Royal Stripper

by Sienna Valentine

  I wasn't sure how I felt about her new boyfriend, Alan Montgomery. He preferred people to address him as Mr. Montgomery, which I found stuffy and ridiculous. That was all I knew about him so far.

  Well, that and the fact that he was running for senator, had a big mansion outside of town, and likely filled it with bales of money.

  Candace was simply over the moon.

  "Ms. Dylan?"

  I glanced up. The secretary, a gray-haired woman with rectangular glasses, was looking at me. I quickly rose to my feet.

  Here goes nothing.

  She ushered me into a small but tastefully decorated office. James Hurcomb, the man interviewing me, was waiting behind the desk. He rose to greet me with a firm handshake.

  I gulped and took his hand. And, with that, took the first step toward my future.

  Candace was waiting for me when I got home. Still wearing her pajamas, since she also had the day off, she threw her arms around me the moment I walked through the door.

  "You'll do better next time, honey."

  I sighed and leaned into her, breathing in her lavender and honey scent. "I know I will." My words were muffled by her shirt, but she understood all the same.

  "They just weren't ready for you."

  "I don't know for sure that I didn't get it, yet," I said. "He said they'll call me."

  Candace rubbed my back and then released me from her embrace. "As long as you stay positive, that's all that matters."

  I definitely didn't get the job.

  There was no doubt in my mind. I didn't have enough experience, wasn't prepared enough for the interview, and totally gapped out a few times when we were talking.

  I'd been way too busy during the past week to do any research on the company. Between work and spending time with Matthias, I'd barely had enough time to sleep and shower. In fairness, I didn’t expect to hear from them, and the interview was very last minute, but still. It was completely unprofessional of me.

  And it had shown.

  But as my parents have always said since I was little, success isn't a straight line. I’d learn from this mistake and do better next time.

  "What are you going to do with the rest of your day?" Candace asked. "Do you want me to cancel the dinner?"

  I reeled back from her. "Of course not. You've been looking forward to it all week."

  Her features softened with relief, but I found it touching that she would have cancelled if I'd been too upset for company. If anything, I needed company more.

  "I'm going to call Matthias and see what he's up to," I said. "Maybe he'll want to go hiking or something."

  After our last-minute beach date, and then our evening under the stars, I figured we’d reached the stage of our relationship where we were starting to do activities together.

  "Sure. Let me know if he's busy." Candace patted me on the shoulder. "I've got a few hours before I need to start doing prep for tonight."

  I had no idea what Candace was making for dinner—state secrets, she insisted—but I knew it was going to be fancy. I hadn't seen Candace this excited about anything in a long time. Only problem was, she was usually a terrible cook.

  Still, I was looking forward to it. This dinner would be the first-time Matthias and I hung out with another couple. It almost made me feel like we were a couple, despite the fact that we’d never had that conversation. In fact, we’ve never spoken at all about our relationship and where it was going or what it meant.

  Which kind of bothered me.

  It was a dumb insecurity to have, but I couldn't shake the feeling that if I didn't establish myself as Matthias' girlfriend, someone else would swoop in and steal him away.

  I knew that wasn't how things worked, but was I so off base to worry about his fidelity? He was a stripper, after all. Every week he was being pawed at by drunk, beautiful women while he was completely naked. Even a priest would find that sort of temptation hard to ignore.

  Besides, did I really want to be his girlfriend in the first place?

  What about the issue of trust?

  I wanted to trust him, but it didn’t help that he was clearly still keeping secrets from me. Constantly deflecting questions away from himself and his past, perhaps never really outright lying, but not being completely honest, either. My hope was that he would eventually open up to me in time.

  How could I get serious about someone like that? Matthias didn’t seem to have any long-term goals, he spent his nights taking off his clothes for money, and then he spent that money like a five-year-old let loose in a candy store after getting his first allowance. He seemed to have no ability to think about the future.

  That was completely unlike me.

  Wasn’t that the whole reason I’d had sex with him that first night? I wanted to do something wild and crazy, and Matthias was the very definition of that.

  But it was supposed to just last that one night, not go on for weeks.

  And yet here we were.

  I swore out loud. I could feel a tension headache building up behind my forehead, but I blamed it all on my crappy interview. Despite my doubts about him, I couldn’t deny my growing feelings for Matthias. I knew just seeing him would make me feel better and calm my fears. It always did. I decided to call and find out if he was free any earlier than we’d planned.

  He’d texted me right after I’d come out of the interview to ask how it went, and I told him briefly that I didn’t want to talk about it. I still wasn’t ready, so as soon as he said hello, I started talking.

  "Hey Matt, are you free to hang out before dinner?"

  There was a pause. "Right, about that..."

  My heart sank.

  28

  Ally

  "Ally, I can't come to dinner tonight. I'm really sorry."

  My temples responded with death gongs. "Why not? Everything okay?"

  Matthias hesitated. Not a good sign. I prepared myself for the worst—maybe his dad had died. Maybe he had come down with Typhoid Fever. And a third, chilling possibility: maybe he was breaking up with me.

