can handle.

  To: Val@realmail.sg.com

  From: ChristieT@viennawest.edu

  Subject: I CAN’T WAIT ANOTHER DAY!!!

  Val,

  Okay, first of all, I cannot BELIEVE you’re not going to be home tonight. Second of all, I don’t care WHAT you think your unbelievable news is, mine is unbelievable-er.

  I got your e-mail too late yesterday to call then, because it would have been about 2 AM your time. So even though I wanted to tell you everything on the phone, I will give you a hint now.

  David spilled his guts to Jeremy yesterday. And I mean SPILLED. And it was about YOU.

  Is that enough of a hint about what I need to say to make you stay home so I can call you? Does this not make whatever it is you want to tell me suck in comparison?

  I’ll try calling tonight just in case, but if you’re not there, I’ll call again tomorrow night. You MUST hear all my gossip.

  You said you could come home if things weren’t good in Schwerinborg. I’m telling you, you should seriously consider COMING HOME! Now is most definitely the time.

  Details during the phone call.

  Love,

  Christie, your very desperate, very pushy friend

  I can’t identify my soup, which is a light, minty green color. I also cannot identify the meat on my plate—some kind of fancy stuffed bird I have no idea how to eat. But I can’t even think about the food, despite the fact food generally occupies a very high spot on my priority list.

  Georg’s leg is rubbing against mine under the table, and he’s totally doing it on purpose.

  And what s worse, I like it. A lot.

  But what I cannot get over is that David Anderson really likes me! For real. After all these years. After all this wishing and hoping and fixing my hair just so and choosing at least one class I know he’s going to be taking every quarter in the hope that he’ll just notice me as something other than a friend. And now, apparently, he has. Or did.

  That has to be what Christie wants to tell me. There just can’t be another way to interpret her e-mail.

  I think I am going to hurl all over the nice white tablecloth and fancy crystal goblets. My stomach is just one big friggin’ knot.

  I wish, wish, WISH I’d just left to meet Georg in the library when Dad left the apartment. I could’ve found plenty of things to do while I was waiting. I could’ve sketched while I waited. I could’ve stared out the window. I could’ve relaxed in front of the fire with a nice leather-bound copy of Dickens or whatever it is Prince Manfred keeps on the library shelves.

  Okay, so I’m not into Dickens.

  But what I should not have done is go online to read my e-mail and make sure Christie got my message not to call tonight, because she just gave me way more information than I can handle.

  What am I going to do?!?!

  How is this even POSSIBLE?? How can TWO guys like me?

  And how can I not know which one I really want?

  No, I know which one I want. The one who actually talks to me about me and who gets the thing with my mom.

  Right?

  Then I feel Georg’s fingers on my knee. I’m so surprised I bump against the table, even though he’s had his leg touching mine the whole meal. He starts making little circles with his fingers, twisting the red fabric of my dress into little swirls against my leg.

  Okay, forget David.

  I so want to go find a room with Georg. I mean, could he be any hotter?! He’s wearing a tux, but it doesn’t look stupid on him, like on most guys when they’re going to the prom. He looks like he wears one all the time. And the best part is that the dark jacket shows off his blue eyes and his high cheekbones, making him look even more interesting and mysterious.

  I glance to my left, where he’s sitting. His parents are at another table across the room, talking with the British prime minister and smiling for the press photographers—there are about a dozen or so of them crowded along the walls on that end of the room—so I don’t think anyone saw me jump. We’re stuck sitting with the losers. Okay, not really losers—I mean, they’re all fairly important people—but the press isn’t clamoring for snapshots of them like they are of Manfred and Claudia. Our table is filled with people like Prince Manfred’s private secretary, the minister of the treasury, and a couple of foreign diplomats—one of whom, Georg mentions, is Ulrike s father—who only care about whether they’ll get a few minutes’ conversation with the P.M. after dinner, and a few random staff members like my dad. Though thankfully, he’s three people around the table from me, so he doesn’t have a good angle to see me.

  The only fairly important person on this whole side of the room is Georg’s uncle, Prince Klaus, who’s at the table behind us, with his back toward Georg’s. I guess Klaus is Manfred’s younger brother.

  Could you imagine growing up in a house where the kids are named Klaus and Manfred?

