Page 27 of The Thing About My Prince
“Ah, friends with planes.” He pats my upper arm. “Those are the friends to have.”
“Well?” Mum sniffs and looks from Lexi to me, like Lexi can’t possibly identify herself.
I rest my hand in the center of my fake girlfriend’s back. “Mum, Dad, this is Lexi Lane. Lexi, this is my mother, Josephine, and father, Craig.” I dispense with their titles—Princess and Earl—partially because this is an informal family meeting where I don’t think we should stand on ceremony, and partially because I know it annoys my mother.
“Nice to meet you.” Lexi offers them a hand to shake, but the second she speaks, they jerk to attention, eyes as wide as a commemorative plate.
“American,”they say in unison.
“Yes,” Lexi says, her hand still hanging in midair. “Oliver and I met in New York.”
“Oh. I see.” Mum’s disappointed tone is more akin to finding out that she’s been disinvited from Trooping the Colour—the monarch’s official birthday bash involving hundreds of soldiers, marching bands, and glittering horse-drawn carriages—and replaced by a corgi.
Dad at least has the decency to take her hand and shake it. “Good to meet you. Lexi Lane. Sounds like a good name for a superhero.”
I press my lips together to try to stop myself from smiling. But it’s tricky.
“Lexi?” Dad continues. “Is that short for something?”
“Alexandra,” she says. “But please call me Lexi. Only my awful boss uses my full name.”
“Yourboss?” Mum sounds like the idea of having a job is particularly grubby, and Lexi plummets even further on the approval scale. “What do you do?”
Finally she takes Lexi’s hand and gives it an obviously halfhearted shake.
“I’m a journalist.”
“Oh,” Mum and Dad say, again in unison, while they each take a step back as if they’re run by the same computer program.
“Gosh, I wouldn’t have expected that,” Dad says.
“Well, to be honest, we weren’t expecting anything at all, were we, Craig?” Mum doesn’t wait for my dad to respond before looking at me. “Why on earth didn’t you tell us you were bringing a guest?”
“Didn’t want any fuss.” I slide my hand up Lexi’s back and onto her shoulder. For some reason, the sensation of the ridges of her bra under my fingers catches me by surprise and makes my breath hitch. “You know, keep things simple.”
Lexi tucks into my side, fitting perfectly under my arm exactly as I knew she would, and wraps her arm around my waist.
“Yes,” she says. “No need to go to any trouble for little old me.”
“Would have been nice to know though,” Mum says, still looking only at me until her attention is caught by something over my shoulder.
“Giles, hello.” Her voice is filled with the relief of someonein mortal danger who spots a friend armed with a deadly weapon.
“Good morning, Your Royal Highness and Your Lordship,” he says with a deep respectful bow of his head. “And hello, Oliver,” he adds.
Ah, my parents’ private secretary, Giles Thorn, in all his black-suited, white-shirted glory. In a shocking turn of events his waistcoat is gray—how very daring.
I swear to God that clipboard is surgically attached to his arm. I don’t think I’ve ever once seen him without it, and I don’t recall a time when he wasn’t around to attend to and organize my parents.
“Hello, Giles,” I reply.
His eyes rest on Lexi. “I heard we had an unexpected guest, so thought I’d better pop along and…” The expression on his face would suggest the rest of that sentence isassess the damage.
“News still travels fast around here, then,” I say. “Giles, this is Lexi Lane. My girlfriend.”
I add the last two words pointedly as a poke in his eye. But, turns out, they slide deliciously off my tongue.
“Nice to meet you, Giles,” Lexi again offers her hand.
