Page 30 of His Princess Brat
“Pita!” I caught up with her just as she was disentangling herself from her latest would-be beau—a tall, pretentious man who looked me up and down as I came running up to her as if he couldn’t believe we were in the same room together.
She managed not to roll her eyes at having been stopped yet again, and when she turned to face me, she wasn’t anywhere near as warm as I was hoping my reception with her would be. Especially considering last night.
Which didn’t make sense, unless she thought I’d deliberately been avoiding her all night.
“I’m sorry it’s taken this long for me to reach you,” I half-laughed, still trying to catch my breath. “Every time I turn around, someone’s grabbing my arm—” I turned on the tall man, my smile vanishing behind a very real dude-don’t-make-me-hurt-you glare, “—and flirting.”
Sniffing his disdain, he turned and walked away. Finally, I had Pita all to myself, and she was still giving me that cool mask of disinterest.
“Well, here I am.” She folded her arms over her chest, trying to distance herself emotionally. “You found me, congratulations. What do you want?”
“To spend a little time with you,” I said bluntly, and then even though the answer was just as obvious, asked, “Where are you going?”
“To the stables to see my horse.” She glared at me, but already I could see she was softening. Her features relaxed and she offered a small, reluctant smile. “You’re welcome to join me, if you want to.”
My stomach growled loudly, answering for me. “While I really would love to see your horse, I think I’m going to have to take a raincheck. I haven’t eaten much today, and I’m over these dinner parties. All I want right now is a big hunk of red meat and my bed.” My smile grew salacious. “Honestly, I was hoping you would join me.”
She looked tempted, but in the end I lost to a horse.
“Red meat and not having to suffer through another of these obnoxious parties sounds good. Maybe I could also get a raincheck? Say, for tomorrow night?”
Hey, at least she was no longer angry or cold with me. A delay was better than nothing.
I grinned. “It’s a date,” I promised.
I couldn’t wait.
* * *
Dinner in his room. We were going on a date. A real date! Just the two of us.
All of that was the thought that had bolstered me through my social exhaustion last night, when all I could see stretching out before me was a lifetime of nights just as miserable, confining, and awkward as dinner had been. Now it was morning, I’d gotten some sleep, and I was starting to freak out a little.
Thoroughly rattled, I paced my room like a caged tigress in the absolute throes of... I don’t even know what this was. Desperation? Confusion? Hopeless infatuation with a man so damned good-looking that I just wanted to claw the eyes out of every woman he spoke to in that rotten ballroom last night?
I had to do something. It was a deep guttural instinct surging uncontrollably inside me. I had to figure out how to make him want to keep looking at me the way he had when he’d kissed me on his couch, or when he grabbed my butt. I had to do something... make my mother proud somehow.
My God, I had to become a real lady, at least appearance-wise. That was the only real difference between me and all those people who kept monopolizing Azid’s time, smile, and completely undeserved attention.
But how? What were all those ladies doing that made them so much different from me?
Glancing at the computer provided by my cousin, it was desperation that drove me to it. I plunked myself down on the comfortable desk chair, drawing my feet up on the cushioned seat as I turned it on. What should I even search for? How not to resemble your horse? I could practically hear Bethany’s voice in my head saying that, and it automatically put me in a sour mood.
Beauty secrets was what I typed and the search engine pulled instant hits. Hair removal, what? I leaned in to look closer at the screen, my fingers going automatically to twine with a lock of my own long hair. Azid was bald, but surely he didn’t prefer his women that way—oh. I suddenly realized with a start when I saw all the feminine products attached to a blog article entitled ‘Taming the Jungle Bush’ that I realized the hair on my head was not the hair in question.
My. God.
Actually, it kind of made sense. That wanton bloom of heat ignited instantly, like it did every time my thoughts turned to Azid, but I persisted. I perused the articles and the suggestions the search engines offered regarding my own bushiness, although it made me squirm.
I’ll admit I didn’t do a lot with my appearance and I know other women spent great quantities of time every morning as well as periodically throughout the day making sure they looked just right.
Okay, I thought. Okay, I can do this. I’d have to have supplies picked up for me via the village though, because although the articles repeatedly made reference toward beauty shops and services, no way was I going to make an appointment to have that done with other people not only present but participating.
Yeah. No way at all.
I checked the time. Seven hours between now and our date. At this point, I probably didn’t have time for such an appointment, anyway.
According to the blog, waxing offered two options, hot or cold, and could be used for total hair removal or personal sculpting into pleasing designs. I didn’t think I was adventurous enough for pleasing designs. This first time, I’d consider myself lucky if I could figure out how to do it on my own.