  Well, I’ve now been in Schwerinborg long enough to find this absolutely believable. I’ve also been here long enough to realize that the family members who aren’t in the direct line of succession—people like Georgs uncle—and other diplomats get about a tenth of the attention someone like Georg does in the press, so they kind of run in their own little worlds. And on nights where politics is the hot topic, like tonight, the only press who show up are from the supersnooty papers and political magazines—reporters who’d rather figure out what the British P.M. tells Manfred
about the environment than the fact that Georg brought a date to the dinner.

  Of course, this means all of the people on our loser side of the room are talking to each other about their own little lives, and unless they get to meet the P.M., they don’t care about being here. It’s all same-old, same-old party circuit to them.

  And none of them are looking at me or Georg.

  I put my napkin up to my mouth and hiss, “Hey, cut it out.”

  He sneaks a look at the photographers, then at his uncle. Without looking directly at me, he says, “You don’t like it?”

  And he moves his fingers another inch or two higher.

  Oh. My. God.

  “No.” I blot an imaginary bit of food from my mouth and glance at Dad, making sure Georg follows my point. “I do. But …”

  He smiles and takes his hand off my knee. He waits a half beat, then gets a hunk of asparagus on his fork before whispering, “Good.”

  We keep quiet for the rest of the meal, but I can still feel where his fingers were on my leg, playing with my dress. Georg told me in the library, before we came in to the dinner, that he’d told his parents it was a date. However, he says that if it comes up, his parents are going to tell the reporter types that I’m the daughter of a staff member, and they thought it would be nice for Georg to finally have company his own age at one of these events. Period.

  His parents were very cool when I met them too. They sound like they’re as laid back as Dad, once they get away from the cameras and stuff. So maybe sneaking away after dinner won’t be such a bad thing.

  And then I feel Georg playing with my dress again under the table.

  Oh, this is going to be bad. In a very, very good way.

  “That was beyond boring,” Georg says in his completely sexy accent once we’re clear of the ballroom and finally feel safe enough to stop running and start walking. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

  “You’re the one who gave me the idea,” I grin at him, trying to catch my breath. Poor Georg had been cornered by two ancient diplomats, and they were not-so-subtly grilling him about what he planned to study in college when I interrupted, as innocently as I could, and told Georg that we needed to go if we were going to finish the “planned tour” in time for him to be back to say good night to the P.M.

  Ha!

  The diplomats bought it, and the second Georg and I were out the ballroom door, he told me to run—well, as fast as I could in my new heels—and I followed him until I was totally lost. Now that we’re finally walking, I realize we’re in the long hallway that leads out to the gardens behind the palace. I walked through here on my real palace tour the day Dad and I arrived. It’s completely empty now, except for me and Georg. And the lights are all off, except for some hidden, faint lights near the floor. Totally romantic, even with the pictures of all the old, gruesome-looking men on the walls and the sour-faced statues scattered here and there beside the closed doors.

  “Well, thanks a lot for interrupting when you did. I’m so sick of having all my parents’ friends butt into my business, you can’t even imagine.” He looks angry as he adds, “They weren’t asking about school and stuff to be friendly. It’s that they think they have the right to tell me what to do, like they think I’m not following the correct path for Schwerinborg.”

  “Like you won’t turn out to be as good a prince as your father if you don’t take AP Physics next year?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That blows.”

  This, of course, makes him laugh, which I think is what he really needs.

  We walk along in silence for a while. It’s a good silence, though, and Georg takes my hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world to him.

  And the really scary thing is that it feels totally natural to me, too. Exciting and majorly nerve-racking, but natural. Like we’re supposed to be holding hands.

  “Do you think they’ll notice if we don’t go back?” I ask as he leads me out an unguarded side door.

  “Depends. My dad will be too busy to notice for hours. My mom might ask around though.”

  I almost ask him whether or not his mom will get mad, but the garden is so gorgeous, I quit caring.

  “This rocks,” I say, nodding toward an empty fountain a few feet in front of us. It’s surrounded by benches, and you just know that it’s full of staff in the summer, sitting and eating their lunches, listening to the water as it cascades down from the vase held by the goddess statue in the center. There’s still snow in a few spots, but since today was warm, I’m guessing it’ll be gone by tomorrow.

  But somehow, the cold and the snow make the garden even more beautiful. Maybe because I know it’ll be ours, all by ourselves.

  “I come out here a lot,” he says. “Especially in the winter. It’s a lot nicer in the summer, but—”

  “More crowded,” we say at the same time, then we laugh.