  "Somebody offered me a gig tonight. The cash was too much to give up," he answered finally. "I feel awful."

  "A gig?"

  "Yeah."

  "Like, a stripping gig?"

  "Yeah. Just a last-minute thing."

  "We had plans, though…" I was angry, and doing my best to keep it in check, but this was the last thing I needed to hear tonight.

  Matthias sighed. "I know. But like I said, the money is too good to pass up."

  Suddenly, a vision of a future with Matthias began to take shape in my mind. This issue wouldn’t be a one-time thing, not with his penchant for spending like a Rockafeller and having no ambition beyond having a good time and dancing for a living. I didn’t need vast wealth to be happy, but I also wasn’t keen on being with someone that spent so frivolously that he had to pounce on every opportunity to make a buck, even at the expense of breaking his commitments.

  But what could I say? It wasn't up to me how he spent or earned his money. It wasn't up to me whose dinner parties he showed up to. All I could control was whether or not he was part of my life.

  "Okay. Kick some ass tonight," I said, holding back tears.

  "Generally that's frowned upon in my line of work, but I'll see if I can get one or two in while they're not looking."

  I smiled, even though my face felt like it was about to explode from the pressure and tears butting up against the back of it.

  As soon as he hung up, I threw the phone across the room. It landed dully against the carpet with an anticlimactic thud.

  I wasn't normally one to cry, but this time I couldn’t hold back. Sitting on my bed, I bawled my damn eyes out and didn’t stop until it was time to get ready for dinner.

  Despite some of the issues I had with Candace, she was still one of my best friends and I loved her dearly. She really was smart, witty, beautiful, and had a great heart. But when it came to men, she seemed drawn to sleaze and trouble.

 
; Which explained Alan Montgomery.

  "Oh, honey, have you told your friend about how we met?" Alan asked.

  Candace was stirring something by the stove. It was brown, but I wasn't sure it could quite be called a gravy. Not for the first time, I wondered whether letting her take care of this dinner on her own was such a good idea.

  "We met at the salon," she said giddily. "He came in for a trim. All the girls in the shop were giggling over him."

  "But I only had eyes for you." He brandished a smile that could light up the whole block. His teeth were so white that I bet he glowed in the dark. Or maybe they just looked white because of how unnaturally tanned he was. He looked a lot like a carrot in a wig.

  "That's cute." I grabbed a mushroom off the counter and shoved it into my mouth. For some reason, the moment I set eyes on them I had a craving. Maybe it was because I knew mushrooms grew in shit, and the shit was being shoveled so heavily in this kitchen.

  Candace tried to whack my hand away, but I was too fast and grabbed another.

  "It's a shame that your friend couldn't come tonight," Alan simpered. "I would have loved to connect with him. I've been trying to build up my economically challenged voter base."

  I almost choked on the mushroom, and decided to use that as a reason to excuse myself.

  Candace must have given him a look, because as I left I heard him continue. “What? I’m not saying all strippers are poor, but even the ones that do often spend the money on drugs anyway, so…”

  His voice faded by the time I’d gotten to my bedroom, but I still shut the door behind me and took a deep breath.

  A few minutes later, there was a light knock on my door. "Ally? Can I come in?"

  "Sure.”

  Candace stepped into my room. "Dinner's basically finished, but did you want to talk for a few minutes first?"

  I nodded and she closed the door behind her before hopping onto the bed next to me. I was leaning against the pillows, legs pulled up to my chest. I probably looked pathetic. I felt pathetic.

  "Sorry about Alan,” she said.

  "Yeah, he seems a bit...disconnected."

  Candace tipped her head back and laughed. "Yeah, he has his moments. But he can be nice, too. Anyway, it’s not like I’m going to marry the guy.”

  "Then what's the point?"

  She raised a brow.

  "Isn't it just a waste of time and energy investing in a relationship that you know is never going to become more serious?"

  Candace cocked her head from side to side, considering my question. "I guess that's the difference between you and I, hun. I'm not looking for that one big love. I'm looking for my next little love."

  I'd never thought about it like that. I always knew that Candace had a far more active dating life than I did, but I didn’t realize it was by design. I just thought she continued to make bad choices.

  “So I guess this is really about Matthias?”

  "Mostly," I admitted. "And my head hurts. And I can't stop thinking about how I royally screwed up the most important job interview I’ve ever had."

  Candace poked my arm. "There will always be other jobs. If you weren't ready for it, you weren't ready for it. Fate. As for Matt..." She looked up at the ceiling, as if the right words would be written in the stucco. "Is the problem just that he didn't come to dinner? Or is there more?"

  "I'm worried that I'm wasting my time with him."

  Now that the words had come out of my mouth, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

  "Wasting your time?"

  "Matthias is just out for a good time, he doesn’t take anything very seriously, he’s terrible with money, and I’m sure he’s hiding something from me."

  "Okay, so maybe you’re not destined to marry the guy, but you like him, right? So what’s the harm in just having some fun with him for now and letting the future happen however it’s destined to happen?"

