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 Vintage, 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.

I stay to the side of the window, shifting the edge of the curtain aside instead of the center. And nearly gasp when I see that the crowd at the end of the driveway has grown. There have to be at least fifty there now, up from the twenty that were there the last time I checked.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

How can this be happening? It was one kiss. One. Kiss. And a little illegal entry onto public lands, but come on. Garrett’s brother, Kian, was constantly in the magazines with one woman or another. A few shots here, an interview there, and nobody paid much more attention than that to the women in his revolving door. So why is it such a big deal that Garrett kissed a woman? He is more than a prince, after all. He’s a man. A straight man, and straight men tend to kiss women. That’s how it works.

Sure, up until recently he’s had a fiancée, but he’s been around the block a few times these last couple of months. I’ve seen those pics too. So why this sudden frenzy? Why me? And yes, I understand the irony of being excited about the increased traffic to the site even as I bemoan the people giving me the extra publicity that drives that traffic, but come on. I was happy with my business the way it was, and I’d go back to it in a heartbeat if it meant that I could walk out my front door right now like a normal person.

With a moan, I let the curtain fall back where it belongs. Then I head into the kitchen for a much-needed cup of coffee and a chocolate croissant. Because if any morning ever deserved chocolate, this one is absolutely it.

I’m just getting my croissant out of the microwave when a knock sounds at my front door. It’s so unexpected that I end up nearly dropping the stupid thing in my haste to turn around and stare at the door. Which is ridiculous, I know, considering I can’t see through the wood. But I can’t help feeling a little like the first victim in a horror movie when the killer comes knocking on the door.

I ignore the summons—no way am I stupid enough to open that door—but then it comes again. And again. And again. I get a little more pissed off with every rap of knuckles against wood, because these reporters freaking know better. It’s why they’re camped at the bottom of the driveway instead of on the front lawn. They aren’t allowed on private property and they are well aware of it. So why the hell is one of them knocking on my damn door at eight o’clock in the freaking morning?

Furious at the audacity and frustrated at my absolute inability to do anything about it, I march toward the living room. I’m not opening the door, but I can yell through the thing for them to go away.

But before I can even make it to the small entryway, I recognize Garrett’s voice calling through the door, “It’s Garrett, Lola. Open up, will you?”

Hallelujah, the cavalry has arrived!

I start to throw open the door, then remember I’m dressed in nothing more than a skimpy camisole and short pajama bottoms. The last thing we need is some jerk with a long-range lens getting a shot of me letting Garrett into the house when I’m nearly naked.

“Give me a sec to put some more clothes on,” I call back, then race to my bedroom to throw something on. There’s a little bit of déjà vu, considering this is how this whole debacle started last night, but I ignore it as I pull on a pair of yoga pants and a hoodie. It’s hot as hell in this weather, but I’d rather turn on the air-conditioning than worry about showing too much skin on the cover of the National Enquirer.

Once I’m dressed, I race back to the front door, where Garrett has started knocking again. “Come on, Lola. The last thing we want to do is give these guys a ton of pics of me standing on your front porch.”

I throw open the door, doing my best to hide behind it as I do. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were coming.”

“You would have if you’d turn on your damn phone occasionally,” he growls.

My back goes up at his tone, and at the implication that I’m somehow at fault for this mess. “Sorry, but after the two hundredth call from a reporter, I decided it was better to just turn the thing off. Believe me, this whole disaster is no picnic for me either. Unlike some people, I have actual work to do today.”

His eyes narrow at my implication. “I came to help get you out of this mess. But if you’d rather wait around for someone else, let me know and I’ll get out of your hair.”

Our eyes are locked by this point and I know I’ve got two options here. I can either say something that will keep this thing escalating between us or I can defuse the tension. And since I’ve got more than enough to handle right now with the paparazzi on my driveway and the increased traffic to my site, I figure picking a fight with the Crown Prince who isn’t really the Crown Prince anymore isn’t my smartest move. Especially since he claims he’s here to help and he’s got way more experience with this game than I ever will. More resources, too.

After a couple of seconds holding his gaze, I run a hand through my hair and let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry. This whole situation just has me on edge. Can I get you a cup of coffee and a croissant?”

He relaxes the second I do, his whole demeanor softening as he comes toward me. “I’m sorry too. I never should have taken you out last night. But I’ve been here three days and nothing major happened when I went into local businesses, so I thought it’d be okay. But that was before…”

“Before I convinced you to break into a park?”

