"I didn't destroy anything – we didn't destroy anything," I protest.
"We," she says, her hand going to her mouth. "It's we, isn't it. The wedding wasn’t a joke. The two of you are together.”
"No," I say, my voice loud. "The wedding was a joke. That's all it was. I didn't know he was a prince."
She's doesn't even register my protest. "There will be a meeting, Isabella," she says. "A family meeting. A plan. This entire thing is finished. It will all be swept under the rug. You'll need to do an interview, both of you – the PR team will decide all of that, of course. Denial – that’s the best strategy here, I think.”
I can't hear anything she's saying, except bits and pieces of words: PR team…interview…family meeting.
All of it will be focused on Albie and I and our drunken marriage.
And our current relationship.
The tabloids will paint it into something dirty, something disgusting and reprehensible. There will be more headlines like the one on the paper she's holding. I can already picture them:
PRINCE AND SISTER: EXCLUSIVE DETAILS ABOUT TABOO ROYAL RELATIONSHIP
I think I'm going to be sick.
I run headlong for the bathroom. My mother's voice still echoes through the room as she talks more to herself than to me, strategizing aloud. I heave up the contents of my stomach.
Panic clutches at my chest like a vise, gripping my heart as I kneel on the floor. I try to gulp oxygen into my lungs, but I can't seem to breathe.
I can't do this. I can't be the center of a media scandal.
I can't have my relationship with Albie laid out before the whole world like it's something tawdry.
I haven't even sorted out how I feel about Albie, whether it’s just fantastic sex, or whether the way he makes me feel means it’s everything.
And I can’t figure that out with the entire world watching us.
I just can’t.
92
Albie
“I had to talk to you, before all of…whatever the hell is going to happen today." Every word I utter seems to be punctuated by the pounding base drum playing in my head right now, but all I can think about is what's going through Belle's mind as she stands in front of me.
Belle looks…tired. And worried.
"You have to go," she says, her voice strained. "Christine or someone else from the PR team is going to be here in my room any second now."
"Belle."
She looks away from me. "No," she says. "You shouldn't be in here."
"Belle, look at me." I walk across the room and take her hands in mine. "This doesn't change anything."
"What are you talking about?" she asks, her voice high-pitched. "Of course it does. It changes everything."
"It'll be fine," I tell her. I'm not sure whether I'm lying more for her benefit, or for mine. "It's just –"
"My mother came in here," she says. "She accused us of destroying her relationship with your father. It's in the papers, Albie. It’s all over the internet.”
"That part wasn't me," I say. "Look, I told my father, but Derek or someone at the party must have leaked the rest to the press, or gotten them interested enough to really start digging."
"You told your father?" She shakes off my hands and slowly steps backward, looking at me with a horrified expression.
"I told him we got married," I say.
I left out the rest.
I'm fucking Belle.
I can't stop thinking about Belle.
I think I might be in love with Belle.
"How could you do that?" she asks, her brow furrowed. She brings her hand to her mouth as she shakes her head. "Get out."
"Belle," I start. "I don't care who knows."
"You don't care?" she yells, choking on her words. I think she might cry, but she doesn't. She looks at me, angry. "Didn't you ever think about whether I might care? Or what it would mean to your parents?"
"Aren't you tired of hiding from everyone?" I ask. "It's out in the open now."
“What’s out in the open?” she asks. “The fact that we’re fucking? You had no right to put it out there, to decide that I wanted that out in the open. My sex life – our sex life -- is no one else’s business.”
“We did a little more than just screw, Belle,” I say.
Maybe that’s all it is to her. Maybe all it’s been is screwing.
“We got married in Vegas while we were drunk,” she says. “We had a little fun screwing around after that. But that’s all it is.”
“Is that all it is?”
Her jaw clenches, and she looks away. “That’s all it has to be.”
"Are you getting back with that asshole fiancé?" I ask.
"What?" she squeals. "Are you insane? Of course not. This isn't about Derek."
"That guy doesn't deserve you."
I want to deserve you.
"I didn't need rescuing," she says. "You just – you ran in there and punched him, out of some misguided notion that you needed to defend my honor and now everything's out in the open. Everyone knows, Albie."
"I know you don't need rescuing," I say. My frustration is mounting. "I was coming down here to tell you that – fuck, this is not how I saw this conversation going."
“I don’t want my romantic exploits spread all over the media!”
"You think I wanted this all over the papers, Belle?" I ask.
"I don't know what you –"
The knock at the door interrupts whatever she was going to say, and she looks with something like regret before walking to the door and opening it. She pulls open the door, apparently not caring if someone sees me in here with her.
Christine, the head of the PR team, looks back and forth between us, obviously uncertain about what's going on. "Oh," Christine says. "If you're busy…"
"It's fine," Belle says.
It’s the opposite of fine. Everything right now is as un-fine as it can get.
"Great." Christine looks at her notepad, barely glancing at Belle and I. "Obviously, Erika is on her way here."
"Erika who?"
