Three months was a blip in guilt-land. “Remember, he’s been carrying around that burden for twenty-four years. That’s got to wreak an emotional toll. Hard to erase it all with a single conversation.”
“You’re right.” They jogged on at least a hundred more feet before Kelsey continued. “I think it was more awkward because of the whole princess thing. Did I not tell you from day one that being a princess would be a pain in the neck?”
OMG, yes. Repeatedly.
Kelsey Wishner had to be the only woman on the planet who resented being transformed in the blink of an eye into a beloved, wealthy princess. “He’s been guarding the royal family his entire life. Why would you being a princess make him awkward at dinner?”
“I know, right? But Elias explained that his dad’s, yes, guarded the royals forever. As a job. He doesn’t ever hang out with them and interact as peers.”
Hmm. Mallory had been, ah, wary of meeting actual royals. Super uncomfortable at the thought of that car ride with King Julian to the Dolomites. And she’d probably always be more than a little nervous around the grand duchess—because everybody was. The woman was a force of nature.
But overall, once you started talking to them instead of bowing before them, the members of House Villani were just kind, smart, thoughtful, interesting people. And Kelsey had none of the ingrained standoffishness that occasionally popped out in the rest of her family. She was casual, easygoing American to her core. How could the dad not be at ease around her?
She’d solve this. Before confessing her own drama to Kelsey. Because she hated the thought of her little sister being uncomfortable.
“Hasn’t Elias been best friends with Christian forever?”
“Yes. Like brothers, except better, because they never fight.” Kelsey bit her lip. “Okay, they did fight once. About me. But once in a lifetime is pretty good.”
Mallory hoped they wouldn’t be fighting again in the near future…about the other Wishner sister. “So his dad must’ve interacted with Christian as simply a normal, teenage, hormonal idiot of a boy, right?”
“Ooh, that’s strategic.” Kelsey slowed to a barely there jog. For which Mallory was über-grateful, as her lungs burned and her thighs burned and her glutes, yes, burned. “You think next time I should bring Christian along? That he’d feel less intimidated by my title with him there?”
“It’s worth trying.”
“Thanks, Mal. You always know just what to do. Maybe we could do a brunch next weekend. The four of us.” She stopped abruptly, grabbing just above the iPod strapped to Mallory’s biceps. “Wait—better idea. You should come, too. The five of us.”
Well, crap. That was her opening. On a silver platter. With a doily of convenience. No more waiting around. No more avoiding the awkward conversation.
No more having her prince solely to herself as the most special secret ever.
But clearing the air with Kelsey was important. Mallory took a step back, pulling out of her grip. “I think Christian would like that. Me tagging along, I mean. Because, ah, I wanted to tell you—we’re dating.”
Shrugging, Kelsey set off again in a slow lope. “Yeah, I know Christian is officially dating the boring and the title-chasers. But you’re dating, too? Who’d you meet? How’d you meet? I didn’t think you ever left the palace.”
That made her sound like a pathetic shut-in. And that her sister had been so busy with her own princess things that she had no idea what Mallory had been up to for the past month.
Not to mention that Kelsey had utterly missed the point she was trying to share.
Her bruised ego pushed at her to say, “I did leave the palace. A month ago. I went to a pub for dinner and darts.”
“Did you leave them with their pride, at least? I know how competitive you get at darts.”
Yes, well, her prince was just as competitive, if not a tad more. Which Mallory loved. It was so fun to play with someone on the same level.
“He’s got more than enough pride to go around, believe me.” Except that defending her competitive streak was not the goal of this already endless run. “And, well, you misunderstood what I said. Christian and I are dating. Each other. He’s the one I ran into at the pub.”
Kelsey picked up her speed a bit. She called over her shoulder, “Christian who?”
This. Was. Painful.
Made even more so by the sound of Sofia choking on a laugh behind her. This breach of protocol was shocking.
And totally understandable.
