Page 7 of The Thing About My Prince
Oliver’s full lips spread into a playful grin that puts a glint in his eye that does nothing to calm my blush.
“Yeah, the city view’s pretty amazing even though we’re only twelve floors up. This building’s somehow escaped being hemmed in.” He strolls past me into the wide-open corner room that’s lined with windows on two sides, and turns back to face me—the spire of the Empire State protruding from the top of his head. “I’ve been here a while, but it never wears off.”
His voice sounds exactly as it does in the interviews I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours bingeing as research. His accent has that cut-glass royal ring, the sound no other British people seem to have. But there’s also a more relaxed undertone to it, like it spans two worlds.
I’ve never been starstruck in my life, but looking at his face, which is even more attractive in person than in photos—more lived-in, more real—gives me a strange kind of nervous feeling in my belly.
So I let my eyes wander down to his chest instead.
Thankfully I find something to distract me from its broadness. “Is that blood?”
I point at a stain on the front of his pale blue hoodie.
“What?” He looks down. “Oh, no. Strawberry jam. Breakfast. Sorry. I was going to change before you got here but you were a little early, so this is what you get.”
He gestures from the top of his thick mess of sandy-brown hair to the white athletic socks poking out from the bottom of his distressed jeans.
Get a grip, Lexi. Don’t fall for this charming, I’m-so-ordinary ease. He was literally raised to be nice to people, to make people like him. It’s the job he was born into.
“Do you own this place?” I can’t imagine how much it’s worth. And the furniture must have cost a fortune—there’s a huge low, curved, cream sofa at one end of the room, a darkwood coffee table in front of it, a matching dresser on one wall, and bookshelves on another.
Sitting in the far corner is an egg-shaped chair that looks like it would be the most deliciously comfortable place to nap in the sunbeam that’s hitting it right now.
And centered on the window on the long side of the room is a grand piano. A grand fucking piano. How ostentatious can you get?
“You’re getting right down to the nitty-gritty, huh?” Oliver says.
He can stop with that eyebrow thing too. Bet he thinks it’s cute.
“Well, I have to turn in a first draft before Christmas. Which means I have three months to get this thing researched and written. In case you aren’t aware, that’s an almost impossible timeline. So I have a lot to find out about you in a short time, then get it written up into something vaguely resembling a book.”
“No, I didn’t buy this apartment,” he says. “It’s been lent to me.”
“Lent?As in, you’re living here for free?”
“Yup. I got lucky.”
Did he ever. And my least favorite type of lucky. The accident-of-birth kind.
Oh, the entitled brats I grew up with and the rich people who treat others like dirt who I’ve come across over and over in my years as a reporter. They’re all the same.
“I have a friend who has a lot of big property investment clients,” he says.
“Miller Malone? One of the guys you own the soccer team with?”
“Yeah. He builds luxury condos in Boston and?—"
“I know. Research. Journalist, remember?” Oh no, did I just do the eyebrow thing right back at him? Jesus, Lexi.
“Right. Well, most of what you’ve researched about mewill have been complete bollocks. But it is true that I own the Boston Commoners with three other guys. Anyway, Miller has a client who’d bought this place as a tax write-off or something, and it was sitting empty, so he suggested it would help its resale value if someone with a certain profile had lived in it for a while. So here I am.” He throws his arms out to the sides.
“The irony of wealth,” I say.
“What is?”
“The richer someone is, the more they get for free.”
“Am I picking up some subtle vibes that you’re not enormously happy to be here?”
