by Sparks, Ana
I took a deep breath and then launched into the script I’d come up with while the phone was ringing. “Good morning, ma’am. I’m calling to try to find someone who was arrested this morning on a drunk and disorderly charge. His name is Francisco de la Laros.”
My eyes flipped to the pad in front of me, where I’d written down his information. I hoped I’d said that right.
“Prince Francisco de la Laros,” I clarified. “I need to know where he’s been taken and when he’ll be appearing in court.”
There was a short pause—probably so the annoyed receptionist could check some sort of List of People Who Were Arrested Today—and then she said, “I do see his name here. But I need some identification before I can give you any information. You are…?”
Right, well I was three steps ahead of her on that one, thanks to the five cups of coffee I’d had while I was reading articles about Francisco.
“His personal secretary,” I said quickly. “Obviously, a man of his stature has to travel with a full staff. And that staff needs to know where we’ll be required. I also need to know what to tell his brother. The king.”
I threw that last bit in without even thinking about it. Because she might not respect the fact that I was working for a prince, but it seemed like anyone would respect the idea that I was going to be passing messages right to a king.
If a personal secretary even got to do that sort of thing.
Shit. Would a personal secretary to the prince even have access to the prince’s brother, if the prince’s brother was king? I suddenly realized that I had no idea, never having been a personal secretary to a prince before.
But the story must have flown, because the next thing I heard was the receptionist asking, “And how do I know you are who you say you are?”
Okay, another easy one.
“Ask Francisco,” I said calmly. “Tell him that Erika Saunders is on the phone and needs to know how long he’s going to be there so I can inform his brother of his whereabouts.”
“Hold, please.”
And then I got that generic hold music that seems to be the same whether you’re on the phone with a lingerie store or your bank—or, it turned out, the Chicago Police Department.
It went on long enough that I started to get really nervous that I’d done something wrong. And after that, I started to wonder what exactly the punishment was for calling the police department and lying to them about who you were.
Shit.
I was just about to hang up, having completely freaked myself out, when I heard someone come back on the line.
“Erika?”
Oh God, it was Francisco.
I hadn’t even realized how keen I was to hear his voice again—to know that he was still okay—until he said my name and everything in me literally felt like it started to melt.
“Francisco,” I returned. “Or do I have to call you Prince Francisco, now?”
“Please don’t,” he groaned, though I could tell there was a smile behind it. “I hate when people call me that. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry about getting arrested out of your apartment this morning.”
“Be sorry the cops woke me up, while you’re at it,” I said. “And sorry that you left without explaining anything. Are you okay? Is everything okay?”
There was a part of me that understood how strange this entire conversation was. I was talking to a freaking prince—who I’d slept with—and he was in jail for the fight he’d had in my bar. And I was giving him a hard time about having left my apartment with the cops without explaining things to me.
But it was what it was, honestly. And I wanted to know. Like I said, something about the guy had grabbed me, and that meant I was at least somewhat concerned about his well-being.
I shook my head and went back to paying attention to what he was saying.
“I’m afraid not,” he said.
And then he launched into an even more insane story about his brother and how they weren’t on the best of terms and how Francisco wasn’t supposed to travel by himself (probably because of all the trouble he seemed to get into, I added silently) and had raised a big red flag by firing Roger.
“The guy who wanted you to go home and go to bed?” I asked, confused. “Yeah, speaking of him. What, exactly, does he have to do with all this?”
Francisco paused for a moment. “He is my brother’s employee, and it was his job to keep me in line. So when I fired him, I assume the first thing he did was call Javier and turn me in. Javier, in turn, called the cops. And they came to your apartment to collect me.”
Well, that made sense, sort of, but it was also missing some very important steps.
“And how did they know you were at my house?” I asked. “Since I forgot to put out the sign advertising your presence.”
I heard a long sigh on the other end of the line. “Tarana is a small nation, but it is still a nation. Javier has access to resources that you don’t know even exist. Regardless, the end result is that I was arrested, and have now been reclaimed by the throne.”
“Reclaimed?” I asked, confused. “What are you, a lost bracelet?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he replied, the smile evident again. But his next words were serious. “Unfortunately, it means I’m going home. This afternoon.”
I felt my entire body go cold at those words. And yeah, I’d only known the guy for a few days. Yeah, we’d had a great weekend, but what did he really mean to me? What attachment could I actually have to him?
Even more than I’d realized, if my body’s reaction was anything to go by.
“Home?” I whispered. “You’re leaving? Just like that?”
“I’ll be back,” he promised. “Soon. But I’ll have to go home first, to smooth things over with my brother. I want to see you again, Erika. I want to… I want to see you again. If I return—when I return—will you still be here?”
