Chapter 18

Heidi

 

 

How had it been two months already?

In my over-pillowed bed, I shifted onto my back and stared my question into the crack in the center of the ceiling, as if it might somehow have an idea. As far as I was concerned, the long span of time seemed incredible given how quickly it had passed. I, Heidi Sommers, had been dating British royalty for a whole two months.

Not to mention I was still as crazy about him as I was when I’d first met him. Charles was as sweet and sexy as any girl could dream of her boyfriend being. Unfortunately, there was the catch that he was royalty and I was going back home in a month.

Rolling over to my side, I pushed the disheartening thought aside. No point in dwelling on the negative and letting it ruin my morning. Dating Charles had been incredible so far. On the last date, he’d actually shut down a whole carnival so we could have fun on all the rides. It made me realize I did like carnivals; I just hated the lines. That night, soaring around the swings as the gay carnival tunes serenaded us, I realized that. It seemed I’d realized a lot of things lately.

Charles wasn’t at all what people thought. He was a lot more daring than his public image portrayed. On one of our dates, we’d gone skydiving.

Sure, it hadn’t been completely easy sailing these past few months, but I would have things decided soon.

A dark cloud appeared over my sunny thoughts. When was I going to tell Charles about it? I had thought giving myself some time, thinking about it, would help. But one day had stretched into one week, and now I was more unsure about what to do than ever. Obviously, I had to tell him, but how?

Liza creaking open my door knocked me out of my thoughts.

For a second, she just stood there. Her blue eyes were furtive.

“You okay?”

I exhaled in relief. At least Liza knew. Ironic, how the tables were now turned. Liza knew more about Charles and me than Charles himself did.

My nod eased the tension on her face.

“So you saw it.”

“Saw what?” I asked.

In the seconds that followed, I came to realize nothing was okay.

As Liza took a step forward, her whole body rocked backward, as if it were physically fighting against her coming in here to tell me what she had to.

When she reached the edge of my bed, she sat down, still without looking at me.

“I would tell you to sit down…” Her strained voice trailed off.

Okay, this was really freaking me out. I was a model pregnant with a prince’s child, for God’s sake.

The pregnancy test I’d bought and sobbed over several days ago had been testament enough to that. What could be worse than that?

Straining up in bed, I point blank said, “Liza, tell me.”

Wordlessly, she got out her phone and handed it to me. In this case, a picture was worth one thousand words, even more. More like ten thousand or even one hundred thousand.

As I took in the impossible picture on the screen before me, my mind couldn’t settle on a thought, let alone a feeling.

All that came out of my lips was a low croak, half pleading, half begging, and definitely freaking the fuck out. My shaking hands clasped her phone, almost dropping it but catching it at the last minute.

There on the screen was me, Heidi Sommers. The picture was from an article on a tabloid site, Dailymail.com, but that was nothing new. What was new was the headline and what I was doing in the picture: Sommers buys pregnancy tests. Who’s the father? And the photo, sure enough, showed me with a stupidly translucent plastic bag containing the telltale pink cardboard box of a pregnancy test.

My hand jolted to my mouth. Shocked bile coiled in me, and I raced for the bathroom just in time to spew whatever I’d had last night, which I couldn’t now remember, into the toilet. It looked like carrots and maybe chips.

Liza’s comforting hand rubbed at my back.

“This isn’t a total catastrophe.”

Wiping off my lips with the back of my still-shaking hand, I said, “You’re right. It’s complete and utter devastation.”

Our intercom buzzer went off. Liza and I froze, exchanging a look. Who could that have been? We didn’t give out our flat address to many people, and the few we did give it to, such as employers or Ron, weren’t the types to just show up unannounced. Unless…

The intercom buzzer shrilled again.

“I’ll get that,” Liza said, although she didn’t budge.

To her questioning glance, I nodded. Whoever it was at the door couldn’t possibly be worse than what was here in the bathroom with us.

As Liza walked off, closing the door behind her, I crawled closer so I could hear better.