“Kelsey. Hang on a minute, will you?” They stopped on the edge of a tiny creek. It was bucolic. Peaceful. Bordering on romantic.
And completely wrong for this conversation. Mallory would far rather be in an empty room with only two steel chairs so that nothing could distract Kelsey. Even better? An empty room with their bodyguards outside the door and thus not hearing every single word exchanged.
“What?” Kelsey bent over, bracing her hands on her thighs, panting. “Do I know this Christian guy?”
“Yes, for God’s sake. My Christian is your Christian. I’m dating the crown prince.” It felt like trying to force her words through a throat covered in asphalt, but Kelsey’s lack of clarity had to stop. “I’m dating your brother.”
First, Kelsey’s jaw dropped.
Then she brought both hands up and covered her mouth.
Then she stumbled backward until a bushy, Christmas tree look-alike enveloped her in its branches. She swatted at them, cursing when her blond ponytail snagged in needles and sap. Lathan, her bodyguard, offered a hand to pull her out. “No. I’m not in quicksand, Lathan. No need to rescue me.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Sorry I snapped. I’m off-balance.”
“Literally,” Mallory murmured.
“This is your fault. You should be helping me out.” Kelsey struggled with the neck cord on her white windbreaker, caught on a pinecone.
“You’re a grown woman. As you pointed out to Lathan, you’re capable of extricating yourself.”
“If you’re dating, that means you’ve already been on a date, yes? You’ve been sneaking around without anyone knowing? Omigosh, that’s exactly what I did with Elias. And what Genny did with Theo. That’s hilarious.”
Mallory swept her hand through the air as if making a headline appear. “Secret Palace Romances—if it were on the front of a rag at the grocery store, it’d sell out in a day.” Good. They were laughing together. Whew.
“The best part is that nobody would believe it was true.”
Wait. Did Kelsey think she was joking? Even a little? Mallory shook out her arms to try and let go of the tension knotting her up head to toe. “Well, this isn’t a prank. It is true. Christian and I are dating.”
Geez, how many times would she have to repeat that?
Oddly enough, the more she said it, the more natural it felt. The more right. No matter how much logic, how many reasons were against them, being with Christian was easy and comfortable and fun.
Kelsey fisted her hands on her hips and walked in a tight circle. “Just…wait…the pub was a month ago? You two have been a secret thing for an entire month?”
“Yes. Well, no.” The last thing she wanted to do was hurt Kelsey’s feelings. But she wouldn’t lie to her, either.
“This is right up there with being a little bit pregnant, Mal. Either you did keep this a secret from me for a month, or you didn’t.”
Uh-oh. The shock was clearly wearing off. Kelsey’s tone was an indicator she’d zipped right along into the annoyed zone. Mallory had hoped to avoid that. Even though it was as inevitable as craving Doritos the week before her period.
“Um, yes, things happened. But back then, we’d agreed that dating would be a mistake. Which is why I didn’t tell you. It was supposed to be a blip. A one time, drunken…” Mallory paused. What could she call
it? Being overwhelmed by life and overwhelmingly attracted to the man and needing to blow off steam?
“Mistake?” Kelsey filled in.
“No.” Wow, that came out louder and sharper than intended. “No, I’d never call it that. I have no regrets. We have no regrets. It was accidental. Not intentional.”
“An accidental kiss? You passed out and he gave you mouth-to-mouth? There was a stubborn beer-foam mustache situation and you decided to use your tongue as a napkin?”
Whoa. Snide, much? “Why are you angry?”
Kelsey threw her hands up over her head. It slammed her knuckles into yet another tree branch with a dull thud. “Because you didn’t tell me. We tell each other everything, Mal. Because it’s weird? Because I hate feeling out of the loop with you. Because it’s one more symptom of everything changing. Of the ground shifting underneath my feet, just when I thought I was starting to get my balance again.”
“Fair enough.” Mallory tugged on the pocket of her windbreaker, leading her into the middle of the path away from the nature hazards. “I didn’t want to get into a giant discussion, like this, if it would never happen again. I promise, I truly thought that it wouldn’t.”
