“Oh, certainly.”
“Are theyfairyprincesses who can cast magic spells?” she asked.
“Nope, just the regular kind.” He raised one eyebrow.“Unless they have put me under a spell to say that.”
“Areyoua fairy prince?”
“Sadly, also no.”
“I must say that I am disappointed that you aren’t going to be the ruler.”
He snorted. “I’m not.”
“What about your brother, Prince Pierre? He’s the one who’s going to be the ruler-prince. I could throw you over for him.”
Augustine reached for the lamp. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
“Anything else, Prince Auggie?”
“My cousin is a rock star. I think he killed a man when he was fifteen and got away with it.”
“Yeah, sure. Anything else?”
“I’m pretty sure one of my best friends is a spy.”
“CIA?” she asked.
“MI-6.”
“Nice.Anything else?”
“I think that about covers it.”
“That was awesome.”
He turned off the light, and darkness flooded the room. “What was awesome?”
“Everything you made up. The fairy tale. You should be a writer.”
He laughed, his male laughter ringing in the darkness above the whirr of traffic from the street down below. “I am entirely unsuited for that. I like talking to people. I do not enjoy my own company.”
Dree set her phone on the nightstand and slipped farther under the covers.
The warmth of his body flowed through the sheets to the skin on her bare legs.
His sigh echoed in the night.
The story he’d told her about princes and princesses and prince-doms had taken her mind off that asshole ex-boyfriend of hers, but worry returned with a vengeance. Stupid scam-artist Francis had been stealing narcotics through the hospice he worked for, and she had been the patsy who’d helped him.
What a fucking moron she was.
Self-loathing and fear for her future swamped her, and her hand followed the warmth streaming between the sheets, seeking human connection and comfort.
She found Augustine’s hand in the dark, and his fingers closed over hers.
It helped. She was stupid, and it helped.
She held on.
