by Tracy Wolff
“I think the issue this morning is more about what you want,” comes his cryptic, yet amused, reply.
“Dude, I’m hungover and—” I cut myself off before I say “horny as fuck.” Some things even a twin doesn’t need to know. “Either get to the point or call me back at a civilized hour.”
“Yeah, well, civilized is in the eye of the beholder. I’ll have you know I’ve been up and working for two hours already this morning.”
“Do you want a fucking parade for that?” It’s about time he learned that governing doesn’t come with a convenient nine-to-five schedule.
“No, but I would like a thank you, considering most of the work I had to do this morning was on your behalf.”
A warning bell goes off deep inside me. I force myself into a sitting position, barely managing not to whimper as the light hits my bleary, hungover eyes and a really bad marching band starts playing in my head. “Me? What’s going on?”
Has more information about my torture leaked online?
Have the photographs they took when I was in that hellhole finally surfaced?
Has our father made a formal, final decision about me losing the throne?
My stomach clenches up as I try to figure out what would be worse. For me, definitely the formal decision to end progenitor as we know it. For Wildemar? At this point I just don’t know.
It’s a blow to admit that, considering I’ve always known what was best—and worst—for Wildemar. The fact that I’m so messed up now that I don’t? Maybe the King is correct in thinking about changing the order of succession.
After all, the last time the news got hold of a few of my hospital pics, it caused such an uproar that it was news for weeks as the world speculated about just what had happened to me during the three months I was missing. After that disaster, we classified everything, locking my records and the investigation down as tightly as we possibly could. But if I’ve learned nothing else during my time in the palace in the social media age, it’s that absolutely nothing is foolproof. Or leak-proof.
And since I’m trying to figure out how to mount one last defense aimed at my father, the last thing I need right now is the details of my torture being made public. I’m barely hanging on to my title as it is—though my father hasn’t yet made a public declaration that Kian is the heir, speculation has been rampant for a while, especially since he’s been doing so much of the head-of-state stuff.
Info about the torture will just fan the flames—not to mention give my father, and Parliament, all the ammunition they need to set me publicly aside. And while it’s already been done privately, I can’t help but hold out hope that—as long as it doesn’t come down by royal decree—I have some small chance of being able to serve Wildemar as I was born to do.
“I assume you haven’t checked a news site in the last two hours?” Kian drawls. “Or social media? Or your phone? Or your email? I’ve got to say, you’ve got good taste. The redhead is adorable.”
My hands start to shake—another fun by-product of the torture—even as I reach for my tablet and swipe it open. “What happened.” This time it’s a demand, not a question.
Kian must hear the difference, because he goes from teasing to serious in the space from one breath to the next. “You’re on the home page of every gossip and news site in the western hemisphere, bro. That kiss with Lola Barnes was something else. I have to admit, I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Oh, fuck.” My blood runs cold. “I was at her cottage in the middle of nowhere, at midnight. Who the hell was taking pictures?”
“Some photographer who spotted you climbing the fence at a closed public park,” Kian answers, and the amusement is back in his voice. “Everyone’s speculating that the badass entrepreneur behind Va Voom Vintage has turned Good Boy Garrett into a rebel.”
“Va Voom Vintage?” I feel like he’s speaking another language—one other than the eight I’m fluent in.
“Too busy getting to know Lola to really get to know her, huh?”
“You sound like a frat boy.”
“You can take the boy off the yacht, but you can’t take the yacht out of the boy,” he answers far too cheerfully for my liking. Especially since I’ve been scrolling through the feed of a major news agency for only about thirty seconds and I’ve already found three pictures and five mentions of Lola and me.
Shit. This thing is really blowing up. And I am a total asshole for thinking it was just a few locals last night. For not realizing that paparazzi might have been mixed among the villagers.
And because I didn’t think about it, because I thought no one but the locals knew where I was, I brought this on her. I took her out, didn’t notice when some asshole photographer spotted us, then led him straight to her doorstep. Now she’s alone out there in that cottage, and God only knows how many other photographers have found her at this point.
“Hold on a minute,” I tell my brother. Then I fire off a text to Samuel, demanding that he get someone over to Lola’s house to scope things out—and to protect her if she’s under siege.
He answers right away, assuring me he’s already on it, and while it doesn’t satisfy me about her safety, it’s all I can do right now, until I figure out just how bad this thing is.
“What do Jacob and Liese think we should do?” I ask Kian, referring to the two people in charge of palace PR.
“That depends. Do you want the official line they’re giving Dad or the one they’re feeding me under the table?”
“There’s a difference?” There shouldn’t be. I’ve spent my whole life learning to toe the palace line, to follow the official statements to the letter. Kian’s heir to the throne for a few months and suddenly there are back-channel communications? What the hell is going on?
“There is if you want to turn this into the chance you’ve been looking for to get the throne back.”
