It's My Party: A Royal Romantic Comedy (Seven Brides for Seven Mothers Book 3)

by Whitney Dineen

  My mom comes over and gushes, “We’re thrilled to officially meet you both. Claire, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you my name earlier. We were trying to keep our surprise for Geoffrey.” Then, before I can stop her, she announces, “I’m Queen Charlotte of Malquar. I’m delighted to meet you, my dear.”

  I look at Claire and watch as tears spring to her eyes. She offers my mom a small curtsy before saying, “Ma’am.” She must have learned that from watching BBC or something. I don’t think most Americans know how to officially greet royalty. Which is probably one of the reasons I like it here so much.

  “Please come and join us for cake,” my mom tells Claire. “You too, Tara. Any friends of Geoffrey’s are friends of ours.”

  Claire follows my mom like she’s walking through set Jell-O. One foot follows the other automatically, but it seems like a chore. Anyone who knows her would know something is wrong. I hurry to her side and lean down to whisper, “I can explain.”

  She looks up at me with a world of hurt in her eyes. “There’s nothing to explain.”

  “Claire, please.” I want to say more but my siblings engulf me in a huge hug and pull me to the opposite end of the long table.

  When I’m seated, I finally recognize that Brigitte’s family is here as well. I lean over to Chéri and ask, “What’s going on?”

  She smiles brilliantly. “I told Mom and Dad the only way I’d get married was if we did it privately without any press or any over-the-top preparations. I also told them I wanted you to cook my dinner. That’s when we tagged the wedding on top of your surprise birthday party.”

  “Congratulations!” I tell her with an abundance of emotion. “What changed your mind?”

  My sister looks across the table at her soon-to-be wife and says, “Brigitte did. I didn’t think it mattered whether we were married or not. But when I found out how important it was to her, I realized it was important to me too. You can’t love someone and not be willing to change for them.”

  Her words stick with me throughout the rest of the evening. Sometime after the cake was served, Claire must have slipped out because she’s no longer here. I want to go straight to her house and talk to her, but I can’t walk out on my own birthday party.

  I stay with my family for another two hours before everyone starts to succumb to jet lag. When my parents get up to leave, my mom comes over to tell me, “Claire is lovely.”

  “Yes, she is.” I wonder what her follow-up will be, but she doesn’t have one.

  Instead, she says, “We’ll see you in the morning for breakfast. Is there any chance you can join us?”

  “I don’t normally cook breakfast, so after I’m done creating something wonderful for you, I’ll join you.”

  “Thank you, dear.” She reaches up to kiss my cheek before whispering, “Life doesn’t always seem fair, does it?”

  While that’s the understatement of the century, now doesn’t seem like the proper time to bring that up. I shake my father’s hand, then bid the rest of the table goodnight. I hope Claire is still awake when I get home, because she and I need to clear the air once and for all.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Sharon

  “Not like that!” Sharon tells her sister while laying back on the sofa beating two soup spoons together. “The rhythm goes, CHEATin’ makes your DONG fall OFF!!!” Then she rolls over and stifles her laughter in a throw pillow.

  “This song has Country Music Award written all over it!” Tooty declares while picking up her banjo. She plucks away at the strings and sings the line again with the proper emphasis. “I think we’re gonna need a washboard and jug for this one.”

  Sharon bursts into the yodeling riff, motioning for her sister to join her. With their heads thrown back they let themselves go. Several minutes pass before Sharon says, “Wait, wait, shush. Did you hear that?”

  “What?” Tooty wants to know. With her eyes closed and her head tilted up to the ceiling, she singsongs, “All I heard was the applause of fans.”

  “I think someone’s at the door.” She jumps off the couch and hurries to the entryway. She opens the door to find Geoffrey standing there.

  “Can I help you?” she asks, sounding less than welcoming. As sad as her daughter’s been lately, Geoffrey is not her favorite person.

  “Sharon, I need to talk to Claire.”

  “Well, good luck to you. She’s not here.” Sharon moves to close the door in his face, but he steps inside before she can.

  “Then can I talk to you, please? Tonight was a little upsetting for Claire, and I want to explain.”

  Tooty joins them in the entryway and says, “You must be the man from Malquar. You look like the people we met while we were there.”

  Sharon’s eyes pop open wide when the truth of her sister’s words hit her. “You do look like them. That must be why I thought you were familiar.” Sharon grabs Geoffrey by the arm and pulls him into the living room before pushing him down onto the sofa. “Start talking, boy, and don’t stop until I tell you to.”

  Claire

  I sneak out of Geoffrey’s birthday party under the guise of needing to take something to the kitchen—like the knife that was just plunged into my heart. But instead of going there, I head to my room where I immediately pull my laptop out of my overnight bag so I can do a little research on the royal family of Malquar.

  I find pictures of Geoffrey from the time he was a small child through his college days at Dartmouth. With the exception of a few shots here and there, the photos of him all but disappear.

  I read an article from the London Times titled “Royal Cousins Come to Play.”

  There are pictures of all of Geoffrey’s siblings, but not him. After that article, the only ones that pop up about Geoffrey are the occasional ones of him at some event in Europe, but he looks shorter and skinnier and doesn’t look much like himself. Why is that?

