Almost My Prince

by Miranda King

  * * * *

  Almost My Prince

  Copyright © 2014 by Miranda King

  Book Layout: JT Formatting

  Cover Art: Angela Waters

  Trademark and Logo Designs: Modern Web Studios

  Rich and Royal Romance® is a Registered Trademark. All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014921619

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please use the contact listed on mirandaking.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  The author claims no affiliation with Harvard University. Although the author recognizes there are many types of educational techniques, the Wellborn Collaboration Technique is fictionalized and not intended to be based off of any real, legitimate technique.

  All trademarks and registered trademarks are owned by their respective companies and denoted by proper capitalization of that company and/or brand. The author claims no connection nor ownership and no infringement is intended.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Chapter One - Secrets and Tabloids

  Chapter Two - What to Do With a Prince

  Chapter Three - The Proposal?

  Chapter Four - Garbage Day

  Chapter Five - The Arrival

  Chapter Six - All Fired Up

  Chapter Seven - A New Lesson

  Chapter Eight - A Matter of Principal

  Chapter Nine - Guys and Dolls

  Chapter Ten - Girl Talk

  Chapter Eleven - Whatever!

  Chapter Twelve - Sassy Little Thing

  Chapter Thirteen - A “Friendly” Tantrum

  Chapter Fourteen - Chocolate Kisses

  Chapter Fifteen - Gossip Gwen

  Chapter Sixteen - Girl Talk

  Chapter Seventeen - Saints and Sinners Masquerade

  Chapter Eighteen - The Naughty Nook

  Chapter Nineteen - Sass Bares All

  Acknowledgments

  For D,

  Nothing without you, fact.

  For Mom and Dad,

  I love you, always.

  For Jessie and John,

  I owe you, forever.

  For Cindy and Randy,

  Strength that inspires, amazing.

  This book officially brings my doll collection “out of the closet.” For years, I’ve stowed away my dolls whenever company has come to visit. No more. I love fashion design—the creativity, the details, the tailoring—and the Fashion Royalty family of dolls allows me to experience that on a miniature scale.

  Thank you, Integrity Toys, Inc.

  Thank you, Jason Wu.

  For more information on Fashion Royalty dolls and the entire line of Integrity Toys, Inc. products, please see their website:

  http://www.integritytoys.com/page/about_us/our_company

  For more information on Jason Wu and his fashion designs, please see his website:

  http://www.jasonwustudio.com

  Please know that I am in no way affiliated nor connected with Integrity Toys, Inc. or Jason Wu.

  For pictures from my own private collection, please see my website:

  http://mirandaking.com/

  “The Playboy Prince Has Another Royal ‘Plaything’”

  -Gossip Weekly

  “Can an American Tame The Playboy Prince?”

  -Royal Rumor Report

  “Was he worth it?” Mom’s voice dripped like hot butter, smooth, yet sizzled on impact.

  I was toast. She knew it. I knew it. Hell, even Granny knew it.

  “It’s not what you think.” I dropped the words out like crumbs—nowhere near appeasing her.

  “Hmm…” The texture of Mom’s voice could’ve been designed by Prada. Mom glided past me and perched herself on Granny’s clear-covered, plastic-protected sofa. Mom tapped the vinyl beside her twice. My summons.

  I slumped down next to her and tucked my bare feet underneath me. I wiggled my toes against the plastic creases, each line created after Grandpa had died, after Granny had covered the sofa, after the clock had struck midnight on a fairytale.

  Granny never seemed bothered by all the scratches in the warped plastic, but they sure did chafe against the butt—excuse me, Mom’s in the room—I meant derrière.

  Mom had her own kind of plastic cover, an artificial barrier that irritated something between us—and I didn’t need to wiggle my toes to feel it.

  “Perhaps there’s more to the story between you and the Crown Prince.” She lifted my chin with the manicured curve of her nail, and she scanned my eyes with her own. “Did he actually ask you to marry him?” She furrowed her brow, yet her lips curled up like a cat waiting for cream.

  My stomach curdled with something sour. “It all happened so fast,” I explained, as much to myself as I did to her. “I can’t really say.” And I really couldn’t.

  “It’s not that hard.” Mom rose from the sofa and towered over me. “Either yes or no.” Mom gestured her hands like Granny did when she compared cantaloupes at the grocery, but I imagined it was more how Mom compared shoes at Barneys. “Is that too hard of a question for a Harvard grad?”

  That’s the trouble with graduating from Harvard—it always gets used against you. I mean, it’s Harvard. One of the hardest places to get into on the freaking planet.

  Most people wish they could have gotten into Harvard, and putting down a Harvard grad is like saying to themselves, “Hey, I’m smarter than a Harvard grad, and I could have gone to Harvard if I’d really wanted to.”

  Nope, doubt it. All Talk, No Action—that’s not Harvard material. Harvard instilled within me a deep longing to make a difference, to sacrifice, to do something good.