"The girlfriend," she says.
I hold up my hand. "She's not my girlfriend," I say. "And why in the world is she on her way here?"
"Girlfriend or not, she's your best way of explaining this entire thing away, and –"
"Get out." Belle's voice is firm, echoing through her room.
"Erika is not coming here," I say. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. If that's the PR plan here, that's ridiculous."
"Get out, please," Belle says. She doesn't look at either of us. "Now."
"Erika will stand by your side," Christine says. "We've already leaked your engagement to the press."
"You did what?" I yell. "Who in the world told you to do that?"
"Get out!" Belle screams. Everything goes silent. "Now. Get the hell out of my room, Christine."
"Belle, I –" I start. I want to grab her by the arms and tell her that all of this will be fine. None of it means anything to me.
"You too," she says. "Just go."
Christine is on me immediately, nonstop talking as she takes my arm before we even leave Belle's room. But I don't hear a word she says.
The only thing I care about right now is Belle.
When I glance behind me at her as I walk away, she pauses for a moment in the doorway, and her eyes meet mine.
I try to shake off the sinking feeling that I get as she closes the door.
She’s closing the door on us.
93
Belle
"I've done a lot of crazy shit," Raine says, "But this is way up there in terms of nuts, Belle. We didn't see any reporters, though, so that's good."
"Let's just get out of here." I exhale heavily, looking behind me at the summer house on the hill. The guard posted at the exit from the secret passageway saw me when I left, a weekend bag slung over my shoulder containing everything I'd need, at least for now. I half-expected him to stop me, to drag me back up to the hous
e like a prisoner. But he didn't.
It was just like any other time I'd left the palace grounds.
Except that this isn’t any other time. This time, I’m sneaking out, unaccompanied by a bodyguard or a driver.
This time, Raine and Phoenix were waiting just across the street in a banged-up little car they'd bought to drive around Europe, duffel bags strapped to the top with bungee cords.
This time isn’t like the other times I’ve left to volunteer at the hospital. This time, I’m not going back.
“I can’t believe you got out of there without anyone knowing,” Phoenix says. “You’d think they would have better security.”
“I learned from the best,” I say, thinking of Albie. For a moment, I want to go back. I want to tell him that I don’t care what anyone thinks. “Besides, I’m not a prisoner there.”
"Are you sure you want to leave?" Raine asks. She sits in the back seat with me, Phoenix in the driver’s seat.
Am I sure?
I’m as far from sure as I can be.
“Yes.”
Raine reaches for my hand. "I'm sure they have a plan to deal with the media, you know. It doesn't have to be a huge deal. You could hide out in the palace or whatever."
"No," I say, my voice flat. "I just…it's too much attention. I can't think right now."
Raine squeezes my hand. "What about Prince Albert?" she asks.
"I don't want to talk about him."
I think I might be in love with him.
The thought terrifies me.
“Are you sure, Belle?” Raine asks. “Are you certain you want to run away from this? From him?”
No.
I could go back. Right now, I could turn around and walk back inside the house and tell Albie I don't care about any of it.
I could do the brave thing. I could tell everyone to fuck off.
I could tell Albie I want to be with him.
But I’m just not that brave.
"Just drive," I say.
94
Albie
"What do you mean, she's gone?" I ask. I pull out my phone and text Belle, but I hear the buzz of the phone in the room, and Noah holds it up. "Is that hers?"
"It's hers, sir," he says. "She left it in her room. I took the liberty of retrieving it before the head of security got to her bedroom, since I thought there might be things on her phone you might not want made public."
"She's gone," I say again, stupidly. I can't get it through my head.
"Yes."
"She took everything with her?"
"She took a bag," Noah says. "She evaded Simon and walked out of the gate."
She's gone.
"She left a note, sir," he says, handing me the folded sheet of paper. I open it.
I'm sorry, Albie. I just...can't stay.
Love,
Belle.
I crumple it up into a ball in my hand and look at him. "Where?"
"With Raine," he says. "One of her friends from Africa."
"I know who Raine is," I snap.
"Royal Intelligence will get a lock on Raine's phone, I'm sure. Do you want to know where Belle and Raine are when they do?"
Do I want to know where she is?
She's the one who left, who ran from all of this.
She left her phone behind. She doesn't want to be found.
"Yes," I say, blurting out my response before I even think about it.
She doesn't want me to find her.
I should just let her walk away.
"No," I say. "Never mind. No, I don't want to know."
Noah looks at me for a long minute before speaking. "Sir," he starts, then shakes his head. "Oh, fuck it. I'm going to say my piece. Prince Albert. I've known you for a long time, and I've seen you with a lot of women. I mean, seriously. A lot of women."
"Noah," I warn.
"My point is this," he says. "I've seen you with a lot of women, but none like Belle. She loves you and you love her. It's apparent to anyone who sees you together, and if it isn't apparent, well, then they're fucking blind."
"She should have fucking stayed," I say, more anger in my words than I expected.
"She's scared," Noah says, his voice softening.
