Chapter 29

Tamara

“Stop fidgeting,” I muttered.

Joanne’s hands fell to her sides but she started chewing her lip instead. The PA announced a final boarding call for a flight to Tokyo, and Jo eyed the ticket desk like she was considering making a run for it.

“Mom and Dad love you,” I said. “They understand that you had a rough time. Besides—“ I flipped my hair from my shoulder with a dramatic flair. “Their other daughter is marrying a prince. I doubt they’ll even remember who you are.”

Jo let out a bark of laughter and bumped my side. “What would I do without you and your selfless devotion?”

“Heaven knows.” I nudged her back, then caught sight of a familiar shock of red hair bobbing above the crowd slipping through the arrival gate. “Dad!”

I waved my hand and he waved back, smiling wide. Mom jumped up beside him to see over the tops of the other heads. They forced their way through to us and I flung my arms around my mom first, inhaling her familiar scent. Cinnamon and honey. No matter what she was doing, whether she was cooking curry or disembarking from a transcontinental flight, she always smelled like cinnamon and honey.

“Look at you!” Mom said. “You’re wasting away.”

“I am not!” I argued, just as my dad pulled me in for a hug.

My sister hung back awkwardly, kicking the ground. She hadn’t spoken to them since before she got on that fateful flight months ago.

“Come here, Jelly Bean,” Dad said, extending one of his arms.

Jo rushed into the embrace and soon all four of us were hugging. It was a nice moment.

Until the first flash.

“We should get to the car,” I said, grabbing my mom’s bag from her. “The press are everywhere these days.”

“I feel like a proper movie star,” Mom said airily.

I laughed. “Come on.”

I led them outside, where a gaggle of press gathered and started shouting questions at us. I ignored them, as I always did, until I realized there was something odd about their questions.

I never heard my name once. It sounded like they were yelling for Joanne.

“Joanne! Are you going to clean up your act?”

“Do you think your behavior is appropriate for future royalty?”

“Are you sorry, Joanne?”

“What the hell is going on?” I asked, tugging my sister beside me.

She was fighting back tears but shook her head. “I don’t know! I haven’t been out since before you guys got engaged. I’ve been spending all my time with Tristan.”

I believed her, since things in Jo’s life had improved dramatically since she made things right with Tristan. She was looking at a new major, and even thinking about transferring to study over here to stay close to me. I imagine it was convenient that she could get Tristan in one fell swoop too, but I didn’t hold it against her. They were perfect together.

“Joanne!”

“Jo!”

“Hey! Party girl! Over here!”

We loaded up into the car and I took the backseat to sit with Jo, signaling our driver to start driving.

“I’m just going to call Alex quickly,” I said, already dialing his number.

He picked up right away. “Hey! Did you get your parents okay?”

“Yep. They’re safely stowed in the car and we’re en route to the hotel,” I confirmed. “Weirdest thing at the airport though... There were all these paparazzi hurling questions at Jo about her partying. Do you know anything about that?”

“Crap,” he muttered. “It’s worse than I thought.”

My heart dropped. “Alex? What’s going on?”

Jo’s eyes widened and she swallowed. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, but I could tell it did little to comfort her.

“A story broke this morning about her ‘wild partying’,” he revealed. “There were pictures of Jo and Teddy doing shots and wearing stupid hats and stuff like that. Everything they said and all the photos they had were from before the engagement, but the press is packaging it as if it’s recent.”

“Shit. What do we do?”

“I’m working on it,” he replied. “I’ve got to go, but I’m glad you got your parents okay. Tell them I look forward to meeting them tomorrow. And tell Jo not to worry, that we’re taking care of it.”

“Okay,” I said, bewildered. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I set the phone down in my lap and faced the expectant faces of my family.

“What did he say?” Jo asked.

Mom frowned. “What’s going on?”

I explained about the bad press, and assured Jo that Alex was handling it. “He’s got people to deal with these kinds of things,” I said. “It’ll blow over.”

Inside, however, I was worried. This was exactly what I was afraid of, but I hadn’t anticipated the press going after my family as well. I needed to see what they said.

I picked my phone up and moved to the corner of the backseat, Googling my sister’s name. Article after article flooded the screen, each one making rude and outlandish statements about my sister’s suitability for the family. They questioned whether she—and by extension, me—were royalty material.

It was worse than that, though. They picked apart everything in my life. These weren’t the polite pieces drawn up in the hours after our announcement that commented on my lack of breeding without disparaging my character. These were attack pieces. Bad ones, too.

Not only had my sister apparently offended the public, but the articles found ways to tear me down too, and there was a unilateral agreement among publications that I wasn’t princess material.

“Sweetie.” My mom’s hand landed over top of my own, dragging my attention away from the screen. “You need to stop worrying so much.”

“Who said I was worrying?”

She smiled knowingly and I sighed, locking my phone and stowing it in my back pocket.

“Tamara, I’m so sorry.”

Jo looked how I felt—distraught.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the option to look how I felt, and I had the talent to make sure I didn’t. I painted on a fake smile and wrapped my arm around my sister’s shoulder.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “Alex is figuring out our next move, but at the end of the day the press will forget all about this, like they forget about everything.”

I wasn’t so sure. It was one thing the news moving onto the next juicy topic, but those die-hard royal purists wouldn’t be so easy to convince.

What if this was the end of Alex and I? I wouldn’t blame Jo, even if this windfall did mean I went back to the States empty handed. It wasn’t her fault.

If the worst did happen, I wondered if I would find it satisfying in any way to know that I’d been right all along—that we couldn’t work.

No, I realized. It would be heart-shattering. I squeezed Jo’s shoulder tighter and started telling my parents all the exciting things we had planned for them to celebrate the engagement.

And I hoped—I hoped that the wedding would still happen.