He laughs at that and it’s as soothing as his voice is. As soothing as the hand he rests on the center of my back. I feel myself relaxing at the closeness of him, at the sound and feel and smell of him—all orange and bergamot and rich, dark cinnamon. Instinctively, I sink back into him, my whole body relaxing, unclenching, before I make the conscious effort to do so.

Normally, I’d be screaming at myself. I’m not the kind of woman to just step back and let some guy take over my life—even if he says he’s here to save me from it all. Believe me, I’ve been there, seen that, and it never ends pretty.

But this is different, I tell myself, as I absorb the heat of his palm through the thin material of my hoodie. I’m not sure how yet, but it is. Or at least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

My computer dings, signaling a DM from one of my staff, and—reluctantly—I pull away from the warmth of Garrett’s touch. “Just let me get this,” I tell him as I scroll through to the new message. “My business has been going nuts since the pics of us broke and I’m trying to keep my site from crashing under the increased traffic.”

“I’m sorry about that.” His hand is back, this time on my shoulder. The nonverbal support shouldn’t mean anything—I’m just doing my job—but somehow it does. Which, if I let myself think about it, makes Garrett, and this situation, even more complicated than I want to admit.

“Don’t be sorry,” I tell him, going for flippant. “Increased traffic means increased sales.” I skim the information about increased server space and fire back an answer. I also need to draft something about this for PR to circulate, but since I want Garrett’s take on that, I close the computer so I can actually focus on the discussion at hand.

“So, how do you like your coffee?” I ask, when I can finally bring myself to pull away from his touch. It’s way harder than it should be. Nearly as hard as it was to step out of his embrace and kick him off my porch last night.

There’s just something about Garrett that turns me on, something about him that makes me throw my normal defenses out the window the second he touches me. I don’t like it, but there it is. And considering he’s a more decent guy than most…

It is what it is, I decide, as I move to pour a second mug of coffee. I look at him questioningly, since he hasn’t moved an inch since I pulled away from him. Maybe I’m not the only one feeling this strange sense of connection and familiarity between us.

“Black,” he finally says, when my look gets through to him. “Like my heart.”

I lift a brow. “You expect me to believe that?”

“It’s an inside joke with my brother. Kian says only bastards and psychopaths drink their coffee black.”

I hand him the mug, careful to turn the chipped rim away from him. I probably should have gotten him a different cup, but I like this one, with its cheery yellow background and optimistic message that reads, Throw Kindness Around Like Confetti. It seems to suit him. Well, that and I’m already using the I Can’t Adult Today mug. When I first got here, I was a little surprised to find such American mugs in a French-speaking, European town. Now I’m just kind of charmed by this little bit of home.

Then again, maybe that’s the point.

“So, how does Kian take his coffee?”

“Black,” he answers, deadpan, and I can’t help laughing.

“So, is he a bastard or a psychopath, then?”

Garrett pretends to consider it. “A little bit of both, I think.”

It feels weird to casually be asking something like that about the man nicknamed His Royal Hotness. Then again, Gorgeous Garrett, who also shares the His Royal Hotness moniker with his brother, is currently standing in my kitchen. Talk about a surreal turn of events.

Vera, my vintage buyer who also happens to be a huge royal shipper, would die if she knew. Then again, considering what’s being published about me and Garrett right now, she’s probably dying at this very moment…

The thought brings me back to our very uncomfortable reality and I gesture toward the table. “Have a seat and I’ll warm up another croissant.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Sure I do. I’m hungry and my grandmother was big on Southern hospitality. She would roll over in her grave if I ate my breakfast without giving you some.”

“Southern hospitality, huh?” He studies me over the rim of his coffee cup. “If you’re from the American South, how come you don’t have an accent?”

It’s a long story, and one I have no intention of telling a man I just met. Then again, if I give the reporters outside long enough, they’ll probably tell him for me. Just the idea makes my heart plummet to my knees, even as I tell myself that my past is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not my fault my father led a double life—his public life with his wife and children and the one he had with my mother and me. We were his dirty little secret, and even though that’s on him, not me, I still don’t want the whole world knowing my business.

“We don’t all talk like this,” I tell him, exaggerating the words until they sound like a Southern drawl. “No matter what they tell you Europeans. Besides, I’ve lived in California for years.”