  Now that I’d started venting, I couldn’t stop. "I think he's got commitment issues. Not just with women, either. What kind of guy doesn't have any aspirations? I've tried talking to him about it, but he refuses to think any further ahead than his next meal. And what if investing all this energy into a relationship destined to fail was what stopped me from getting that job?"

  Candace gave me a flat look. "Don't be silly, Ally. It's not like the person who interviewed you knew whether you were seeing anyone or not."

  "I don't mean that," I replied. "Just that... Well, I probably wouldn't have been so unprepared if I hadn't spent all of the past couple weeks with Matthias. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy that time but what if I’m giving up better opportunities for something I know isn’t going to last?"

  Candace exhaled through her mouth. "That's a lot of heavy thoughts."

  No wonder my head felt like a ten-ton weight.

  Candace rolled off the bed and offered me her hand. "Why don't we go have dinner, get rid of the senator, and then talk more after, over a glass of wine?"

  "That sounds like a great idea."

  We left my bedroom together, and I managed to slug through another hour of conversation with Alan before Candace called it a night. I also somehow managed to eat all my food, even though her cooking hadn’t improved a bit since the last time I’d tried it. I would have been better off stealing more mushrooms before she massacred them.

  The senator protested being sent home early—clearly having planned on spending the night—but she told him it was a girl thing and that we needed to be alone.

  But before Candace and I could even pour a glass of wine, a wave of nausea hit me that was so intense I immediately sprinted to the bathroom.

  After spending twenty minutes with my face over the toilet, I was no longer in the mood to chat. Candace understood, and helped me to bed. She put out a barf bucket and a glass of water and told me to call her if I needed her. Probably mostly out of guilt, since we both figured it was food poisoning.

  We both were wrong.

  29

  Matthias

  Veronika came out of her bedroom and assessed me. As always, she looked like she'd slept wonderfully. I could only imagine how I looked.

  "Did you get any sleep last night?" She strolled over to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee.

  "No." I nodded weakly toward the coffee pot. "That's a bit old."

  She looked into the cup, then back up at me. "How old?"

  I looked at the clock on my computer. "I'd say about six hours. Give or take."

  "Matthias, it's seven a.m."

  "And?"

  "Have you been sitting up all night?"

  I shrugged.

  My eyes were like lead weights in their sockets. I felt like absolute death and I hadn't come any closer to figuring out what I should do. Having never experienced stress-related sleeplessness before, I was at a loss for how I was supposed to handle it.

  Veronika marched over to the table and slammed the lid of my laptop down. She fixed me with a stern frown.

  "You need to go to bed."

  "Probably." I slowly rose to my feet. "But I doubt that will help."

  Veronika rolled her eyes skyward, as if praying for strength. "They never told me I was going to have to protect you from yourself," she said blithely.

  "Hey, it’s news to me, too.” I shrugged and re-opened my laptop. "But as they say in America—them’s the breaks."

  Veronika took the seat opposite me, clasping her hands in front of her. "Is this still to do with your father? He wouldn’t want you to be worrying like this."

  "Whether he would or wouldn't doesn't change anything." I paused. "It's about more than just that, though."

  "Tell me."

  I grew uncomfortable under the intensity of Veronika's steely gaze. She could be like a steamroller with a single look, just one of the reasons she was so effective at what she did. As a bodyguard, that was probably very effective.

  Problem? Iron it out.

  Big problem? Apply more force.

>   End of problem.

  I wished it were that simple.

  "I think Ally's avoiding me," I admitted. "When she got food poisoning a few days ago, it made sense that she didn’t want me around. Now that she should be over that, she claims she has a virus and continues to forbid any visits."

  Veronika's lips quirked infinitesimally. "She forbid you?"

  "Forbade."

  Even my correction couldn't quash Veronika's smile from spreading.

  "The Prince of Caspierre, heir to the throne," she mused, staring off into space. "Given orders by an American librarian."

  If it had been anyone else telling me what to do, I would have ignored it. I probably would have even made a power play. But Veronika was right—I was whipped.

  And it fucking sucked.

  All I could think about was Ally. Her generous smile, the way her laugh seemed to make the whole world just a little happier. These were qualities I never would have noticed before, and now they consumed me.

  Veronika must have noticed my expression because she quickly changed her tune. "Maybe she really is sick and doesn't want to pass it to you. You have paranoia."

  I shook my head, too distracted to correct her English again. No amount of reasoning would make the sinking feeling in my gut subside. I didn’t believe Ally was too sick to see me. She was avoiding me. But if it went on much longer, it may be too late.

  "I wasn't just up because of her," I admitted, closing the lid of my laptop again. "I've been talking to the family lawyers much of the night as well."

  "I thought you were finished with them?"

  I shook my head. I wasn't even close to finished. Being royalty had its perks, but the passing of one monarch meant that preparations had to be made for the next. Lots of preparations. And there was only so much I could get done from here. It had taken up almost all my time over the last few days, and was the real reason I’d had to skip out on Ally’s dinner party date night.

  Although maybe if I had known how hard she would take it, I would have skipped it after all.

  "Did you speak to your family at all last night?" Veronika asked.