Kismet: A Royal Romance

by Dee Lagasse

  Kismet

  Dee Lagasse

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 Dee Lagasse

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior written consent of the author except where permitted by law.

  The characters, places, brands, and events depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Dee Lagasse

  Edited by Ellie McLove

  Proofreading by Kelli Spear

  Cover Design by Kat Savage of Savage Hart Book Services

  Formatting by Alexandria Bishop of AB Formatting

  To Jeffrey.

  No story I write could ever compare to the real love story I get to live every single day with you. I love you, Cracker Jack. Forever.

  And, for Jason “Jay” Craib.

  We missed you yesterday. We miss you today. We’ll miss you tomorrow and every single day after that too.

  I handed you my heart,

  this bloody, bruised, barely pulsing thing,

  and you held it reverently,

  eyes wide with adoration.

  you wanted it for your own,

  you vowed to care for it,

  and for the first time,

  I believed someone finally would.

  The Gift

  Kandi Steiner

  Chapter 1

  Sutton

  Boston

  November 2, 2018

  I’m ready for a glass of merlot and my bed. Not this hotel bed, as comfortable as it may be. Ugh. I just want my bed.

  And there’s still a week left in America. A week of shaking hands with politicians, hugging strangers, smiling pretty, and looking perfect knowing cameras are always out. Then, I can go home. Home to my apartment, my dog, good coffee, and having my privacy back.

  I’ve spent the last five days bouncing back and forth to almost a dozen elementary schools throughout Boston. Don’t get me wrong, I love kids. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. But, going in and out of classrooms and running assemblies for hundreds of screaming children for three days is exhausting, to say the very least.

  This trip was something I had been looking forward to for months. Clementine and I had spent hours researching, picking out the restaurants we wanted to go to, the sites we wanted to see. Neither of us had ever been to Boston, so our weekend itinerary was purposely left completely open to allow us to be tourists for the two weekends we would be there.

  And then, my mother and my aunt got wind of the trip.

  Before I had a chance to discourage their idea, they went right above me to my grandmother. Laying out their entire plan to have my cousin Estelle “tag along” during my trip. It didn’t matter that we were at a birthday dinner for my grandfather, or that there were forty people looking on as they discussed what would be best for my cousin.

  “The space will be good for Estelle,” my aunt said.

  “Sutton will be such a good influence,” my mom said.

  “Estelle will be joining Sutton on her trip,” my grandmother announced.

  Just like that, it was settled. There was no room for discussion. My girls’ weekends with my best friend were out the window in a matter of seconds. Because no one says no to the Queen of Windham.

  If I’m being honest, spending six hours of the day confined within the four walls of buildings filled with loud, hyper children is not why I need wine. Today alone, I’d been asked for my autograph, to take selfies, and even gotten a marriage proposal during snack time. Even when they’re screaming and running around like hooligans, they’re just children.

  This tour was supposed to be about my book, about promoting and spotlighting youth literacy programs and it has turned into the Estelle Alloway-Josten show.

  My book.

  It’s still mind-blowing that the picture book I wrote with my sister about a golden retriever living in Basingstoke Palace named Roxy, after my own pup, has become such a big phenomenon. The moral of the story is to have faith in yourself and believe you can do anything, but the storyline is just so silly that I wasn’t sure if the concept would catch on.

  As a royal receiver, Roxy had the world in her paws. Living the life any pup would dream of, she knows just how lucky she is, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting to do the one thing she sets her mind to – learning how to read. With a lot of hard work, determination and help from some palace pals, Roxy learns how to read. Proving you can do anything you set your mind to!

  Once the book started hitting bestseller lists, Simone and I started brainstorming. Using Roxy as our mascot, we created a reading incentive program throughout the entire country of Windham. There are quite a few reward tiers, but the grand prize is attending “a pizza party with the Queen, two princesses, and other members of the Royal Family.” Thanks to our incentive program, there has been a surge of reading in young children, even book sales are up. And, I kind of can’t wait to see my grandmother eating pizza with a bunch of five-year-olds.

  When our publisher in the United States got wind of the program, we partnered together starting with two reading centers on each coast of the country. Boston is the recipient of the east coast center and tomorrow, my team and I will head to California and do the same thing on the west coast. The incentives are a little different, but I will be the official ambassador for the program.

  This trip was supposed to be easy.

  Opening the centers, hanging out with kids, reading books, site-seeing…being my twenty-five-year-old cousin’s babysitter wasn’t part of the plan. But lo and behold, half of this trip has been about watching Estelle and making sure she isn’t making an ass out of herself…or our family.

