Royally Yours: A Bad Boy Baby Romance Read online

  I scowled darkly at him but let go. Trust Henry to be able to throw that in my face. His good behaviour was as tentative as ever. Right now, he only had two glasses of wine in him, so I was probably safe. But any more and a good-looking female or two and we’d be in for a night.

  At the sound of choking, I turned to see his face going beet red. I was behind his chair to help him when he swallowed with difficulty. I followed his narrowed gaze to the door, where much of the room was looking now too. Everyone had fallen into a hush.

  There, at the door, in a simple, elegant gown of blue-and-white silk, was my mother, Queen Mary.

  “Here we go,” Henry muttered under his breath.

  “Can you save it, please,” I implored him as I sat back down. “I know you two aren’t exactly each other’s favorite people, but—”

  “Each other’s favorite people?” he interjected, his face going even redder. “The latest I heard from Mother was that I was a family disgrace they should have shipped off to Siberia.”

  “You know we don’t ship people off to Siberia anymore.”

  Henry’s brows inverted in an incredulous glare. “Seriously?”

  I sighed, giving him one of my glistening broccoli florets in recompense.

  “Okay, so you may have a point. A big point,” I allowed, “but tonight isn’t about family politics bullshit. It’s about—”

  “Supporting a good cause,” Mother said, smiling thinly as she lowered herself into a seat between us. “I didn’t miss your speech, did I?” she said, angling her steely-blue gaze my way. I shook my head, trying to think of something to say.

  It was sometimes disarming to be in the same room as Mother and Henry. The tension was so thick that you could cut a slab of it and eat it—not unlike the salmon, although it would doubtlessly taste bitter as hell. Ever since he was fifteen and got kicked out of his boarding school for setting off fireworks on a stone bridge, Henry and Mother had been at each other’s throats.

  Not to mention they both had the same disarmingly focused, steely-blue eyes—which were now locked in a glaring contest.

  “I see you’ve been enjoying the wine selection,” Mother said blandly, her accusing gaze stopping on Henry’s empty wineglass with its thin bed of red at the bottom.

  Immediately, Henry’s hand slipped to the wine bottle in the centre of the table. He poured himself another glass, watching her all the while.

  There was a loud tinkle throughout the room, and I rose.

  “That’s me,” I said, trying to smile. It didn’t quite work, as Mother and Henry were still busy glaring holes into each other.

  “Please don’t kill each other,” I whispered before I left, not entirely joking.

  One look over my shoulder a few seconds later and I found they hadn’t heard me.

  Up on the podium, familiar nerves settled over me. I brushed them away with a swift shake of my head. This dinner had nothing to do with me except that I was the organizer and the paycheck. Even this speech had nothing to do with me; I was just the messenger. The important part was the message and getting it out. I was going to do my damnedest to make sure I gave it the justice it deserved.

  “Thank you, everyone, for gathering here today,” I said, my gaze spanning the room. Everyone had stopped eating and was looking my way. Everyone except for Mother and Henry, that was.

  Inspiration struck me. Although I had planned this speech and memorized it down to the last sentence, that didn’t mean I couldn’t improvise a bit too. Maybe add certain elements to make certain individuals in the crowd a bit more…I don’t know…open to not despising each other.

  “I don’t need to tell you how much this means to my family and me. We ourselves have been ravaged by this cruel and unforgiving disease. Slow and painstaking and inevitable, MS leaves no survivors, and that’s just what we need to do to every strain of MS. Your generous donations today will help our battle against this unflinching disease, and so I thank you for that.”

  I smiled a bit, thinking of my grandpa. I hadn’t known Grandpa Horace, my mom’s dad, but I had known Grandpa Philip on my dad’s side. The old king as it were. And I’d seen him decline limb by limb. He was the grandpa who’d bought me a model train set and sat down in the basement to play with me for hours as my little heart thrilled at every movement of the locomotives. He was the grandpa who read me bedtime stories when my mom or dad couldn’t. He was the grandpa who was a better man than I could ever aspire to be. I exhaled deeply, giving him a silent salute. This one’s for you, Grandpa.

