The Royal Rake (Royal Romances Book 3)

by Molly Jameson

  “Yes. But lean muscly, not like those bodybuilders who have necks bigger than my thighs.”

  “And tiny dicks. Because steroids make their peepees shrink.”

  “What? Did you just talk about tiny dicks in my tearoom?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, I talked about balls at the Pump Room tea!”

  “I knew you went to tea there because you blew up my phone with Instagram alerts every time you took a bite. Did he take you there? Did he take you to a fancy tea party? How did you not just do him right there?”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s forbidden at fancy tea parties. Yes, he took me to the Roman baths and then we went to the spa and soaked in the thermal waters and then we had tea. And I got mad at him because I didn’t get to dress up.”

  “That bastard, how dare he take you to the place of your dreams! Let me get my shovel; we’ll get rid of him right now!” Lily said.

  “Hey, I could have at least worn something better than jeans if I’d known. It was pretty fabulous though, and he let me eat all the scones,” she said, “and he was stupidly charming, like hand him my panties charming the whole time.”

  “And yet here you are, single and wearing your panties.” Lily scolded.

  “He didn’t want them, ok? I kissed him; I asked if he was interested, nothing. He spent the night in my apartment and never laid a hand on me,” she said.

  For some reason, she lied to Lily about it. She wanted to protect him. Evie didn’t want her friend to think Leo had taken advantage of her or pulled a shag and dump right there in Bath with her best friend. So she claimed kisses only—enough to give a hint of romance to his ever so brief appearance in her life but not enough to open them up to speculation, should Lily’s fascination turn to gossip.

  “He spent the night with you?” Lily said, choking on her tea.

  “Only nominally. He was hiding from the press when his ex-girlfriend died.”

  “You mean the crazy one? Hey, he is just like Finnick, I was so right! Crazy girl from his past…only we’re hoping the hot prince doesn’t get killed in the sewer because yuck. So was he heartbroken? Why didn’t you comfort him? And by comfort him, I do not mean give him a damn cup of tea.”

  “I wasn’t going to take advantage of him when he was grieving! Okay, maybe I would have if he’d shown the slightest interest in me. He was very kind and attentive, but I think he’s just a nice person that way. It wasn’t any special fascination for me.”

  “He took you to the Pump Room for tea. He spent a whole day and night with you. Men don’t do that to be nice,” Lily advised.

  “So what’s the story there? I mean I asked him straight out, and he said he wasn’t interested.”

  “He’s afraid of commitment. He’s a guy, Evie,” Lily said.

  “I think we overthink things, babe. When you ask if a guy is interested in you and he says no, then it means he’s not. It doesn’t mean he’s afraid of getting hurt, or he has daddy issues or crap. It means I’m not his type.”

  “Yeah, or he’s not over the dead girl. Did you see those pictures?”

  “What pictures? I don’t let myself google him because it’s too humiliating.”

  “These,” Lily said, cuing them up on her phone.

  There was Leo, grim and handsome and holding up something over an open grave, “Is he, like doing a spell or something? It’s very Hogwarts,” Evie said.

  “It’s an engagement ring obviously. He was in love with her and threw the ring in the grave.”

  “He wasn’t in love with her. I asked him that, too.”

  “No wonder he didn’t accept your panties. You interrogated him the whole time he was here.”

  “I also fed him scones,” Evie said.

  She clicked through the links and scanned the articles. They were all about how the philandering, rakish prince had driven his devoted, fragile girlfriend to kill herself. It was all old photos and conjecture, and she hated it. Hated seeing him in pictures with that beautiful, tragic girl and hated knowing that an entire nation was speculating that he was so mean to Adriana that she’d committed suicide.

  “This is total crap. It’s horrible on her family, and it’s just bullshit click bait. He didn’t drive anyone to kill herself. He’s too nice. Reckless maybe, but not, like, mentally cruel,” she said decisively, “he’s patient. He listened to me go on about Halle Berry and truck nuts and all kinds of crap. I can’t see him being actively mean to anyone. He might get bored and wander off,” she said with a half smile.

