Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LEXI
What a fucking family. No wonder Oliver wanted to escape it.
I’m not surprised he’s much happier in New York if he was under fire from the press here all the time and these assholes never stood up for him.
I drop onto the four-poster bed and text Becca the photo I just took of it.
ME
The bed I’m sharing with the prince.
Dinner was a cringe-inducing nightmare. My heart went out to the guy.
Dessert was fantastic though. The delicious sweetness of the pineapple upside-down cake with homemade ice cream was a stark contrast to the relentlessly sour look on Oliver’s mother’s face.
She took off swiftly after dinner, feigning an oncoming migraine. She was so limp and pathetic that I wanted to give her a gentle tap to see if she’d fall over.
Sofia and her boring but handsome husband seem nice. At least that’s something.
As soon as Oliver’s mother had left the room, I did some dramatic yawning and complaining of jet lag, and Oliver suggested I go to bed while he caught up with his sister and found out what his wedding duties are.
I took that to be his way out of an awkward situation with us getting ready for bed in the same room at the same time.
Earlier I’d considered arguing with him about who should sleep on the chaise, but I’m so damned tired and I need to be on my toes tomorrow to start interviewing Oliver before I get any further behind with this book than I already am. So, yeah, I’m taking the bed.
BECCA
You’re doing WHAT?
ME
I might have exaggerated. He’s sleeping on a chaise at the foot of the bed. Which also looks about two hundred years old.
BECCA
That’s only a marginally better idea.
Is that seriously your bed? Where you’re actually sleeping? Not a picture you found on Pinterest under “museum of royal furniture”?
ME
Totally real. Hopefully the mattress is a lot newer than the frame.
BECCA
Be sure to check under it for a pea.
ME
Oh, the parents have already decided I’m not princess material. They don’t need any vegetables to clarify it for them.
BECCA
This all sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen. Take care of yourself. I’ve gotta run to proof the intern’s Instagram caption. He’s already almost posted next week’s crossword answers today.
Yeah, it probably does look like a potential nightmare from the outside. But it’ll be fine. I just need to do what I have to do to get through the next two weeks here and turn my first draft of this damn book in before Christmas.
It’s only as I haul myself up that it dawns on me that the floor-to-ceiling velvet curtains have been drawn.
And the lamp on the nightstand is on.
Neither Oliver nor I have been back to the room since earlier.
Does a staff member go around closing all the curtains as soon as it gets dark?
Or did someone do it as an excuse to come in and check on their listening device?
I peer into the vase on the nightstand. The bug’s still there.
“Bastards,” I mutter to myself, grabbing two pillows from the bed and tossing them onto the chaise as I pass it and head to the dresser.
There must be some spare bedding in here somewhere.
Opening the drawers reveals nothing but a musty aroma until I get to the bottom row and find some sheets and blankets.
I leave them in a neat pile on the chaise with the pillows. Then, two steps away from it, I figure it might be nicer if I make it up for Oliver so it’s all ready when he gets here.
Once I’ve tucked a sheet around the cushion, plumped the pillows, and laid out another sheet with a couple of blankets on top, it looks pretty cozy. And the chaise is long, so hopefully his feet won’t dangle too far off the edges. He’ll be fine.
I grab my toiletry bag from my case and head to the bathroom.
As I get out my face wash, moisturizer, toothbrush, and toothpaste, my brain rewinds over our shower sex fakery.
What the hell will whoever’s bugging this room make of that? Maybe we took it a bit far. It was very funny though.
Oliver certainly enjoyed it. The genuine delight on his face and his stifled hearty laughter lit him up. Wonder when the last time was that he had fun like that.
Of course I’ve seen pictures and footage of him at Boston Commoners’ games where he’s shouting and cheering and clapping in the owners’ box at the stadium. But that’s not the same as his unbridled hilarity at our joke.
Lathering my face in the mirror reminds me of his “I want to soap up all your special little places” comment, and my reflection chuckles back at me.
After just this short time with him, I have to concede that he seems like a genuinely good guy who has a lot going for him. Or at least he will if I can write an amazing book that helps to rehab his image and create some income for him at the same time.
I hadn’t expected this job to become one I want to do well rather than to just get over with. But it’s impossible not to be affected by the tiny glimpse I’ve had of what he has to tolerate.
Why can’t the press see who he really is?
Or his parents, for that matter? How can they not know their own son?
Do the real British people see it? Or do they believe all that shit in the gossip columns?
I mean, after missing out on a job early in my career because it went to someone who was related to the right people and seeing useless Lee Regus coasting on his family connections at The Current, I’m the last person to be open-minded about finding a good person hiding below the surface of someone who could get any job they wanted simply because of who gave birth to them.
But even I spotted that good person pretty quickly in Oliver.
Rinsing my face, I make a mental note to spend a day in the village, wandering around and acting like the ignorant American tourist that the locals will probably assume I am, asking what they think about the royal family—specifically the part of it that lives in the nearby castle.
The opinions of the locals will be great background for the book.
When I return to the bedroom, I pull my pajamas from the case.
Thank God I brought the ones that cover from neck to ankles.
I did that in case I was going to have to walk down a hallway to go to the restroom in the middle of the night.
But now they’re handy for not wandering around in front of Oliver in shorty-shorts with Breaking News banners on them.
They’re also useful for warmth and, boy, these sheets are chilly. This bed isn’t exactly the most comfortable I’ve ever lain in either. It’s somehow firm, yet also a bit lumpy. Feels like something Henry the Eighth might have slept on.
Oh, but the pillows are nice. All fluffy and, thankfully, from this century.
I lie back and take in the ridiculousness of my surroundings.
A royal castle in Scotland.
Where I’m sharing a room with an actual prince.
A prince who seems shockingly well-adjusted for someone raised in this circus. How did he and his sister turn out so well?
Nannies, probably.
Then boarding schools—which I would normally be massively un-in-favor of. But in these circumstances, anything that got the kids away from those parents is fine with me.
But it’s also a testament to the strength of both their characters, which makes them very impressive humans.
I reach back to the nightstand and turn off the lamp.
Yeah, Oliver seems like a decent guy. He has a quick brain and knows how to use it. He makes me laugh when I least expect it. And he’s self-deprecating.
He was such a good sport, playing along with my bathroom sex game.
The vision of his hip thrusts reappears in my mind.
It’s impossible to deny how attractive he is. But I knew that before I met him—the American media has been almost as fascinated with him as the British press since we were both teenagers.
I close my eyes and picture his face next to me as we sat on the bathroom floor after all the shenanigans.
My belly flutters as I recall the sensation of him drawing my hair off my face.
It somehow felt so utterly…romantic? Is that the right word? Intimate, maybe. Yes. Intimate. Like we had a shared secret. Our own in-joke despite having barely spent a total of twenty-four hours in each other’s company.
And when he leaned down toward me, regardless of it being the absolutely wrong thing to do, it felt kind of…right…to seal that with a ki—
The door squeaks as it slowly eases open, and a shaft of light falls across the room.
My pulse jolts. Shit.
I roll over, turning my back to the side of the bed Oliver will have to walk past to get to the bathroom and pull the cover up high, to prevent him from catching even a glimpse of my face.
The door clicks shut. He’s in the room now. Blackness again.
My heart’s racing so hard that he must be able to see my profile rising and falling with my heavy breaths.
I don’t even hear him pass the bed until the bathroom door clicks shut and a little light leaks around the edges. He must have taken a lot of thoughtful care to be quiet enough to not wake me.
A second later the shower’s turned on.
While the pitter-patter continues in my chest, I can’t help but smile to myself as I curl tighter into the fetal position and drift off to the sound of the running water.