He turns his back to her, giving the girl some semblance of privacy. As she scrambles to get dressed, I head back to the bathroom to wash the smell of sex off my body.
After a quick rinse, I pull on my running clothes and head for the door. The girl is gone, thank fuck. Nev got rid of her in record time. I need to give that man a raise.
If I’m lucky, I won’t have to speak to anyone else for a few hours. I wind my way through the corridors of the castle, walking faster as I hear footsteps approaching. Only a few more seconds, and I’ll be able to duck into a side passage that leads straight outside and onto the trails…
… but I’m not so lucky.
Talin, my father’s right-hand man, steps around the corner and across my path.
“Your Highness,” he says, giving me the smallest of bows—barely inclining his head. His dark hair is slicked back and his eyes are razor-sharp. He gestures down the hallway. “Your father would like to have a word.”
“Are you his little lapdog now? You playing fetch for him?”
Talin bristles but says nothing. I sigh. Nothing puts me in a worse mood than listening to my father drone on about what a shitty heir I am, but it’s always worse if I keep him waiting. He has a wicked temper.
Kind of like me.
My father, the King of Farcliff, is sitting in the breakfast room.
Yes, we have a breakfast room.
He’s sipping an espresso and doesn’t lift his eyes from his newspaper as I step into the room. I stand there for a few seconds as my frustration mounts.
“Good morning, Father,” I finally say.
“Charles,” he says, deigning to look up at me. “How nice of you to join me. Coffee?”
“I’m going for a run. If I have coffee now, I’ll shit my pants in the woods.”
The King grimaces. “Do you have to speak like that? You’re a prince, for crying out loud.”
“Well, shitting my pants isn’t very princely, either.”
My father huffs, bringing his fingers to his temples and taking a deep breath to compose himself. “The Prince’s Ball is coming up this weekend. You will be there.”
I roll my eyes. “I’d planned on being in Mauritius, actually. The jet is arranged for tomorrow.” I haven’t actually planned that, but I like seeing my father’s face turn that funny shade of purple.
Besides, if I did want to go to Mauritius, a private jet can be arranged—that’s not a problem. It sounds a hell of a lot more fun than some stuffy birthday party that I never even asked for.
“Stop fucking around, Charlie!” My father slams his palm on the table. His cup jiggles in its saucer and I arch an eyebrow.
“That’s not very kingly language, Father.”
I know I shouldn’t taunt him like that—I’m a grown man—but he and I have history, and getting under his skin is one of life’s little pleasures that I find simply irresistible. His jowls tremble and a little tickle of enjoyment passes through me.
I love it, but I also know when to stop.
“Yes, your Majesty, I’m going to the stupid ball, but I’m not coming out of it with a wife.”
“Charles, it’s time. The laws dictate that—”
“I say when it’s time,” I interrupt. “I’m not getting married.”
“You’re the heir to the throne. You need to think about your responsibilities, and not just which girl will spread her legs for you next. If your mother were still alive…”
“Don’t speak about my mother.” My voice has a dangerous edge to it. My father stares me down as only a King can, and I hate that I avert my eyes before he does. I turn to leave when he stops me.
“Charles, one more thing.” My father pushes the newspaper he’d been reading across the table. It slides over the polished surface and stops right in front of me. “No more boxing.”
“Excuse me?”
I drop my eyes to read the headline:
Prince Charlie delivers knock-out blow
“What’s wrong with this? I won the fight. You should be proud of me.”
My father inhales, staring at me as if I’m the densest person to walk the earth. Only the King has the ability to make me feel like a child every time I’m with him.
Finally, he speaks. He talks slowly, enunciating every syllable. “You can’t beat up your subjects, Charles. It’s just not done.” He touches his finger to the table with every word. ”No. More. Boxing.”
I ball my hands into fists but say nothing. Turning on my heels, I head out of the doorway. The instant I’m outside, I start running. I have to get out of that room, out of that castle. Hell, if I could leave this stupid Kingdom, I would.
