The Prince: The Young Royals 1

by S. A. Gordon

  She realized, of course, that she hadn’t had the same reservation about David. Maybe it was because he was so famous—she felt like all of his bad behavior would have been exposed already. That was an illogical belief, but she hadn’t had any doubt that David was who he’d seemed when they’d met on the beach. For all she knew, though, he was an asshole who had a smooth routine developed to keep his ex-lovers quiet. Maybe he had a whole bank account devoted to paying them off so they didn’t squawk about his callous ways. Maybe that same bank account paid off newspaper editors so they didn’t expose him either. Maybe the man she’d met was a cipher—the version of himself that David was comfortable presenting to the world, but in actuality not a person at all. And here she was, thinking about him again.

  Sure am, she wrote back to Liam. Just finishing laundry. Ready in 30 minutes.

  She pressed send and dropped the phone in her bag, then leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling.

  *

  “So, dinner with Liam?” Lisa said when Caitlin arrived home with her laundry.

  “Yup,” Caitlin said, her face in neutral as she began sorting her clothes into different piles on the kitchen bench. She didn’t really want to answer too many of Lisa’s questions. She’d managed to keep the whole David thing to herself and she also felt a bit protective of the Liam thing … whatever it was.

  “So it’s going well, huh?” Lisa walked around in front of Caitlin so that Caitlin had to look at her.

  “I guess.” She kept sorting and folding.

  Lisa frowned. “Y’know, you never used to be this shut-up shop.”

  Caitlin looked up. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean … before you met Liam you used to tell me stuff. Now you don’t tell me anything.”

  Before she’d met Liam … the coincidental timing of meeting Liam and meeting David had been very useful for Caitlin to keep her secret. She had one piece of news to pin everything on, and it seemed to be working.

  Caitlin smiled. “There’s nothing to tell. Honestly, Lise. We’re dating. That’s it.”

  “But he’s gorgeous,” Lisa said, faking a swoon. “I’ve only seen photos but I can tell. How can you resist tearing his clothes off every time you see him?”

  “How do you know I’m not doing just that?” Caitlin said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Because you just don’t seem that interested, is all.” Lisa fiddled with Caitlin’s laundry and Caitlin tapped her hand to make her stop.

  “I mean, he comes around to pick you up and you won’t even let him up here,” Lisa continued. “So I’m pretty darn sure you’re not letting him in anywhere else either. Know what I’m saying?”

  Caitlin sighed. “Yes, Lisa, I know what you’re saying.” She rolled her eyes. “You know, not everyone wants to get laid straightaway. Maybe I just want to be sure about him first.”

  “Why aren’t you sure now?” Lisa made a noise of exasperation then smiled wickedly. “I bet he has a really big cock,” she said.

  “What?” Caitlin exclaimed, her cheeks tinged with red.

  “He’s so … confident. Only men with big cocks are that confident.”

  “Oh my god … why on earth would you think that?”

  “Because they know they’ve, like, beaten all the other men. They won the prize. They’re the alphas. Or whatever.” Lisa walked over to the fridge and opened it to retrieve a can of soft drink. “Don’t tell me you don’t know about this stuff,” she said.

  “Uh … no.” Caitlin picked up her laundry. “Anyway, I have to get going. He’ll be here in five.”

  “Wear something slutty!” Lisa called out as Caitlin walked to her room. “Maybe you’ll get in the mood.”

  “Uh-huh,” Caitlin muttered as she closed her door.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Caitlin’s weeks passed in a blur; the magazine’s deadlines were constant and structured, and she tethered herself to them like they were an anchor for normal life—life without David in her brain all the time. There was a lot to be said for routine; it was a good distraction. Copy arrived, copy was laid out by the designer, copy was cut to fit. One issue got put to bed and then the next. In among it all there was office gossip and the odd sample from the beauty editor, a thank-you for picking up some minor mistake that would, however minor, have cost the magazine an advertiser. Sometimes Caitlin had the sense of not knowing where she was headed in her career but she hoped that if she just kept working—hard and consistently—that it would pay off. She’d been raised on such a belief and even though her parents had never achieved anything too glamorous in the way of work, they had built a life and bought a home and raised children and taken holidays overseas. Maybe that’s all Caitlin should hope for; perhaps it was greedy to want more than that. She was an ordinary girl, when it came down to it. She had no special talents. Liam kept telling her she was beautiful but that wasn’t a talent—that was just the luck of the draw. And she wasn’t that convinced about it anyway.