I switch to a prominent gossip site, which has taken the pics—and the story—and run with it. “How can me fooling around with an American—one whose job is apparently selling old clothes online—help me convince the King to trust me again? Especially when that ship sailed the minute I let myself get kidnapped.”
“You didn’t let yourself get kidnapped,” Kian tells me, exasperation ripe in his tone. “Ten mercenaries came after you. What were you supposed to do?”
“Throw myself on my sword, apparently. Since undergoing months of torture without spilling any state secrets isn’t enough for him.” Then again, maybe it’s just me that’s not enough for him.
“Nothing’s enough for him. It’s not like that’s exactly news.” Kian clears his throat. “Now, about Va Voom Vintage.”
“What kind of name is that anyway? And who makes a living selling old clothes?”
“She does more than make a living, Garrett. Lola Barnes is CEO of what has turned into a multimillion-dollar company,” Kian corrects me. “And it’s vintage, not old. Like antique furniture, but with designer clothes instead.”
I think of the piles of clothes in Lola’s living room that suddenly makes a lot more sense. “For a CEO of a company that big, she’s awfully hands-on.”
Kian chuckles. “Pretty sure the same can be said of you, at least if these pics of the two of you together are accurate.”
“Nothing happened between us.”
“So you were just giving her a tonsillectomy then? With your tongue, no less?”
I grit my teeth and fight the urge to bury my face in my hands as my headache kicks up another notch or seven. “I took her to dinner, broke into a park with her, and then kissed her. But that’s all that happened. Otherwise, I would have been kissing her inside the house instead of on her porch.”
“That makes a sad kind of sense, and I’ve got to say, I’m a little disappointed in you, Gorgeous Garrett. I thought you were more of a closer than that.”
Kian pauses and I can practically hear the wheels turning in his brain. Too bad my head hurts too much for me to even try to keep up.
“You like her,” he says after a minute.
“What? I barely know her.”
“You know her well enough to like her,” he all but cackles. “This is good. This is perfect, actually.”
“What do you mean it’s perfect?” I’m scrolling through another site now, one that’s offering money for candids of Lola—with or without me in them. “The vultures are all over this story.”
“Exactly. And not only are they all over it, they are loving it. Gorgeous Garrett and a self-made American businesswoman? It’s a tale as old as time.”
“This isn’t Beauty and the Beast, man.”
“Sure it is. She’s beautiful and you’re absolutely a beast—especially lately. Even though Dad wants the story buried, Liese and Jacob think you should run with it. Wine and dine her and show the world just how much of a Prince Charming you still are. Once everyone falls in love with your romance, they’ll stop thinking of you as the poor, abducted prince and start thinking of you as a prince again. More, a king. And a hot commodity, at that.”
“That is a terrible idea.”
“It’s a brilliant idea. You’re just too miserable to recognize it.”
“What happens when we break up? Which will happen, since we’re not actually together?”
“Jacob and Liese will spin it. They always do. And who’s to say you’re going to break up, anyway? You like this girl. It’s pretty obvious she likes you. Go into it with an open mind and see what happens.”
“Aren’t you the matchmaker lately.”
“Can I help it if I want my brother to be as blissfully happy as I am? Besides, it’s perfect.”
“It’s about as far from perfect as it can get!” I growl, sounding way more like the beast he accused me of being than I like to admit. “It was just a date. I don’t have any plans to see her again. And even if I wanted to—which I don’t—it’s not like she’ll be interested in seeing me again.”
“Are we looking at the same pictures?” Kian demands. “Because from where I’m sitting, the two of you look like you’re about to set that porch on fire. Why the hell wouldn’t she want to see you again?”
“A bunch of reasons, including the fact that—according to the text I just got from Samuel—she’s trapped in her cottage by press and photographers. Plus I’m pretty sure I’m too much of a stick-in-the-mud for her.” I scroll through some pics of Lola when she was younger. “She looks like she was a pretty big party girl.”
“So? I know my way around a party or two. That didn’t stop Savvy from falling for me, even though that’s not her scene. Opposites do attract, you know.”
“What is it with you and this whole matchmaking thing? Seriously. It’s weird.” Especially considering he was the biggest playboy on the planet less than a year ago.
“Will you just trust me for once? I know you’re used to coming up with the plans and giving the orders, but I’ve got this. It’s foolproof.”
“Nothing’s foolproof, especially if our father is involved.”
Kian snorts. “Isn’t that the truth. But that’s why I’m in charge of this op. I’m totally circumventing him. He’ll know nothing about it until it’s too late.”
Part of me wants to correct him, to tell him the King always knows, but I figure he’ll find out soon enough. Some things can’t be taught, anyway. They have to be experienced.
Because this isn’t my first time around the block, and because I know the King a lot better than Kian since I’ve spent my whole adult life working closely with him, I also know that I should walk away right now. No matter how intriguing I find Lola—no matter how much fun I had with her once we left that god-awful restaurant—now isn’t the time for me to try to get involved with a woman. Especially one who made it pretty clear last night that she wasn’t interested in getting involved with me and all the hoopla that entails.