His voice was so hopeful, so torn up, that I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the chances of us seeing each other ever again—him a prince from Tarana, and me a bartender from Chicago, with nothing between us but one weekend of intense experiences—were slim.
I didn’t have the heart to even think it.
“Of course I will,” I said.
I gave him my number and wished him a safe trip. And then I hung up the phone and stared at it for several long moments, trying to make sense of everything that had just happened, and how I felt about it.
Chapter 12
Francisco
A Week Later
“I’m sorry, sir, but I just don’t know what else we can do to smooth the situation over,” the voice on the other end of the line said—without all that much apology in the tone.
I pulled my own phone away from my ear and stared at it, like the pure energy coming from my eyes would somehow change the answer. Make the man on the other end see the light and come up with something different.
It didn’t, of course, and after a moment of completely futile staring, I put the phone back up to my ear to try to handle this like a normal adult. With words.
“What do you mean you don’t know what else you can do?” I asked sharply. “I’m the goddamn prince of Tarana, and that comes with some rights. The American government isn’t going to let a little thing like a drunk and disorderly charge get in the way of diplomatic relations, surely.”
“That’s true, but they are also well aware of your… reputation. And it’s not as though they’ve insulted the king of Tarana by saying that they plan to become yet another country that doesn’t want his brother crossing their borders.”
“Ouch,” I said. “That one hurt, Juan.”
The man on the phone chuckled softly. And he could do that, because he’d been handling my family’s affairs ever since I could remember. “You know it as well as I do, Francisco. Your reputation has preceded you here, and there’s very little I can do about that.”
“It’s shocking that they arrested me for some
thing so small in the first place, honestly,” I grumbled.
“Another repercussion of your reputation, I’m afraid. A lack of diplomatic protection. Particularly when you insist on gallivanting around without even taking your security staff.”
Now that, I didn’t have to accept. Because Juan had watched me grow up, struggling for any sense of importance as nothing more than the second son. He’d been the first one I went to when I decided that I wanted to start traveling, so I could at least see the world if I was going to be locked out of any form of governing at home.
He also knew that Javier was the one who assigned my guards. And that they were there less to guard me and more to guard the family’s reputation.
“That’s unnecessary, Juan,” I finally said. “You know as well as I do why I have to get rid of them when I can.”
“I do,” he said, and I could hear the resignation in his voice. “I also know that it doesn’t matter how often you get rid of them. There’s always another one. And there will always be repercussions.”
Well. He was right on that one, too, unfortunately.
I’d arrived home to find actual hell to pay with my brother for the things I’d been getting up to in Chicago—and for getting rid of the guy he’d paid to watch over me and make sure I got home safely.
That didn’t mean I wouldn’t fire the next guy he assigned, though. And the one after that. Call it my own little form of rebellion. My way of trying to maintain control over my life.
My way of making sure I was living the way I wanted to live rather than just being tossed away and told to sit down and be still, the way Javier mostly wanted me to.
Look, I loved my brother. I’d idolized him ever since I was born. He was several years older than me, which made him old enough to appear semi-godlike to a five-year-old boy. That particular part had never gone away. And we’d been best friends when we were young. Closer than close, especially after my father died and my mother had taken over running the country on her own.
But that had all changed when she stepped back and Javier became king. At that point, I’d been termed a problem rather than a brother. And Javier had been treating me like a question requiring an answer ever since.
So obviously, I’d been fighting him tooth and nail, fist and hammer. Whatever it took. Whatever I had to do to make sure I was still an individual and in charge of my own destiny, rather than just being the spare prince that no one had time for—and the one that my brother tended to think he could order around.
I mean, maybe it hadn’t been the best way to deal with things, and maybe lately I’d been thinking that I should at least try to shape up. Do something more important with my life. But I wasn’t going to do that until I was good and ready—and when I did, it was going to be my idea. Not the idea of some security goon that my brother had hired.
“So they’re not going to let me back in the country?” I asked, coming back to the reality of the conversation I was having with Juan.
“I’m still working on their State Department,” he replied. “But they’re fighting me. And I can’t say I blame them. Much. After all, they don’t know you like I do.”
I had to smile at that. “You know me better than almost anyone, Juan. I’m not sure they would like me much better if they knew all the things you know.”
“If they knew all the things I know, sir, they would know that you are worth far more than your reputation seems to indicate. And they would welcome you back into their country with open arms.”
And then I flat out laughed. Not only because it was such a grandly worded statement, but also because Juan had always been one of the only people in the world to make statements like that about me. And there are times when you need to hear that someone thinks you’re worth more than your reputation indicates, you know?
“Keep working on them,” I said. “I need to get back into that country to see about a girl. Don’t tell anyone I told you that. It would ruin my reputation. And Juan?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t call me sir. You’ve known me since I was born, and it feels weird when you talk to me like I’m my dad or my brother.”
