Chapter 22
I’m exhausted by the time we make it through the second most grueling pap walk of my life—otherwise known as the international terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport. This time around, I didn’t pay much attention to the crowds or security or anything but keeping a smile on my face and putting one foot in front of the other.
I know Garrett notices, because in Wildemar his arm around my waist was purely for photo ops. This time he’s supporting me, using his never-ending strength to keep me upright and moving forward even as he murmurs how sorry he is over and over again.
I know it’s not his fault, know this is something I agreed to. But right now, that knowledge doesn’t make this any easier. Neither does the fact that these pics are going to be seen all over the world—including at my office, the place where I’ve worked so hard to be seen as a professional instead of as the secret love child of a Vegas showgirl and the scion of one of America’s most respected business dynasties.
By the time Garrett and his security detail get me in the back of a large, black SUV, I’m little more than a limp rag. Which seems ridiculous considering all I did was walk through two airports and take a short ride on the most tricked-out airplane I’ve ever seen in person. All I can say is that it’s a lot harder than it looks.
“I don’t know how you do it,” I tell Garrett as he leans across me to fasten my seatbelt.
“Lots of practice,” he answers, settling down next to me.
“I don’t think there’s enough practice in the world to make me look as natural as you do.”
“They’re my people. Not here in France, obviously, but in Wildemar. I answer to every single one of them.”
“Like that woman you stopped to talk to.”
A shadow passes over his face before he wipes it deliberately blank. “Yes, like her.”
I want to push, want to ask what she wanted and why he chose her. But he’s got No Trespassing signs all over this one and I don’t want to upset him. Especially not when I’m too emotionally drained to take care of him if I do.
Instead, I settle for telling him, “You’re really good at this king thing.” I rest my head on his shoulder and my hand on his thigh, relishing the way I can feel him relax—just a little—under my touch. I don’t have much experience with the whole giving-comfort thing, but Garrett’s taught me a few things since I met him.
He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Kings don’t get themselves abducted. Future kings, either, for that matter.”
Indignation slams through me, but I shove it down. That’s not what Garrett needs right now. “That’s what your father thinks? That you ‘got yourself’ abducted?”
“I don’t think he cares how it happened. Just that it did.” He’s looking out the window now and, under my hand, his thigh has once again gone rock hard.
“Is that true? Or is that just what you think?”
“People are dead because of me.”
“People are dead because of some insane fringe militia group with a grudge against the monarchy. Not because of you.”
He shoots me an annoyed look. “I know that.”
“Do you?” I want to see his face so badly, but he’s turned completely away from me at this point, staring out the window as if the Parisian streets are his only chance of salvation.
“It doesn’t matter what I think. It only matters what happened. And what happened is that people died. They died, Lola, and all the talking in the world isn’t going to change that fact.”
“Beating yourself up won’t change it either,” I tell him.
He whirls on me then, eyes blazing with a pain that breaks my heart. “You don’t have any idea—”
“So tell me.” I scoot closer to him, try to take his hand where it’s balled up on his knee. But he won’t unclench his fist and he won’t say anything more, his jaw working like it’s taking every ounce of control he has to keep his shit together.
It’s not my place to push any more than I already have. I don’t know what he went through when he was captured, don’t have a clue how much psychological and physical damage was done to him. Picking at him without having a clue what I’m doing—or what I’m bringing to the surface—seems like a really bad idea.
Fuck. Why don’t I ever think before I jump in? “I’m sorry, Garrett. I’m being an asshole and you don’t deserve that.”
This time when he laughs, it sounds like he means it. “You’re not an asshole. And you don’t have to apologize. Everyone’s got an opinion about my abduction. Why shouldn’t you?”
I start to correct him, to tell him that that’s not what I meant, but before I can figure out what to say, we pull up to the hotel.
Correction. We pull up to a hotel that very definitely is not the hotel where I have a reservation.
“What are we doing here?” I ask as I look up at the placard for the Four Seasons George V, one of the most exclusive—if not the most exclusive—hotels in Paris. “We’re supposed to be staying at the Pullman—”
“We can’t stay there,” Garrett tells me. “I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean we can’t stay there? It’s a perfectly lovely hotel. I stay there all the time. It’s not as fancy as this, obviously, but I think that could be a good thing. Who would think to look for you there?”
“No one, be—”
“Exactly. I want to go to the Pullman, Garrett.”
He closes his eyes, rubs the bridge of his nose. For the first time since I’ve known him, he looks exhausted, defeated, and I can’t help feeling guilty for making a fuss. But this is my trip, not his. He’s only here because he wants to keep the pressure on his father by making sure new pictures and articles about us appear in the press daily. Which is fine. But this is a business trip for me and I’m going to treat it as such.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I start when he doesn’t say anything else. “I’m not trying to be difficult, okay? I picked the Pullman because it’s close to a lot of the places I’ll be going in the next few days, which cuts down on the hassle of renting a car, fighting traffic, et cetera. If we stay here, a lot of that goes out the window.”
