by Imani King
"Wait until I'm gone," Killian instructed me. "I'm leaving one of my security guys to drive you home, he's right outside the door. Just give me a minute before you leave, OK?"
I nodded. At the last minute, just before the doors shut behind him, he popped his head back into the elevator, looked right at me and said: "You're the loveliest person I've ever met, Eva James."
And then he was gone. And I was alone, overwhelmed, turned on, completely and utterly dazzled by the force of nature that was Prince Killian. A few minutes later, when the security man knocked on the elevator door and asked me if I was ready, I still wasn't entirely sure the whole night hadn't been a dream.
Killian:
"Dan only," I snapped at my security team waiting outside the tower, not eager to make conversation or deal with anyone I didn't know on the ride home.
"Sir? The weeknight protocol is –"
"I don't care about the fucking protocol! Dan only!"
"Yes, sir."
I collapsed into the back seat of the car and leaned my head back against the leather headrest, exhaling heavily, wondering if I'd just made the biggest mistake of my life in refusing to take Eva home and give her what she so clearly needed. Goddamn, she looked so good in that dress, the fabric draping over her breasts so nicely I'd been hard the second I saw her at Capital Airport. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth against the urge to change my mind, to call her and tell her I was just kidding, that she needed to come back to Pritchard Palace with me right away.
"Home?" Dan asked, adjusting the rearview mirror and starting the engine.
"Yes," I replied. "Home."
The next few days were a blur. I gave two speeches, one to an wildlife charity and another to a veteran's organization. I also did a press conference at both. On top of that there was the usual meetings at my offices in the Capital, working out itineraries for scheduled trips abroad and discussing the expansion of my own conservation project, the one focused mainly on endangered species in Rhenland.
And alongside all those things, all the regular duties of my life, there was Eva. Always there in the back of my mind even as I spoke about the experiences of veterans or the need to do more to preserve the Rhennish wildcat. People noticed, too. Even the press noticed. There was one headline in the Capital's daily tabloid that described me as the 'Distracted Prince' after I stumbled over a few lines in a speech and then knocked my notes off the podium. I called Eva at work from the car that night and told her to check out the story.
"You did that," I told her disapprovingly as she read the headline out loud.
"Did I?" She asked, amused. "As far as I know I was at work this morning, not forcing you to throw your papers all over the room in front of the cameras."
"Well I didn't say you physically did it. I was just thinking about you, and whenever I think about you I start tripping over my own feet and lose the ability to speak in sentences. It's a good trick, Eva."
She laughed and oh, God, hearing Eva laugh at one of my stupid jokes was literally the high point of my day. "You should see me," she countered. "I feel like I'm about to explode all the time. I just want to talk to my girlfriends about this, but I know I can't really do that. So I just walk around all day like a bomb about to go off."
Damn. She was perfect. The universe had designed a perfect woman to torment me with. I say 'torment' because underneath everything, there was a knowledge I'd been refusing to face ever since that day on Cambridge Street when I first laid eyes on Eva James. And that knowledge was that there was a certain line for me, a point beyond which I could not go with women – with any woman, regardless of how I felt about her – without getting the approval of my parents. And not the way a sixteen year old school girl gets approval from her parents, either. That girl's parents are just trying to make sure the boy they're approving is good for their daughter, that his intentions are good. My parents are the living embodiment of the state, of Rhenland itself. They live lives of immense privilege and wealth. They also lead lives that are in no way their own, and that's the world in which my sister and I were both raised from birth. My duty is to Rhenland. Everything I do, everything I will do, must be for the good of the state, and not for the good of myself.
Of course I kicked back against the constraints a little, the way many young members of royal families do. But I never truly questioned the way I was raised on any deep or serious level. It was what it was. Until Eva. Until I found myself entirely ignoring the fact that even as I stupidly imagined various shining futures with her, I knew it could never happen, not in reality. Thinking about it made me angry, so I solved that problem by not thinking about it.
It was at lunch with Charlotte that the issue raised its head unexpectedly, when she asked me how Tristan was doing.
"Is he still mooning over that little Spanish girl?" My sister asked, sipping her tea. "I don't know why he's being so stupid."
"Well that's a little harsh," I replied, taking an entirely different tack to the one I usually took when it came to Tristan and his doomed foreign affair.