  Georg squeezes my hand, then pulls me a little closer. “You cold?”

  I shake my head. I know it’s the dead of winter, but I’m not, even in my wispy dress.

  Then I realize what a dork I am—because of what he was really asking—and try to cover. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to stay out all night, but it’s not bad.”

  Georg slips off his jacket and slides it over my shoulders. I know it’s totally corny, and so does he, but neither of us care.

  “Better?”

  I nod, and he takes my hand again, walking me a little farther from the back door, I think so no one sees us and starts gossiping.

  “It’s strange. I know we’ve only known each other a few weeks, but I feel like we get each other.” He looks at me sideways, and I can’t tell if he’s being flirty or serious. “We’re a lot alike.”

  I think so too, despite the fact that he’s dark to my pale, every person in the world is dying to know the real Georg, (like anyone cares about the “real Valerie”), and he’s got an accent that makes me want to jump all over him. But I never would have said what he did. I mean, it’s fine for him to say it. But for me to say I’m a lot like a prince would come off as pretty damned egotistical.

  “What?” he asks, misreading my silence.

  “Nothing. It’s just … I feel very comfortable with you too. This”—I wiggle my fingers in his hand—“this feels right. Cool, but scary at the same time, you think?”

  “Like when I’ve got my hand on your leg under the table, with your father sitting right there?” He stops walking and faces me, and that wicked look is on his face again. We’re behind a big hedge, so no one in the palace could see us if they tried, which is just classic. Even the air around us is cool and still, like it’s waiting to see what happens next too.

  Oh, I want him, bad.

  “Especially then,” I say. And I get bold, lean forward, and kiss him.

  Because I can tell it’s what we both want, but we’re both too scared to start.

  Ten

  I know how to kiss. Go figure.

  After all this time of stressing over whether or not I’d screw it up royally and make a complete and total fool of myself if a guy kissed me, and I mean REALLY kissed me, I find out that I can do it just fine, thankyouverymuch. Georg clearly has no clue this is the first time I’ve engaged in an intense makeout session. Again, thank-youverymuch.

  And kissing Georg Jacques von Ederhollern is nothing like when Jason Barrows kissed me back in seventh grade. For one, Georg knows what he’s doing. He is good. I mean, there’s nothing sloppy or overeager about it. And he doesn’t just kiss me with his mouth or his tongue.

  I am learning in the best way possible that Georg is a full-body kisser.

  Maybe it’s supposed to be this way though—I mean, how would I know?

  But what I do know is that when we hear voices in the garden—apparently one of the waiters and his girlfriend had the same thought we did—and scoot back into the palace, I want Georg to start from the beginning and kiss me all over again, because every single nerve ending in my whole bo
dy is doing this funky vibrating thing from wanting him. It’s like someone stuck my finger in a socket and left my skin to sizzle.

  Apparently Georg has the same thought, because his expression is totally intense as he pulls me along a couple of hallways without saying a word, then through another door.

  When he flips on the light, though, every ounce of tension leaves my chest in a whoosh, and it’s all I can do not to split my gut laughing.

  “Oh, now this is totally romantic.”

  “You like the urinals?”

  I laugh even harder, because I just can’t help myself. He frowns. “That’s the right word, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yeah. They’re urinals, all right.”

  “No one ever uses this restroom,” he explains, pulling me past the two regular-size stalls and into the handicapped one on the end. I can hear the music thumping through the floor upstairs, and roll my eyes upward.

  “The reception hall is right above us,” he says as he wraps his arms around me, pulling me up against him again. “It has its own restrooms, though, so no one will bother us here.”

  “Good thing we managed to get outta there.” I run my finger down his cheek. I love the way his skin feels. Smooth, but a different kind of smooth than mine. Like he shaved right before dinner. “I really prefer to dance to something besides whatever it is they’re playing.”

  “It’s Schubert.”

  “You a big Schubert fan?”

  “Him and Eminem. Uncle Kracker would be okay too.” He smiles and kisses me again, but gently this time, all soft and caring. My hip nearly bumps against the siderails of the stall, but he puts his hand there first, anticipating the collision.

  “You hang out in these stalls often?” I tease. If he’s brought other girls here though, I really don’t want to know. I don’t want anything to ruin tonight.

  “Actually, this is the one place I can come to be alone. I’ve been hiding out in here since I was little. My parents have no clue.”