The Royal's American Love

by Sophia Lynn

  The Royal’s American Love

  By: Sophia Lynn

  All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2015-2016 Sophia Lynn

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  Table of contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter One

  Marianna prided herself on her timeliness, but asking her to get ready for a star-studded gala in just under twenty-four hours was too much. Most of her clothes were suitable for typing in front of her laptop or heading out to the club. She had utterly nothing fancy enough to wear to the event Opal Featherstone had impulsively invited her to.

  The former child actress had turned up in person, tiny dog and personal assistant in tow. It was definitely something to see the woman described as Hollywood’s greatest disappearing act pull up to Marianna’s tiny, dingy apartment building in her black Cadillac, tottering up the drive in her tall, orange heels. Luckily, Marianna caught sight of her and had come out to meet her before she could try to get up the rickety steps.

  “I don’t know how it happened, dear, but when I found out that you weren’t invited to the gala, I was shocked, just shocked!”

  Marianna looked around quickly before turning to Opal.

  “Opal, it probably has something to do with the fact that it’s your big event. You wrote a potentially award-winning autobiography, and umm… I’m the last person your agent and your PR people want snooping around.”

  “Oh fiddlesticks,” Opal said, waving her hand. “Do you think I care about that? No, dear, I want you there. Even if it’s not the thing to have one’s ghostwriter present for one’s literary successes, I cannot think of any one I would rather have at my side. You must show up, or if I must I will send Henry to pull you out bodily and drag you to the gala kicking and screaming.”

  Henry, Opal’s personal assistant, looked as if it was news to him, but he nodded. “You’ve been the driving force behind this book. Miss Featherstone does owe a great deal of this to you.”

  “And to her extraordinary life and gift of gab, let’s not forget,” Marianna said, but it seemed as if Opal and Henry were set.

  “Oh pish-tush, my gift for gab and extraordinary life were moldering in my mansion in Bel-Air before you dragged me out of hiding. Do come, darling. I’ll be prostrate with grief if you don’t.”

  Some people might have mistaken Opal Featherstone’s speech for hyperbole, but Marianna, who had worked with the old woman for some four months, knew it was not. Behind the brazen child star was a sensitive woman who never quite understood if people genuinely, truthfully liked her. There was something nervous about the way Opal ask her to come, so Marianna nodded reluctantly.

  “All right,” she said, “but I can’t be there as you’re ghostwriter, okay? I’ll be someone else, just please remember that.”

  Opal brightened as if the sun had come up.

  “Well, you can be my grandniece then, if anyone asks. Oh thank you, dear! It would have been so empty if you won’t come…”

  Opal had given her a surprisingly strong hug and disappeared in a wisp of L’air du Temps perfume. Marianna had gone back up to her apartment only to realize she was in a bit of a bind.

  Marianna looked at the mirror in dismay, wondering if she could plead illness.

  If anyone could understand “unable to attend due to terminal lack of fashion sense” it would be Opal, she thought, but the truth of the matter was the old star would be heartbroken.

  Sometimes, Marianna regarded getting the job as Opal’s ghostwriter as some sort of strange quirk of fate. A friend of a friend had clued her in on a strange ad on one of those work forums. At first, it had been so shrouded in mystery that Marianna thought it must have been some kind of joke. Then, after a week of interviews, it had been revealed that the subject was Opal Featherstone, a woman who had won hearts as “America’s Little Sweetheart” in dozens of fifties movies. Legend had it, sometime around the age of seventeen or so, Opal had disappeared from the public eye, and no one knew what happened to her.

  Now, however, Marianna knew. She knew about the secret marriage to a much older man, she knew about the daughter who died tragically at less than six years old. She knew about the aimless flitting around the world, and the attempts to do some real good on a planet that seemed to be spinning hopelessly out of control.

  Opal wasn’t always a very cooperative subject, but together, over long interviews at Opal’s Bel-Air mansion, the story had come out. When Marianna could see it in its entirety, she saw a narrative of a brave woman who had seen so many incredible things over her long life. She set out share Opal’s story with the world, and now, almost six months after those first difficult interviews, she had done so. Tonight was Opal’s triumph, and she didn’t want to take it away from her.

  During the course of the interviews, she had come to realize she enjoyed the process of compiling someone’s biography completely. She loved getting into the details of Opal’s life, what made her happy, what made her afraid. At first, it had been a way to make some money while she was recovering from losing her job at the local newspaper when it went belly up. Now she wondered if she had a career ahead of her.

  Well, no use resting on my laurels, she thought. Time to get out there and see who’s running around. After all, she might find new clients at the gala, and that thought made her a little more interested in going. However, she couldn’t go dressed like a reporter to the gala, and she certainly couldn’t put on her old clubbing clothes.

  Suddenly, inspiration struck, and she remembered she had friends with expansive wardrobes who owed her favors. Five seconds later, she was on the phone, her excitement building with each ring. This evening might be some fun after all.

