American Royals

“Hey!” Nina cried out, wiping the snow from her shoulders. Sam laughed. It was her dad’s laugh, that great Washington roar of laughter that sparked an answering smile in everyone.

“Sorry, but you all looked drowsy,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “Consider this your official wake-up.”

“I knew I would regret brewing you that second mug of coffee,” Jeff countered, though he was smiling.

“I blame the frosted bear claw as much as the coffee.” Nina directed the comment at Sam, though she was watching Jeff’s mouth for a smile.

Sam ignored them, reaching up to pull her goggles down over her eyes. “Where are you guys headed? I’m thinking if we want to do Prospect, we should go now, before it gets choppy and skied-over.”

“That sounds perfect,” said Teddy, who’d been quiet up to this point.

Nina hoped she was the only one who saw Sam flinch at his words. “You go ahead. I just remembered something.” The princess pulled her phone from her pocket as if to send a text, though Nina saw she was really just scrolling through her social media feeds.

Jeff’s eyes lit on Nina’s, then darted rapidly away. “Last one to the lift is in charge of the hot-tub jets!” he called out, and dropped down into the slope, Ethan and Teddy on his heels.

Nina turned to Sam, but the princess’s eyes had widened at something on her phone. “You won’t believe who’s in Telluride!” Sam answered her own question before Nina could hazard a guess. “Daphne Deighton.”

“Really,” Nina said carefully. It was an effort to keep her features bland and disinterested. Just when things seemed to be going so well, she would have to face Jeff’s ex-girlfriend?

“I know, it makes her look totally desperate,” Sam agreed, misunderstanding.

Sam and Daphne had never really gotten along—though they’d pretended to, for Jeff’s sake. Nina wasn’t sure why, but Sam didn’t like Daphne. It was the biggest thing the twins had ever disagreed upon.

“We need to find someone else for Jeff to date, so that he doesn’t relapse and end up back with her,” Sam declared.

Nina made a strange noise of protest that she quickly tried to hide with a cough. “I think you might be overreacting.”

Sam only smiled as she shoved her phone into her pocket and kicked off. Nina hurried to follow.

Halfway down the run, she took a narrow traverse through the trees, only to realize she’d gone the wrong way. She’d missed the turnoff for the Prospect lift.

Though she’d learned to snowboard alongside Jeff and Samantha, Nina had never gotten the hang of it the way they did. The twins loved extreme terrain, which required sharp turns and serious finesse. While most of the time, Nina secretly wished she could call Ski Patrol to come collect her, and have them take her home in what Jeff and Sam called the “toboggan of shame.”

She turned her board edge-on to the mountain, slowing almost to a halt, leaning back as she scraped down the traverse inch by painstaking inch.

“I knew you’d come this way.”

Nina whirled around, breathless—and saw the prince off to one side, his board slung casually over his shoulder.

“Jeff! How did you …?”

“Because you always miss that turnoff. Every year.” He grinned and pulled her a few feet down, into the thick cover of the trees. Nina let out a startled yelp.

“Shh.” Jeff set his board to one side and stepped forward, trapping her against the broad trunk of a tree. He braced both gloved hands against the frozen bark to hold Nina in place. Not that she wanted to go anywhere.

She could see the cloud of his breath in the cold winter air, mingling with her own.

“Aren’t you worried about being the last one to the lift?” she managed to say. No one ever wanted to be on hot-tub-jet duty. It meant that while everyone else was warm in the water, you had to run across the patio and hit the button that turned the jets on for another thirty-minute cycle.

“I have more important things on my mind right now.”

Still pinning her there, as if he was terrified she might change her mind and snowboard away from him, Jeff reached to unsnap her helmet and pull it off her head. He began trailing a line of soft, teasing kisses along her jawline.

Nina went still, her eyes fluttering shut. Jeff’s lips were freezing, but his tongue was hot. The twin sensations of ice and fire sent shivers of longing through her body, fusing deep within her into something sharp and newly forged. She kept trying to twist her head, to catch Jeff’s mouth with her own, but he seemed determined to torture her.

When Nina couldn’t take it anymore, she reached around his waist to grab fistfuls of his jacket, yanking him closer. Her hair brushed against the tree as she tipped her head back, arcing into the kiss with reckless abandon. In the distance, they could still hear scattered laughter and the whoosh of skiers gliding past.

“I guess we should head down,” Jeff finally said, with obvious reluctance.

Nina’s blood pounded with adrenaline. “You should at least give me a head start. It’s the chivalrous thing to do.”

She gave him one last rushed kiss before setting off downhill, unable to stop smiling.

That night, Nina stood just inside her doorway, rising on tiptoe and lowering back down again. She was waiting for silence—for all the rustling and footfalls and general ambient noises of an eighteen-bedroom house to finally fall still.