  I’m so flabbergasted to find out he’s royalty, I don’t know how to react. Actually, I do. I decide to cry some more.

  Geoffrey’s moving home because his royal duties are calling. Getting involved with me is obviously not on that list. I feel as small and unworthy as a tadpole in the ocean, and believe me, after Jack, I wasn’t feeling that great to begin with.

  When Geoffrey said we could only be friends, what he meant was, “I can’t get serious with a peasant like you.” There’s no other explanation that makes sense.

  This is the first time in my whole life someone thought my family wasn’t good enough. The whole notion spins me around to the point where I don’t know what to think. I’m hurt, offended, and madder than hell.

  Here Geoffrey has been portraying himself as one thing, when he’s nothing of the sort. It’s a colossal case of misrepresentation, and I’m tired of being duped by men.

  Now I have to spend the weekend making sure his family is well cared for and somehow stay out of his way.

  A knock on my door jolts me out of my thoughts and back to the present. “Who is it?” I yell like I’m yelling “Touchdown!” at a high school football game.

  “It’s me, Tara. Open up.”

  I open the door to my friend and promptly burst into tears again. I’m getting sooooo tired of doing that. Taking me into her arms, she announces, “I had no idea.”

  “I didn’t think you did,” I tell her. “I don’t think anyone did.”

  “Why do you suppose he didn’t tell us?” she asks, sounding confused.

  “I don’t know, Miss Supermodel. Why didn’t you tell anyone who you were when you came here?”

  “Because I didn’t want anyone to know. I wanted to live my life for me and not for what people expected me to be.”

  I suddenly become alert like I just jumped from a hot tub into an arctic pool. Geoffrey wanted to enjoy his life as a private citizen before he had to go home and join the family business, as it were. While I can’t begrudge him that, he still should have told me.

  My dreaded angel p
ops up and whispers in my ear, “He told you he couldn’t get serious and you said you were okay with that.” I want to hiss at her to shut up, but I don’t. I just mentally retie her gag. Tighter.

  “Geoffrey and I have been seeing each other,” I confess to Tara. “We’ve been dating.”

  “Then why have you both been so grumpy this week?” she demands.

  “I caught him at his house with Cheryl.”

  “Caught him, how? Were they kissing or worse?” She looks mad enough to go to war for me and I couldn’t be more grateful.

  “They were drinking beer in his living room,” I tell her.

  “What else?”

  “There was a fire in the fireplace,” I elaborate.

  “Did he tell you something was going on between them?”

  I shake my head. “Of course not. Why would he confess to fooling around on me?”

  She touches my arm gently before saying, “It doesn’t sound like he was fooling around on you.”

  “Cheryl has a crush on him, and I told him that.” The “duh” is implied.

  “What did she say was going on?”

  “She said Geoffrey was upset when he went into the market and she offered to have a friendly beer with him.”

  Pushing me aside so she can sit on my bed, Tara says, “That sounds like what it probably was. Just because Geoffrey didn’t tell you he was a prince doesn’t mean he’s a cheater.”

  “He’s still leaving here.” I sound so forlorn you’d think I’d just run over a nest full of baby birds.

  Tara puts her arm around me. “Do you want me to talk to him?”

  “No! I just want him to hurry up and leave so I don’t have to see him all the time. Maybe that’ll be enough for me to stop thinking about him.”

  I don’t know how I’m going to get through this weekend, but I do know one thing: I will never let a man toy with my heart again. “Will you stay for a while?” I ask my friend.

  She stays, only sneaking out after I cry myself to sleep.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The Queen

  After washing her face and crawling into bed, Charlotte tells her husband, “That Claire sure is a nice girl, isn’t she?”

  “Don’t encourage our son in that direction. If they aren’t already seeing each other, there’s no point in them starting now.”

  “I think they are seeing each other, Alfred. You should have seen the way Claire’s eyes filled with tears when I introduced myself. I don’t think our son told her who he really is.”

  “The whole reason Geoffrey went away is so that people didn’t know his real identity,” her husband grumbles.

  “Darling, I’m the daughter of a florist,” she reminds him.

  “Your grandmother was a baroness.”

  “What if Claire has some obscure royal connections in her background? I read somewhere that Ellen DeGeneres is related to our family in England. Would that be enough for you to consider letting Geoffrey keep dating her?”

  “Within reason, possibly.”

  “Well then”—Charlotte snuggles up to her husband—”until I can start researching tomorrow, what do you say we make the most of our first night away from the hustle and bustle of our normal lives?”

  Alfred pulls his wife into his arms and kisses her with the passion of thirty-five years of marriage. “Let’s play the florist and the king …”

  Geoffrey

  I’ve gone years without giving my heart to a woman. Now, weeks before I go home, I blow it? What was I thinking?

  I know what I was thinking. I was thinking that Claire is fun to be with. She’s beautiful and funny and smart and … I could go on and on. She was also hurting when she moved here, and I couldn’t stand to see her in pain. Now, I’m the cause of her pain. Terrific.

  I feel better after talking to Sharon and Tooty last night. They both believed me, that I wasn’t cheating on Claire with Cheryl, but they both wished me luck convincing Claire of that.