Charlotte is the smart one in the family. She looked up from her tea and caught my eye. "Harsh? Where's that coming from? Tristan knows as well as anyone that he was never going to be allowed to marry someone like that. He should never even have spoken to her, let alone fallen in love."
"I don't know," I mused, trying to choose my words carefully because Charlotte is like a goddamned bloodhound when she gets a scent. "I just think it's harsh, is all. Who gets to choose who they love? You didn't choose to get caught making out with that stable boy when you were at Marlton, did you?"
Marlton was the all-girls private school Charlotte had attended as a teenager. And I knew that the incident with the stable boy, reported in the media as a meaningless, drunken dalliance between a couple of dumb kids, had been more than that. And Charlotte knew I knew, we'd just always had an unspoken agreement never to talk about it. She eyed me suspiciously.
"This is about that American girl, isn't it? That's why you're bringing up ancient history. Don't sit there all wide-eyed, Killian, do you think I didn't hear about her?"
There's a childhood dynamic between my older sister and I, one that has survived beyond childhood itself, and that is my tendency to get defensive when she calls me on something –especially if she's right.
"What?" I asked, offended. "No, this isn't about Eva – what are you talking about? Why are you even bringing that up? Who told you?"
My sister sighed. "Why do you do this, Killian? It is about her. I know it and so do you, and it doesn't matter who told me. Apparently you didn't make much of an effort to hide your infatuation, either, so I don't know why you're getting tetchy with me. I'm not our parents, you know. I'm not going to give you a lecture. I just hope you know what you're doing – for your sake and for hers. It's not fair to string people along, and it's also not fair to leave them open to media attention when they have no idea how to handle it."
'Infatuation.' Charlotte always knew what words to use to get under my skin and make me feel like I was eight years old again.
"You don't know anything about it," I told her. "It's – it's not even a – it's not a thing, Charlotte. We haven't even, uh, I mean, it's just a friendship. I don't know who you spoke to but you might want to find a less excitable source. This isn't any of your business, you know. This isn't anybody's business. The media has no idea."
Charlotte looked out the window and grimaced, revealing a few tiny crow's feet around her eyes. They weren't new, we were both getting older and I knew the knowledge that she would one day be Queen weighed heavily on her at times. She looked a little different that day, though. A little puffier in the face. Before I had time to ask if she was feeling well, she turned to me and fixed me with a patient gaze.
"You forget how well I know you, little brother. You haven't taken her to bed yet and I'm supposed to believe that that's because you don't have feelings for her? You also forget that I'm on your side. I'm sorry for getting def
ensive about my own past, I guess it's hard for me to admit I cared about him. And that I dropped him because I had to, not because I wanted to. Just – Killian, please be careful. That's all I'm saying. You may think you know this girl, but you don't. Who knows what kind of mess she could stir up? Hell hath no fury and all that."
I swallowed the urge to defend Eva, to insist that she would never do anything to cause trouble for me. Charlotte was just looking out for me, like she always does. And no matter how into the girl from Oshwego I was, my sister was also right about the fact that I didn't know her very well.
"OK," I said, reaching across the table and sneaking a sip of Charlotte's tea before she could stop me. "I hear you. I'll be careful. I'm not an eighteen year old idiot anymore, you know."
My sister grinned. "Well, you're not eighteen anymore, that much is true."
After our lunch I walked out into a sunny autumn day in the Capital, thinking of nothing except Eva James. It's one thing to say you've taken advice on board – it's another to actually do it, especially when it feels literally impossible to stop thinking about a certain person, no matter how hard you try. I don't think I waited even ten minutes before calling my assistant Jason and asking him to clear my schedule for the weekend.
"Can't do it," he told me bluntly, before checking himself. "Well, I could, but you know as well as I do that it would get out. We just finished putting out the last PR fire – do you really want to start another one this soon?"
He was right, just like Charlotte had been. "How about the weekend after, then?" I asked. "Just two days, Saturday and Sunday, and I can do anything Friday night and possibly even Sunday night, depending on when I get back to the Capital."
I waited as Jason checked the schedule, making little annoyed noises the entire time. "OK," he finally agreed. "I can try to reschedule the Children's Place press conference for Friday evening. I'll try for six. You've also got an appearance at that community gardens thing with Charlotte on Sunday afternoon."