So am I. But I didn't run away.
I can't believe she just left. Without so much as a goodbye.
I'm angry at her for leaving, but I'm more angry at our parents – especially Sofia – for deciding that the best response would be for the PR team to descend on Belle like a swarm of locusts. And I'm angry at myself for telling my father about the Vegas marriage.
I don't even wait until dinner to see my father and Sofia. Instead, I go straight to the King's wing of the house, where he and Sofia sit inside the living room of their suite, Sofia on an armchair surrounded by a copy of every newspaper and magazine available, splayed out on a coffee table.
Our faces are plastered across the front page of all of them, a million different headlines, all of them promising tales of scandal.
"Albert," Sofia says. "There you are. I knew you'd see reason. See, Leo? We've been discussing a plan for PR."
"You know she's gone," I say. "You drove her away. With all of your concern about image and PR and bringing in Erika – Belle left."
"I'm sorry about Erika," she says. "I didn't think it would be such a big deal."
"You didn't think it would be such a big deal?" I ask, shaking my head in disbelief.
"At the engagement party, I'd heard you and Erika had…" Her voice trails off, and her cheeks redden. They actually redden. Maybe the woman doesn't have ice in her veins after all.
"That we'd fucked?" I ask, not caring about the use of vulgarity in front of the soon-to-be-Queen or my father. "No, Sofia, it wasn't Erika I screwed at the engagement party. It was your daughter."
"Albert!" my father booms, his voice echoing in the room. "That will be quite enough."
"I don't think so," I say. "I married Belle. And it wasn't anything in the beginning, but now it is. Was. Maybe it's past tense; I don't know. All I know is that I don't care about all of this. I don't care whether you approve or not."
"The wedding is weeks away," Sofia protests. "It's obscene, right before the –"
"You know what?" I don't even know what I'm saying before I say it. None of this is planned or thought out. It should be. It would be more mature that way, more reasonable. "Screw the wedding. And -- "
A single knock interrupts what I'm about to say, the 'screw the throne' rant I'm about to dive headfirst into, and Alex bursts into the room. "Get out, Alex," I say.
“I’m sleeping with Max.”
“Oh my,” Sophia says, her hand over her chest. “Apparently today this family is all about disclosing way too much personal information. Who’s Max?”
“He’s my bodyguard,” Alex says, her tone imperious. She turns around and points as Max follows her into the room and stops short, looking back and forth between us.
“Oh shit,” Max says, only partly under his breath.
“You’ve got that right,” Sophia says.
“So if you’re mad at Albie, you can be mad at me, too,” Alex says. “Did you tell them you’re in love with Belle?”
Sofia looks at us her eyes wide. "You're not in love with Belle," she says.
"Oh please," Alex huffs. "He's in love with her. I've never seen him look at anyone the way he looks at her. And now she's off running around Europe because he didn't have the balls to tell her how he felt."
"Didn't have the balls to tell her?" I ask. "She went running off before I could even say – "
"You heard what I said," Alex says. "No balls. You missed your shot with her. And she ran off because she didn't want all the drama."
"You mean, all of this drama?"
"Silence!" my father yells, his voice cutting through our bickering. "The two of you are not children anymore, so stop acting like it!"
"I didn't even do anything!" Alex squeals. "I'm trying to tell him what's good for him.
"
"Enough!" My father yells in the voice that we all know means business. He walks over to the bar against the wall and pours himself a glass of scotch from the crystal decanter, his movements slow and deliberate.
None of us speak.
Alex and I watch as he sips from the glass, then sets the tumbler down on the bar. He places his palms on the top of the bar, standing with his shoulders slumped as if he's carrying the weight of the world.
For a minute, I feel terrible. For all of his flaws, my father has always been a good man. Now he’s found happiness with someone, something that's eluded him since my mother’s death, and Alex and I are in here driving him into an early grave.
“Do you love her?” my father asks, without turning around.
“Leo!” Sofia says. "You can't be seriously entertaining this idea."
“Do you love her?” he repeats.
Do I love her?
“Obviously, he does,” Alex interrupts.
“Alex,” my father warns. “Stay out of this.”
“I love her,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve said the words out loud.
It's the first time I've been certain of it.
95
Belle
“You could go back, you know,” Raine says, sipping her coffee. We’re sitting at a café in downtown Budapest, people-watching. Raine's boyfriend is sightseeing with a group of people from the hostel, probably shooed away by Raine so that she could interrogate me about Albie.
“Seriously, I’m totally fine,” I say. It’s an obvious lie, yet I feel the need to say it. I feel the need to convince myself of that fact. “I’m having fun.”
“You’re having a terrible time,” she says. “You should go back to him.”
“After I flipped out and went running away?” I ask. “I can't. Besides, it’s Albie. He’s the playboy prince. There are plenty of women who will be throwing themselves at him. I’m sure he’s moved on already.”
“You’re so full of shit, Belle,” she says.
Her Bodyguard (Raunchy Royals Book 2) Page 54