by Aven Ellis
“Yes.”
“Maybe we leave it at that for now,” I say. “What about Xander and James?”
“They can keep secrets, so they can know,” Christian says. “What about Paisley and Evan? Can they keep this from your parents? Can Paisley be an ally for us?
“An ally? What, are we invading a country?”
“Your new nickname is going to be Sassy Pants.”
I giggle, and he laughs.
“But do you think Paisley could help me win your parents over when the time comes? When I meet them, I mean?” Christian asks.
My heart skips at how he sees the future that I do, that yes, we’re going to make a go of this, and that will include meeting my family someday if things go in the direction we hope they do.
Then I see the anxiousness in his eyes. Christian truly has no idea what a good man he is, that once he lets people in, it’s impossible not to like him.
Because people don’t give him the chance to be normal.
“I don’t think you’ll need help, once we revive Mom with smelling salts, that is. But trust me, once the shock wears off, they will love you. And yes, I will tell Paisley and Evan. Paisley is protective, but I think she would like the idea of knowing I am going to see you and not going alone to London. So that will be our circle of trust for now.”
“How are you going to explain this sudden trip to the UK to your parents?”
I smile. “I cooked up a devious plot while you caught up on your sleep,” I say proudly. “To celebrate my good brain health, I’m taking a trip to London and Cambridge to take a stately home tour and study antiques. I’ll get Paisley to back me up; they trust her with being the wiser, older sister.”
He nods. “All right.”
I frown for a moment. “They will flip out that I’m going alone. But I think they would flip out more knowing I was going to see my boyfriend who they have never heard of.”
“If they knew I was a prince, they’d fear for the vortex you were about to be sucked into,” he says, his voice tinged with regret. “If I were them, I’d fight to keep you away from the House of Chadwick with everything I had.”
I see the sadness has returned to his eyes.
“Well, that’s too damn bad. I’m choosing to get sucked into this vortex, so stop with this talk right now.”
He blinks in surprise. “What?”
“I’m exactly where I choose to be. I’m not a delicate flower who will lose all her petals if things get a bit rough. Or really rough. I want to see you, and that makes everything worth it.”
“I would kiss you right now if I could.”
I smile at him. “I know.”
Christian pushes the sleeve back on his sweater and checks his watch, flashing me a bit of seductive watch porn as he does. There is something delicious about a man with a fantastic watch.
“We’ve got to head back. I need to pack and get to the airport.”
The lump returns to my throat. “I don’t want to say goodbye.”
“We won’t.”
“What?”
“I refuse to say that word to you.”
My heart fills with love for him.
“So what will we say instead?”
Christian stands up, and I do the same, brushing the sand from my clothing as Bear barks and dashes around us.
“I think ‘see you soon’ is much better. And we’ll do that here so you can go home and we don’t have a dramatic airport exchange that might attract attention.”
“See you soon,” I repeat. “I like that much better.”
As we head back to the resort, I already feel better knowing this isn’t goodbye.
And I’ll be counting the days until I head to Cambridge in a few weeks.
Chapter 11
A Little Trip to Look at Art
“Would you uncork that chardonnay for me, please?” Paisley asks, not lifting her eyes from her food-splattered cookbook.
I open her kitchen utensils drawer, which is a hot, jumbled mess. It’s Friday night, and I’m joining her and Evan for crab pasta, sourdough bread, garden salad, and conversation.
And I’ll be dropping the Prince Christian bomb on them tonight during said conversation, too.
Christian has been gone for four days. I miss him like crazy. When we parted in Half Moon Bay, he took a part of me back with him. The overwhelming sadness I felt when we said “see you soon” ripped my heart in half. I dried my tears on my sweatshirt—I seriously need pocket tissues—and vowed no more tears. I’ll see him in a few weeks, and my heart will be whole again.