After the creak of a door opening, voices sounded. They started out quiet, but then gradually got louder and louder. Pealing my ears to hear who or what had come hardly helped. Our walls were apparently surprisingly thick. I could make out the low sound enough to ascertain the speaker was probably a male, and he sounded determined.

Suddenly, the front door closed and there was silence. A sigh of relief escaped my lips. Maybe it had been a political canvasser or a strong-minded door-to-door salesman. They weren’t unheard of in Britain, were they?

“Who was that?” I asked Liza as the bathroom door creaked open.

As soon as her face was visible, I gulped. It had a look that meant “extreme danger.”

“Who is it,” she corrected me in a whisper. “It’s Charles.”

Amid the jumping up and down my stomach was doing, my heart started crumpling too. No. Not him. Not now. Now when I just found out about this whole tabloid debacle.

What in the hell was I supposed to say to him when I still hadn’t fully made sense of it myself?

“I can tell him you won’t see him,” Liza said quietly, “but that didn’t go well back at the door. He demanded to come in and wouldn’t be turned away.”

Tears misted my sight. Liza looked like a fuzzy blob. What I had to do now, which was go out there and talk to him, seemed obvious—and yet impossible.

Liza wrapped me in her protective, sturdy arms.

“I’m sorry, Heidi. I’m so, so sorry.”

I said nothing, just let myself enjoy this calm before the storm. I let the side of my head sink into her comforting arms. I breathed in her familiar scent, some silly drugstore cotton candy perfume she’d gotten addicted to a few years back. Right now, things were okay. Unreasonably, it almost felt like being in Liza’s arms was like being in a sanctuary, like nothing could get to me if I just stayed here long enough.

But then I heard the creak of our wooden floor outside and the peace was obliterated.

Outside, probably fuming, was the father of my child, the man I’d known things were impossible with from the start. And now, sooner than I’d ever hoped, our relationship was coming to its natural conclusion.

Drawing away, I wiped off my tears. At least I was getting this over with. At least, after this next encounter, I wouldn’t have to worry about how Charles would take the truth about the baby anymore.

“I’ll be okay,” I told her. “I’ll just talk to him alone for a couple minutes after I wash my face. Thanks for trying.”

As I twisted the wheel-like handle of the sink, behind me in the bathroom mirror, Liza paused. Clearly, there was more she wanted to say, but there was no time now. There was no time for me to do anything but what I was doing now, dipping my hands in the sink’s cool stream and then placing my wet hands to my cheeks and the back of my neck. When I glanced at the mirror again, Liza was gone.

Turning off the sink and walking out of the bathroom seemed to take an eternity. I felt each step with heightened awareness on my bare feet. The cool slick tile of the bathroom. The smooth wood of the main room. Then I looked up, and there he was.

It was with morbid curiosity that I noted his attire: green and red pajama pants, a low-slung navy blue tee, and a big straw farmer’s hat that was clearly meant as a disguise. It worked, too. I wouldn’t have known this bedraggled man in front of me was Charles, England’s future monarch, if it hadn’t been for his eyes.

His piercing blue sapphires never left my face as he spoke.

“Is it true?”

There was no point in feigning obliviousness, in asking what he meant. Right now, with him here like this, there was only room for the truth. The absolute, horrible truth.

I nodded miserably. A sharp exhale of breath shot out of his lips.

“How long have you known?”

This question was harsher, more insistent.

It demanded words, words I could give him, but not while looking him in the eye. I made for the couch, then settled into it, enjoying how low its scratchy orange cushions sunk me. Part of me wished it could sink me right down through the floor, down and away from here.

“A week.”

After I spoke, chancing a glance at his face was a bad idea. It was twisted due to my words.

“I was going to tell you,” I said quickly. “I wanted to tell you.”

He took one step toward the couch, then paused, as if he had just realized he couldn’t stand the thought of even being on the same couch as me.