  In the odd spare moment, Caitlin would think about David, except now she wondered how she could ever have thought that she had a chance with him. He needed someone extraordinary to fit his extraordinary life. He needed someone who knew how to be glamorous. Caitlin could pull herself together all right but glamor eluded her. And he needed someone who could meet kings and queens and not be nervous; who would know what to say to lords and ladies and captains of industry and heads of churches. Failing that, someone whose charm made those other requirements moot. Someone like his mother. She was definitely not like that. She had no natural charm to speak of; she couldn’t captivate people just by gazing at them with her bright blue eyes. So she needed the other things, and she didn’t have them.

  “You don’t need anything extra,” Liam had told her once. “You’re stunning the way you are.”

  She always appreciated his compliments. And she appreciated the way he looked after her. He took care of everything: he chose where they went to dinner and he picked her up each time. Sometimes he even bought her clothes and asked her to wear them the next time he saw her. He hardly ever said a critical word—and when he did it was usually because she hadn’t been quite perfect enough in a given situation. But, overall, he was so far removed from Matthew that she sometimes wondered if it was an act: how could one man be so destructive and another be so supportive? How could men be made that way?

  Three months with Liam had given her enough proof that he could be trusted. He’d always kept his word. She hadn’t caught him in any kind of lie—and she was always alert to lies, given that they tended to be the hallmark of someone with a manipulative personality. Liam turned up when and where he said he was going to turn up. And she did the same.

  Still, she wasn’t quite ready to make love to him. It was clear that he wanted her to—he’d progressed from asking politely to nagging regularly—but she’d told him that she wanted it to be perfect, just as he deserved, and she still needed to feel a bit more secure about their relationship. She’d told him about Matthew—not all of it, just that she thought she’d rushed into things with him and she’d regretted it. She hadn’t anticipated that Liam would react quite so jealously when she’d mentioned Matthew’s name, but she supposed that his reaction was normal. She didn’t really know—she hadn’t dated enough men to be able to talk about them to other men. But jealousy was meant to be a sign of how much someone wanted someone else, wasn’t it? She was sure she’d read, or heard, that somewhere.

  The thing was, she wasn’t jealous of Julia. That weekend in the Hamptons she’d been surprised to see her—maybe even a little shocked—but Caitlin realized that she hadn’t been jealous, just surprised. And whenever Liam had mentioned Julia, or Ingrid had talked about her whenever she and Caitlin met up, Caitlin had felt nothing. Not even curiosity. Shouldn’t she be jealous, though? Shouldn’t she be worried that this perfect man had a past? And for all that Liam told her she was perfect, if she’d made a list detailing the perfect man—if she’d listed looks, body
shape, personality, manners—Liam couldn’t have come closer to satisfying all of the criteria. But she wasn’t satisfied. Not by a long shot. And she knew that she had no one but herself to blame.

  *

  “Caitlin Meadows,” she said as she answered her phone to a number that had appeared as “blocked.” But wasn’t everyone’s number blocked nowadays? Half of her friends kept their numbers concealed just for kicks.

  “Hello,” said a voice she’d heard in her dreams.

  Caitlin inhaled sharply, not daring to believe.

  “Who is this?” she said tentatively.

  “Caitlin, it’s David.”

  She exhaled and felt suddenly incredibly shy.

  “Caitlin?”

  She cleared her throat. “David who?” she said with more confidence than she felt and she was rewarded with a chuckle.

  “Nice try,” he said. “But I understand why you’d hesitate.”