I’ve already downloaded a Cambridge app on my phone, planning the activities I’m going to do while he’s in lectures. There are amazing museums and gorgeous stately homes the likes of which I’ve never been in, with incredible art and antique collections. I’ll spend the rest of my time with him, cooking dinner in his house, getting to know his inner circle of friends, and going to a pub for steak pie and a quiz. Then we’ll fall into bed at the end of the night and lose ourselves in each other’s arms …
I’m still finding it hard to believe this is my life and that my love is at Cambridge and wants me to come be a part of his world.
Keeping him a secret is harder than I thought it would be. Now that I’m in love, I want to shout it from the rooftops. I’m so happy, so full of appreciation for this new adventure, I want to tell everyone about the amazing man who has entered my life.
But I can’t.
It’s been killing me to keep him a secret. I want to share my joy with Bryn and Chelsea, but I know that’s asking them to keep an impossible secret. I can’t put that on them, at least not yet. But finally, finally, I get to talk about him tonight.
“Clem, wine?” Paisley reminds me.
I grin. Patience was never Paisley’s strong suit.
“How do you find anything in here?” I ask, as I can barely open the drawer, it’s so crammed full of crap.
“Well, it might seem unorganized to you, but I know where everything is,” she declares, a defiant tone entering her voice.
Sure. I bet if I asked her right this second the location of the corkscrew she’d have no clue, but I decide not to poke the bear. After all, she’s a great cook. I love her Dungeness crab pasta. I don’t need to distract her when she’s making it.
I bend down to peer into the drawer. I spy it at the back, but I can’t slide the drawer all the way out because the corkscrew is jammed up at the top, keeping the drawer from opening.
“Paisley, this is a stupid mess,” I say, trying to wedge it free without scraping my hand. “I’m organizing this for you.”
“You will do no such thing,” Paisley declares, chopping some herbs on the cutting board.
I free the corkscrew at last, and the drawer pops open.
“Yes. I see you have this completely under control,” I quip.
“Shut up.”
I chuckle and uncork the bottle of chardonnay for her.
“I think I’m ready for a glass now, too,” I say.
I move to the cabinet where she keeps her glasses and select one. I know her home in the Russian Hill neighborhood as well as she does, and I adore the old apartment building, with its breathtaking views of the bay and the cypress trees nestled around it. I love the details of her apartment, like the crown moldings and stunning bay windows, as well as the renovations, like her super-modern kitchen.
I pour some wine for both of us and set the bottle next to her.
“Thank you,” she says. Paisley finishes chopping and sets the knife aside. She clears her throat. “Um, so, did you ever hear from CP again? I’ve wanted to ask you, but I didn’t want to upset you. For your sake, though? I hope that asshole fell off the face of the earth.”
Door. Open.
“I did hear from him,” I say, an anxiousness beginning to swirl in my stomach. Good lord, my story is crazy to me, so how on earth do I expect Paisley to understand?
Paisley picks up the bottle of wine. “I hope y
ou told him he’s a jerk for what he did to you and blocked his creepy ass.”
She adds a splash of chardonnay to her copper pan, expertly tossing it about off the flame, and I draw a breath of air for courage.
“No, I didn’t. In fact, we’re talking. Things wer—”
The pan lands down on the burner with a crash, and I stop mid-sentence, jumping back from the loud noise.
“What?” she shrieks, her brown eyes wide in horror. “Clementine! He’s a psycho. Oh, my God, what if he finds you and stalks you? He could kidnap you! Murder you! No, this is bad-bad-bad and you nee—”
“I can assure you, Prince Christian of Wales is not about to murder me.”
Paisley’s mouth falls open. “You believe this guy is Prince Christian?”
“I know he is. I know this is crazy, Paisley, but that is who CP really is. When I started talking with Christian, I only knew him as CP. It was to protect himself. He’s used to people only liking him for being a prince, and he wanted a true friendship with me—”
Before I can say another word, Paisley puts her hands on my shoulders, turns me around, and guides me to the living room.