  “Oh, girl, you’ve got it bad. Sitting here defending him like it’s your job.”

  “No, speaking of my job, make me an online store. I need to peddle some scones on the strength of his hot royalness.”

  “It’s a good idea. I mean, I’d pay to put my lips where his have been on a scone.”

  “It’s not the actual scone he ate off of! But, if you’re nice I’ll let you sit in the chair where he sat.”

  “It will be like our butts are together,” Lily said.

  “Your enthusiasm makes me feel better about myself. I’ve been beating myself up for weeks because I’m crushing on some royal like a typical American crazy cat lady.”

  “You’re a crazy tea lady. Not a crazy cat lady.”

  “Thanks,” Evie said.

  Within a fortnight, they had the online boutique up and running, and Evie had the oven in her apartment going as well as the commercial ovens in the bakery to keep up with the orders. She thought she’d safeguarded herself from being overwhelmed with orders by charging a ridiculous price for a dozen scones. Instead, orders had poured in. Twice, Lily had to post that, due to demand, no new orders would be accepted for forty-eight hours. Then they had to change available quantities so online customers could only order half-dozens, at an even higher price than before. Still they were so flooded with orders that for three days, Evie closed down Thimble’s tearoom just to bake and ship scone orders. The scent of oolong, cinnamon and a hint of cardamom clung to her skin and her hair no matter how much body wash she used. The Royal-tea scone was certainly paying the rents, but she couldn’t bring herself to so much as taste one because they reminded her too much of Leo.

  She’d only known him for a couple of days, and that had been weeks ago. So why was she still thinking about him? Sometimes Evie told herself it was because he symbolized what was missing in her life, excitement and charm and romance. She wasn’t misogynistic enough to believe she’d moved to Bath and built a business plan for two years just waiting for him to walk into her life. He wasn’t her soul mate because there wasn’t any such thing as soul mates. It was all nonsense perpetuated by fairy tales and Hallmark, and she’d watched way too many of those Lifetime movies where the reformed bad boy always comes back. If she’d had a porch swing, a golden retriever, and a country music soundtrack, she’d have had hope. As it was, she had scones and a good profit margin and a bad case of infatuation that wouldn’t quit.

  Sometimes Evie told herself the truth. That she fell in love with Leo. She fell that fast and that irrevocably and even if she kept it to herself forever, it wouldn’t be any less true. She didn’t like trading on his image and his name, not just because it was tacky. Mainly she disliked it because it suggested a link between them, a thread of connection that stubbornly didn’t exist. He wasn’t going to visit her shop again, wouldn’t drop in to say hello. They weren’t friends. She was nothing more than a crazy tea lady, as Lily had said, an American lonely hearts who was dumb enough to fall for a little charm and a lot of angst with a pirate’s smile.

  It was just as well that Thimble was closed the third day since a terrible ice storm was battering half the UK and no one was silly enough to be out in it. Schools and businesses were shut in Bath, and that wasn’t even where the worst storms were concentrated. She sat by the fire up in her apartment, petting Gandy and watching ice strike the window while the TV droned in the background.

  The
image of Leo’s picture caught her eye when it filled the screen. There was that reckless charm, those sapphire eyes. His photo on the news program could mean nothing good, especially since Maritime Search and Rescue was a dangerous line of work in a severe storm. No matter what she’d said about his Coast Guard style job being paltry and unheroic, she knew damn well—and the icy knot in the pit of her stomach, the stone that seemed lodged in her throat knew, too—that he was exactly the sort to risk his neck for someone else. She could imagine him being blown off the swinging ladder on the helicopter, dashed against the rocks or knocked out and drowning. In mere seconds, horrific scenarios blazed through her frantic mind. She turned up the volume on the television, needing to hear the news as much as she wanted to cover her eyes and pretend it was fine.