I hung up before he could argue with me about that particular point—because I knew for sure that he was going to—and moved right on to the next item on the list.
Juan had called to let me know that the US wasn’t keen on the idea of me coming back into their country. And yeah, I could understand that. I had a history of being arrested in other countries, courtesy of all the running around I did, and that meant that, unfortunately, many countries had barred me entirely. So the US was just… well, following a precedent, I suppose. I didn’t like it, but it was the way it was.
Still, this particular country barring me was a big deal. A really big deal.
Because I had told Erika I would come back. And I wasn’t about to let that become a lie. Yes, she was just a girl I’d met in a bar. No, she shouldn’t have meant anything more to me than just that.
But the girl had touched me in ways I wasn’t looking at too closely, because I didn’t want to label them. The truth was, I was afraid of what those labels might be. We’d spent a weekend together where she’d treated me like a real person, and made fun of me for some of the little things I did. She’d acted as though I was just like any old guy—except I didn’t think she’d have taken any old guy into her bed.
I didn’t think she’d have done the things we did together with anyone unless they were really special.
And I knew for sure that I wasn’t going to be able to just move on from her without… something.
I didn’t know what that meant, or what it might indicate about my feelings. But I’d made the girl a promise that I’d be back to see her again, and by God, I meant to see that promise through.
The US State Department would just have to get over that. And, I added mentally, I was going to have to find a really good way to do it without my brother—or the Taranan State Department—finding out about it.
I turned the pad of paper in front of me over, grabbed a pen, and started writing down ideas for how to do exactly that.
Chapter 13
Erika
When my alarm went off, I literally had to stop myself from taking my phone and throwing it across the room and against the wall.
I mean, it wasn’t my phone’s fault that I had to get up if I was going to get anything done today before I had to go to work tonight. It certainly wasn’t my phone’s fault that I had barely slept, spending my precious time in bed tossing and turning instead.
And the reason for that tossing and turning also had very little to do with my phone. Because my phone couldn’t exactly do anything about the fact that I had yet to hear from Francisco, the hot guy I’d spent that incredibly hot weekend with… and then never heard from again.
I turned the alarm off then flipped over onto my other side so I could stare through the window at the cityscape outside. It wasn’t much of a view—because I definitely couldn’t afford a view—but I could see a sliver of the sky through the brick buildings outside my window, the view just starting to get that yellow glow of afternoon light, a few clouds floating through the patches of blue I could see.
It had been a gorgeous day, by the looks of things. And as usual, I’d missed it. Because I was stuck in a job where I had to work at night, which left me sleeping through the entire day.
It definitely wasn’t what I’d pictured for my life when I’d been enrolling at college, all starry eyes and rainbow dreams. At that time, I’d been seeing a career in music ahead of me, seeing myself traveling across the country with my guitar strapped to my back—or something slightly more glamorous than that—as I made music for the masses, pouring my heart and soul into my songs for the world to hear.
It had never happened, obviously. Or rather… Well, I guessed it could have happened. Except that I had that little issue when it came to having to pay bills and eat. If not for those minor details, hitting the road with nothin
g but my guitar would have been an easy decision.
But, you know, refusing to eat wasn’t actually an option.
Hence the best-paying job I could find that still left me some time for making music. A year ago, bartending had easily fit that particular description. And now here I was, lying in bed at four in the afternoon, trying to pull myself back into the real world as I contemplated one more night of cleaning up after drunks while simultaneously serving them the best drinks I could manage.
All of which led me to spending my time around people who did things like passing out in bars like mine. People like Francisco.
Who still hadn’t called.
I sighed and finally let my brain go back to that weekend, and the way it had ended, and closed my eyes against the mellow glow of the sunshine through the window. It had been such a great weekend. A literal whirlwind of food, exploring, music, and drinks, and all of it topped off with a long, steamy night in bed. It had been everything I’d ever heard an adventure should be, wrapped up with one very hot and romantic foreigner.
A foreigner who was a prince. Who then got arrested and deported. And who had, before said deportation, promised me that he’d be back—and that he’d find me when he did return.
And though I’d given him my phone number the last time we’d talked, and I’d fully—okay, mostly—believed that he would actually try to get back to Chicago, that was a week ago, and I’d yet to receive anything. No email, no text, no phone call. Nothing even remotely resembling communication from some tiny European island called Tarana.
And nothing that made me think that would change anytime soon.
At that moment, my phone started buzzing away, and I grabbed at it, annoyed. My friends knew not to call me at this time of day, when I was in the midst of trying to sleep for the coming night, and I hadn’t talked to my parents in a year, so it couldn’t be them.
So who the hell was calling me right now?