  * * *

  Nikolos was awakened from a deep slumber by a ringing phone. He groaned, thrashing around in the enormous bed until he found the source of the annoying sound. Before he did so, he encountered a plush female leg that resulted in a giggle when he squeezed it. The giggle was so diverting that he nearly let the phone go, but when he glanced at the screen he found that, in fact, it was someone he could not ignore.

  He swiped the screen and muttered a terse, “Hello.”

  “Good afternoon, Prince Nikolos,” came the prim, slightly disapproving tone of his mother’s personal assistant.

  “Good afternoon, Philip,” he said, stifling a yawn. “What is it?”

  “Where are you at the moment, please?”

  Nikolos glanced around at the luxury hotel suite. It had been in better shape when he’d checked in the night before. There were the remnants of a lavish dinner, and some broken furniture from when two of his guests had decided they wanted to try bouncing from bed to couch and back again. A good party, over all.

  “Where am I supposed to be?” he asked, and he was answered by a slight sigh. Somehow, Philip managed to roll irritation, disappointment, and frustration all into one sound.

  “Well, last night, you were meant to be at the journalist’s convention in downtown Los Angeles,” Philip replied. “I take it you didn’t go?”

  “I made it to the hotel it was being held at,” Nikolos offered. He had. One of the women he’d brought back was a bartender at that hotel.

  “Your mother is hardly pleased with these developments,” Philip said, “but I am sure that she will take that up with you herself. As it is, I want to remind you that in just a few hours, there will be an author’s gala at the King’s Head ball
room.”

  “Why am I going to an author’s gala?”

  Philip’s chuckle was thin. “The author in question is Opal Featherstone. Despite the name, she is Greek-American, and it would be appropriate for you to go pay your respects to someone who shares your homeland.”

  Nikolos sighed. “I see. You want me to go out and polish up my image, is that right?”

  Philip made a tutting noise. “That is not something that I said at all, but if you could, it would be quite a good thing.”

  Philip hung up, leaving Nikolos shaking his head.

  Nikolos was a lean-muscled man with broad shoulders and a tumble of inky black hair. He had features that were slightly heavy for real beauty, but he had never had problems getting the attention he wanted from women. However, neither his good looks nor his good taste got him anywhere with his family, who seemed compelled to put a limit on his lifestyle.

  This trip to the United States to hunt for a family biographer was just the most recent attempt to get him into something a little more productive. He would have been irritated if it hadn’t been so much fun.

  Well, it looks like I’m heading out to meet a child star, he thought wryly.

  Then the woman in bed with him stirred, reaching for him sleepily, and he grinned with delight.

  Philip did say that I have a few hours…

  * * *

  I…can’t help but think that Mei went a little overboard.

  The moment she had described her dilemma to her friend, she could imagine Mei lighting up like a Christmas tree.

  “Come over first thing tomorrow, and we’ll get you set up.”

  Marianna had intended to spend the day searching for freelance jobs. She figured spending an hour or two at Mei’s loft would be enough, and then she could search out clients before the gala in the evening. The fashion designer had other ideas in mind.

  The moment Marianna walked in, Mei ordered her behind a screen to take off her clothes. While Marianna was behind the screen, she heard Mei greeting some other people. In her underwear and surrounded by strangers, Marianna felt suddenly very vulnerable.

  “Mei… Mei, if you have invited people over to kill and eat me, I’m going to be so mad at you…”

  “No, silly, I just put together a team of people to get you ready for tonight.”

  “A…team? Seriously, I know I don’t go to the fancy places on Rodeo Drive, but I don’t dress that badly.”

  “Just trust me.”

  Marianna could scarcely believe it, but it really did take them almost eight hours to get to the “final product,” as Mei called it. By the end, she barely recognized herself in the mirror. She had shown up in jeans and a T-shirt, expecting to walk out with a dress in a garment bag. Now she stood in front of Mei’s mirror, a flame-haired memory of a Hollywood gone by.

  After some debate, Mei and her team decided to go retro with Marianna’s look, something suitable for the event. The result was a clinging, icy-white gown that showed off Marianna’s lush curves, paired with glassy heels that were at least four inches tall. A frowning young woman with an arsenal of hair care products had put up her hair in an elegant chignon, while a determined young man gave her nails a beautiful polish in the palest blue.

  “I’m…so pretty,” Marianna said, looking at her reflection in awe. She had always been the girl behind the scenes, the stage manager and not the star. A part of her understood it had taken Mei and four other people to create the look, but that wasn’t something she was going to dwell on. Not right now, at any rate.

  “You’re beautiful,” Mei declared. “You are just going to stun at the party.”

  As Marianna drove to the gala, she couldn’t help but feel a spark of excitement in her belly. She could feel that something interesting was going to happen tonight, and she couldn’t wait.

  * * *

  Nikolos knew the night held absolutely nothing interesting for him. It was an enormous party, but he would spend the evening bored out of his mind, begging for something to happen, and it never would.

  No one knew who he was, and he didn’t care to be known. He had started introducing himself as an emissary rather than a prince to curtail long conversations, and at this point, he was ready to cut the evening short and find something more entertaining to do.

  He was just getting ready to ask for his car when there was a rustle in the crowd. He heard a few people exchanging interested whispers. With an experience born of many interminably long events in his past, he found out who they were speaking about immediately.