  If it weren’t for Luke and Clementine graciously taking “babysitting” shifts with me, I already would have lost all patience with Estelle. As my private secretary, Luke isn’t required to do anything more than set up photographers, answer any media or event requests, and make sure I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be when I’m supposed to be there. His pay comes from the Alloway Family Estate and he’s not allowed to accept money from me, otherwise I would have made certain he had a big fat bonus for this trip.

  I plan on coming up with a small token of gratitude to give him, but I need to make sure they’re taken care of once we get home too. Which is why as I sit in this chair as Clementine does my hair, I’m sending an email to my grandmother’s secretary requesting an audience with my grandmother when we return to Windham.

  “How does this sound?” I ask my best friend before reading off the e-mail I just typed into my phone.

  Since the first day we met in primary school, Clementine and I have been stuck together like glue. She’s the only one that didn’t treat me like a princess. From day one, I’ve just been “her best friend Sutton” not “Princess Sutton.” Our friendship is based on just that, the friendship. Unlike most of the girls we grew up with, she didn’t get close to me pondering what she could get out of being my friend. And I’ve
never taken that for granted.

  Growing up, we did everything together. She became an extension of my family. So much so that my parents call her their “third daughter” and I have a key and an open invitation to her parents’ house.

  We even went so far as comparing our university acceptance notices to pick a school we could attend together. No surprise to anyone, Clem majored in fashion design and production and I, in reading and literacy. No sooner did we graduate, I hired her. As her boss, there was no company that could pay her as well right out of school. As her friend, I knew this was a legitimate way for us to hang out all the time, despite my crazy life.

  Which was why I had been looking forward to this trip. It was going to be a lot of work during the week, but the weekends were for fun and exploring.

  All that went out the window as soon as my cousin joined us.

  If she was someone who wanted to go to museums and soak up the endless amounts of history and maybe have a spa day or two, this could have been fun. We could have just made reservations for three instead of two. And I would have loved nothing more. But she’s not.

  So instead, we’ve all been playing “follow the bratty princess around and make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid” since we landed. Luke went with her to a Red Sox game, right after sitting on a plane for seven hours. Clementine followed her to a pub in South Boston and had to stop her from buying drinks for the entire bar the next night, knowing I had to be up at five to get ready for the book tour.

  Estelle has no schedule and no responsibility to anyone other than herself. She’s the only person she cares about too. It doesn’t matter to her what people say or how it makes our family look. There are some mornings I wake up to see her making headlines and I swear, she’s trying to get everyone’s attention. She certainly didn’t get the nickname “Duchess of Disaster” by doing an extensive amount of charity work.

  And it’s one thing to have to keep tabs on family at home. At home, I can make phone calls and pull favors. It’s something else entirely to keep track of a flighty drama queen in an entirely different country in which you know nothing and no one.

  When Estelle first started acting out like this, I understood and even sympathized. Hell, if I had walked in on my boyfriend of two years and my best friend, I would have gone a little batty too. But that was over a year ago and it’s only gotten worse with time.

  Making a few appearances in the tabloids in my early twenties myself, I know what it’s like getting caught in the whirlwind of it all. The combination of the title and the money at our fingertips makes it incredibly easy to push aside duties and start acting selfishly.

  Nothing about a yacht and a ten-thousand dollar champagne delivery says, “I’m doing my civic duty.” The media had a bloody field day with that one. My parents and my sister had tried to get through to me, and it went in one ear and out the other. I just wanted to live my life. I didn’t care about what they had to say.

  But then my grandmother called me in for tea. When she looked me in the eye and told me that I needed to take a week off, get whatever I needed to out of my system, and then come back ready to be an active part of the family because I was embarrassing her, it gutted me. I walked out of there like a dog with its tail between its legs. In all reality, it was a slap on the wrist, but it felt like a knife to my gut.

  From that moment on, I was determined to do everything I could to make her proud of me. And at the time, since I didn’t have a better idea, I decided to tag along during my dad’s annual trip to South Africa. I’d been a lot of places, but never there. I figured I’d go on a safari, spend some time on the beach, shop. After all, Granny had said, “take a vacation.”

  All it took was one trip to the lion conservation. Seven days of being there changed my entire life. I came back a completely different person with goals and a to-do list a mile long.

  The first thing on that list was to write a book with my sister, Simone. Something we had talked about doing since we were kids. And we did it. The day before we released Roxy the Royal Reading Retriever, Simone announced to the world she was pregnant.

  And once again, everything changed. There’s no one on this earth I adore more than my nephew, Tennyson, which is why I understood ninety percent of the responsibility that comes from releasing the book is now on me.

