Chapter 3 #2
He disappears around the corner, presumably toward the kitchen. “Once they’ve tasted a cup of my perfectly made tea, they’re usually converted. I’ll make you one.”
I look around for an appropriate place to put my things. On top of the piano is probably not that. “Honestly, it’s fine. I really don’t li—”
“Just try,” his disembodied voice says. “If you hate it, I’ll drink it.”
Ugh. “Okay.”
I drop my bag and notepad on the floor by the sofa, shove the phone into my pocket, and follow him around the corner. Maybe the tea thing can make a running joke through the book.
Man, this kitchen is enormous. But why am I surprised?
This whole place is big enough to land a jumbo jet in.
The kitchen’s long and wide with wood cabinets and a marble counter and backsplash.
There’s a matching island in the center with what I suppose is the billionaire’s equivalent of a breakfast nook beyond with a white round table and six chairs.
“How does someone who’s spent their life surrounded by servants get to be good at making tea?”
Oliver fills a shiny silver kettle from the pot-filler faucet over the sleek commercial-sized stainless-steel range. “I think you might have misjudged what it’s like to be a member of the royal family.”
I spread my arms wide and look at our surroundings. “Pretty sure I haven’t.”
A couple of the born-into-wealth people I’ve interviewed did turn out to be okay.
There was the granddaughter of a family that seems to own about half of South Carolina who used her powers for good and funded a life-saving treatment for a tick-borne disease in Africa.
And an older guy who was super grumpy when I interviewed him about the demise of unions at the shipping company that had been in his family for generations, but when he died a couple of years later, he left his entire fortune to children’s literacy charities and animal shelters. So I’m not averse to being surprised.
But I’d bet there are no surprises with this guy.
I guess I wasn’t expecting him to make tea, though.
He puts the kettle on the stove and sparks the gas under it with a click-click-click. “Like I said, got lucky with this place. I’m not a top-line royal. I’m the king’s grandson. And the line of succession goes down my mum’s brother’s side, because he’s older than her. So I’m pretty much a nobody.”
“A nobody.” I stroll around the island to the windows that feel about twenty feet high and gaze out toward the river. “Sure.”
“Fair enough. Maybe that sounded silly. But, it’s relative to the whole royal situation.” He makes air quotes around royal.
“And you’re here, in the US, because you don’t want to be royal anymore, right?” I repeat his air quotes.
“It’s not quite as straightforward as that.” He opens a cabinet, pulls out two mugs and puts them on the counter.
I can’t help but chuckle. “You use I heart New York mugs?”
“There were no mugs at all when I got here. Only those obscenely tiny espresso cups. And I was desperate to make tea, so I ran outside, and these were in the first shop I found.”
“When was that? Four years ago? And you haven’t gotten yourself something better than tourist store mugs?”
“These are fine. They’re the perfect size.” He picks one up and holds it next to his face. “And I do, indeed, heart New York.”
Oh shit, there’s that fluttery thing in my chest again. I can not allow myself to be taken in by Prince fucking Charming.
“And you went to the store to get them?” I ask. “By yourself?”
“Who am I going to send?” He opens another cabinet, pulls two tea bags from a box, and drops one into each mug.
“Your assistant?”
“I don’t have an assistant.”
“What staff do you have?”
“Four security guys. Two full-time, two-part time. You met one of them at my door.”
“Yeah, he wasn’t very welcoming.”
“Only because it’s the first time he’s met you. It’s their job to be suspicious, but they’ll warm up. They’ll be seeing a lot of you when I get back.”
“Get back? From where?”
“Scotland. I have to go to my sister’s wedding.”
“When?”
“I leave the day after tomorrow.”
Now my chest has an entirely different type of flutter—one induced by panic. Why the fuck did no one tell me about this? “For how long?”
“Two weeks.”
Oh Jesus. That can’t happen. I’m already terrified I won’t be able to turn this thing around in three months. Fourteen days is a significantly large percentage of that, but my brain’s not capable of the math right now.
I miss the deadline, I don’t get the new job.
“You can’t go away for two weeks.”
The kettle whistles and Oliver turns off the stove, then pours steaming water onto the tea bags. “Of course I can. I have to.”
“I thought you were here to get away from your family.”
“It’s not as simple as that. And I’m not missing my sister’s wedding for anything. She’d be gutted.”
“But do you have to be gone for two weeks? Can’t you just go a couple of days before and come back the next day?”