  “Word has just reached us that Prince Leopold Charles Alexander, the fourth child of King Victor and the Queen Consort Eugenie, who turned twenty-nine only last month, was seriously injured during a daring search and rescue in the storm. He saved an imperiled camper on the verge of a cliff, just before the man, identified as twenty-two-year-old Aidan Brocklehurst of Taunton, would have been swept into the sea from the force of the storm,” the presenter said solemnly.

  Leo, seriously injured. A daring rescue mission. He’d saved a stranded camper, been seriously injured…it all spooled through Evie’s mind but she couldn’t comprehend it. Then the news feed changed.

  The image of Leo grinning in a tuxedo at some charity gala was replaced with grainy video footage of a helicopter, its dangling hoist careening in the harsh winds as the figure of a man reached out and caught a person who seemed to be hanging from the cliff as a tent and other camping equipment blew off the ledge and whipped into the sea below. The figure on the hoist seized the camper and, in the force of the wind, they both nearly tumbled off the device. Leo was seen catching one of the steel cables as they fell and holding on, saving himself and the stranded camper.

  The video footage froze on the image of Leopold Charles Alexander, Earl of Basingstoke and Prince of England hanging by one arm from a steel cable yards above the churning sea. He had held on, had managed to keep hold of that fool he rescued. She could only imagine how painful it had been to catch his weight and the weight of that confounded Aiden Brocklehurst with one arm. She could imagine the tendons at his shoulder tearing with the strain, could envision the way he’d grit his teeth and mutter a curse and then hold on gamely until the winchman could pull them up into the chopper. He’d probably joke about it, probably use his rascal charm to cover the agony, to minimize the danger.

  Evie was on her feet watching the footage replay then. She dumped an indignant Gandy to the floor in a heap as she got as close to the screen as possible. There he was, that barely recognizable dark shape, nearly flung into the sea as he hung off a hoist in all that wind to save some idiot who thought it a good idea to camp near the edge of the cliff in an ice storm. She was furious that he risked himself to rescue such a fool, which he had been hurt doing so. She was shaking. She sank to the floor and seized her phone. She pulled up the video and watched it again and again, searched for more information about his condition. All she could find was that he had a torn rotator cuff and was hospitalized and being hailed a hero.

  She fed more scones into the oven, cooled the finished ones on a rack and boxed them. She thought to send a package of them to Leo, but she didn’t know how to get them to him. Even if she sent them to the hospital, surely some royal security would x-ray them and have them tested for anthrax, and they’d be stale by the time he ever saw them. If he had been an ordinary acquaintance, she could have called him to see how he was. Instead, she trolled gossip sites, sick with worry and annoyed by the media frenzy about the wounded hero.

  For the next few days, with Thimble open and half the patrons asking how Leo was doing after his accident as if she would know, Evie finally read that he was due to have surgery. Then she wasted her tea break looking up information about rotator cuff surgery and the risks and recovery. As if it were any of her business. Another week passed and there was no update in the press about his condition. She was worried, especially considering the fact that the royal family wasn’t notoriously open about their private concerns.

  Leo had spoken on the phone to his brother about their dad having cancer, a situation that didn’t exist in the press. As far as the UK knew, the king had a surgical biopsy several months back, and everything was fine. So clearly the public truth and the private were two separate things. She had no way to get to the private truth about Leo and his condition now. She went to the notice board and unpinned the calling card he’d jokingly left in the Basket of Estrogen. She sat down and typed out an email and sent it to the address on the card.

  Dear Leo,

  I heard about your daring search and rescue work and your injury. I hope you are well. The photo you sent me helped greatly with sales, and the scone you liked is very successful. I can’t thank you enough for your help, and I still wish you better days.

  Evelyn Bartlett (Evie…the tea pimp)

  She sent the message and waited. She imagined him, handsome and hearty in his hospital bed, taking a break from flirting with all the nurses to check his mobile and see a message from her. He would read it and smile, his muscled chest bare, his injured shoulder wrapped in white gauze. It was a beguiling image, and she thought about it until her phone pinged. He had replied so quickly! She couldn’t help smiling until she read the message.

  Dear Sir or Madam,

  This is an automated message; please do not reply to it.

