Chapter 4
KATIE
Tristan
Date night tonight.
Katie
Who’s the lucky winner?
Tristan
Sarah Hawthorne
Katie
Antarctica?
Tristan
The very one.
Katie
She got here quickly.
Tristan
What can I say? I’m a catch.
Katie
And so modest too.
Tristan
Hot enough to melt the icebergs.
Katie
Somehow, I don’t think that line is going to work tonight.
The security center is silent when I walk in at six a.m. on Monday. No messages on the phone. No alarms going off or anything on the security cameras that indicates a break-in. My shoulders lower as I sink into the chair in front of the wall of monitors.
The coffee maker finished five minutes before I walked in, just like it does every morning. I sip my first steaming cup of many and open my email. In the three days since Tristan broke the internet, the Prince Bourbon PR machine has gone into overdrive.
Their newly hired PR fixer, George, arrived from New York yesterday.
All the siblings will do media training.
Tristan will spend his time this summer meeting eligible candidates, all of whom will be extensively vetted by George and then by me for security reasons.
Per Tristan, he’ll fund the winning candidate’s research or charitable work, and he wants the best and brightest.
Overnight, he has become the world’s number one topic of conversation.
Videos have spawned—How to Bag a Billionaire. He’s doing an interview today for a spread in Vogue. A pop star joked yesterday about jilting her boyfriend for him.
As I start scrolling through Tristan’s DMs like I do every Monday, I realize precisely how many people want to marry him.
I blink at my phone. There are thousands of messages.
Selfies, nudes, pictures of people’s pets.
One woman has a tattoo of his name on her knuckles.
That was fast. I save the message and make a note to tell Tristan not to respond to any of them without speaking to George or me first. People are already getting weird.
A minor royal explains in his DM that his family really needs the money to pay off his uncle’s gambling debts.
My stomach sinks as I scroll. As the world wakes up, messages come in faster than I can read them. People as far away as India, Australia, and China want to marry Tristan. Sarah Hawthorne has flown all the way from McMurdo Station in Antarctica to meet him tonight.
George’s team flagged her days ago as a top candidate.
There’s a weird twisting inside me as I look at her profile.
They were right to flag her. She’s Tristan’s type.
Brilliant, confident, beautiful. I shut my eyes briefly and imagine the next two months.
Endless messages like this, more weirdness from his “fans,” increasingly aggressive paparazzi. I groan.
It’s going to be a long summer. And I’m going to need backup.
The Starboard Slide is packed that night, even though it’s already well past my bedtime.
I shift against the wooden railing enclosing the bar’s massive outdoor terrace and sink my chin into my jacket.
I look like a bodyguard even though Tristan demanded I wear something casual so you fit in.
When I asked what he meant, he texted me a picture of Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider.
I responded with a big middle finger. He was still laughing about it when we got in the car earlier.
We compromised. I’m wearing a leather jacket and old jeans with faded high-tops.
I still have a gun under my jacket. I’m still clearly not one of them.
No one is coming over to talk to me. The Starboard Slide is a hookup bar.
It’s where Tristan’s crowd goes during the summer to make out in dark corners and do shots off various limbs.
The prices are astronomical and the seafood towers are legendary.
They even let yachts pull up directly to the bar in the summer, and servers will bring buckets of champagne to the boats.
You can see the sparklers in the magnums going off on clear nights from the old dock at Crownhaven.
It might only be May, but now that it’s open season on Tristan Prince, the bar is packed.
I track his shiny head of hair as he leans against the bar and chats with Sarah.
She seemed extraordinary on paper and is even more extraordinary in person.
She has a PhD in molecular biology and she looks like a movie star, with deep auburn waves and a tall, curvy frame.
Tristan grins at something she’s saying, and I look away to scan the crowd again.
Everyone is talking about Tristan. Every gossip site, every influencer, every person at this party.
My mind spins through the risks, half assessing every person who walks through the door, half watching Tristan.
I’ve learned over the years to split my attention like that, and I’ve become accustomed to triggers—people who look like they’re on a mission, people who look like they are deliberately trying to avoid notice, women with extra-large handbags, people who keep their hands in their pockets.
Anything that raises the siblings’ public profile is bad. Stalkers. Extortion. Kidnapping. Sienna already regularly gets death threats. Now Tristan will too. Crazies will come out of the woodwork.
This isn’t going to be a one-woman job anymore. I watch how closely the bar crowd presses in on him. He doesn’t seem to mind, but I do.
I mind more than a bodyguard should, maybe.
I shake my head. Of course I do. Tristan is my best friend.
The day I started at Crownhaven, I was fresh off losing my adoptive father, David, and I had everything I owned in a backpack.
It was mostly guns and shoes, which Tristan teases me about to this day.
I was so nervous I thought I was going to be sick. I’d never taken a job on my own before, and this one wasn’t meant to be mine, it was meant to be ours. My stomach squeezes at the thought of David. Gruff, well-meaning, competent. The only dad I’ve ever known.
The only person I ever called home, until Crownhaven and Tristan. He nearly knocked me off a ladder my first day on the job, then he grinned at me and asked if I wanted to be friends.
And now I’m losing him.
I dig my fingers into my palms. It had to happen sometime.
“Oh my god,” a woman next to me exclaims. I dart her a glance, but she’s just showing her friend something on her phone. Another woman wanders over with two fresh drinks in her hands.