“No. I'm the patron of a children’s cancer charity, and they have an event the week before.” He pulls a spoon from a drawer, then stirs and mashes the tea bags.
“Rather than video call into it, I’m going over early to be there in person.
Even though the idea of small talk makes me want to go lie in the middle of the West Side Highway, I like to do more than be a trophy name on their website that helps them attract donors. What’s the problem anyway?”
I dig my nails into my palms to keep from asking him if he hasn’t heard a word I said about the already crushing timeline for this book.
“The deadline is the problem. I need to interview you a lot. A lot. I need you to tell me all the things. I can’t write anything without that.”
He goes back and forth between the mugs, mashing and stirring. “There are these things called phones now. And even phones where you can see each other’s faces. It’s quite spectacular.”
“Yes. Thank you. But it’s not the same. Also, are you trying to beat those tea bags into submission? Also, tea bags? If you’re a connoisseur, why are you using bags and not loose-leaf stuff in a china pot?”
“Who the hell makes tea in a pot anymore? Apart from maybe my grandmother.”
“By grandmother, do you mean the queen?”
“Yes. But to be fair, she doesn’t make it herself because she actually does have staff.”
He drags a tea bag up the side of its mug, squishing it with the back of the spoon the whole way, until it emerges almost dry. Then he takes hold of the very edge of it between the tips of his finger and thumb and flings it into the sink.
It lands with a wet thud, and he moves to the second mug to repeat the painstaking process.
“God forbid you shouldn’t get every last drop out of it,” I say.
“Vital part of the process. It boggles my mind when I see Americans scoop out a tea bag and toss it away dripping wet. Think of all that lost flavor.”
I try not to roll my eyes. “Anyway. Interviews over the phone or video call aren’t the same. No one opens up as much that way. There’s too much of a barrier.”
After the second tea bag is in the sink, he moves farther down the kitchen and opens a cabinet door, which turns out to be the fridge.
“Two percent.” He holds up a carton of milk. “Vital ingredient.”
He pours some into each mug, stirring and adding more one micro drop at a time, apparently perfecting the exact shade of brownness.
It’s kind of mesmerizing. The way his fingers hold the spoon is—
Fuck, what’s wrong with me? I need to figure out this ridiculous Scotland plan.
“Like I said, if you want this book to be the best it can be, I need you here.”
“Or”—he puts down the milk and hands me a mug—“you have to come with me.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
I try to think of an answer as he returns the milk to the fridge, drops the spoon in the sink, picks up his own mug, and leans back against the counter.
“I can’t go to the UK with a prince. With you.” Good work, brain.
He laughs with a smile that lights up his whole face and makes his eyes do that sparkly thing they did when he opened the front door. “Of course you can.”
“I haven’t been given a budget. Or expenses. I can’t randomly fly three thousand miles and get a hotel room.”
“You’d fly with me. Leo has a private jet company. Leo Johanssen, one of the—”
“Other owners of the Boston Commoners. Yes, I know who he is.”
“And you would stay at my parents’ house.”
“I can’t stay at a palace.”
“Don’t be silly. They don’t live in a palace.” He takes a sip of his tea and peers at me over the large red heart on the side of the mug. “It’s, um…it’s a castle.”
“This is ridiculous. Just go a week later. Then I can get a good solid week of interviews under my belt and have enough material to keep me going till you get back.”
“I’ve already told the charity I’ll be there for the event. And I’m not letting them down. Just come. No stress. It’ll be easy.”
“What? It’ll be no stress for me to stay with the family you moved to a whole different continent to escape? Seems unlikely.”
“It’ll be fine. That’s settled, then. Now, try your tea.”
Fuck me. So not only am I ghostwriting a memoir I don’t want to write, for a man who represents every institutional and societal issue I’ve despised my whole life, now I have to go and stay in a British royal castle with him?
I take a sip of tea. The instant the bitter, milky liquid hits my tongue, my facial muscles involuntarily contract into an expression that can’t possibly disguise I’m on the verge of gagging.
But I need to learn to go with the flow here. If this prince dumps me as his ghostwriter, my career takes about a five-year step backward.
This might be a nightmare of a project to work on, this guy might be the living embodiment of everything that’s wrong with society, and I might now be stuck on a trip to the UK with him and have to stay with his goddamn parents, but I need to keep reminding myself it’s all short-term pain for long-term gain.
I cough to disguise the gagging. “It’s great. Delicious.”