Page 9 of Some Like It Royal

Alyx

“Are you seriously considering his offer?” Rhonda sat on the edge of the picnic table bench, a cigarette dangling between two fingers. The restaurant opened in an hour, they were set up and they had some time to kill. Nestled among the trees and bushes, the smoking area was deserted save for the two of them. Alyx didn’t smoke, but she wanted to take advantage of the rare quiet time to chat without interruptions.

“I don’t know.” She sighed. In the two days since the theater fiasco, Daniel, his offer, his blue eyes and what accepting all of the above would be like were the only things she had thought about. As promised, an envelope containing her family research arrived at the restaurant the next day. It sat unopened in her car.

“Youareconsidering it.” Standing, Rhonda shook her head, looking around as if to ascertain they were alone, then stared at her. “You don’t know this guy. He could be some kind of crackpot and his attorney an accomplice—if the guy was really an attorney.”

“He was. I googled Martin Grange and looked him up via the California Bar Association. I found photos and news articles about him. Did the same for Daniel. They’re real. They are who they say they are.” Which made the conundrum muckier than it already was. What the hell did it say about them that they wanted to use fraud—well, not fraud, not if he was right about her. But weren’t they asking for an act? An illusion to make a business deal happen?

“You didn’t meet the attorney, sweetie. You talked to him on the phone.” Her friend grimaced.

“No, I didn’t see him but he was in captioned in a photograph with Daniel last year. The photo matched his bar association page.” Stretching, she paced away from the table and the haze of smoke. Too many possibilities crowded in her mind. Her gut twisted with indecision. She told him no at the parking garage. While the audition didn’t completely reverse her decision, she sat firmly on the fence between the risky promise of the unknown and the less certain success of the road she traveled.

“Do you hear yourself? You’re thinking about—” Rhonda glanced around again, dropping her voice to a whisper, “—getting engaged to a guy you don’t know and walking away from your life to play apart.”

“But isn’t that kind of what I always wanted to do? Be an actress, play a role, inhabit the part?”

“On. Stage.” Her friend crushed the cigarette out and snapped her fingers in front of Alyx’s face. “Wake up. This isn’t a part—this is your life.”

We’re going to have to learn the mannerisms and manners…

I’ll hire someone to teach us how to do it…

You were born for this part…

“Rhonda, I’m going to do it.”

The bottle blonde sighed and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. “I knew you would. You are the most daring, adventurous, out-of-her-mind person I know. You see something you want, you go after it. You live out of your car, you shower in a gym and you’re still together and on top of things. Me, I do good for the day by day. You? See the mountain, take the mountain.”

“Tell me how you really feel.” She grinned. Rhonda was her oldest friend in Los Angeles and the reason she got the job at the steakhouse in the first place. Rhonda’d tried to talk her into sharing her apartment, but it was too cramped with Rhonda and her boyfriend. She did, however, sublet the guest room closet for her nicer outfits so they didn’t get crumpled in the car.

The older woman took her by the shoulders and stared at her. “You get everything in writing and you get some of that money up front. You also remember you have an out—anything gets hinky, you come straight to me.” Pursing her lips, she shook her head slowly. “I still think you should just say forget it. You have the information. If you want to track down your royal roots, you don’t need this guy.”

“It’s not about that.” And curiously enough, it wasn’t. She’d gotten used to having no family. She’d had sixteen years of getting used to it. Some days, she couldn’t picture what her mom and dad looked like. She remembered how they smelled—her mother’d loved Tabu perfume and her father’d favored Old Spice. If she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could almost imagine the feeling of their hugs, but that was it. Capturing those elusive moments was one the reasons she liked sleeping in her car. Some her best memories were falling asleep in the backseat on the way back from some adventure while her parents talked in the front seat.

On really bad days, she could close her eyes, hug her bear and soak up that feeling.

“Then why?” Rhonda tilted her head, expression curious and concerned, but lacking judgment. “Why take this kind of leap?”

“Because it’s crazy. It’s—immersion. It’s becoming someone else entirely. If I can dothis,then I really do have a future in acting. It’s not just some fairytale I dreamed up one night to run away from a foster home.”

“Sweetheart, this isn’t justimmersionlike you’re playing a part in a movie. This is the real thing and you’re talking about marrying a guy you don’t know?”

“I’m not actually marrying him.” She went over his request so many times in the past two days she’d memorized it. He wanted an engagement. He wanted a splashy showing. He didn’t say they had to go through with it. Catching Rhonda close in a quick hug, she grinned. “It’s going to be fine. I’ll make sure I have the parachute on before I jump.”

“I worry about you,” Rhonda said, utterly unconvinced. “You need to check in with me and regularly. I want to know he hasn’t buried you in his backyard or locked you up in his cellar or something.”

She made a face. “That’s a cheery thought.”

“It’s a realistic one. You’re usually a lot more practical than this.” Dislike kissed every single word.

“Then I promise, I’ll check in and text you regularly.” It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have someone know where she was. “I’ll make sure you have the address too.”

“Good. Take selfies to, I want to be able to see that you’re fine.” She shook her head. “If you change your mind atanypoint, one phone call, fuck it, just show up. You can come to me.”

That helped. Maybe more than she knew. Alyx hugged her again. “Thank you.” Even if she didn’t like it, didn’t want her doing it, she wasn’t cutting ties.

After Rhonda went inside, she pulled out her cell and the crinkled business card. She weighed the decision for another minute before dialing the number. She could have texted it, but this seemed like something where it would be better if they spoke.

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