  After months of pestering from our publisher, Simone very reluctantly agreed to a two-week book tour just after Tennyson’s first birthday. Well, that was until three weeks ago when she found out she is pregnant again. Due to some complications with her last pregnancy, her doctors advised her not to travel abroad. Which led to me handling this entire book tour on my own.

  Simone could have kept Estelle in check. She would have had her attending events, going to museums, hell, probably even doing community service. My sister is a natural leader. She’s going to make an amazing queen one day.

  I’m just thankful it’s not me. At one point, not too long ago, I was third in line for the crown. As the oldest child of Jane Alloway, the reigning Queen of Windham, my mother, Sara, will take over when my grandmother abdicates due to her age or dies. Following my mother, is my sister Simone. Before she was married and had children, I was next.

  With each child my sister has, the chances of me being queen grow farther and farther away. And I’m okay with that. It’s too much pressure to be perfect. Someone, everyone, following your every move, almost as if they’re just waiting for you to mess up. And my mother and my sister have that in tenfold.

  And that’s why I would much rather spend my life supporting the crown than being the crown. Even if that does include babysitting when my grandmother demands it.

  Which is why I’m sitting in this chair with a curling wand in my hair, getting ready to spend my last Friday evening in Boston attending an event with my cousin instead of site-seeing and ending the night in bed with a bottle of wine. Clementine offered to go tonight, but she and Luke have done more than their fair share of being on ‘Estelle Watch’ and Estelle very specifically asked for me to go.

  After the baseball game last week, she managed to make friends with someone from the team or maybe it was someone’s manager…I honestly don’t know. I’d only been half listening as she rambled on about it Monday. It was five in the morning. I was getting ready to leave, she was just coming in.

  When she first asked me to go, I immediately shot it down. Until later that day when Luke realized it’s a charity event for children’s programs around Boston. Estelle managed to not only secure tickets for all of us, but convinced the hosts to give a portion of the proceeds to the new reading center.

  Luke immediately got to work, calling in his connections at the local media outlets. He updated my social media and public itinerary on my website to let people know I would be there, and Clementine did her research about the event to piece together an outfit that would fit the “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” theme.

  I know nothing about American baseball. Only that Boston’s baseball team, the Red Sox, just won the World Series. I might not know anything about baseball, but it was hard to miss the entire city coming alive during the game that secured their title. Even though the Red Sox were playing in Los Angeles, you could feel the excitement in the air, and it lingers still.

  So, it makes perfect sense that the theme of the event is celebrating the beloved team, I just hope no one asks me a single thing about the sport. Especially anything about the player whose jersey I’m wearing. I can just see it now,

  “And, why did you choose to wear Cambridge’s jersey?”

  “Well, see, my assistant/fashion guru picked it out and, yeah, that’s all I got.”

  Normally, I would have done my research, found a player that stood for great things, impacted the community in a positive light, but I just didn’t have time for that in between everything else I was doing. So, when Clem handed it to me, I took the tags off, put it on and sat down, letting Clem do what she does best.

  A half hour of makeup fo
llowed by twenty and counting minutes of hair curling, and I am already ready to come home, or well, to the hotel, and crawl into bed. Just as Clementine takes the curling iron out of my hair for the last time, there’s a loud, repetitive banging on the suite door.

  Smirking, Clem looks at me and asks, “You ready for this?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” I shrug before closing my eyes as I inhale and exhale, preparing myself to deal with the person on the other side of the door.

  As soon as Clementine opens it, the Duchess of Disaster herself comes barging in. Brushing past Clementine as if she’s not even there, Estelle helps herself to the bowl of mixed berries next to me.

  “Ya, go right ahead, help yourself, Estelle,” I deadpan as my eyes all but roll into the back of my head. “And don’t worry about body checking Clementine as you passed her. I’m sure she’s fine. No apology necessary.”

  “I still don’t understand why you didn’t hire an actual professional stylist,” Estelle shakes her head, shooting a look of disgust over to where Clementine is still standing by the doorway.

  Opening my mouth to tell her off, Clementine shakes her head, grinning. The glimmering spark of excitement in her eyes tells me all I need to know.

  This isn’t going to end well.

  “One of these days, Princess Estelle,” Clementine starts, sarcasm dripping as she uses Estelle’s given title. “Someone is going to put you in your place, and I hope I’m there to see you fall on your ass.”

  My cousin’s face twists into disbelief as she turns to me expectantly. She’s assuming I will jump to her defense because that’s what everyone else does. But when you’re right, you’re right, and I have no kind of rebuttal for Clementine right now.