“Look at this,” says the first woman, a brunette in a green silk dress. “It says here that the website for the spouse applications for him went down due to too much traffic last night.”
“Course it did.” The woman next to her tosses back half her champagne in one gulp. “He’s crazy hot, rich, and has all his teeth. It’s more than I can say for any member of the royal family.”
They all look at Tristan.
Inwardly, I smile. Has all his teeth is a new one. I’m totally teasing him about that tomorrow.
“He’s not that hot.” Another woman in the group shrugs, and I laugh silently into my collar. I wish I could record this for Tristan just to take him down a peg when he gets cocky.
“Oh come on, Carrie.” The woman who has been quiet until now rolls her eyes and leans in. “I heard he’s crazy good in bed.”
Carrie scoffs.
“Seriously. My friend’s college roommate slept with him years ago. Just a weekend thing. She said he was insatiable.”
There’s a weird tugging sensation low inside me. My eyes go to Tristan. Insatiable? Tristan? He’s never brought anyone home. I’ve never heard anything. Or seen anything. Maybe he’s getting laid elsewhere. He disappears a lot on business trips.
“What does that mean?” One of the women sounds intrigued.
“My friend’s friend said he’s the best she’s ever had. He kept her up all night. He told her not to wear clothes for the full twenty-four hours. Apparently it was a waste of time when he was just going to tear them off again.”
Heat spills through my stomach.
“God damn.”
“I know,” concurs the storyteller. “And, though keep in mind this friend loves to exaggerate, she said he’s a little kinky.”
“Kinky like spanking or what? Straight men are so vanilla.” The skeptic does not sound convinced.
I, on the other hand, feel weird. My insides mimic a carnival ride as I watch Tristan straighten from where he’s standing at the bar with Sarah and usher her toward the dance floor.
My attention is drawn by the line of his body as he bends to speak into her ear. Insatiable. The stupid word won’t stop echoing in my head.
I’ve never felt insatiable before.
But my best friend has. I press a palm to my stomach.
“Kinky like he likes a woman in control and he’s down for whatever. Apparently he literally told her use me for whatever you want.”
“Holy shit,” one of the women whispers. “I want that.”
I want that too. The irrational thought spills through my head, and for a second, I feel a flicker of something when I watch Tristan.
I wonder, for a brief, scalding moment, what it might be like to have that with him.
I flatten my palm against the wooden railing.
“The woman he’s with tonight is some genius scientist. And he was dancing with a woman at his party last weekend, so I’m not sure you have a chance.”
A scoff. “That was his bodyguard, Jordan, not a potential spouse.”
My whole body prickles. I hold myself still and keep from looking at the women. Instead, I watch Tristan grin at Sarah. It’s his for-company smile, as he calls it. It doesn’t reach his eyes. It doesn’t make his dimples pop.
“Stranger things have happened. My cousin was sleeping with his housekeeper for months.”
“Sleeping with, not marrying.”
“I thought she was pretty,” Jordan exclaims.
Thank you, Jordan.
Carrie scoffs. “Men like him don’t marry the help.”
Jordan makes a distressed sound in her throat.
I want to tell her not to bother. I’ve been called “the help” before.
Women like Carrie have handed me their jackets, even though I’ve never worked a coat check.
Men pass me their plates without looking at me, even though the catering staff is clearly in different clothes.
The words roll off me after years in this job.
“Be nice,” Jordan murmurs.
Carrie frowns, and my stomach sinks. She strikes me as someone determined to make a point, and I’m likely to be the butt of it.
Before I can move away, she adds, “I’m serious.
She’s not his type. Not without a full makeover.
He’s going to pick someone like…” She casts around for a minute before she gestures toward a woman in a gold dress who holds court over a small group like she was born to command a room.
She positively sparkles. “Her. Nadia Connor. Corporate lawyer. She just won some massive equal protection case before the Supreme Court. Pro bono.”
I watch Nadia laugh. She’s stunning, and more than that, she’s poised. She looks like the type of woman who speaks multiple languages and could argue a case in all of them.
Carrie is probably right that Tristan would like her.
I should probably make sure he talks to her if things don’t work out with Sarah.
My throat seems to constrict.
The women continue to debate the particulars of Tristan’s dating life, and I only half listen. My fingers slowly dig into the wooden railing. They are five feet away from me talking about how unsuitable I am for a man in their world.
For the first time, I look down at my clothes and judge myself. Should I be wearing a dress? Should I be trying harder? I used to love being a tomboy. David joked that I followed him around with a little pair of toy nunchucks when I was eight.
She’d need a full makeover.
Shame heats my cheeks, burns my throat.
I’m okay with being called “the help.” I’m okay with being in the background.
But never before have I felt invisible.
“What’s going on?”
I jerk my head around to see Sienna next to me, her brows raised. She disappeared onto the dance floor as soon as we got here, and now she’s rosy and glowing and carrying a large pink drink.
“Katie, are you okay?” She looks alarmed now.
“Of course.” My pulse hammers in my throat. “I just need to use the bathroom. I’ll be right back. Can you please keep an eye on your brother? The usual protocol.”
Sienna nods.
The usual protocol means she’ll hit the emergency button on her phone app to alert me. It means I have five minutes to get myself together.
Five minutes to stop thinking about Tristan.