  Caitlin stayed silent, trying to control her breathing, which threatened to accelerate.

  “Caitlin?”

  “I …” She clenched and unclenched her fists, realizing that her palms were clammy. “Why are you calling? Now?”

  “I realize it’s been a while.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said with a note of sarcasm that she immediately regretted. The man’s father was seriously ill. She had no right to be peeved at him.

  “I have a good reason. Reasons, actually.”

  She felt even more contrite. “I know,” she said softly. “I just didn’t think I knew you well enough to contact you. Especially …” She swallowed.

  “Especially as I said I’d call and then didn’t?”

  “Um …”

  “You were right to do what you did. For one thing, they make me get a new phone number every few months so it could have changed when you tried. And … I was in no shape to think about anything other than my family, so I wouldn’t have been much use even if you had contacted me.”

  She smiled and it was a loopy, daydreamy thing that she hoped no one else could see.

  “How is your father?” she said.

  “He’s …” She could hear David take a deep breath. “Not that well. And thank you for asking. But it doesn’t seem to have been one of those strokes that he’ll recover from. So we are all interested in maintenance. How can we maintain his wellbeing, such as it is? Of course, it’s complicated by the fact that the man can’t leave his job.”

  “So he wouldn’t …” She paused, unsure if she should even be talking about this with him.

  “Abdicate? No. He thinks that’s for Europeans and he is of the belief that the United Kingdom is steadfastly not part of Europe.” She heard him sigh. “Plus, he thinks it’s his vocation. His duty to God.”

  “So he’s religious?”

  “As the head of the Church of England, he’d want to be, love,” David said lightly.

  “Oh—of—of course.” She felt so stupid.

  “I don’t expect you to know everything about my family.” He paused. “I don’t know everything about yours.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say, so she waited, hoping he’d say something instead.

  “So you’re wondering why I’m calling,” he said at last.

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “I am.”

  “Now that we’ve run through my family problems.” His tone was hard to read.

  “I don’t mind talking about your family problems,” she said meekly.

  “No—that’s one of the reasons why I’ve thought of you. You’re incredibly easy to talk to.”

  She blushed and was glad he couldn’t see it.

  “Which makes it sound like I just wanted to call you to whinge. But that’s not true. I’m calling,” he said, and she was aware of how low and smooth his voice was, “because I’m coming back to New York to see some of the people from my sister’s charities who were left in the lurch when I departed. I’d love to pick up where we left off, even if things are a little more complicated than they were. And presuming you’d like to, of course.” He sounded unsure in that last sentence, and she found it charming.

  Caitlin took a deep breath. “I’d love to see you, of course,” she said.

  “Great,” he said quickly.

  “But, David—” She looked around, realizing she’d said his name out loud and that someone from the office might have heard, but no one seemed to react. “I have a boyfriend. So it’s not going to be picking up exactly where we left off.”

  “Of course you do,” he said, and she could hear bravado and pragmatism mixed in his voice. “I was foolish to presume otherwise. A woman like you doesn’t stay available for long.”

  “It’s not that. I just … We had such a good date, I thought.”

  “We did.”

  “And when I didn’t hear from you—once I knew why—I thought I’d never see you again. I thought you’d just be in England forever and it’s not like I was going to fly there just on the off chance that there might be another good date.”

  He coughed once. “A fair assumption.”

  “So when Liam—”

  “Liam? That rather anxious chap from the beach?”

  “Yes, him.”

  Caitlin could have sworn she heard David chuckle.

  “All right, go on,” he said.

  “Well, Liam asked me out. And things went from there.”

  “So you’re keen on this Liam?”

  “He’s my boyfriend.”

  “One doesn’t necessarily imply the other,” he said so softly she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.

  Caitlin had nothing to say in reply.

  “I’ll tell you what,” David continued, “just meet me for a drink. It would be divine to see you and we know we get along, right? So we’ll have a good chat and that would be lovely for me. I’m aching to have some company that doesn’t have a title in front of their name.”

