I’m about to slip past them when I hear Theo say, “It’s not fair to ask her to do this.” I assume they’re talking about me(maybe the internet was right to call me a narcissist), and I pull the door almost shut while straining to hear what they’re saying over the machine-gun barrage of my own heart.
“We didn’t ask, you did,” Graves replies.
“And now I’maskingthe Firm to loan her a security detail so that she doesn’t have to disrupt her life.”
(Iknewit was about me.)
“For how long?” Graves asks in a steely voice.
“Just until this mayhem dies down. You can feed the press a more interesting story. Mum used to do that all the time.”
“If we provide this random American with her own personal security, it implies that she’s important to you and to the monarchy. It will only increase public curiosity. They’ll expect her to stick around.Isshe sticking around, sir?”
I stopped breathing several sentences ago.
“No,” Theo says. “She’s going back to Chicago.”
“Is she important to us?”
Theo’s spine straightens, and he looks at Graves dismissively. “Don’t be daft. She’s just a girl I spent a few days with.”
My throat burns with the pain of holding back tears.
“Then don’t throw a spanner in the works, let us do our jobs, and she’ll be gone in a week,” Graves says, before turning on his heel and marching down the hall.
CHAPTER11
DAYS UNTIL THE CORONATION:NINE
I’m on my second private jet in three months, sitting across from a boy I once loved who does not want me here. It’s as awkward as it sounds, which is why I spent a good portion of last night brainstorming ways to get out of this.
I’m morally opposed to flying private.(True.)
I’m too sick to fly.(Technically true, since my stomach is churning.)
I’m pregnant. (And it’s not Theo’s.)
The easiest escape route would have been to tell Brooke and Naomi what I overheard, but it won’t help anyone if they murder the king of England.
“Do you think Princess Victoria will be on our flight?” Naomi asked when we were all in the car early this morning, a notepad of hotel paper clutched tightly in her hand.
My stomach churned anxiously. “Probably. Why?”
“I’ve made a list of conversation topics to help Theo’s siblings get to know you. First, I’m going to tell them about the time your pet hamster died, and your parents buried him inthe backyard, and you couldn’t stop crying so you dug him up and walked around for three days with a dead hamster in a shoebox.”
I gaped at her. “Please don’t.”
“It’s charming! Second, I want to know if it’s true that she doesn’t squeeze her own toothpaste. That one’s not about you. Third, I’d love to know her thoughts aboutweather.”
“As a general concept?”
“Yes. Exactly.” Her eyes scanned the paper. “I guess most of these aren’t about you.”
When the ride ended, Naomi stepped onto the tarmac, stared up at the dreary, pre-dawn sky, and declared that it would be a great day. She then fired off a dozen emails to her roommate, her RA, her student adviser, and her professors, informing them all that she’s on a diplomatic mission and would be back in a week. Brooke, still behind on sleep after spending an entire night driving to Canada, wordlessly slunk to the back of the plane and conked out.
I was surprised to learn that most of Theo’s team would be on a second plane leaving later today, and that this morning’s flight would just be us, the royal siblings, Comet, and Winston. I overheard snippets of heated conversation about whether the direct heirs to the throne would be allowed on the same plane as Theo, but it sounds like Victoria and Henry wanted on the first plane out of Canada. In the end, Theo overrode royal protocol to allow all three of them on the same flight.
I feel mortified every time I look at the King, flushed with the shame of thinking he wanted to kiss me in his suite last night, that I ever meant anything to him. I’m glad he left when he did, and even more glad that he didn’t come around asking for Comet. He would have found me in a bad mood, unwillingto give up my dog, and deep down a rabbit hole of Googling his brother.