  I leave for work early in hopes of having some time with her before the chaos of the day starts. With Chéri’s wedding and reception, and the singles’ event tonight, I need to be three people to be everywhere at once.

  I have a suit in the car that I’ll change into for the wedding, then it’s back into my chef’s clothes for dinner service, then back into my suit for the rest of Chéri’s reception. I’m going to be in and out of my clothes like some kind of superhero.

  Running through the front door of the lodge, I spot Chris and ask, “Do you know which room Claire is in?”

  She curtsies to me before answering, “I’m sorry, Your Highness. I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Why can’t you say?”

  She ignores my question. “Why in the world would you keep something like this from us?”

  “Can you yell at me later, Chris? I really need to talk to Claire.”

  Ruby comes out of the office and throws a stack of papers at the counter. She misses and they fly all over the place. She doesn’t seem to care though. She just steps out from behind the desk and shouts, “You are in the doghouse, young man!”

  “What room is Claire in, Ruby?”

  “She’s in room it’s-none-of-your-business!” she says while wielding her pointer finger at me like it’s a wand meant to turn me into a frog.

  “Please tell me,” I beg.

  Before she has a chance to say anything else, I hear Claire behind me. “Ruby, will you please inform Geoffrey that I’m unable to talk to him as I’m overseeing a royal wedding today.”

  Ruby looks at me and repeats Claire’s words verbatim.

  “Claire, can I please have five minutes of your time? Please?” I sound like a starving man begging for a crust of bread.

  She avoids looking at me. “Ruby, would you please tell Geoffrey that I don’t have five minutes, and even if I did, I wouldn’t give it to him.”

  Ruby repeats everything again. This is going to get old fast.

  I’m about to fall to my knees and prostrate myself in front of her when my family comes downstairs. My mother runs over to give me a hug. “I can’t wait for breakfast, I’m starving!”

  I hug her back. “Well then, I’d better get to the kitchen and start preparing it.”

  “Remember you promised to join us,” she says before turning to Claire. She takes her hand and pulls her along saying, “Come eat with us, dear.”

  “I can’t.” Claire sounds panicked. “I mean, thank you for the invitation but we have a busy day here.”

  “Don’t you worry about us,” she says. “Chéri would be just as happy getting married wearing jeans out in the rain. She doesn’t appreciate fuss.”

  “Nonetheless, I owe it to everyone to make sure her day is spectacular.”

  Ruby calls out, “You go have breakfast, Claire. I’ll man the battleship until you’re back.”

  Claire walks with my mom while still managing to turn around and give me the evil eye. I’d follow them into the dining room, but I have breakfast for twenty-four to make. Twenty-five with Claire.

  In the kitchen, I decide to send everything out family-style so that they can try a variety of food. I tell Henry, “I need a large fruit plate for twenty-four and twelve bavarian waffles, stat.” Then I get a line cook making up a platter of eggs Benedict and applewood bacon, while I start the crepes and fillings.

  When I finally get to the dining room where my family is eating, I spot Claire sitting by my mother. The servers bring in the food and put the platters in the middle of the table. I try to pull a chair up next to Claire.

  “There’s no room here, Geoffrey. You’ll have to sit over there.” She points to the opposite end of the table—which is obviously quite a distance with twenty-five people sitting here.

  I find a place next to my dad. “Hey, Dad, you mind if I sit with you?”

  He stands up to move his chair over to make space. “I’d love to share my little corner with you, so
n. How are you doing with the surprise we gave you last night?”

  “That was some surprise. I thought I was getting a parade and a park named after me.”

  “Oh, you’re still getting those. This was a little something extra.”

  “Why?”

  “We wanted to see what your life here was like and we knew if we gave you notice, we wouldn’t get a clear representation.”

  “Why does it matter what my life is like here? I’m coming home in a few weeks.”

  Alfred takes a sip of his orange juice before answering, “I wanted to see what the draw was. You’ve spent over a decade in this country. I guess I wanted to understand why.”

  “It has less to do with the country and more to do with the anonymity. I’ve been able to relax here.”

  The king nods his head. “Which you wouldn’t have in Europe.”

  “Correct.” Then for some reason, I feel the need to ask, “What do you think of Claire?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to talk to her. Your mother has been monopolizing her.” Then my dad asks, “What’s going on there, Geoffrey? Your sister seems to think you’ve started dating this girl.”

  After pouring a cup of coffee from the carafe, I answer, “We have, but things aren’t going well at the moment.”

  “Why?”

  “She thinks I was fooling around with another woman.” In response to my dad’s raised eyebrow, I add, “Which I wasn’t. Then, you all showed up and now she knows I’ve been lying about who I am. That’s never a plus in a relationship.”

  My dad appears to be thinking so hard I’m afraid he’s going to blow a circuit. “Maybe it’s for the best then. It’ll be easier for you to come home if you distance yourself now.”

  Talking to my dad is like listening to the same sentence on a constant loop. “It’s time to come home, Geoffrey. It’s time to come home; it’s time to come home.” I get it already. I swear the next time I hear that I’m going to start throwing things.