“Oh yeah? You could’ve fooled me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said desperately, tears welling in my eyes. “I just didn’t know how to tell you. I was going to. Soon. But then this whole tabloid thing happened, and I just found out this morning.”

Charles’s laugh was low, hateful.

“This tabloid thing. Henry was the one who showed me this, you know. Even he is freaking out. My brother, the wild one, is freaking out.” His eyes flashed. “And he’s right, too. Do you realize that if who the father is gets out, if it gets out that we were together, my whole career is finished? I’ll never be able to be England’s king then.”

I nodded dully. Each of his word was another kick to my already aching gut.

“I’m going home soon anyway,” I reminded him. “In a few weeks. No one has to know. I won’t be telling anyone, and I won’t be asking anything of you either. As soon as you walk out that door, it will be as good as though we never knew each other.”

Charles looked at me as if for the first time.

“What are you saying?”

Puzzled, I lifted my gaze and found his face even more livid than before.

“What you want,” I said simply. “The baby and me out of your life. I’m keeping it, but I’ll just take it and leave you alone.”

A smile kinked on my lips as I said it. Part of me had always known I couldn’t get rid of a creature so intrinsically already a part of me, but now that I’d said it, there was no doubt in my heart that it was true.

My words threw Charles into a steady pace. Back and forth he went, his face becoming more and more enraged until it almost resembled a caricature.

Finally, he stopped in front of me with accusing eyes.

“And where do you get the gall to presume to know what I want?”

As I gaped at him, he continued. “That is my child you’re carrying in your belly, and you’re my girlfriend. Unless there’s someone else you haven’t been telling me about.”

His eyes were challenging, and I shook my head.

“You know you’re the only one I’ve been dating. And obviously I care about you tremendously, and these last two months have been the best of my life, but we both knew from the start this had an expiry date.”

“Did we?” Charles snapped.

He started pacing again. The floor creaked as he did. I could only wonder what our downstairs neighbors must think, although that was least of my worries right now. Charles was being absurd. He was so used to doing the noble thing that he was actually fooling himself into thinking for a second that this time he was going to do it too.

“It’s fine,” I assured him, getting to my feet and reaching out a hand. “You don’t owe me anything. I’ll always be grateful for the time we had together.”

Charles’s downturned eyes settled on my hand, his face tortured with indecision. Abruptly, he wrenched away.

“There are two people involved in this decision. Two.”

A creak came from farther down the hallway. Liza.

With a questioning expression on her face, she pointed a finger to her taffy-pink duffel bag. I had a matching popsicle-blue one. Our model bags.

A groan spilled out of my lips.

The shoot this afternoon. I’d completely forgotten. It was this huge fashion-packed one for Zara, which featured Liza and me in at least ten different chic outfits and countless different coy poses. In no uncertain terms, Ron had informed us this would garner us the kind of exposure that only Victoria’s Secret models got. I’d been all but counting down the days to it—until the whole tabloid catastrophe this morning, that was.

A glance at Charles revealed he was as frantic as ever. He didn’t even seem to have noticed Liza’s entrance.

“We can talk about this later,” I told him. “I have to go.”

His head jerked in my direction.

“I have a shoot in an hour,” I explained. “I’m going to be late as it is. It’s a really important one too.”

All my words were as good as water droplets being flung at his face. He shook his head as if to disengage them.

“I stand by what I said,” he said angrily. “That is my child you’re carrying, and you’re still my girlfriend. I’m not about to throw that all away because of some stupid tabloid story.”

My head turned to my bedroom door, the one I had to go through to get ready, the one I couldn’t make it through just yet.

My heart was completely in Charles’s hands. If I didn’t know better, if I didn’t know how the world really worked, I would’ve thought he was telling the truth, that we really could make this work. That somehow, a prince and a top model could have a happy little baby and be happy together while keeping their lives perfect and pristine. But this wasn’t some fantasy rom-com; this was real life. I was a model. I made money on my reputation and the fit state of my body, both of which were going to be destroyed by this scandal.