My feet pound the pavement until I duck into the forest and make my way to the lake trail. Once I’m under the trees, I breathe a little deeper. The smell of fresh pine, moss, and rich soil fills my nostrils. I settle into an easy jog as the trees thin around me and Lake Farcliff appears. The water looks cold, but its gentle lapping on the shore settles my nerves.
My father has hated me ever since my mother passed away. I know he blames me for it, even though he’d never say it out loud. He hates the fact that I’m his successor—and, to be honest, so do I. I never asked for this.
Movement on the lake’s surface makes me glance over.
A woman is gliding along in a boat, parallel to the trail I’m running on. She’s too far away to make out the details of her face, but I watch her move through the water like poetry in motion. She’s rowing at a leisurely pace, sweeping her oars over the rippling surface as if she were born to do it. She hasn’t seen me, but I match her pace as I run along the shore.
Then, I speed up the tiniest bit and I smile when I see her head turn my way. She pulls the oars through the water with a little more strength, first matching my pace and then moving ahead of me. My smile widens.
So, she’s like me. She doesn’t like to lose.
I speed up, nosing in front of her as my feet pound the hard-packed earth.
I can’t help it.
I know I’ll never win. I’m not an idiot—no matter what my father likes to say. This woman was obviously resting before, and there’s no way I could outrun a professional sculler in a racing boat.
But it doesn’t matter. Adrenaline floods my veins at the promise of competition, and I give it all I’ve got. She makes another powerful stroke.
I’d like to give her a powerful stroke.
I’m in a full-on sprint now, but I already know I’ve lost. The young woman doesn’t even look like she’s trying, and yet she glides ahead of me. Before my lungs explode in my chest and my muscles spasm uncontrollably, I slow down. I lift my hand to her in surrender, and I think I see her smile.
I finally stop running and try to catch my breath. Bending over, I rest my hands on my knees. The woman slides out of view and I gulp down another breath. My heart thumps harder than it has in weeks. I laugh to myself, alone in the woods, intertwining my fingers on top of my head and inhaling deeply.
That was fun. I want to do it again.
How sad is my life that I can buy anything I want, go anywhere I wish… but my biggest thrill is losing a footrace I never could have won in the first place?
3
Elle
“What was that about? You were supposed to be cooling down,” Coach Bernard grumbles as I make it back to the pier.
I decide not to answer. I was racing some runner on the shore just doesn’t seem like something Coach would like to hear two months before the biggest regatta of the year.
It’s the first time I’ve qualified for the Spring Regatta. As a single sculler, my event is one of the most highly anticipated ones.
Farcliff is a Kingdom nestled between the United States and Canada, near the Great Lakes. We’re much smaller than either of our neighbors, with a population of under twenty million packed into a country the size of Vermont—but we’re fierce. The Spring Regatta brings in all the nearby colleges, including Princeton and McGill.
Th
e entire royal family attends the Spring Regatta, and the winners get their medals presented by the King himself. American schools have won the singles event for the past six years, and Coach Bernard thinks I could be the one to bring the trophy back to Farcliff.
Winning that event would not only mean I get to keep my scholarship, but it also has a healthy prize purse attached to it as well. It’s basically the pinnacle of any Farcliff athlete’s rowing career in one event.
So, yeah—I probably shouldn’t be deviating from my training to race some runner when I’m supposed to be cooling down, but I have a competitive streak and sometimes I can’t help myself.
Coach Bernard is still staring at me with those assessing eyes of his, waiting for me to answer his question. Instead, I just haul myself out of the water. My coach gives me a few notes and then heads back to the athletic building. I’m almost finished getting my shell out of the water when I see movement on the shoreline.
I look up just in time to see Olivia dangling my running shoes from the tips of her fingers. A cruel grin spreads over her glossy lips.
“Oops,” she mouths as she tosses them in the water.