“Paisley, what are you doing?”
She sits me on the sofa, and then she drops in front of me, and I see tears in her eyes.
“You’re going to be okay. We’ll get a different doctor to see you.”
“What?”
“You aren’t well, Clem,” she says, her voice breaking. “But I promise we’ll get you better.”
“You think I’m crazy?”
“No, of course, I don’t, but you’ve been under a lot of stress, and you’re vulnerable to believing these kinds of thin—”
“I am not,” I say, growing irritated. “I’m not crazy or vulnerable. He came here. This past weekend, when I said I was at a hotel, I was at the Ritz, with Christian.”
The key turns in the lock, signaling that Evan is home, but Paisley keeps going.
“Oh, my God!” Paisley goes stark white. “You were sleeping with some stranger pretending to be Prince Christian!”
“No, I was sleeping with Prince Christian!” I shout right as Evan walks through the door.
Nobody says a word.
“I need to call Mom and Dad. You’re not well.”
“I can prove to you it was him!” I cry, leaping up off the couch to get my phone. “CP is Prince Christian.”
“Wait, are you talking about the Prince Christian, as in the hoarder?” Evan asks, trying to make sense of the shitshow he’s stepped into.
“Evan, we need to get her to the hospital,” Paisley says, choking up. “She’s not well. She thinks she’s dating Prince Christian, and she’s sleeping with some creepy guy pretending to be him! Dr. Choi obviously missed something!”
“Would you listen to yourself? That is absurd!”
“You’re the one sleeping with a stranger who just showed up on your doorstep pretending to be Prince Christian! He’s a-a doppelgänger! You are having sex with a man you don’t know, one who is a creepy doppelgänger, and you’re lucky you didn’t end up dead and dumped in the bay!”
“Stop,” I say, retrieving my phone.
“I think we all need to take a breath here,” Evan says.
“I’m calling Dr. Choi. We need help,” Paisley says as she reaches for her phone.
“Here!” I yell as I run up to her. “This is me, with Christian.”
I shove my phone in her face, and Paisley takes a step back, staring at the picture of me and Christian that I took.
“Sweetheart,” she says gently, “it’s going to be okay. I promise you it is.”
“Are you looking? That’s Christian.”
“I don’t want you to be frightened,” Paisley says gently, placing her hands on my shoulders, “but I know you photoshopped his head in there. It’s okay. Your brain chemistry isn’t right, but we’ll get this all sorted out. I promise you that. I love you. We’ll fix this.”
Oh, my God.
She thinks I photoshopped him.
“But that’s Christian,” I say. “That’s him.”
Evan takes the phone from Paisley. “Honey, that doesn’t look photoshopped. But I’m sure it’s a lookalike, Clem.”
Shit.
Then I remember something about Christian.
“Zoom in on the photo,” I say. “If you zoom in on his hand, his left hand, there’s a scar across the back of it. He cut it as a child. It required stitches, and the scar never faded. If you blow up pictures of Prince Christian’s hand, you’ll see the same scar. I’m not that good at photoshop to be able to crop in a hand seamlessly.”
Evan enlarges the picture. Paisley gasps as soon as he does.
“You … you aren’t making this up?”
“No. I will FaceTime us together when the time zones are decent, but I’m dating Prince Christian.”
Nobody says anything.
Suddenly, I smell something burning. Oh, crap, the pasta sauce!
“Paisley, your sauce is burning,” I say.
“I don’t care, you … you’re … with a prince?” she sputters.
I decide I’m the only one not in shell-shock, so I take it upon myself to hurry to the kitchen and pull the pan off the burner.
“A prince?” Paisley repeats as if her brain can’t compute this.
“This is crazy,” Evan says.
I wave a towel over the charred sauce so the fire alarm doesn’t go off, and then I run it under some cold water. I wait as the pan makes a loud sizzling noise. Once it’s silent, I answer Paisley’s question.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m seeing a prince.”