Not to mention Charles was a prince with an almost spotless reputation that was going to be completely obliterated if this scandal broke. We couldn’t make us work. We just couldn’t.

“We’ll talk later,” I said in a small voice so we wouldn’t argue further.

Charles didn’t move. I glared at him desperately, but he didn’t move.

Finally, forcing my limbs into unwilling action, I turned my back on him and went into my room. Throwing myself into the first reasonable clothes I came across only took a minute or so, as did grabbing my blue duffel bag of supplies.

When I came back out, it was only Liza waiting for me on the couch. I ignored the pang of regret in my stomach. Right now, there was no time to think about it, let alone mourn that I may have just seen Charles for the last time.

Regardless of his words and promises, if my gut was right, we’d parted for the final time without ever saying good-bye.

My gaze settled on Liza. Her lips were drawn in an expression that I was probably wearing too. After all, this morning I had just found out that my life as I knew it was completely ruined. Who knew what the future held?

--

Liza and I were all of three feet on the set when Ron bustled in between us.

“Heidi. We need to talk ASAP.”

Without any other introduction, his muscled forearm hustled me back in the direction I’d come from. All I had time for was a quick wave to Liza before I was out of the room and into another.

Ron threw himself in a black chair, and I took the only other free one.

“It’s not true,” he said, cracking a toothy grin that made me shudder.

When I said nothing, he repeated, more forcefully, “That article on the Daily Mail, it’s not true.”

I glanced down at my hands and found they were bearing the brunt of my stress. As usual, whenever I was overly upset, they got hideously splotchy, like they were now. Pink and white and even a little bit of rosy red in there.

Ron was still gawking at me so hard that it looked like his eyes might roll out of their sockets and onto the ground.

“What you want me to say, Ron?” I asked in a low voice.

Ron’s whole body jerked, as if my words had been a sucker punch straight to the groin.

“Shit.”

Pressing the tips of his fingers together, his bulging neck twisted so that his oval head was facing the wall. There, judging by the way his close-set eyes were furiously moving, he was coming up with some master plan to fix things. Or at least trying to.

When he turned back to face me, his expression was inconclusive.

“But you are getting rid of it.”

A simple headshake sufficed to express my response. Ron twisted away again, then back to me.

“Who’s the father?”

“I can’t say,” I told him.

Another twisting of his head sent my stomach churning. What if Ron fired me on the spot? Had I really kissed good-bye my whole career, years of hard work? I could almost picture it now: me clad in one of those hideous McDonald’s polo shirts, serving fries to some pimply teenager who, lips sneering, asked, “Hey, aren’t you that model Heidi Sommers who got pregnant?”

I shivered.

Ron turned to face me again.

“It isn’t a complete disaster,” he said to his himself mostly. “This can be fixed.”

I frowned. I wished people would stop saying that. First Liza and now him. It actually served the opposite effect and made me even more convinced than ever that I was screwing up my life for good.

Ron stretched out his huge, muscled arms as if to physically stretch out his brain so it could brainstorm better. When he crossed them in front of his chest again, he had an idea. I could see it in the decided set of his lips.

“We’ll say you were buying the pregnancy test for another model, whose identity we won’t disclose. Then you can work for at least a few more months until you have the baby. Then…”

His eyes shifted to me, and I nodded. Then I had probably half a year at most to get my body and mind back in gear. Otherwise, I was on my own.

I felt like I had dodged a bullet, like it had grazed my shoulder and while there had been blood, at least it hadn’t been fatal.

“And if things go well,” Ron said, his brain quickly clicking into overdrive again, “we could even, eventually, maybe include the baby in some shots. The only things the general public loves more than babies are good-looking babies.”

A half smile lifted his face with that.

He kept on talking, but I hardly heard what he said next. While I was grateful he had thought of an admittedly genius story to cover for me temporarily, my troubles were far from over. The biggest problem of all still hadn’t been solved.

Charles. I still had to talk to and figure things out with Charles.