What the hell was she doing? It was pretty damn clear—from the furtive glance over her shoulder she’d given the paparazzi scumbag who’d taken that last video—she knew that she and her royal boyfriend were being stalked as they’d left that upscale Boston restaurant. And yet, she’d instigated the PDA—and it was one hell of a Hollywood, big-screen-sized kiss she’d laid on ol’ Ted in the middle of the Newbury Street sidewalk. After which they’d quickly flagged down a cab. Didn’t take much imagination to figure out where they were rushing—home to their apartment. Or why they were in such a hurry to get there—for a replay of that kiss, with fewer clothes on.
Thomas sighed.
He’d gone online to do some easy research: Ustanzia 101. Bring himself up to speed both on the royal family and the current political situation in the country.
When he’d first started digging, Thomas had found out the basics: Tedric Cortere the Second, Crown Prince of Ustanzia, son of Queen Wila, had been named after his now-deceased uncle, the former crown prince of the tiny oil-rich nation. There’d been a great of deal of tension in Ustanzia after Ted the First—known for his excesses and bad behaviors—had drowned in a terrible Thailand tsunami. Although as Thomas dug a bit further, it appeared thatthatmight’ve been a convenient cover for “died from a drug overdose.” Either way, the tragedy had a ripple effect. The reigning king had had a stroke at the news of his son’s demise, and died himself, mere days later.
The history got even more Shakespearian at that point. The king’s much younger brother, Hendrake—seriously, that was the guy’s name—had tried to claim the crown, but the Prime Minister, backed by the rest of Ustanzia’s government—along with most of population, too—pressed to put the beloved king’s surviving child, his daughter Wila, into power.
A popular princess due to her propensity for wearing blue jeans and speaking her mind, Wila had already given birth to two sons—theheir and a sparethat her own father had failed to produce—so she could focus on running the nation. Which everyone who had working brains in their heads knew she’d already been doing for her elderly father for the past decade.
And although angry Uncle H did his best to usurp her rise to power, he’d failed—slinking off to Monaco where he still grumbled his discontent, despite the fact that he lived in a freaking palace.
Paid for by his niece.
That was all good to know—Queen Wila seemed cool, and not-too-dragon-like—but while Thomas had been Googling her, he’d discovered that the search bar’s primary autofill prediction following his typed words “Queen Wila of Ustanzia” was “reaction tobaby bump.”
It turned out that everyone and their obnoxious paparazzi brother spent way too much time chasing handsome Prince Tedric and his mysterious red-haired GF through the streets of Boston. Oh yeah, andapparentlythe latest furor surrounded the burning question,Was that or was that not a baby bump?It all seemed to have started when some photo-“journalist” snapped a long-distance and badly focused picture of Tasha, dripping wet, one-piece bathing suit clinging, reaching for a towel just after she’d pulled herself out of some indoor swimming pool, probably in her high-end apartment’s fitness center.
Thomas hadn’t seen anything more than averyhealthy young woman, but the rumors persisted. And even though the links that screamedTEDRIC BABY BUMP PROOF!landed him—squinting through his eyelashes, just in case—on a bunch of shitty photos of Tasha wrapped in a giant and completely body-obscuring, cold-weather appropriate winter coat, the rumors didn’t appear to be dying down any time soon.
Mostly because the prince and his girlfriend didn’t deny it.
It was then that Thomas had stumbled upon the video of that steamy kiss.
He scrolled back a few dozen frames and froze on Tasha who was, indeed, looking dead into the camera’s lens.
The girl he knew—or thought he knew—would’ve hated that kind of attention, but here she was, definitely playing to the camera.
Of course, five years was a long time, and as people grew from child to adult, they often changed.
As for Queen Wila’sreactionto saidbaby bump...? A terse, “You’ll have to ask my son—or his little red-haired friend.”
Ouch.
So. This week was going to be even more stressful for Tasha than he’d imagined. And Uncle Navy—who always did his homework, too—damn well knew it. No wonder he wanted Thomas’s presence to be large.
Thomas shut his laptop and went to finish packing for the coming red-eye flight, and the suck-fest of a week that was sure to follow.
Chapter Three
Saturday Night
Tasha’s eyes widened when she turned and saw him come out of the gate and onto the airfield. Instead of a more conventional greeting likeHeyor’Sup, she went with, “No.” She shook her head, too, adding, “Nope. Nope. No.”
Thomas smiled. He couldn’t help himself and of course she bristled, thinking he was laughingather, rather than commiseratingwithher.
Her blue eyes turned decidedly chilly, staring at him, unamused, from the stony face of this weird stranger she’d become over the past five years. She was strikingly beautiful, true, but the weirdness here was off-the-charts.
Gone was the messy little girl who’d been a rough-and-tumble tomboy even as she’d insisted on wearing Disney-princess pink.
Gone was the reckless teen who’d driven her aunt and uncle crazy with worry.
She’d transformed into this carefully put-together, heavily made-up, fashionably dressed young woman, with every hair in place.
Nah, that’s where shades of her former messiness still poked through. Her hair was still untamable, and as she shook her head at him, it flashed in the airfield’s high powered lights.
Thomas shook his head back at her—coupla idiots just standing there on the airstrip next to a very slick-looking private jet,No-ing each other emphatically, in total agreement.