  So far my contribution to the world had been helping to increase tabloid sales and raising TMZ’s ratings.

  Everyone had to start somewhere.

  “Start answering my questions, Sassandra.” Mom had mortgaged all her patience to chase the American dream. “I’m your mother and I have a right to know.”

  “Leave her be,” Granny said to Mom. “Every woman is entitled to her own secrets. I’d say you have a few of your own.” That shut Mom up.

  Granny flounced along past us and into the kitchen with her fuzzy purple slippers that clashed with her brassy red, drugstore-dyed hair. Don’t even get me started on that poodle perm.

  Granny winked at me and poured only a splash of coffee in her mug—the one labeled “Yard Sale Queen.” She capped her cup with sweet creamer and swirled, à la Stevie Nicks, about her kitchen routine in her floral-covered muumuu. “I’d keep a few secrets of my own for that man—he’s a total DDG.”

  “Drop Dead Gorgeous,” I added for Mom’s sake.

&n
bsp; Granny and I had our own code words, like we’d slip in the word “hair” during a conversation whenever we needed to talk privately. We’d gotten out of some pretty hairy situations together, and judging by the way Mom had banged on our apartment door this morning—yep, it’d be one helluva bad hair day.

  I intercepted Granny before she could hand a full dose of black coffee to Mom—that woman needed an injection of caffeine about as much as a hyperactive kid needed a king-sized candy bar before bedtime.

  “I don’t care if he is a—what did you call him?” Mom wrinkled her nose. “DDG.” Mom rifled through her I’m-expensive-look-at-me leather handbag—don’t bother asking which one since there’d be a new one next week—and produced a stack of magazines. “I care about the tabloids.” She strewed some on the counter. “Have you seen these?”

  “For the love of dolls, you know we haven’t, Isabel,” Granny said, stirring melted chocolate chips into her oatmeal on the stove. “Say what you’re going to say, so we can get this over with.”

  She spared no glance for the tabloids stacked on the counter. To her, tabloids were cigarettes for the mind: Addictive and poisonous.

  Mom said something to Granny, but I had tuned out their conversation once I’d seen those covers.

  My face—and more—filled all four corners, and so did his.

  I gulped. The prince had winked when the press asked about me, and now everyone wanted to know if an engagement was soon to follow. That’s the real reason Mom had come—the press had gotten involved, and Mom had to make sure she knew more than they did. Despite the risks involved for her in coming here, she’d gone straight to the source: Me.

  Mom could grill me on this better than any prosecuting attorney—she should’ve been one. She’d tell you that herself—and had told it to me at least a million times. She’d Perry Mason me until I couldn’t take anymore of her heat. I’d watched it before, and I didn’t care for reruns.

  I slid away to a tangle of tattered curtains and shimmied open the rickety window. Thick, hot air rolled over me—the same way it did with an opened oven door. A generous helping of humidity—Southern style—basted my skin.

  And dozens of camera flashes seared into my vision. The paparazzi again.

  Now what did they want?

  “Sass: Tabloid Vixen or Future Queen?”

  -Gossip Weekly

  “Is Sass Too Sexy To Be Queen?”

  -Royal Rumor Report

  The paparazzi shot questions at me like target practice.

  No, more intense—this wasn’t practice. This wasn’t the just-cause-I’m-bored-with-my-own-life, nosy-neighbor type of questioning either. This was a full-scale attack launched by every media outlet in the world to get answers.

  But you’d think questions from forty or so trained journalists wouldn’t sound like they were written mostly by giggly, teenaged girls.

  “Where’s the ring?”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  “How does it feel to be almost a princess?”

  “Is there a rival?”

  Each question pummeled into me. Bam, bam, bam, bam—and oh, man, here comes another one.

  “Are you his mistress?”

  All while the cameras bombarded me from every angle.

  Mom could be a spitfire at times, but she was nothing like this full-blown blitzkrieg.

  Out of the flame and into the fire.

  The suspended sun turned its high beams into my window and reminded me of the inquisition light police used to question suspects. My eyes burned under the intensity. My nerves sparked and misfired. All the arteries leading into my brain were building up to something, like they’d been lit by a fuse.

  It was that moment I’d seen in the movies when an actress sweats trying to get a car started because something’s about to explode, and she’s got to get out of there.

  Come on, come on, come on! Get away from the window… Now!

  And yet, I stalled. I wasn’t going to run away from the cameras. I cranked up my hand and waved to the reporters like I was a natural-born Kate Middleton—except I didn’t have brunette hair, except I didn’t stand nearly as tall, except I didn’t even own anything in my closet that wasn’t a hand-me-down.

  But I did have a prince—almost.

  Now what to do with him.

  I didn’t want a prince. I wanted to play a part in helping children grow into adults, in helping struggling families, and… okay, now I sounded like a Miss “Something” pageant contestant.

