Chapter 16 – Rowan
ROWAN
Ispot Marcella first. Her blonde hair glimmers like wheat fields against the sun.
She laughs, her head thrown back as Bellamy’s hands wave wildly in the air.
Zayer is on Marcella’s lap, tucked against her like it’s the most natural place for him to be.
This shouldn’t affect me. Zayer has sat on Emily’s lap numerous times, and Marcella is simply a temporary Emily.
But like everything with this woman, it does.
I smelled her, brushed my lips along her cheek. She didn’t smell like Ella. Ella smelled like a cold winter’s night, and I needed to test that for myself because, where so many other things about that feel uncertain, I remember how she smelled.
Marcella smells like soap and shampoo. Clean and a bit floral with something underneath it that I liked way too damn much.
“Mommy!” the girls scream, running up to Bellamy when they find her.
“We just went on the biggest roller coaster ever!” Sabrina is practically vibrating with excitement and adrenaline.
“Yes, and now they’re starving,” I dramatize, imitating their voices.
“We just had calzones,” Bellamy tells them, wrapping an arm around both girls. “They were delicious. Would you like that or something else?”
“Calzone!” they both chip.
“I’d be happy to get you all some,” Marcella offers.
“Marcella, you haven’t gone on any rides,” Bellamy interjects.
Marcella laughs it off. “I didn’t expect to, Bellamy. It’s fine. Really, I’m happy to get everyone their lunch. It’s my duty here.”
“Nonsense. Rowan, take her on a roller coaster or something. She’s never been on one.”
That catches my attention. Sheltered or not, even the children have been on rides.
“Is that true?”
Marcella looks away, possibly a bit put out that Bellamy outed her that way.
“Marcella?” I press.
“Yes, it’s true, but honestly, it’s fine.”
“What do you think, girls? Should we take Marcella on a ride before we all eat and let Mommy and Zayer have a rest?”
“Yes!” they both squeal because these girls have boundless energy. Being cooped up in the palace will do that. I can’t wait for the new renovations on the pool to start. I plan to have them help me with all of the planning.
“Your Highnesses, that’s really not—”
“Come now, you don’t want to disappoint princesses, do you?”
If Marcella could flip me off right now, she would. “Of course not, sir.”
“Zayer, lad, how about you sit next to Mommy and the two of you hang tight for a few minutes? If you’re good and stay with Mommy without trying to run off, I’ll get you one of those incredible pastries from the stand we just passed. What do you say?”
He nods enthusiastically. “Yes! Yes!”
“I thought so. All right, one last ride before lunch.”
Zayer climbs off Marcella, and she stands, throwing daggers at me with her eyes. Bellamy gives her a wink I don’t understand that makes Marcella’s lips thin.
“Which roller coaster should we take her on?” I ask the girls. “I’m inclined to really get a scream from her, so I’d say the upside-down one.”
“Yes! The upside-down one,” Sabrina agrees, coming on the other side of Marcella and taking her hand. It startles Marcella, but she recovers quickly and offers her a kind smile. “If you’ve never been on a roller coaster before, it’s a fun one to start with.”
“No way!” Phaedra chimes in. “I say the up-and-down one that has the twist. That’s better.” Phaedra glances up at Marcella inquisitively. “Do you get sick on rides?”
Marcella pales. “I don’t know. I’ve never been on one before. And I just ate. Is it common to get sick on rides?”
“Oh.” All three of us pause.
“Maybe, we shouldn’t—”
“No,” Marcella cuts me off. “I want to go on the biggest, scariest one you’ve got. I can handle it.”
“All right,” I agree. “Let’s do it.”
We get back in line for the upside-down one, and because people are kind and genuinely awed that the royal family—particularly the children—are here, they allow us to cut.
Even when we try to tell them no over and over again, they insist, and somehow we end up at the front of the line in the first car in record time.
“I’ll ride with Marcella,” I tell the girls. “You two go behind us.”
The girls are in on the plan, wanting Marcella to have the best first experience possible, and something about that hits me.
“You’re a virgin,” I state as we get into the car and are harnessed in place.
“Excuse me?!”
I chuckle. Wow, that came out wrong. “I meant a ride virgin.”
“Your Highness, if this is your way of trying to distract me—”
“Rowan, and I’m not trying to do that. I simply realized you’re a virgin.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “Not anymore. You’ve officially popped my cherry.”
It makes me smile, only for it to slip as I study her. “Are you sure you want to do this? You look a bit…sweaty and gray.”
She gnaws on her lip. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I shouldn’t be nervous. It’s just a ride.”
I can’t tell if she’s talking to herself or me.
“I’ve done a million things. A million dangerous things and yet…
” The ride starts to move, heading toward the rail that will slowly take us to the top.
“Oh bloody fuck!” Her head swivels in my direction.
“I hate you. You need to know that, and I likely shouldn’t be telling you this, but if I die on this ride, I can’t die without you knowing it.