“Okay. I get it. I guess. So how did you go from never again to dating?” Violet eyes narrowing, Kelsey shook a finger. “Don’t you dare say ‘accidentally.’”
Damn it. There really wasn’t a better word. Especially since Kelsey seemed to have assumed they were at the chaste-kissing stage, and hadn’t progressed to the hot-sex-on-a-desk stage. The vaguer the answer, the better. “More things…happened, and then he made a bet with me.”
Kelsey sucked in air in a backward whistle. “It’s impossible for you to turn down a bet.”
“Trust me, Christian is keenly aware of that character flaw. He bet me that we could date without the world imploding. So last night we went on our first official date.”
“Back up. What sort of things ‘happened’?” Kelsey asked, her tone dark with suspicion.
Circling her hand in the air, Mallory said, “Things, okay? It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. I want to hear the story. How you fell for each other,” she insisted. Her sister’s bone-deep stubbornness probably should’ve been a clue, decades ago, as to her true imperious bloodline.
Mallory’s stomach—and throat—clenched.
Sharing simply didn’t feel right. Not this time.
They’d bonded over Christian’s problems with acting as king. Dealing with the unwanted responsibilities Parliament was trying to thrust upon him. If he hadn’t chosen to share that with his sister, it wasn’t Mallory’s place to betray that confidence.
Besides, was she really supposed to tell Kelsey that they’d fallen for each other trying to deal with her no doubt clinically depressed but undiagnosed father?
“That woman who snuck into Christian’s room. She made him realize that he wanted to be with me.”
Kelsey’s head jerked back in a double take. “Stalker girl? I thought that was a secret.”
Looked like Kelsey kept her own secrets from Mallory now. So this whole snit deserved to be dialed down a notch. “Obviously you know about it. So, also obviously, not a complete secret.” Geez, that came out bitchy. If she didn’t explain to Kelsey how bonded she and Christian already were, how could she expect her to understand?
“Well, Elias jumped out of our bed to rescue Christian.”
“I told you, last night was our first official date.” Mallory tugged on a low-hanging branch and plucked out its needles, one by one. It gave her something to look at besides the disapproval coating Kelsey’s features. “We went to dinner. At a restaurant called Hanoi. It was delicious. You should get Elias to take you there. It’ll do you two good to get out of the palace and discover more of the city.”
“Do not turn this around onto me. We’re not done with you yet.”
Well, it’d been worth a try.
Mallory sucked in a deep breath. “The date went well. A couple of people stopped by the table and treated me as though I was a piece of furniture, but aside from that, it was great.”
Wow. She’d just reduced three hours that had flown by feeling like only three minutes, a nonstop “clicking” between them that practically hummed in the air, not to mention the sexual chemistry—to the excitement level of a phone survey.
Mallory carefully walked down the embankment to the creek. She picked through a few rocks before choosing a flat one to skip across. There had to be a better way to talk through this with Kelsey. Since she was being so dense about it, maybe a bit of silence would jog Kelsey into figuring it out.
It only took three rocks before Kelsey joined her, sitting on a flat-topped boulder and hugging her knees to her chest. “Are you going on another date?”
How was that even a question? Kelsey might not appreciate her brother’s sex appeal, but she was well aware of all his other obvious attributes. “Yes. Of course.”
“But…why?”
Seriously? Now Mallory was peeved.
Why the third degree? Where was the congratulations on finding a nice, good guy?
A flash of brown skittered by. Chipmunk? Some European version of them? Maybe they shouldn’t linger out here until they had a briefing on the wildlife. So she kept her answer succinct. “I like him.”
Kelsey shook her head so vigorously that her ponytail thwapped her cheeks. “That’s a reason to date a boy in college. There’s no casual dating a man who may be wearing a crown soon.”
“You don’t think mutual attraction and interest are sufficient reasons to date?”
