Chapter 23

Garrett

Goddammit. We’ve been in France for exactly an hour and a half and already I’ve fucked things up royally with Lola, no pun intended. Could I be any more of an asshole?

I slam into the suite with a roar of annoyance—as close to that temper tantrum Michael wanted to see as I’ve ever been in my adult life. But this time it’s not my captors I’m mad at. Not my father, not the press, not the bullshit circumstances that led me here.

No, right now, all the rage roiling around inside of me is directed at only one target: myself. What the fuck was I thinking?

Tagging along on this trip, pretty much without Lola’s permission.

Courting the press to advance my own agenda.

Dragging Lola to a hotel that obviously makes her uncomfortable and refusing to let her go to the one she likes.

Insisting she take a bodyguard with her when her body language was screaming that she just wanted to be alone.

So, to answer my earlier question, no. I couldn’t have been any bigger of an asshole if I’d tried. Merde. What the fuck was I thinking?

I wasn’t thinking. Obviously. Sure, most of what I’ve done has been for her safety, but I could have at least talked to her about it instead of being such a fucking autocrat and just presenting her with a fait accompli. It will be a miracle if she doesn’t just keep walking until she gets to the Pullman and decides to hell with me and this whole harebrained plot of Kian’s.

I’m reaching for my phone—ready to order Xavier to do whatever he has to do to make sure that doesn’t happen—when the damn thing rings. It’s my twin, and for a second I think about not picking it up. He’s the asshole that got me into this mess, after all.

But duty runs deep. He had a meeting with Parliament today over the Pacific Rim treaty I brokered two years ago and I want to make sure it went okay. They’ve been trying to weasel out of it pretty much since it became law, but I’ve always managed to stay a couple of steps ahead of their plotting. I just hope Kian can say the same.

“How’d the meeting with Parliament go?” I demand as soon as I swipe to accept the call.

“Well, good to talk to you, too, brother. Especially since you ran off to another country without even mentioning it to me.”

“I’m in France, not Patagonia. I can be home in an hour if you need me—not that you will.”

“Poor Garrett. All dressed up and no one to strong-arm. It must be a sad day for you.”

“Yeah, yeah. If you called to harangue me, I’ve got better things to do.” Like check in incessantly with Xavier to make sure Lola is okay. And that she hasn’t made a run for it.

“I bet you do,” Kian says, insinuation ripe in his tone.

It pisses me off all over again. “Seriously? Are we fucking twelve here?”

“Geez, who pissed in your café au lait? I’m calling to give you good news and this is what I get? So much for brotherly love.”

“Good news? So the meeting with Parliament went well?”

“What? Fuck, no. It was an absolute shit show, per your predictions. I tried to talk them around, but they pretty much ignored me. They plan on holding a vote to withdraw from the treaty sometime in the next two weeks.”

“What? Are you fucking kidding me? How could you let that happen?”

“Let it happen? Dude, I studied the hell out of your notes on the treaty, but they kicked my ass. You know I’m no good at this shit. Plain and simple, they outmaneuvered me.”

“They outmaneuvered you because you’ve spent your life fucking around instead of figuring out how politics really work. Maybe if you hadn’t tried to cram for this like a damn final exam—”

“Sorry, but cramming is pretty much all I’ve got open to me, since I’m trying to learn a hundred years of modern policy on the fly. Which is why we need to get you back into Daddy Dearest’s good graces and fast, before I end up giving away the treasury.”

I snort. “Yeah, well, that’d be one way to lose your position as the King’s favorite.”

“Yes, well, I’ve got another way—which is why I called. We just got the first polling data back—”

“Polling data? What are we polling?”

“You and Lola, obviously. And guess what? The people love you guys. I mean, like they’re one step away from creeping into your bedroom, dude.”

What the fuck? It takes me a minute to even try to wrap my head around what he’s saying. “What the hell are you talking about? You had them do a poll on Lola and me?” The fuck?

“It was Liese’s idea, actually, but it’s obviously a good one. I’m going to float the numbers to the King later today, let him see what’s up. But don’t worry, it’s totally going to put pressure on him to do the right thing.”

“Wait a minute. Just wait…a minute. Let me get this straight. You polled Lola and me as a couple and the people like us?”

