Page 4 of The Thing About My Prince
“Of course I do. But I know nothing about Prince Oliver.” It’s a pathetic objection, but it’s all I have.
“You knew nothing about Sabrina Summers, but that book sold almost a million copies.”
“Yeah. Shame I didn’t get a royalty deal or I could have started my own magazine and sent myself wherever the hell I wanted.”
Julian picks up his phone. “I’ll call upstairs and tell them you won’t do it then, right? That it goes against your morals. That you would rather fall on your ethical sword and be unemployed than spend a few weeks swanning around with the most fun member of the British royal family, throw together a couple of hundred pages of decent text, and then pack your bags for the assignment of your dreams?”
I say nothing. Just stare back.
He clicks his phone and holds it to his ear.
“Hi, it’s Julian,” he says with a smile in his voice that is not on his face. “I’ve spoken with Alexandra, and I’m afraid she?—”
“All right. All right.” I hate myself, but I can’t flush theultimate career opportunity down the drain. “Of course I’ll do it.”
“I’ll call you back,” Julian says into his phone, then hangs up. “I knew you’d see sense. You’re meeting him tomorrow morning.”
I move toward the door, trying to focus on the end goal.
But having learned we all have a price.
And it seems mine is Prince Oliver.
CHAPTER TWO
OLIVER
“How am I supposed to cope with having a stranger all up in my business every day?” I ask my friend and business partner Chase Cooper as I pace around the living room of my Manhattan apartment. Chase has been listening on the phone patiently for about half an hour.
“Sorry for going on, mate,” I continue. “But you’re the only person who understands what this is like, the only one I know who has to constantly guard their privacy against press intrusion the way I do.”
“Oh, it’s not the same way at all.” Chase laughs. “No one cares about people like me who make a shit-ton of money playing dress-up and pretending to be other people in movies. But you and your family? You truly mean something to people. They really do care about you.”
“They definitely care that I’ve let them all down.” I stop at the window seat with its view of the Empire State Building.
“Well, isn’t that the whole point of writing the book? To share your side of the story?”
“Yup. I just wish I didn’t have to tell it all to a ghostwriter first. The publisher’s picked a bloody journalist, for fuck’s sake. What if she leaks a bunch of stuff to one of her reporter friends and it gets taken completely out of context and makes me look bad?”
“Those are the words of a man who’s been burned way too many times,” he says.
“And that’s exactly why I live here now.” New York is fan-bloody-tastic. Look at it. All this hope, all the energy, all the everything-is-going-to-be-great-ness that buzzes in the streets outside these windows. “And the fact that if I position my baseball cap correctly, I can get in and out of the coffee shop without being recognized.”
“Ha! What name do you give them?” Chase asks with a laugh. “His Royal Highness?”
“I use a different name every time. Always something simple so I don’t have to repeat it. Like Steve, or Jeff, or Ted, or something.”
“That’s a cool story for the book.”
“Not likely. If word got out, I’d never be able to grab a sneaky mango dragon fruit drink again.”
“Way too much sugar anyway,” says the man who starts every day by blending his own organic smoothie.
“Maybe, but the whole point is for me to get out and do normal things. As normal as I can, anyway, with Dane and Cole following me around.”
Dane and Cole are my two ex-marine security guards. Two others cover the weekends, but these are my main guys. They’ve been with me since my first month in New York four years ago, and I trust them with my life—literally. Cole is outside my apartment door right now. Dane will take over for the night shift.
I’d never needed protection until the backlash over my move to the US. Well, there was once a marry-me-or-else incident, but generally the members of the public I heard fromtreated me like a rock star and were pretty good-natured. The death threats only started after I left the UK and hardcore haters thought I’dturned my back on my homeland, orabandoned my duties, orhadno respect for the royal family.