  “We can’t let this disease win. We can’t fold our hands and give up or let it take and rip from us what it will. We’ve already made strides toward a cure; doctors have confirmed that. Now let’s close the gap. Let’s not settle for prolonging the lives of those with MS. Let’s actually save their lives. We can only do that as one, with all of us working together as we are now. So please, even after you leave this dinner today, your bellies full and your smiles wide, remember that. We need one another for this.”

  In the resounding sea of applause, the only faces I sought out were Mother’s and Henry’s. They looked in a little bit better humor.

  However, when I walked back to them and sat down, my mother’s predatory nose rotated my way.

  “Henry tells me the two of you visited a photo shoot. With American models.”

  At my pointed glare, Henry only shrugged his shoulder as if to say, She ripped it out of me with pliers and tongs.

  “We did,” I confirmed, carefully choosing my words before letting them out. “But it was an insignificant affair. Enjoyable, but nothing noteworthy.”

  She nodded as though she’d expected as much.

  “I’m sure your brother didn’t fail to make the acquaintance of several of the ladies, but please tell me you didn’t make the same failing.” Before I could respond, she continued. “Those American girls are something else. They aren’t raised with the same pedigree or class as British girls are. They’re wilder, more unpredictable.”

  When she had said “American,” her mouth had twisted as if she’d said “Nazi” or something.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if one of them got pregnant just to trap you and throw our whole family into a blackmailing scandal,” she said angrily, directing her comment at Henry.

  His chair shrieked across the floor as he stood up.

  “Shockingly, I’m no longer hungry.”

  A glance at his plate found that he had finished off his broccoli, although his salmon was only picked over.

  As he stormed out of the room, mother shifted her up-turned nose my way.

  “When disaster strikes, just remember that I warned him.”

  Chapter 4

  Heidi

  The red satin one? Or no, the black velvet one. But what about that white leather one with the zipper in front?

  My room looked like a volcano of a wardrobe had exploded, spewing out my clothes every which way. It’d been three hours and I still couldn’t decide what to wear.

  “You okay?”

  I turned to see Liza, smiling knowingly, in the doorway.

  Finally letting out the groan that had been curdling in my stomach these past few fruitless hours, I heaved myself onto my bed.

  “I don’t have anything to wear!”

  My antique bed let out a pleasant creak as Liza flopped down beside me, her arms laden with shopping bags of her own.

  “Heidi,” she said patiently, “you have about forty dresses and thirty skirts.” Seeing she was getting nowhere, she sighed. “Do you want me to help you decide?”

  I grudgingly turned her way. “Please?”

  Grimacing, she unloaded her arms and put her hands in her lap, nodding.

  “Fine,” she said, “but first we need to whittle the choices down to ten.”

  Off the bed now, I froze.

  “Ten,” I said, swallowing thickly. I let the word hang in the air for a good minute so she could fully survey the clothing-crammed scene. So she co
uld grasp that ten was a bit too severe. When her baby-blue eyes fixed on me, she swept her blond ponytail over her shoulder and repeated, “Ten.”

  Exhaling, I riffled through some of the piles until I narrowed the choices down to eleven. Part of me was hoping she wouldn’t notice. After all, she had told me she’d failed tenth-grade math, so that had to count for something, right?

  In any case, when I put on the first bodycon purple tube dress, her condemnation was immediate. “No.”

  I rotated myself in front of the mirror, squinting to try to see what exactly she saw that was so horrendous about the dress. It was the sexiest one I had.

  “Why not?”

  “You look like a marker,” she said simply.

  Glaring at her without saying anything, I put on the next one, which produced a reaction that was just as immediate.

  “Yep. That’s it.”

  I gave her a head-on glare.

  “Are you just saying that to get this over with?”

