Page 8 of Royally Knocked Up
The other people eating with them exchanged glances but said nothing.
I’m going to have to be the one to break the ice,Hailey realized. If she didn’t say something to him, nothing was going to be said at all, and she would lose out on her first opportunity to make a connection with the subject of her investigation.
That was, if you could call a job like this aninvestigation.
She cleared her throat. “Are you going to wear those sunglasses while we eat?” she asked him.
His eyebrows lifted behind them. “Are they bothering you?”
“A bit.”
“Is anyone else here bothered by the shades?” Enzo asked.
Murmurs ofnowent around the table.
Hailey despaired. There went her attempts to blend in — now she was the onlyperson who had pointed out the sunglasses. He was bound to pay closer attention to her now than he might have otherwise. She was going to have to figure out a way to walk this back.
The trouble was that everyone else had been too intimidated to stand up to a prince, she realized. Nobody else would dare criticize him. The king had warned her that it would be like this, and she had still managed to be taken by surprise somehow.
She was disappointed in herself.
She turned her attention to her food. It was delicious — Italian fare. At least the lunch was good. That was something.
And when it came to Enzo… well, she would find a way to get close to him without raising his suspicions.
After all, it was what she did best.
CHAPTER 4
ENZO
Enzo waved to the woman who had introduced him to everyone else. “Can I get a cup of coffee?” he asked her, holding out his mug.
“There’s a coffee pot over in the corner,” she told him.
He pressed the mug into her hands. “Thanks. You’re a doll.”
She stood there for a moment, but then she seemed to get the idea and turned and walked off. Enzo nodded to himself. Things would run much more smoothly around here once everyone realized that, as the prince, he was to be both obeyed and tended to.
“She was trying to tell you to get the coffee yourself.”
The speaker was the same woman who had tried to get Enzo to remove his glasses — a strawberry blonde with flashing blue eyes and an American accent. Enzo studied her from behind his shades, wondering whether the disrespect was an American thing.
“She’s got it under control,” he said.
“You’re just used to people serving you, I guess.”
“Pretty used to it, yeah.”
The woman returned with his coffee. Enzo accepted it and took a sip. “Thanks, boss,” he said.
She nodded. She didn’t smile. He wondered why not — he’d called herboss, after all. She must feel validated by that. Maybe she was just having a bad day.
This job was going to be a pain. He couldn’t believe he had been placed on an events planning team. He knew exactly how that was going to turn out. Since his identity wasn’t under wraps here — how could it be, when his was one of the most famous faces in the country? — everyone who came here for their events was going to see him as an attraction placed here for their entertainment. He would spend party after party shaking hands, doing meet-and-greets, answering questions about his father. How tiresome! Enzo didn’t mind being recognized for who he was, of course, but it was usually having a few drinks that made that sort of thing tolerable.
Well, there had to be a bar around here somewhere, and it wasn’t as if he was going to get fired for having a little fun on the job. Hell, he’d love to get fired. But he was sure he was immune to such things.
The important thing was to act as if he was settling in so that he could get out from under their scrutiny as quickly as possible. The sooner everyone stopped paying attention to him, the sooner he would be able to slip away and enjoy his time here. He wasn’t planning to contact his father the entire time leading up to the coronation, either — not even to tell him that he had reached the resort. Someone would, of course — his father wouldbe told that he had arrived at La Fantasia. But he wouldn’t be sure what Enzo was doing, and Enzo thought there was a chance his father wouldn’t go to the trouble of trying to find out. He couldn’t possibly bethatupset about a few nights at various bars. This would all blow over.