“Are you not listening? They don’t like you. They love you. Seriously. Ask me the approval rating. Go ahead. Ask me.”

“I don’t give a shit about the approval rating. You can’t just boil Lola’s and my relationship down to a bunch of numbers—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Can you just give me a minute to catch up here? What relationship? The last I heard, this was all an act. I thought you two didn’t really hit it off.”

“We didn’t. But now we do and it’s…”

“What? Now it’s what?” He’s so excited, he’s pretty much crowing at this point. “I told Savvy there was something going on here—something about those last pictures of you guys in the airport raised a flag for me.” He is crowing now. “So you two are actually in a relationship now? For our purposes, that’s so much better than faking it. Tell me everything.”

“I will not.”

He makes a dismissive sound. “You’re such a fucking Boy Scout. Fine, tell me something, then. Anything. When did you two decide you wanted to be together for real?”

Shit. I knew better than to open my mouth. Now there’s no way Kian’s going to back off until I give him something. He doesn’t have it in him to walk away from anything empty-handed—with the exception of parliamentary meetings, apparently.

Still, what’s between Lola and me is new and fragile. I want to keep it just between us until we figure out what’s going on—well, between us and a few million of our closest fans, apparently. Damn it. “We haven’t decided anything yet.”

“What? I thought you just said—”

“We haven’t actually talked about whatever this thing between us is, okay?”

“Well, why the fuck not?”

“You’re asking me that? The original man-whore?”

“Reformed man-whore, thank you very much. True love has changed me.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Do you know how ridiculous you sound right now?”

“Not as ridiculous as a guy who’s obviously got feelings for a girl but is too afraid to tell her.”

“I never said I was afraid.”

“Dude, I’m your twin. You didn’t have to say it.”

“Really? You’re playing the twin card here?”

“I’m just calling it like I see it. You worry so much about what might happen that you totally miss out on what would happen if you just got your head out of your ass. You should fix that.”

“Well, thank you so much for the analysis. I’ll be sure to share it with my therapist. I’m sure it will clear things right up for him. In the meantime, can we get back to the treaty?”

“That’s what I’m trying to do. Play your cards right and you’ll be back in the favorite seat in a week. Then you can storm Parliament and do whatever magic you do that gets those cagey bastards to follow your lead.”

“You had one job, Kian.”

“Actually, I used to have one job. Now I have a hundred jobs and that’s just for today. So do what you need to do to get Lola on board, bring her home, and flaunt her—and your ninety-one percent approval rating—in the King’s face. And take back the throne. Please, God. Take back the damn throne.”

“It’s really not normal for anyone to hate being the crown prince as much as you do.” I pause as the rest of his words finally click in. “Ninety-one percent approval rating? Are you fucking with me?”

“No! That’s what I’m telling you. The country loves the two of you together. The women went all googly-eyed at how protective you were of her in the airport shots and the men are overwhelmingly impressed with your fence-hopping ability. ‘No pussy prince for us’ seems to be the general consensus among them.”

“Ninety-one percent?” I say again, because I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. Numbers like that are unheard of. No one in the public eye has a 91 percent approval rating ever, let alone in the middle of a media firestorm.

“Yes!” Kian says with an excited half-laugh. “With an approval rating like that, you can do anything! And get this: since the poll was being authorized by me and not our father, the pollsters had a little more leeway with the questions they asked. Turns out the country is hurting over your abduction, but not the way the King thinks. Eighty-seven percent of people think more highly of you since you were rescued. And eighty-nine percent think you’re the perfect choice to run the country. Eighty-seven percent trust you more. They recognize how much strength it took to go through what you did and come out on the other side of it.”

Again his words echo Michael’s from the other day and as they start to register, really register, I sit down, hard, on the nearest chair. There’s a lot of knowledge and emotion that comes along with those stats and I can barely begin to process any of it.

From the beginning, the King’s been telling me no one likes a prince who’s been abducted. Worse, he’s been saying that the people will never trust me again. After all, how can they trust me to look after them when I can’t even look after myself? How can they trust me to do what’s right for the country when I was too soft-hearted to recognize an abduction attempt for what it was? For months now, his words have crawled around in my head. They’ve plagued me during the day and haunted me in the middle of the night. They’ve kept me from sleeping, from eating. Kept me drowning in guilt over my weakness, over how I’d let my people down.