“Hey! What the hell!” My feet pound on the pier and I make a quick turn, splashing through the shallows to grab my now-soaked shoes. I turn just in time to see her sniggering as she walks away.
“Real mature, Olivia,” I call out after her. She flips me off without looking back.
Glancing at the gravel-filled pathway back up to the athletic building, I let out a sigh and swap my boat shoes for my sopping wet runners. I squelch my way up to put my scull away, and then squelch some more all the way back to the locker room.
I can hear the other girls in the locker room showers, so I just grab my stuff and leave. By the time I get to my house, hot tears are stinging my eyes.
I’m cold, wet, tired, and hungry—and perhaps most pathetically of all, my feelings are hurt. As soon as I got off the water, it only took Olivia half a second to remind me that I don’t belong here. That I’m an outsider. That I’ll never be one of the elite.
That I didn’t get invited to their stupid, archaic Prince’s Ball.
Not that I care, anyway. I wouldn’t have anything to wear, and Coach has us on a strict curfew until the regatta. Going to some party would be a distraction that I really don’t need right now.
It still hurts, though.
I cry in the shower, standing under the hot stream of water until I can get a hold of myself again. By the time I’ve toweled off, I have so much pent-up energy inside me and nowhere to unleash it. I take a deep breath. I know what I need to do.
I stomp from the bathroom to the hall closet and grab my toolbox. In four strides, I’m in front of Dahlia’s door, banging on it as hard as I can. The door shakes so hard it nearly comes off its hinges.
“Dahlia!”
“Come in,” her sleepy voice says.
I burst through the door like a woman possessed. “Up.” I order. “Out of bed.”
Dahlia frowns, rubbing her eyes with her fists. Her shoulder-length hair is dyed a multitude of pastel colors from pale pink to purple to blue, and it’s splayed out across her pillow like a unicorn-colored halo.
“How was practice?” She asks, rubbing her eyes.
“It was fine.” I say. “Get up.”
She yawns, and my frustration mounts. My roommate throws her blankets off and stands up, completely naked. I blush, averting my eyes, but Dahlia doesn’t seem to care. She glides over to the chair in the corner of the room and throws her sparkly purple housecoat over her shoulders.
“What are you doing?” She asks, cocking her head to the side.
“I’m fixing your stupid bed. Where’s your friend the moaner from last night?”
She waves a hand dismissively. “He had to leave.”
“You kicked him out?” I pull the bed away from the wall and glance at my roommate.
She grins. “I told him I had an early class.”
“I wish I had your nerve, Dahlia.” I open the toolbox and find a screwdriver. “I can’t do one-night stands.”
“It’s easy. You just find someone you think is attractive, have sex, and then you say: ‘I have an early class in the morning, so…’ and leave it hanging for them to fill in the blanks.” Dahlia sits down on the chair and leans her elbow on the armrest, her head propped on her palm. “They always understand.”
I snort. “I get the concept of a one-night stand, Dahl. What I’m saying is I don’t think I could do it. I need… I don’t know. More of a connection.”
“There are different kinds of connections. Sometimes, a connection lasts an instant, like a glance at a stranger on a subway. Sometimes it lasts a night. For some people—the lucky ones—they find someone to share a connection with for a lifetime.”
“You really think that’s true?” I tighten the screws on her headboard and then flip the heavy mattress off to check the frame underneath. “I think that only happens in fairytales.”
I don’t mean to sound as bitter as I do, I swear. But I never knew my parents, and I guess they must have had a connection for at least a night. Long enough to create me. I grew up in the system, ferried from foster home to foster home, enduring all types of horrors until I was fourteen. That’s when I found the Valencias, who introduced me to crew. Once I found the Valencias and rowing, everything got a little easier.
Not easy, per se—but definitely easier.
Before that? I don’t even want to think about it. My childhood is a blur that I’d rather not bring into focus.
“The only people I know who had a lifelong connection were the Valencias,” I say. “That’s two people out of, what? The thousands that I’ve met? Out of everyone, only two people have a real connection?”