I hate you. You did this to scare me or make me sick or whatever twisted plot you had in your head.
It’s why you asked me to come with you all today. You’re trying to sabotage me.”
There are a million things in that speech to focus on, but they get cut off when she repeats herself.
“Your Highness, respectfully, I officially hate you.”
I smile like the devil. “You don’t. You just want to.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” she grumbles under her breath as we trickle up and up, the festival growing smaller and smaller beneath us. “I suppose if you have your princesses on here, I have nothing to be concerned about.”
The wind whips her long bangs and heavy blonde hair back from her face, and I get a perfect shot of her profile.
She’s easily the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
It sucks to finally admit that to myself, but there it is.
She’s fucking stunning and sweet-looking, even if she’s not sweet at all. A total knockout. A heartbreaker.
There’s a snarky side to her that she covers with manners and formality, and it’s annoyingly intriguing. It’s also fun to try to get her to bite instead of curtsy, but right now, she has an unexpected vulnerability that’s not only surprising but oddly irresistible.
“You have nothing to be concerned about. Rides are fun.”
“If you say so. I think it’s the harness. I don’t like being locked in.”
This is the most relaxed and conversational she’s ever been with me.
Maybe I’ve been too hard on her. Maybe I’ve been combining everything Ella with her because they physically have some similarities. Maybe I should trust her the way everyone else seems to.
“Are you ready?” I ask, still watching her instead of the track.
Her eyes close. “I can’t believe I’m afraid. Like it’s actually comical given my life and all I’ve endured. I feel like such a wimp, but holy crap, my heart is going to beat itself out of my chest.”
“Hey!” I remove my hand from the handlebars by my head and cover hers that’s locked in a vise grip around the metal. “It’s fun. I promise. Have fun.”
“Fun.” She tests the word. “There’s a new one for me.”
“Good, because here we go!”
The car goes over the arch, and we race down at top speed, chasing a fierce angle that makes everyone on the ride scream at the top of their lungs, including Marcella.
In a flash, we’re heading straight up into the first loop, and she shifts to grip my hand, holding onto me and the bar for dear life.
“Oh my god!” she screams, but now she’s smiling and laughing, and her eyes are wide with wonder.
It’s a ride. A roller coaster. Nothing major.
But she’s holding my hand and smiling at me, and I saw the look in Bellamy’s eyes. Bellamy likes her. Then again, she liked Charlotte. We all did.
The ride continues until it comes to a fast and sharp end, and she blows out a giant breath. The restraints lift, and I stand, helping her out. Her hand slips from mine almost instantly, and it has me turning back to her.
“Wow. That was something.”
“Fun?” I question.
She tosses me a smile that immediately has me wanting to do that again and again just to get this same smile on her lips.
“Amazing!”
“Yeah.” I take her jaw in my hand, mentally giving myself a WTF, but not stopping either. Her eyes round and her lips part, and I don’t know what I’m doing, but my head is angling toward hers, and I’m staring at her lips like I want to kiss her.
Because I do.
I want to kiss her so fucking badly.
“Marcella!” the girls scream, jarring me away from her. And thank god for that.
That was almost a seriously stupid mistake.
They’re all over her, asking if she loved it and telling her all about the other rides.
They make her promise to go on it again after they eat, and we do.
This time, she rides with Sabrina, the two of them fast and easy friends, sharing secrets and giggles.
But I haven’t been able to take my eyes off her.
Or stop watching her. She’s a magnet I’m helpless to resist.
I can’t even explain it. There’s nothing about her that should be this compelling to me. I almost kissed her. I smelled her. I dragged my lips along her cheek. What the fuck is all that?
Yet she looks different. She feels different. She’s shed some of her formal layers.
Most importantly, the children had an incredible time.
We pile into the large black SUV, exhausted and sticky from last-minute cotton candy and candy apples.
Zayer passes out in his car seat the moment the car sets in motion.
He went on three rides with the girls, which Sabrina whined were for babies, but had fun on all the same.
They won prizes, and I’m proud to say we have no critters hiding away in knapsacks.
Marcella is quiet the entire way home. She’s had her face glued to the window and the passing landscape, but it’s clear she’s not seeing any of it. I exchange looks with Bellamy, but all she does is give me a simple shrug as if to say she’s as clueless as I am.
As much as I want Bellamy to have friends, I worry about her easy trust. I worry about how easily Marcella has sucked the children in. Has sucked me in.
I don’t know.
The Ella shit is messing me up. Still. Because I acted on impulse.
I went with my gut, and she was a lie. A fabrication.
A woman I never should have touched, though at this point, so many months later, it seems unlikely she was after anything with me.
A random foreigner who snuck into the royal wedding for a high and got nailed by the prince.
Except I took her virginity.
Who does that? Who sneaks into a royal wedding loaded with security, gives a fake name, fake everything, but then gives a man she just met her virginity? How do I stop thinking about her? And how do I stop connecting her to Marcella?