  Up on the second story landing, looking down at the ballroom itself, he could see who they were talking about quite clearly. From his vantage point, she looked like a fire-haired siren dressed in sparkling white. She walked with a tremulous grace and an iron surety. She approached Opal Featherstone, the woman of the hour, and bent down to kiss the old woman’s cheek.

  A few moments ago, he had been ready to leave. Now, it was as if someone had put a hook through his heart and he had to stay.

  Nikolos was a man who lived his life close to his own desires. He didn’t question this one.

  There was something captivating about this woman, and now he headed down the stairs to find out exactly what that was.

  * * *

  The crowed stirred around her like eddies in the stream. When she first entered the ballroom, she felt as if she were under a microscope. Finally, though, she realized she had a choice: she could either cling to the walls, hiding all of Mei’s team’s good work, or she could own it, walking out unafraid. In the end, it was no choice at all.

  She squared her shoulders, clutched her ridiculously small purse a little bit tighter, and strode into the ballroom. She had never been a woman who turned heads before, and now she was finding that she quite enjoyed it.

  The moment Opal spotted her, the actress immediately beckoned her over. When Marianna leaned down to say hello, she gave Opal a tender kiss on the cheek.

  “Why, you look lovely tonight, my dear. I knew you had it in you. You are my very favorite grandniece.”

  Marianna grinned. “And you are my very favorite great-aunt,” she said warmly.

  “Run along now, make all of those wealthy, greedy hearts flutter. Who knows, you might find a grand affair of the heart before you leave.”

  Maybe I’ll make some contacts and start some deals, Marianne thought, but the truth was she was simply too entranced by all the luxury. This was a high life she couldn’t really imagine herself living day to day. At the moment, she was only visiting, and she could deal with that well enough.

  There was dancing; of course there was dancing at Opal’s gala. Marianna looked wistfully at the dance floor, and realized with a bit of rueful amusement that dancing on her new heels might be a very poor idea. Instead, she made her way to the buffet table, where there was a delicate array of truly gorgeous little treats.

  She had just popped a tiny strawberry tart into her mouth when she sensed someone at her elbow. She turned around and looked up.

  Then she looked up some more, because the man standing next to her was tall, even when she was wearing her heels. For a moment, she was simply trapped. There was something in this man’s handsome face that left her breathless, that made her feel as if all the air had been squeezed out of her body. His hair and eyes were a deep and mysterious black, and something about his bronzed skin made her want to run her fingers along his fine cheekbones.

  Then she shook herself out of her trance, because he was talking to her.

  “Would you care for a drink?”

  She blinked, realizing he was holding up a champagne flute and offering it to her by the elegant stem. The gesture was enough to wake her up a little, and she laughed.

  “Seriously? Sorry, I don’t know about where you’re from, but most ladies in Los Angeles don’t care for drinks that they didn’t see made.”

  He looked surprised.

  “Are you afraid that it might be…poisoned?”

  “Let’s ju
st say that smart girls don’t take chances if they can help it,” she replied. “But I’ll let you buy me something from the bartender if you’re still interested.”

  He eyed her with genuine amusement, and she was pleased to see he didn’t fight her. Instead, he kept the champagne for himself, escorting her to the bar off to the side of the ballroom. When he laid his hand on the small of her back to guide her through the crowd, she felt a frisson of pleasure pulse through her body.

  Seriously, has it really been that long since you had a boyfriend?

  The bartender poured her wine from freshly-opened bottle, and she turned her gaze to the handsome stranger.

  “So now that I have a drink in my hand, I want to hear all about you,” she said. “What brings you to Opal Featherstone’s gala?”

  “Ah, well, that’s a dull story, I’m afraid. It is simply that Greece is proud to claim Miss Featherstone’s roots as the country of her parents, and I showed up merely to pay my respects to a woman who is greatly admired in my home country. I think some of it is that my mother was a fan when she was a girl.”

  Marianna found herself charmed by the rhythm of the man’s words. This was someone who could keep her interest by reading the phone book, and she would have been fine with that. She was so lulled by his voice, she almost missed it when he asked her a question.

  “So what brings you here? I saw you from the balcony. You and Miss Featherstone seem close.”

  Something about the way he said that made faint alarms go off in her head. She needed to be very careful. While celebrities hiring ghostwriters was nothing new, the last thing she wanted to was to hurt Opal by ruining her big night.

  “Oh, I’m her grandniece. Great-aunt Opal insisted I come. I think she’s hoping I’ll meet someone.”

  “And so you have,” the man said gallantly. “My name is Nikolos.”

  “Nikolos,” she said slowly, tasting the syllables on her tongue. “Well, Nikolos, my name is Marianna.”

  “Are you a Mari or an Anna, perhaps? That is quite a mouthful for a woman as…”

  “As short as me?” she asked with a grin. “Heard that one before, and you are going to have to try a little harder if you think that you’re going to be original. And nope. I’m not a Mari, or an Anna, or an Ann, or anything like that. If you want to be my friend, I’m Marianna. Are you ever a Ni?”