But as another text from Samuel comes in—this one saying that she’s not answering her phone or any of the texts he sent—I know I’m not going to be able to just leave her like this. The press is all over her because of me. The gossip sites are digging up everything they can on her past because of me. The least I can do is make sure that I can keep her safe until the story dies down. Which it will, as long as we don’t give it any fuel.
Kian may think the whole Beauty and the Beast thing will work, but that’s only if I’m willing to throw Lola to the wolves. Which I’m not. Too many people have already sacrificed their lives to keep me safe—my bodyguards who were murdered when I was kidnapped and the soldiers who were wounded or killed rescuing me months later. No way am I asking anyone else to sacrifice anything for me. Especially not Lola.
“Look,” I say, breaking into a long-winded treatise from Kian that I won’t even pretend to have been hearing. “I’ve got to go. Lola needs help.”
“See? That’s what I’m talking about. Go ride to her rescue on your white steed.”
“I’m driving a black SUV, not riding a white horse.”
“Potato, po-tah-toh. Just make sure you make it look good. Women eat that shit up—”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“I’m serious, bro. Just do what I’m telling you and—”
I swipe the phone off before he can finish. I may have needed his advice on where the best parties were when this whole shiftless existence of mine came into being, but rescuing a damsel in distress? I’ve totally got that. And not because I want to use her to make my life easier.
Chapter 12
Lola
I’m in hell. There’s no other explanation for the photographers and news people camped on my front lawn. No other explanation for my smartphone ringing off the hook with calls and texts from reporters all over the damn world. Certainly no other explanation for my second-in-command calling me to ask if Garrett’s eyes are really as dreamy in person as they are on the covers of magazines.
How the hell did I get here? One tiny date with a prince in one tiny village in Wildemar and suddenly TMZ is covering my very brief stint in a sorority in college—complete with pictures of me puking into a potted plant at a Sig Ep party my freshman year.
It’s madness. Total, absolute, and complete madness.
I’m supposed to be doing a photo shoot in two hours, but considering I can’t even get out my front door, I have no idea how that’s supposed to happen. No idea how anything I have planned for the next few days is supposed to happen. Not when I’ve got the sick feeling I’ll be trailing paparazzi wherever I go.
No one was supposed to see us. I mean, sure, at the restaurant in town there were a ton of people who noticed Garrett. But we’re in a small village at the back of fucking beyond. Yes, it’s a huge vacation destination during the winter because of the mountains, but we’re six months from peak tourist time. No one but locals are around, and while they might have smartphones and social media accounts, they’re a long way away from being able to identify me off a pic in a dark restaurant.
I mean, seriously, what are the odds that some news photographer would be wandering the streets late at night, enjoying his vacation in the back of beyond, and just happen upon Garrett and me hopping that damn fence into the park? It seems far-fetched, but that’s exactly what happened, and now…now I am in hell.
My computer dings with a DM from my assistant—the only way she can reach me since I turned my damn phone off to avoid reporters—and I pull it up, expecting the worst. I had her start pulling traffic numbers on the site, figuring we might have to do something about our servers if we have a sudden influx of hits. Not that anyone will be buying anything. But this is a huge story and even if no one else checks out Va Voom Vintag
e, every gossip/feature reporter on the planet is going to be looking into my business. I don’t know if our servers can handle that kind of traffic.
But as I look at the numbers Nora sends—not just the hits, but the merchandise sale numbers—my mouth nearly falls open. On a normal day, we move between fifteen and twenty thousand dollars of merchandise. In the last six hours, we’ve moved more than triple that. The hits are out of control, but so are the sales. People are buying our clothes, both the vintage stuff and our own designs, at a rate that’s going to have us out of merchandise in less than two weeks. Not that I expect it to continue, but still…what if it does?
I go into instant crisis mode—a good crisis is still a crisis—ordering Nora to contact the IT guys and make sure they do whatever they need to do to keep our site from crashing. Then I get on Marissa, my head product manager, to make sure she’s ready to start posting the merch we have lined up for next month.
Finally, I contact Sienna, my head retail buyer, and tell her to start tracking down more cute ready-to-wear stuff while I start pulling up estate sales and vintage shops all over Wildemar and France. I had planned on hitting one more here in Wildemar and then a few in France, but if this windfall keeps up for even a week, I’m going to need to get my hands on a whole lot of product in not a lot of time.
I need to cancel the photo shoot today, but I can’t afford to. I need to get these clothes photographed and then shipped back to the States, ASAP. Which means I need to figure out how to get the hell out of here without tipping off the reporters to where I’m going. Piece of cake.
Not.
Ugh. With a grimace, I get up from the small dining table where I’ve been working and make my way to the front window. I pulled the curtains the moment the first paparazzo showed up—well, the second one, considering I never even saw the guy who got the money shot of the kiss—but I can’t help peeking out occasionally, just to see if they’ve left. So far, no one has.