  She was busy picking some dirt out of her pink nails, but she lifted her chin to give me a glare of her own.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Try on the others. But we both know this one is it.”

  I turned to the mirror to look at myself again. She did have a point. The teal, low-neck dress clung to my figure perfectly and set off my pale skin and dark hair even more. Nevertheless, I tried on several more mainly to annoy her.

  After the third consecutive no, even I had to agree that Liza had been spot on. The teal one it was, and not with a moment to spare, either. Just as I was slipping on my black Louis Vuitton heels, my phone went off.

  Your limo is here, Miss Heidi, the message from an unknown number read.

  Downstairs, I could only assume the black limo was there for me. When I dipped my head through the open door, the tan, smiling driver confirmed it.

  “Heidi Sommers?”

  “Heidi Sommers,” I confirmed with a big smile of my own. For once, I was happy to hear someone say my name. Usually it meant someone had recognized me and I was in for a fifteen-minute spiel about how big a fan they were and could I sign their hand, dog, and T-shirt?

  The whole limo ride there, I tried to rehearse how the dinner would go. Zvin—that was the restaurant’s name. Truthfully, it sounded more like a punk rock bar than an upscale restaurant. But if I’d come to know anything about London, it was that it was…unexpected. The culture here wasn’t what I had imagined it to be at all.

  I’d pigeonholed this place as a posh tourist trap, and I’d ended up with a much different impression. The whole city had proven itself to be at once diverse and familiar, a real creative hub. There was graffiti alongside golden-edged tourist throngs, not to mention the museums I had told Charles about. I smiled as I said their names to myself, remembering the fascinating works they held as I did so: the Natural History Museum, the Museum of London, the Science Museum, the National Gallery.

  As the limo nosed over to the curb, I wondered if this date would be a pleasant surprise too.

  The driver opened the door for me. I thanked him, then made my way into the restaurant. Surrounded by oriental-themed decor, Charles was waiting for me inside the door.

  “Right on time,” he said with a dashing smile.

  It took me a minute to catch my breath. He was handsome as hell in his suit. A prince in a button-up shirt and noir pants was one thing, but a prince in a three-piece silver suit with a cornflower blue tie that matched his eyes perfectly? Now that was something else entirely. I scrunched my fingers together to stop my arms from shaking.

  “You have the limo driver to thank for that,” I admitted. “Pretty sure I was a good five minutes late myself. I practically fell to my death running down the stairs.”

  Charles looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be horrified or amused even as I chuckled reflectively.

  “Don’t they have elevators in London flats?” he finally asked, frowning.

  I held the back of my hand up to my forehead in the stance of a helpless damsel.

  “Oh no. Only stairs is what us peasants get.”

  That got a laugh out of him. Linking his arm through mine, he commented, “I hardly think famous American supermodels qualify as peasants.”

  I smirked.

  “Compared to the royal family, I think almost everyone qualifies as peasants.”

  “Not exactly,” he said, still smiling. “Nowadays, there’s plenty of you regular folks who are considerably wealthier than us. Take J.K. Rowling or Bill Gates, for instance.”

  At our table, he pulled out an ornamentally carved chair for me.

  “Well, I can assure you I’m no Bill Gates,” I told him as I sat down.

  “Of course not,” he said, sitting across from me. “You’re even better.”

  He raised his full goblet of water toward me, and I lifted mine. Over his shoulder, I noticed the rest of the tables were empty. The room was divided by colorful partitions decorated with exquisitely rendered cherry blossoms, but still, it was clear from the tables I could see that they were all empty. A subsequent look over my shoulder confirmed that the whole beautiful restaurant was empty.

  “Are you really that hesitant to toast yourself?”

  Charles’s joking question got me looking back at him. Smiling self-consciously, I clinked my glass against his. After I took a sip, I asked, “Did you actually book this whole place?”

  He shot me an amused smile. “Would you have preferred that I booked McDonald’s?”