Plus, I’m pretty sure I can’t afford the suite Garrett is sure to have reserved for us. And since this is my business trip, I need to be the one paying, not him.
One of his bodyguards opens the car door. “The lobby’s been cleared, sir. We have you two checked into the Presidential Suite, so if you’re ready—”
“Give us a minute, Bastian, will you?”
Surprise flashes across his face, but then he nods and steps back. “Of course, sir.” The car door closes firmly.
“I’m going to the Pullman,” I tell him. “If you want to stay here in the Presidential Suite, feel free to do so.”
“You’ve got to know that I want to be wherever you are, Lola. But I can’t stay at the Pullman. The security isn’t good enough.”
“I don’t understand. You have your own security.”
“Yes, but even so, there are certain security protocols that all the members of my family have to follow when we travel abroad. Those protocols were put into place by palace security and they are pretty much indisputable. We’re staying at the George V because their security fits within these protocols, while security at the Pullman doesn’t.”
His explanation isn’t what I was expecting, but it makes sense. Of course it does. Old prejudices of mine notwithstanding, Garrett isn’t the kind of guy to just override my plans for the fuck of it. Damn it.
There’s a part of me that wants to say to hell with it, I’m staying at the Pullman anyway. But that would totally be a case of cutting off my nose to spite my face and I’m smart enough to know it. Partly because I want to be wherever Garrett is, even if it’s in the Presidential Suite of this hotel, and partly because I know if I make a big enough fuss, Garrett will try to give me what I want.
And that’s not fair to him—not when he explained things to me the way he just did. Because, after everything he’s been through, Garrett deserves to feel safe. He deserves to feel like he doesn’t have to worry about his own safety, the safety of his people, or my safety. If staying here will do that for him, then I’ll suck it up. Just like I’ll suck up the fact that there is no way in hell I’ll be able to afford the Presidential Suite.
“Okay. Let’s just go in, then.” I reach for the door handle, but he stops me.
“I really am sorry. If I could let you have the Pullman, I would. But safety protocols have become even stricter since the abduction. My hands really are tied.”
“I know.” I lean in for a kiss. “That’s why it’s so easy for me to let it go. Well, that and the fact that I can’t even imagine what the Presidential Suite in this place looks like.”
When he laughs, the storm clouds in his eyes dissipate, turning them back to the pure crystal blue that I love—especially when they gleam a little wickedly, like they’re doing now. “There’s a nine-foot-long tub in the master bath, with a view of the Eiffel Tower. I mean, in case you’re interested.”
“Nine feet? Really?”
He nods.
“Well, then, what are we waiting for? Let’s go try it out…”
We never make it to the bathtub—through no fault of the George V, the Presidential Suite, or Garrett. No, we don’t make it because I totally freak out before we even get to the room.
While I’ve had my phone on for most of the day, I’ve been ignoring it. I turned my Google alerts off yesterday—the article about me being a whore was more than enough to teach me a lesson on that front.
As we walk through the hotel, I dart into the small necessities shop in the hopes of grabbing a couple of Tylenol to relieve the low-grade headache I’ve had since the airport. But I barely make it in the door of the shop when I’m ambushed by pics of the two of us staring out at me from nearly every magazine cover and the front page of every newspaper in the place.
None of the photos are from our pap walk today, obviously, but I would totally have preferred that. That version of me—of us—was prepared for the public to be spying on us. Hell, we were courting the paps. But the pics they’ve got, which, to be fair, were probably the only ones available when they went to print? They’re of the two of us on our date the other night, when we didn’t have a clue we were being watched by anyone but a few locals, let alone that we were about to bring a shitstorm of massive proportions down on our heads.
“What the hell?” I demand, all wide-eyed and wild, as I reach for a copy of People. People, for crying out loud, who usually only have massive celebrities on the cover. “How?”
“We hit the news cycle at just the right time,” Garrett tells me as he endeavors to steer me toward the small medicine aisle—and as far away from the magazines as we can get. Which isn’t very far, considering they’re everywhere in this place. Which means I’m everywhere.
The mind boggles—and not in a good way.
“The right time?” I respond when I finally find my voice again. “Is that what you call it?”
“Not usually, but think of the plan. Considering how much coverage these photos are getting, not to mention”—he holds up his phone—“the fact that every gossip site in the Western world has picked up our airport stroll this afternoon, the bright side is we are way ahead of schedule.”
“Yay.”
“Not actually caring about the schedule right now, huh?”
I grab for the closest magazine and hold it up so Garrett can see the pic of me on the cover—along with the headline asking if I’m having His Royal Hotness, Prince Garrett’s, alien baby.
He grimaces. “Okay, I admit. That’s not one of the better ones.”
“There are better ones?” I’m doing my best not to shriek, but I’m pretty sure it’s a losing battle. Especially when I hold up a British rag that has somehow managed to get a pic of me from Halloween a couple of years ago—a pic that they’ve captioned “Is Prince Garrett a Va Voom Vintage Sex Slave?”