Dahlia smiles that impish little smile of hers and shrugs. “Like I said, they’re the lucky ones.”
I tighten everything on Dahlia’s bed frame and grab a plank of wood from the closet, long enough to jam across her frame to stiffen it up a little more. It’s seriously Macgyvered, but at least it doesn’t squeak anymore when I test it.
“Help me with this,” I say. “We’re moving your bed to the other wall.”
“Don’t I get a say in this?” Dahlia asks with a grin, even as she’s getting up to help. “It’s my room.”
“As much as I love listening to a sex-fest every night, the Spring Regatta is coming up, and I need to sleep.” We drag her frame across the room, and I help her put the mattress back on and re-make the bed. I take care not to touch her sheets too much—who knows what kind of bodily fluids are on there?
When I grab her bedside table to carry it over, a silver envelope falls to the ground. My eyes widen as I pick it up.
“The Prince’s Ball?” I look up with wide eyes. How did she get an invitation?
Dahlia’s naked again, hands on her hips, staring into her closet. She glances over her shoulder at me and shrugs. “Yeah, what about it?”
“How did you get an invite?”
“In the mail,” she replies, pulling on a pair of teal jeans followed by a purple sweater. It matches her hair and it makes her look completely colorblind, but the outfit still kind of works.
I take a deep breath. I love this girl to death, but sometimes she is seriously off her rocker. “I know you got it in the mail, Dahl—but why did you get one? I thought it was only the upper echelons of Farcliff society that got one of these.”
I follow her to the kitchen as she waves a hand. “My parents know the royal family. It’s not a big deal.”
I frown. “Not a big deal? You told me you were putting yourself through college without their help. That’s why you work at the restaurant, remember? Where we met?”
“Coffee?” Dahlia asks, smiling.
I take a breath to calm myself as my friend does her best to ignore my questions.
“Who even are you, Dahlia?” I look down at the envelope in my hands and my eyes widen. “Dahlia Raventhal? You didn’t tell me
you were a Raventhal. The same Raventhals that got kicked out of the Kingdom when the Queen died?”
I follow Dahlia into the kitchen as she hums to herself and rummages through our cupboards.
“Dahlia?” I say softly.
Finally, she leans her hands on the counter and takes a breath. “Yes, I’m a Raventhal.” Then, her face brightens and she turns toward me. She puts her hands out and jumps up and down in excitement.
“What?” I ask.
“This is perfect!”
“What’s perfect?”
“You! Elle! You’re perfect!”
“What are you talking about, Dahlia?”
“You can go to the Prince’s Ball instead of me. You can take my invitation and they’ll tick my name off the list. My family will think I went, and it’ll keep them happy. You’ll get a night off to enjoy yourself, which you desperately need. It’s the perfect plan!”
“Perfect is not the word I’d use to describe the nonsense that just came out of your mouth, Dahlia.”
Her smile doesn’t slip. She does a little dance and throws her arms around me. “Amazing! I can do your hair and makeup, and we’ll find something for you to wear.”
“No.”
“You’ll go, dance, feel pretty, and forget about whatever it is that makes you cry in the shower.” Her smile widens and she hugs me again.
I freeze. She heard that?
I disentangle myself from Dahlia’s arms and shake my head. “No, Dahl. Absolutely not. This is not happening. I’m not going to some stupid party by myself just because you want your name ticked off the list. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m almost six feet tall and you’re barely four foot nine. I weigh about sixty pounds more than you do. No one will ever, ever believe that I’m you.”
She waves a hand. “None of them know what I look like.”
“No.” I cross my arms over my chest.
Her smile drops, and her eyebrows draw together. A pain passes through my chest. Dahlia is the only constant source of positivity in my life, and I hate hurting her. She knows how hard it is to be a scholarship student, and how hard I work for my place on the rowing team.
Knocked Up by Prince Charming: Knocked Up Royals: Book 1 Page 2