“What part of California?” he asks, digging into the croissant I slide in front of him.

“Does it matter?” I answer. “Right now, I’d say we have bigger problems than black coffee or where I’m from.”

“Good point.” He puts down the croissant and nods for me to take the chair next to him. When I do, he reaches out and takes my hand. “What do you want to do?”

“You’re the prince. You’ve got all the experience with stuff like this. Shouldn’t you be telling me what we need to do to make this all go away?”

“So that’s what you want? For all this to go away?”

“Yes, of course,” I answer, even though his thumb smoothing over the back of my hand is making me feel like I want anything but that. But thinking like that is ridiculous. Yeah, he’s hot. Yeah, he’s a good kisser. Yeah, he’s nicer—and goofier—than any prince has a right to be. But he needs to get back to his life and I need to get back to mine. “Isn’t it what you want?”

“When I got the news this morning, yes. When I headed over here to try to solve the problem, absolutely. But now…”

“Now, what?”

“Now I’m not so sure.”

I swallow wrong, nearly choking on my own saliva. And he’s there—of course he is—patting me gently on the back as I nearly hack up a lung trying to recover.

“What does that mean?” I wheeze when I can finally get a word out.

“It means that there might be a better way to handle this than trying to turn it into a nonstory.”

“It is a nonstory!”

“You know that and I know that, but the pictures of that kiss last night say otherwise. If they didn’t, the whole world wouldn’t be up in arms because I went on a date with a beautiful woman. I have been known to do that occasionally.”

“Believe me, I am aware.” The second I mutter the words I want to take them back. I sound jealous, which is absurd considering we just met and there’s nothing between us. The fact that I like the way he touches me—and kisses me—doesn’t change the fact that whatever this thing is, it’s got nowhere to go but the graveyard. I’m not princess material and I am absolutely okay with that.

He doesn’t comment on my lapse, for which I am grateful. But his blue eyes have a laser-focused look in them, as though his brain is riffling through ideas—and discarding them—at an alarming rate.

“What are you thinking?” I ask, when I can no longer stand the silence—or the anticipation.

“Kian had an interesting idea when I spoke to him this morning,” he says as he reaches for his coffee and takes a slow, measured sip.

“Kian?” I ask. “The psychopath who takes his coffee black?”

“The one and only,” he answers cheerfully. “But just because he’s a psychopath doesn’t mean he doesn’t have good ideas. Crazy like a fox, that one is.”

I pick up my own coffee, bracing myself. “So what does Kian think we should do?”

“He thinks we should run with it.”

The words are so unexpected that for a second they don’t compute. “What do you mean, ‘run with it’?”

“I mean, he thinks we should keep up the charade of being a couple. Not forever, just for a while. The press and the public are eating it up, and their approval will go a long way toward my approval rating. And if my approval rating gets high enough…”

“Your father won’t be able to publicly kick you off the throne and give it to Kian.”

He inclines his head. “That is the idea.”

“And Kian’s okay with this? I thought every prince wanted to be king.”

“Not Kian. It takes too much time away from his own playtime activities.”

“I thought he was getting married.”

“He is. To Savvy, whom he is crazy in love with. But ruling’s never really been his thing, and she’s got him involved in a ton of charity projects that he’d rather concentrate on. He’s always been one hell of a philanthropist behind the scenes, but being king is a different skill set entirely.”

“And it’s a skill set he doesn’t have?”

“It’s a skill set he has no intention of learning and one that I’ve spent my whole life doing nothing but developing.”

“And you think having me by your side is going to put pressure on your father to keep the rightful…umm…” I trail off as I try to think of the correct word for what we’re talking about.

“The rightful order of progenitor. Yes, I do.”

“Dude, you don’t even know me.”

“I don’t, no. But my security detail vetted you before we even went out, and when this thing broke wide open in the middle of the night, they vetted you some more. I read the report in the car on the way over here and there’s nothing in there that sends any red flags up.”

“You vetted me?” I can’t keep the outrage from my voice. “Before you came over here last night, you had your team vet me?”

I expect him to apologize, or at least look a little embarrassed. But he doesn’t. He looks me straight in the eye and says, “Yes. Of course. It’s how things work in my world.”

I think of all the things in my past that I don’t want anyone else to know about—nothing criminal or anything like that, but still. My life is mine, and so are all the mistakes I’ve made and all the bad things that have happened to me along the way. Mine to share or mine to keep secret, and the idea that Garrett knows those things now—that his security knows those things too…it’s a lot to wrap my head around. Not as much as the idea that the whole world might soon know them too, but still.