But these numbers say just the opposite. They say I didn’t let my country down. Just like they say that it’s not the people who don’t trust or like me. It’s just him. Just my father who thinks I’m weak and a coward and a failure.

I run a hand through my hair as I try to figure out what to think about this new understanding. More than that, what to feel about it.

Kian has no such problems, but then he wasn’t the one who sat in that goddamn militia camp for three months being tortured, being ridiculed, waiting for rescue, and then—after a few weeks—just waiting for death.

He wasn’t the one who lived in fear every day that he would betray the people—and the secrets—he’d been charged with protecting.

And he’s sure as hell not the one who lost the throne, who lost everything, after making it through it all without going insane—and without spilling any classified intel at all.

I am.

Rage slams through me, pure, unadulterated, all-encompassing. It starts as a ball in my stomach, then grows until it takes over every part of me. Until it’s all I can do to think, all I can do to breathe, around it.

But rage won’t get me anywhere right now, so I shove it back down where I’ve been keeping it for nearly a year, then slam the lid down over it to keep it from boiling up and escaping.

“Admittedly, these numbers are all cushioned with the rose-colored glasses of your new relationship with Lola—which, I’ve got to say, is polling ten points higher than Savvy’s and my relationship ever has. Guess the country likes the idea of a female entrepreneur as queen more than they do a romantic suspense writer.”

With someone else there might be bitterness there, but Kian’s so overjoyed at just the idea of shedding the crown prince mantle that he’s practically dancing. I don’t blame him—we both are who we are, who we were trained to be. After all, I’m just as thrilled at the thought of getting that title back. Or at least, I think I am.

“One poll is a long way from overruling the King’s prejudices,” I remind him—and myself. No use getting too far into this new reality until we see how our father reacts to the numbers.

“I know, I know,” Kian says. “But it’s a start. So go find your woman and take her out for a night on the town. And make sure you get photographed a lot—the people will love it.”

I don’t even know where my woman is. When I find her—when she comes back—I have plans to do a lot of things, and none of them involve parading her around Paris like a trick pony. We’ve done more than enough of that today as it is.

I don’t tell Kian that, though. Instead, I mouth a few more platitudes and hang up—after giving him some suggestions on how to go back to Parliament and broach the treaty talks again. He grumbles a little under his breath, but he listens and takes notes. Still, beneath the conversation are undercurrents neither of us can ignore, not when they put paid to the idea that soon this nightmare might be over. Soon I could be the one once again browbeating Parliament into doing what’s right.

I can’t fucking wait.

After hanging up with Kian—who promises to keep me posted on what happens with the King—I go back to pacing the hotel suite and doing a shitty job of not worrying about Lola. Sure, those polling numbers bode well for her safety as people seem to love her, but it takes only one crazy to mess everything up. I know that better than anyone.

I try to wait it out, try to give her the space she so obviously needed when she all but darted from the hotel. But it’s hard, so much harder than it’s been with any other woman I’ve ever dated. Add to that the fact that my realizations about the King are still roiling around inside of me, no matter how hard I try to keep them locked away, and I’m a total mess by the time a knock sounds on the suite door.

At the same time a text comes in from Xavier, telling me that they’ve finally returned. That he’s brought Lola back to me safely.

It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to run for the door. But Lola doesn’t need to see how freaked out her absence made me—she doesn’t need that kind of pressure and neither does our brand-new, still undefined relationship. Or at least that’s what I tell myself as I force myself to walk slowly and deliberately across the suite.

I’ve got my apology all prepared as I open the door, but I never get the chance to deliver it. Because suddenly, Lola is crowding into the room. Slamming the door in Xavier’s face. Throwing her arms around my neck and muttering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” as she presses her suddenly desperate mouth to mine.

“It’s okay,” I tell her as I pick her up and carry her straight through to the master suite. “It’s okay.”

But she’s too far gone to listen and really, who am I to get in the way of a woman hell-bent on making love to me? I may not be smart enough to have avoided being abducted, but I sure as hell am smart enough to recognize the best thing that’s ever happened to me.