“How? How did this happen?” Paisley asks, confusion in her voice. “I don’t see how this is possible.”
“It’s because I’m charming on Instagram,” I say helpfully.
“You met a prince. On Instagram,” Paisley says. “This is insane!”
“Why don’t we get a pizza, and I’ll explain everything.”
I order us a pizza and sit down with them in their living room, telling them my story of how I met Christian. I explain how we connected instantly and talked all the time and how I fell for him without even seeing him because we get each other in ways nobody else does. I talk about how he was there for me when I was waiting for the test results and how he flew eleven hours with his protection officers to prove to me who he was, figuring I’d want nothing to do with him afterward.
“This is surreal,” Evan says. “I can’t get my head around this.”
“This happens in royal romance novels and TV movies,” Paisley says. “And now you are stepping into the fairy tale.”
“It’s not the fairy tale I want,” I say. “It’s Christian. I don’t think of him as a prince because, to be honest, that makes everything harder. Much, much harder. But for now, we want to keep this quiet as we see where this can go, without the media finding out.”
“When you talk about him, you’re different,” Paisley says. “Your eyes sparkle. You smile. I’ve never seen you talk about anyone like this before. What’s even better? You had this look at the airport when you didn’t know who he was. This is real.”
“It is,” I say. “What we have is special. It’s like what you and Evan have.”
Evan laughs. “Yeah, except my parents live in Napa. His parents live at Buckingham Palace.”
“You know what she means,” Paisley says, smiling at him. Then she turns back to me. “I’m glad you told me.”
“Christian and I agreed only a few people can know. We can’t risk someone getting excited and sharing our story with someone else. You know how that goes.”
Paisley nods. “Your secret is safe with us.”
I exhale, knowing that is true.
“I can’t tell Mom and Dad right now. Think of how much you guys freaked out.”
Paisley chews her lower lip. “You’re right. Mom wouldn’t believe it, and once she did, she would worry. She can’t know until you’re ready and you two a
re super serious about moving forward.”
“I haven’t even told Bryn and Chelsea. You two are the only ones who know.”
“Okay,” Evan says.
I draw a breath of air. “I’m going to fly over and see him for spring break,” I say.
Paisley grabs my hand. “Ahh! This is so exciting! You’re going to England!”
I realize Paisley isn’t worried about me taking this trip. It’s like her seeing my excitement over being with Christian has put my health scare in the backseat for a moment, which has never happened before.
Excitement surges through me as I squeeze her hand back. “I know! I’m going to see Christian and Cambridge and soak up a new country and art and I can’t wait. But I need your help.”
“Anything,” Paisley says, nodding.
“Mom and Dad are not going to be on board with me going out of the country by myself, not knowing I’m going to be with Christian. They are way too protective, even though with Christian I’ll have access to his doctors if anything should happen, which are obviously some of the best in the world.”
Of course, I know I’m normal and won’t need them unless I fall and break a leg or something, but I have to assure over-protective Paisley I’ll be in good hands.
“Right,” Evan agrees.
“We’ll have personal protection officers surrounding us wherever we go. His house has a bomb-proof door, bullet-proof windows, and a high-tech laser security system. There will be nobody safer than me when I’m with Christian.”
Both of them look startled by those details, but I continue.
“I’m going to be very, very safe, but of course, Mom and Dad won’t know that. What I plan to tell them is that to celebrate my good, tumor-free health, on a whim, I’m off to explore stately homes and buildings near Cambridge. I’ll stay in a flat through a certified exchange program and take tours, and I’ll promise to make them all aware of my medical history, which, I might add, hasn’t changed since I was in high school.”
“Ha-ha, exchange program,” Paisley says, shooting me a wicked grin. “I bet Prince Christian offers some interesting options for paying for your bed for the night.”
I blush, but secretly I’m thrilled. If Paisley is teasing me about sex, she’s come around.