This time he winces. “Yeah, that one’s bad too. But you make a really hot dominatrix.”
“It was a retro party. I was dressed as Elvira!”
“Who?”
“Oh. My. God! Now is really not the time to discuss the divide between American and Wildemarian pop culture!”
“You might have a point.” He nods toward the medicine. “Why don’t we just get your Tylenol and then we’ll go to the room and forget all about the fact that you’re carrying my alien love child?”
“Seriously?”
“Too soon?”
“Way, way too soon.”
He wraps an arm around me, then leans down to drop a kiss on the top of my head. “It’s going to be okay, you know. They didn’t have much info so they ran with stupid stuff, just to get a story about us out there. We’re giving them pictures and a narrative now—that’s what most of them will go with from here on out.”
I know he’s right, but I’m still not quite ready to let go of the panic. “There’s a lot of them.” Twenty that I can count just standing here, and that doesn’t include magazines and newspapers the shop doesn’t cover. Or all the online gossip sites that are carrying the story too.
“There are. But the good news is, we’re getting a ton of exposure right out of the gate. We’ll be old hat in a couple of weeks.”
“A couple of weeks?” I squawk. Right now a couple of hours seems like too long.
“A couple of days?” he tries, but this time he sounds a lot less confident.
I snatch a packet of two Tylenol off the shelf and tear it open right in the middle of the store. I down them with a water bottle from the glass-fronted refrigerator in the corner, then tell the shop’s assistant to charge the Presidential Suite. The least Garrett can do after getting me into this mess is to keep me in headache medication.
“I can’t go upstairs right now,” I tell him as he leads me from the store. “I need to walk.”
For a second it looks like he wants to argue, but then he just nods. “Okay. We can walk.”
“No. Not we.” I take a step back. “Me.”
“What? You mean alone?” He sounds horrified.
I roll my eyes. “No, I mean with your whole entourage, so we can attract as much attention as humanly possible.”
“I’m not my entourage.”
“No, but didn’t you just get through explaining to me how important security is for you when you’re abroad? Besides, I’ve paid attention the last few days. There’s no way you’re leaving this hotel without a five-man security detail and we both know it. That’s not what I want.”
“We can go for a drive—”
“I don’t want to go for a drive. I want to walk. By myself. Like a normal person.” I push onto my tiptoes and press a hard kiss to his very displeased mouth. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours, and then we can do the whole gazillion-foot-long bathtub thing. I promise.”
He looks like he wants to argue, but in the end he just sighs. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to talk you out of this, am I?”
“Nope. Sorry.” I give him my most charming grin.
“Okay. Xavier’s going with you.” When he sees I’m about to argue, he presses a finger to my lips. “Didn’t we just finish discussing how many websites and magazine covers your beautiful face is gracing right now? It’s not safe for you to wander around on your own.”
I’m pretty sure that no one will even look twice at me if he’s not with me—especially if I do something to tame down my crazy hair. But Garrett’s got that look in his eyes, the same one he had in the car when we were talking about his abduction, and I don’t have it in me to push him any farther. Not when the nightmare is still so real to him.
“Fine. Xavier can come. But that’s it.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
He lifts a brow. “Are you going to keep saying that? Because I would suggest you get going before I change my mind.”
“Change your mind? I’m a grown woman! You can’t tell me what to do.”
“I’d never dream of telling you what to do. But I might just decide that I need a walk too. In the same exact direction that you’re planning on going, and then where will you be?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You are a very sneaky man, Gorgeous Garrett.”
“Only because you are a very stubborn woman, Luscious Lola.”
“Luscious Lola?” Suddenly I’m torn between horror and amusement—which is what he was aiming for. The bastard.
“Yeah. It’s my new nickname for you. What do you think?”
“I think you should leave the nicknaming to someone with a talent for it.”
“Wow. Critical much?”
“Only when it’s deserved.” I reach up and pat his cheek. As I do, I see the worry in his eyes, and it’s almost enough to make me say fuck it to the whole walk idea. Almost. But I can barely breathe in here and my skin feels like it’s way too tight. I just need some fresh air and a few minutes to myself.
Still, seeing the concern in his eyes knocks the teasing—and the annoyance—out of me in a hurry. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon. I just need…”
“To be you for a few minutes, not the new girlfriend to Wildemar’s ex–crown prince.”
“Yes. My God, yes. I mean, except for the ‘ex–crown prince’ part, because we’re totally going to fix that.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he says with a shake of his head. “Just go. And be careful.”
“Didn’t you know? Careful is my middle name.” I put my arms out to my sides in an obviously kind of gesture.
“I think you’ve got the definition for careful confused with the one for ‘reckless as all fuck.’ ”
“Aww, look at you. We’ve only been dating for a few days and already you know me so well.”
“Seeing it is no great shakes, sweetheart,” he says with a snort. “You wear reckless like French women wear lipstick. Subtle some days, red hot on others, but always, always, always essential.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”