Again, it’s not that I have so much to be ashamed of. I don’t. The shit that’s happened to me through the years is the shit that happened. Nothing more, nothing less. Some of it is my fault, most of it isn’t, and I’m not going to apologize for any of it. But that doesn’t mean I like the idea of Garrett knowing stuff that I don’t tell on the first date, or even the second or fifth or tenth. Especially since he didn’t give me a choice in the matter. He just decided he wanted to see me, had me vetted, and showed up on my doorstep.

“I think you should go now,” I tell him, pointing toward the door I’ve been terrified of opening since I woke up this morning.

“Right now? We’re in the middle of discussing—”

“We were in the middle of discussing. Now we’re done. And, in case you can’t figure it out, the answer is no.”

He looks shocked. “But why?”

“Are you really that ignorant? You go snooping into my background without my permission, twice, open me up to all of this”—I gesture wildly to the reporters outside—“and then show up here like I owe it to you to do you this favor because you’ve decided it’s what you want. Well, screw that. I don’t like lying and I don’t like liars. I never have.”

I give up waiting for him to show himself out and march to the door. “And, by the way, since you’re in the middle of listing all the ways me doing this is going to help you out, have you done any thinking about what I get out of it? I mean, besides one massive headache.”

If possible, he looks even more surprised. “What you get out of it? I thought it was obvious.”

“What? The chance to publicly date you?” I snort. “Dude, you’re really not all that.”

“You said yourself that your business is going crazy.”

“Yes, so crazy that I’m not sure I can keep up with demand. Not being able to fulfill the orders I have is almost as bad as not having orders. And just to be clear, my business was doing just fine before you came along. I don’t need to use your name to make a living for myself and my employees.”

“I didn’t say that—”

“No, but you sure as hell implied it.” I’m close to seeing red at this point. I’ve worked my ass off to build my business from nothing, and there’s no way I’m going to stand here and listen to him imply otherwise. “And frankly, I don’t see why you need me at all. You and your ego make a beautiful couple all by yourselves.”

Now he looks angry too, which is more than fine by me. The angrier he is, the faster he’ll leave. At least, that’s always been my experience with men. Why should Garrett be any exception?

He opens his mouth to snap back, but closes it before anything can come out. Then he takes a deep breath. Runs a hand over the back of his neck. Shakes his head. Takes another deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says, after the silence has gone from seething to merely sullen. “Can we sit back down and just talk about this for a few minutes?”

There’s a tiny part of me that begrudgingly admires his self-control—and the fact that he’s still here. But that miracle doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed. “That depends.”

“On what?” Impatience flashes in his eyes but doesn’t make its way into his voice.

“On what exactly it is that you’re sorry for.”

His laugh—big and booming—breaks the last of the tension in the room, and has my anger settling down if not draining away completely. “Can I just admit that I’m an ass and then we go from there?”

“A really big ass?”

He laughs again. “A huge ass. A colossal ass, really. And it’s not that I’m blaming the job for my behavior, but…I’ve spent my life thinking of little else but my country and its best interests. Which is good for Wildemar, but not so great for my relationships with other people.”

Slowly, he walks over to the dining table and sits down. Then he picks up his coffee and gestures to the seat opposite him. “Can we try this one more time?”

“Third time’s the charm?”

“God, I hope so. I wear a size-fourteen shoe. I’ve only got so much more room in my mouth to stick the second one.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh. And to cross back to the table so I can sit with him. Which is ridiculous, I know, considering every instinct I have is screaming at me to show him the door. Every instinct but one, that is, and I am so not thinking about that right now. Any more than I’m thinking about our kiss from last night.

“Fine,” I say with a shrug as I pick up my now cold cup of coffee. “Hit me with your best shot.”

He grins, then rubs his hands together like he can’t wait to dig in. And maybe he can’t—as heir to the richest and most powerful constitutional monarchy in the world, I’m pretty sure he cut his teeth on negotiations much tougher than this.

That should probably scare me, but the truth is, nothing about Garrett scares me. His life, yes. The maelstrom he’s inadvertently tossed me into, absolutely. But him, no. There’s nothing about him that is the least bit frightening—except how much I want him, even now, when I know I shouldn’t.