  I pretended to think about that for a minute.

  “I always did like those McFlurries.”

  We both laughed.

  “I’m more of a Big Mac man myself.”

  That was so shocking to me, I couldn’t even laugh. “Seriously?”

  He pursed his lips.

  “Which do you think is crazier: a supermodel or a prince who eats McDonald’s?”

  “A prince,” I said immediately.

  “In any case, we’ll have to save the poll for later,” he said, wrapping his fingers around my wrist.

  Slowly, he conveyed my fingers up to his lips. When he pressed them against his mouth, the sensation sent arousal trembling through me.

  “What do you say we order?”

  There was something sensual in the way he said it. Maybe it was in the twist of his lips. In any case, I could only nod in agreement.

  What seemed like only seconds later, a thin Asian girl was beside our table.

  “We’ll have the rice and chicken meal, please,” Charles said.

  She glided away with a smile and a nod, and Charles turned to me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t even ask you what you wanted.”

  I tried to think of a witty reply to that. He continued. “If you want, I could call in an Uber Eats McDonald’s order from here.”

  This time, it was my hand clasping his.

  “Okay,” I said, my eyes challenging his.

  “Okay,” he said, not moving.

  There was a battle of wills going on, but something told me it was for something far more intense than Uber Eats.

  Finally, he peeled his gaze away and focused on one of his hands, then the other, as if he were considering two options. Finally, he met my gaze again with a smile.

  “I don’t want to be abrupt, but if I don’t talk about this, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to last at this dinner with you.”

  His gaze lazily dipped down my front, and I trembled as though I’d been physically stroked.

  “If things go nearly as well as they have these past few times we’ve had together, I’d like to see you for the three months you’re here.”

  His words bashed against the outside of my head stupidly. Without thinking, I said, “What do you mean?”

  He gave a cute little smile, as if my stupidity was somehow becoming.

  “You, Heidi Sommers,” he said simply. “I want you.”

  Once again, my brain couldn’t make sense of the mishmas
h of feelings that were throttling through me. A stew of shock, awe, joy, and, brimming under the surface—the strangest feeling I had—fear.

  “But what exactly does that entail?” I said slowly.

  He leaned in and clasped my other hand.

  “Whatever you’re comfortable with.” His brow furrowed. “I mean, I can only assume, since you accepted this date and have so far been amiable to my advances—”

  “I’m insanely attracted to you,” I blurted out before I could think better of it.

  He smiled widely, clearly disarmed. There was something in his smile that was different than his others, something less poised. I liked it.

  “That’s a relief,” he admitted. He brought my hand up to his mouth and slipped a finger in. He then bit down before slipping it back out.

  My whole body was practically shaking with nerves and arousal when he said the next part: “Because attracted seems to be too weak a word for what I feel when I’m with you.”

  “The rice and chicken,” the Asian girl said as she placed a hulking portion of each between us. Her sudden appearance as miraculous. It seemed it was only five minutes ago that she’d left with our order.

  Charles released my hand then, and my smile drooped. Never before had I wished food had taken longer to come out of the kitchen.

  Nevertheless, our waitress was gone soon enough, leaving the two of us to stare at each other shyly over the huge portion. As Charles got to eating, I started on mine as well, although I hardly tasted the delicious beads of rice or wedges of chicken. All my senses were focused on sight alone, on watching him, Charles, to see what he would say or do next.

  Finally, after he’d chewed and swallowed a good portion, he spoke again.

  “As mundane as it is, I should probably go over the rules. First off”—he held out his thumb to count—“sex only. I think it’s pretty obvious to both of us that I’m in no position at present to be in a relationship. And I just wanted to check: You are on the pill, correct?”

  I nodded. Part of me felt like a puppet whose strings he was holding, like I would go along with anything he said. All of it seemed like make-believe, as if I were in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. It wouldn’t have surprised me if a chocolate crown sprouted up on Charles’s head.