  Next, I’d say I wanted to cure cancer—of course, who wouldn’t? But how seriously should anyone take me when I’d pursued a special degree concentration in Education, not Biochemistry?

  Sometimes people said things only because they thought that’s what you wanted to hear—not that they meant it. Mom fell for that trick every day, at least since I’d been born.

  Unlike my father, I didn’t intend to be All Talk, No Action.

  But the kind of “action” I desired wasn’t with The Playboy Prince, aka Michael Diamond, the Crown Prince of Maravista, a country along the Mediterranean between Italy and the French Riviera, near Monaco.

  He was All Talk—no ring.

  Until…

  I couldn’t think straight, and all this media attention wasn’t helping.

  Mom edged into my peripheral vision. “Hold on, Howard,” she said into her cellphone and bolted over to me at the window.

  “Get away from there, Sassandra.” Mom jerked the curtains to cover me and tugged the window down—all while clutching her cellphone.

  Mom’s cellphone was her portable oxygen tank—she couldn’t breathe without it.

  “Gawd, what were you thinking posing for the cameras in that?” She twisted her finger around the thin, pink cami strap at my shoulder. “This is not princess material.”

  She let the strap snap back against my skin. “You don’t need to look like any more of a call girl than they already think you are.” Mom modulated her voice the way the press, politicians, and even the First Lady spoke—level as a board.

  But in Mom’s case, I had to watch out for the splinters.

  Mom swept the blond hair off her shoulder and lifted her cellphone to her ear in one well-practiced move. “Howard, this is a media nightmare.” No emotion, simply the foregone conclusion. She paused, and with her hand over the phone, instructed me, “Get dressed.” She pivoted her back away from me and continued, “Do you think you can get your people to…” Her voice trailed off as she headed into the hallway.

  “For the love of dolls, Sass, what happened?” Granny emerged from the kitchen, a gooey-coated spatula in hand ready to do battle.

  “I’ve just auditioned for the next Victoria’s Secret catalog.”

  Granny quizzed her brows, but I responded by snatching her chocolate-covered spatula and taking a lick. The overcooked chocolate had turned bitter and I burned my tongue—the rawness swelled alongside the rest of my mistakes that morning.

  Hells bells—a vocab word I’d picked up from the rock band AC/DC, compliments of Grandpa—I’d slept in only my underwear because of the heat wave last night. Pale pink, the color of skin.

  Jagged pain shot down my head like a lightning strike. Oh, what had I done? I must’ve photographed practically nude to the cameras from a third-story apartment window. And I’d waved! Dear Lord, I’d waved like one of those women in Amsterdam’s red light district!

  What would my new students think of me come Monday? And their parents?

  A storm fury of pain exploded in my head, followed by a piercing drumroll of thunder ringing in my ears.

  Hells bells.

  Granny guided me to the sofa and cradled my head on her lap. Grandpa had had these same headaches, and Granny knew what to do.

  I clenched tight to the spatula when a spasm erupted. Granny drew the spatula away from my white-knuckled grip and relaxed my hand.

  She then feathered her own hands through my hair and circled her fingers around my temples.
Around and around and around. My head pounded, yet each of her velvety caresses absorbed some brunt of the pain.

  Over and over and over. Whenever pain’s wrath threatened to surge, Granny’s strokes fought with it, shepherding its sharp clutch to the fringes of my mind.

  She calmed the restless ringing in my ears with the rhythmic vibrations of her chest from her hummed rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” She lulled me into a state in between sleep and consciousness, a place distant from pain, and I closed my eyes.

  Mom’s muffled voice sounded so far away, and yet I felt her tuck a pillow into the hollow created by my shoulders against Granny’s lap.

  I curled into a fetal position so Mom would sit beside me on the sofa. My bare feet brushed against her cool silk skirt. I arched my toes against her—just to make sure she was really there. She patted the calf of my leg with two measured taps, and then the balance of the sofa shifted back to Granny.

  Was she leaving?

  Zip-zip. Flip-flap. Clankety-clack. Those were Mom’s “fussy” sounds. The ones she made to retouch her makeup before she left to go back to DC, to go back to her glamorous life, to go away from me.

  Click-click. That was the lipstick.

  Next came the perfume: Hideaway. From an ultra-exclusive Paris designer, eight hundred dollars a bottle and flown in direct by Air Force Two.

  No, I’m not giving away any national secrets here. She’d tell you that herself—and had told me at least a billion times.

  Spritz-Spritz. Once the Hideaway hit the air, it would take about twenty minutes or so before it achieved its full effect—this arresting scent of tuberose, a hint of gardenias, fresh cut grass, a breeze drifting with something sweet, and somehow the cleanness of just fallen rain.

  Wherever this scent was born, I could live there forever. Whenever Mom wore this scent, I wanted to stay beside her forever.