  The business office manages inquiries regarding the charities patronized by HRH Leopold Charles Alexander. Personal correspondence should be directed to his private email address.

  Thank you for your interest,

  Press Office for the Royal Family

  She snorted. An auto reply designed to rebuff fan mail, probably. She was amused by the fact that it said, if you knew the guy you’d have his real email address, so go away. Evie did a quick search for his contact information online but kept getting kicked back to the official site, which had rejected her with a form email. She scrolled through pages of gossip sites, archived articles about who he was dating back in 2013 and which actress he supposedly snogged at a movie premiere. On the ninth page of results, she found a message board where women were bitching about him. Women he’d supposedly dated or hooked up with. Considering his reputation as a womanizer, he probably had.

  Evie read on, immersed in the complaints of women he’d left behind. He was always sweet but had a short attention span, one said. He was hot but not much interested in what she liked, said another. He had cheated by texting an old girlfriend or had flirted with everyone in sight at a club, said most of them. She rolled her eyes, not much surprised, apart from the bit about his not being thoughtful. The real surprise, though, was a two-year-old post from Adriana Wellingford.

  Leo is a total shit. Says he can’t trust me anymore. Well, trust this, your highness. Here’s his private mobile number!

  Evie’s eyes were wide. There was no way this was still his number. Still, it was worth a try. She dialed the number, waiting for a recording to say it had been disconnected.

  “Leo here,” he said.

  She nearly choked on her tea. She felt a flush climb her neck to her cheeks. She almost hung up the phone in embarrassment.

  “I—I miss you,” she stammered.

  “What now?”

  “It’s Evie Bartlett, from the tearoom in Bath?” she said, unsure why she made it a question, “I don’t miss you, I was only flustered. I was worried about you, is what I meant. Because your accident was on the news and then there were no updates so, I called you. Well, first I found your number online—“

  “You found my mobile number online?”

  “First, I tried the email on the card you gave me, but it went to some software program that thought I was a stalker and told me to go away so I—never mind what I did. Ho
w are you? Are you still in the hospital?”

  “I’m pretty well on Thai takeaway and quite good narcotics. I’m off active duty for six months, though, and probably for good, in fact. I’m out in Notting Hill at one of the family apartments being bossed around and managed by a hired nurse,” he said, “and you’re not my first stalker, but you’re probably the most determined since you found my private number. I’ll have to get Martin to take that down if you tell me which site it’s on.”

  “It’s on a message board of women you’ve seduced and forgotten actually. As your most persistent stalker, I think I’ve earned a private audience with his majesty,”

  she said, mustering all her spunk.

  “His Majesty is my father. I’m only fourth in line, so I’m properly addressed as ‘sir’,” he teased.

  “Very well. I’ll bring you fresh scones, sir, and take you out to lunch if you’re feeling well enough.”

  “You want to visit me?”

  “Yes, very much, in fact,”

  “Are you free tomorrow?”

  “I can be. I’ve hired more help at the shop to keep up with all the business you’ve brought on. What time would you like me to come up to London?”

  “I’ll send a car for you, Evie,” he said. “It was great hearing from you.”

  “So I’m your favorite stalker?”

  “Indeed, you are,” he said.

  Chapter Five

  Evie rode to London in a posh black car. She had debated whether to bring a bag with her. She didn’t want to seem like she was coming to a sleepover when he was probably just being nice to her and was also bored from his convalescence. So she’d compromised and shoved her toothbrush, panties, and a top into the bottom of a big purse she borrowed from Lily. Lily, who gave her a plastic tiara and a packet of condoms as a ‘going away present’. Evie had left both items in her apartment out of reach of the cats.

  The driver let her off at a row of colorful houses with bay windows and wrought iron railings. A door swung open on the slate blue house, and Leo stood there all mischief and dishabille. His sandy hair needed a trim; his right arm was in a sling. His eyes were just as blue as they had been a month before. He was barefoot in jeans, in cold December and he took her breath away. She hurried up the steps to the door, and he kissed her cheek.