“Not in this case.”
Forget peeved. Mallory was pissed. “What the hell? We’re both consenting adults.”
With a sort of patronizing calm—where had that come from?—Kelsey tilted her face upward. Blinked twice, slowly. “Don’t be so stubborn. You know darn well this is weird.”
“Yes.” See? She could meet halfway in this fight. Now it was up to Kelsey to reciprocate. “The situation, the reason behind our initial meeting, that was weird. But Christian’s single. I’m single. We like each other. We acknowledged and moved past the weird. You need to do the same.”
Kelsey rose to her feet. “He’s not single.” She spit out the words as crisply as the bite of a Granny Smith apple. Pretty loudly, too.
“Not anymore.” Yep. She’d officially staked her claim. Go figure.
“I mean, he’s not available. For you to date.” Kelsey thrust her arm out, pointing back toward the palace. “Christian’s already promised to the royal bride.”
And thus marked for monkhood until that fated trip down the aisle? Mallory shook her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a deer across the creek. Was this some sort of reverse Snow White thing? Instead of singing, the princess called the forest creatures to her with the power of a shrill argument?
“No royal bride has been chosen. I have it on good authority that Christian is, in fact, light years away from making that decision.”
Kelsey brushed leaves and dirt from her ass. “But it’s coming down the pike, Mal. You know it. I know it. The only women he should be dating now are serious contenders for the next queen.”
“Wow.” It was like listening to the prime minister. Or the grand duchess. It was not at all the voice of her relentlessly independent sister. It was, to be certain, the voice of the third in line to the throne of Moncriano. And Mallory had never before felt a gulf this wide between them. “You sure drank the palace Kool-Aid.”
“No, Mal. I’m protecting you. Watching out to be sure you’re not hurt, just like I always have. I don’t want you to set your sights on someone who can’t be yours.”
Funny how Kelsey hadn’t led with that. How she hadn’t put Mallory’s best interest first in this fight. Which made it feel like she was now grasping at straws.
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“For God’s sake, we’re just dating.” Only for four weeks, but Kelsey didn’t deserve that nugget of info at this point. “Human Resources didn’t hand me a form to sign, relinquishing all rights and opportunities for the potential to be queen, before we had dinner together.”
“It’s implied. Christian’s way past the age of indiscriminately playing the field.”
Past the age? Oh, no. Kelsey had never been into historical sagas like Lord of the Rings. She was into futuristic tech stories, anime. There was no doubt she was parroting what someone else had put in her head.
It pushed Mallory over the edge. “Is that what Elias says? Is that where this is coming from? You’re spouting what your boyfriend thinks? Your boyfriend who is so blindly loyal to the House of Villani that he broke up with you to be a good lap dog to them?”
“That’s a low blow.”
“Only if it’s true,” she shot back.
How had this spiraled so far out of control?
They never fought over boys when they lived together. It was far more ridiculous to do now. Kelsey didn’t even want Christian for herself—she just didn’t want him to be with Mallory.
“He can’t date a woman that he can’t marry,” Kelsey insisted, crossing her arms.
“There’s no rule that says that, actually. I know, because out of the two of us, I’m the only one who’s read your copious binders on royal protocol.”
“I’m just trying to do what’s best for my brother and my sister. This ultimately isn’t good for either of you. There’s no fairy-tale ending here, Mal. You need to stay away from him.” Kelsey’s voice was stern, her features set in disapproving lines.
This was unbelievable. Was fudge suddenly a vitamin-packed diet aid? Had the top ten runners-up for Miss World huddled together and figured out a doable plan to make world peace a thing? Because Mallory’s world had just tilted upside freaking down. She teetered on the edge of tears and screaming.
But it was so hard to push the words out that they were barely more than a breathless whisper. “Do not…you can’t…are you seriously playing the don’t date my brother card? Where are your loyalties?”
Tempting the Prince (Sexy Misadventures of Royals) Page 16