  “All right,” Caitlin said hesitantly, feeling like she was doing something wrong to Liam and so very right for herself. “When?”

  “Well, I was going to say Friday but I imagine Liam has a claim on that.”

  “No, I—I can manage Friday. He’s going away for the weekend.” She swallowed.

  “And leaving you unguarded? Silly man. Someone might run away with you.”

  She blushed furiously.

  “Are you blushing?” he said teasingly.

  “Yes!” she squeaked.

  “Wonderful,” he said, laughing. “See, you’ve made me feel better already. I hope that at the very least I can give you an enjoyable evening on Friday.”

  “All right,” she said, more confidently.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said. “Keep your phone handy.”

  “All right,” she said again. “See you then.”

  “I’m looking forward to it, Caitlin Meadows.”

  “Likewise, David …” She stalled, realizing she didn’t know what to call him. Luckily, he laughed.

  “David Wales,” he said. “You can call me David Wales.”

  “Not out loud in this office I can’t.”

  He laughed even more loudly. “A fair point. See you soon.”

  “So long.”

  Then the call was over. But Caitlin had a feeling that topsy-turviness was just beginning.

  *

  Caitlin lay her head on the rim of the bathtub, in full knowledge of how rare bathtubs could be in New York apartments and how lucky she was—her friends had told her so many times, and some had even asked to come over to use the tub. But it was her sanctuary and she couldn’t imagine sharing it—Lisa didn’t like baths, so even she never used it. Caitlin would retreat to the bath when she needed time to herself, or time to think. She wasn’t given to the scented-oil, lit-candle bath experience, but she would occasionally pour herself a glass of wine and sip it as her skin slowly wrinkled. Tonight was one such occasion.

  She wasn’t going to tell anyone about seeing David. She hadn’t lied about Liam being away—he w
as heading off on a three-day ski weekend to Vermont, leaving late Friday afternoon. She didn’t know anyone else who had such flexible working hours but by now Caitlin knew that the rich were different—Liam’s life had all sorts of flexibility that hers did not. Even Ingrid—whose family was well off, if not on Liam’s family’s level—seemed to be able to set her own rules. Caitlin guessed that if someone didn’t need their job to pay their bills, they could be blasé about it; and that confidence—about getting by, about one’s life not essentially changing without the job—seemed to intimidate superiors, who would let such people get away with a lot more than anyone else. It was the sort of power Caitlin aspired to have: power over her own fate, really. The power to pick and choose what she wanted to do in her life. She wondered how to get it. And she realized that David didn’t have it. He had a certain amount of freedom thanks to his wealth and status, but there were limits to what he could and couldn’t do with his life. It was such a paradox: he should have the most power and freedom of anyone in the world, yet responsibility—duty—clipped his wings. Not that he seemed to mind. Maybe she should ask him about it.

  Caitlin grinned and took another sip of wine. She was going to see him again; she couldn’t actually believe it. Before Friday, though, she’d have to see Liam a couple of times and she’d have to behave as if everything was normal—as though she wasn’t increasingly excited about seeing the man she had believed gone from her life. The man who seemed to enjoy her company while she was busy lusting after his face and body. Did that make her shallow? Did it make her more like the man in the equation, whereas David was behaving like a woman would—wanting affection and friendship? Maybe that meant he actually wasn’t attracted to her. Maybe he just wanted a shoulder to cry on.

  Stop it, she commanded herself. He kissed you.

  She smiled again at the memory of his lips on hers, of how she’d felt when he’d kissed her. It hadn’t been her brain responding to that kiss—she wasn’t kissing him and telling herself that this was a handsome, important man who was kissing her. It had been her body that had melted, making her knees weak and her groin grow hot. She blushed at the memory of how that had felt, because it had never happened to her before. Not with Matthew, certainly. And not with Liam. No other man had ever caused her brain to shut off so that she could just be present in that moment of feeling his flesh so close, of touching him, kissing him. That was a real connection. And that was why she was excited about seeing him again.