"Cancel it," I replied. "They don't even want to see me, they want to see Charlotte. Tell her to bring her dashing husband along and no one will even notice I'm missing."
Disapproving silence from the other end of the phone, followed by a heavy sigh. "Sir, that event has been scheduled for three months. They –"
"Cancel it," I repeated. "Tell them I'm sick, tell them I've run off to the circus with a trapeze artist, tell them whatever you want, Jason."
"Well, it's actually Ashley who's dealing with them, so I'll have to –"
"I don't need the goddamned details, Jason, just get it done!"
"Yes, Sir."
I called Eva as soon as Jason hung up.
"Hello?"
Commotion in the background, conversations, the sound of people being busy. "Busy?" I asked, just happy to hear her voice. "I can call back."
"No – I mean, yes, actually. But I'm going to be busy until late tonight. There's a movie premiere this evening and we're in full-on panic mode here. Can I – can I call you tomorrow?"
She was pretending it wasn't me she was talking to, keeping her tone professional. "Yes," I replied. "Of course. But just before you go – can you keep the weekend after next free? I want to take you to Woaden, I've got a –"
"Sorry, what? It's loud here. Did you say Woaden?"
"Yes, it's on the southwest coast. I've got a place there. I'd like you to see it."
"Next weekend? You mean the one after this one? Yes I can do that, I think. I'm sorry, Ki – uh, I'll call you tomorrow, OK?"
"Yes, yes, that's fine, I can hear how busy you are."
We ended the call. Even though I knew Eva had been deliberately vague – even catching herself before she said my name out loud – I couldn't help feeling slightly deflated. I grabbed a bottle of beer and walked out onto my balcony to enjoy the evening, laughing at myself when it finally dawned on me that my emotions were mostly about the fact that women were never too busy to talk to me. It was simply something that didn't happen. Until that day, apparently. And even as I was amused by my own ego, there was something oddly attractive about Eva being too busy to talk to me. She had a life of her own. A job. Not some silly job in PR that she was only doing until she either inherited daddy's money or married a banker or a minor aristocrat, but a real job. One she cared about, one she was good at.
I don't know too many ambitious people. In the circles I run in, ambition is actually a dirty word, a quality ascribed to the common people as they struggle to improve themselves and their lot in life. Ambition isn't necessary when you're given everything you could possibly need from the moment you're born. It's not like I was so enlightened, either. I grew up with that idea – the notion that working to better yourself was somehow vulgar. It was only Eva who got me thinking it might be bullshit. In a way, I envied her. She was doing something useful. Learning a skill, mastering it, making a living. What skills did I have? What had I mastered? I spent my days the way I did because that was how I was told I would spend my days, because that's how everyone in my family spent their days. It was never a question, there was never any choice – I didn't spend my childhood dreaming of being a firefighter or an artist. And I didn't even stop to think about how odd that must have looked to someone on the outside until I met Eva.
Eva. Now I wasn't going to see her for more than a week. So what did I do? I spent every free moment – and most of the un-free ones – thinking about her. I even stooped, late one night, to Googling her. I then spent an embarrassing amount of time going through her boss's Instagram account, looking specifically for the photos that credited Eva. She was good – very good. In some of the photos, Eva herself was visible, hands splotched with various colors and concoctions, surrounded by brushes and palettes, smiling proudly.
I thought I knew myself by that point in my life. I could look back at my younger self and see what an idiot I'd been and it seemed to naturally follow that I was no longer that idiot. I thought I knew what I was doing with Eva, assumed I was in control. Sure, there were difficulties on the horizon. But I was the Prince. I could handle them.
It never even occurred to me that the only reason I so arrogantly assumed I could surmount any obstacle was the fact that I'd never actually faced a real obstacle before. And I'd certainly never had to deal with a relationship where I didn't hold all the power. I had no idea what I was in for...
End of Excerpt
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Imani King is a small town girl with a big imagination. She nurtures a passion for yoga and can often be found in the studio when she's not writing.
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Other Books by Imani King:
Killian: Prince of Rhenland
His Brother's Baby
Mischa: Prince of Neuburg
Wolf: Prince of Dreisburg
Quarterback's Secret Baby
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Imani King, The Cowboy's Baby: A Small Town Montana Romance (Corbett Billionaires Book 1)
