This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, and incidents are all products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Known locales are also used
fictitiously.

If you enjoy this book, please buy a copy
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Please Note: While I had help with this
story from several knowledgeable sources, there are still likely
mistakes on my part. Authors also like to stretch and change things
to make their story work. So this book does not necessarily reflect
reality. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

Dedication

To Vicky Burkholder and Victoria Smith for
sticking with me through twelve books. Thank you!

To all of CPRW for offering advice, and
sharing their knowledge. I couldn’t have done this without you!

To my hubby, Roy, for supporting me through
all these books and offering the encouragement I needed to keep
going.

To you, the reader. Thank you for reading
these stories and then telling me how they touched you. Before ever
being a writer, we have to be a reader first, so these stories all
mean something to me, too. I’m so pleased to be able to share them
with you. I hope you feel like a part of the family now!

Bad Nerd Rising

Chapter
1

Tia Morrison was confident she was one of
the few females on earth who had no desire to be a princess. That
urge had been tormented out of her at an early age. Being the only
sister of three older brothers had squelched her eagerness for all
things pink and princess-like.

She clearly remembered the first and only
Halloween she had dressed up as a princess. A puffy pink taffeta
skirt with a lovely matching spaghetti strapped top made of faux
silk, and a tiara. A gorgeous cubic zirconium and plastic piece
that sparkled in the lamplight like every girl’s fantasy. She’d
been the envy of every other little girl on the block.

That one perfect costume had been the bane
of her existence ever since.

Her brothers had
immediately begun addressing her as
The
Princess
. While one was holding her down to
give her a whirly the others would bellow, “What? Doesn’t The
Princess like whirlys?” Another flushed the toilet. While yet
another held his dirty, stinky, teenaged socks to her nose. “What?
Doesn’t The Princess like my socks?”

Every frog, snake, spider, or other vermin
hidden in her bed was so announced, “The Princess objects to
(insert creature) in her bed.” They racked up a lot of mileage with
those small torments. If she didn’t take seconds and thirds at
mealtimes, like they did, they’d sniff and take turns going around
the table, “Since this isn’t caviar and champagne, The Princess
won’t eat it.”

In the natural chemistry
between siblings, they ganged up on her at every point. If her
cousins were visiting, and they generally were, the male ones,
anyway, that swelled the Ape numbers infinitely. (None of the
female cousins visited her house,
ever
.) Anything the boys could use
against her, they did. Thus snuffing all girlish needs to play
princess.

As a matter of fact, Tia never wore pink
even now. Ever.

“Macy, what am I supposed to do?” she nearly
wailed to her sister-in-law as her newest, adult problem reared its
ugly head. “I guess I could move.” She bit her lip and thought
about what a pain that would be.

“You’re going to move because you gave a
prince your phone number?” Macy’s voice raised at least two
octaves. In the very next one, it would shatter glass. Tia pulled
the phone from her ear and rubbed.

She heard her brother heckling, as usual, in
the background. “What would a prince want with a nerd like Tia
anyway? Oh, yeah, he probably needs a cafeteria lady,” Nick
chortled.

“Nick, knock it off. This
is probably
your
fault,” Macy scolded him over the noise of the latest football
game.

Silence from that end, which didn’t surprise
her. Nick and her other brothers all had the attention span of
gorillas, so he had already lost interest in the conversation. She
was a teeny bit impressed he’d managed to utter those two
sentences. That was major for him, even though he was an
architect.

Of course, her problem still wasn’t
solved.

“Macy, what am I supposed
to do?” This time
her
wail might have shattered glass, except she’d learned during
The Princess Years to keep her voice low and relatively even.
Otherwise the Apes went on forever, mimicking her.

“Let me get this straight. You’re stressing
because you gave your phone number to a hot man you’re actually
interested in, who just happens to be a prince?”

“Yes,” Tia nearly shouted.
Macy had managed to sum up the problem pretty well.
What should she do?

“Umm, Tia, I’m not seeing the problem here.”
Macy’s voice, ever since she’d married Nick and taken on his four
kids, had developed the “mom” cadence. A slightly superior,
authoritative note usually sounded in her voice.

It wasn’t a bad thing. The woman got things
done. That’s why Tia had called her rather than her two other
sisters-in-law-to-be. Neither of them had actually accomplished
marriage yet, much less mom-hood, so they hadn’t learned the same
skills Macy possessed.

“Hello? How can you not see
the problem? He’s a
prince
, Macy. He’s the ruler of his
whatever.” Tia made a loopy-loop with her hand.

“Funny, I’ve never heard
anyone say the word
prince
with such disgust before.”

Tia rolled her eyes. Maybe
she should have called her mother. Nah, scratch that
thought.
Bad idea
.
Her mother would have shipped her Fed Ex to any man willing to ask
for her phone number.

“Macy, what does he want with me?” She heard
a choking sound. “Macy?”

“Don’t do that.” Macy gasped. Tia pictured
her frantically waving a hand in front of her face.

“Don’t do what?”

“Tia, you’re nearly six feet tall, you have
long blonde hair, gorgeous blue-green eyes, a perfect figure and a
near genius IQ. I’d hate you if you weren’t my sister-in-law.” Macy
sounded like she admitted some dark secret.

“So what does he want from me?”

“Scratch the near genius IQ,” Macy said,
sounding exasperated. “Why’d you give him your number in the first
place?”

“He caught me off guard.” Tia chewed on her
lip. “Maybe I should just change my phone number.”

“You know, I used to think you were adopted,
but you definitely have the Morrison family stupid gene.”

“I’m a scientist. I never
do my hair, I’m allergic to makeup. Princess’s wear makeup, Macy. I
wear comfortable, sloppy clothes.
Why did
he want my phone number?
”

“I’ve heard, through the news, of course,
that Prince Aleksi is laid-back.”

“Of course he is. And his is only a
principality. He doesn’t rule a country. But what he has, he has to
rule.” Tia swallowed. She wasn’t princess material. Grace Kelly,
movie star, used to Philadelphia society, was princess material.
Tia Morrison, sister to three Apes, numerous cousins, and not
involved in Hershey society at all made her anti-princess
material.

She gulped. “Macy, I can’t do this. Maybe
I’ll just flush my phone.”

“Flush your phone?” Macy sounded
confused.

“I gave him my cell phone number.”

“And you were planning to move? Tia, I know
you’re supposed to have a near genius intelligence. Where is
it?”

“Where’s what?”

“Your intelligence. You have a Ph.D. in
microbiology. You’re supposed to be smart.”

“A smart woman doesn’t give
her phone number to a
prince
.” Panic encroached. Visions of
pink danced in her head. “I can’t do this.” She rubbed her forehead
and didn’t manage to squelch a moan.

“You’re insane,” Macy concluded
succinctly.

***

“You asked some American woman for her
telephone number?” His mother’s voice held disdain, anger, and some
definite attitude. Not that he hadn’t known how she’d react.

Aleksi sighed and briefly considered making
an excuse to remove her from his office. Only the knowledge that
he’d have to eventually deal with her kept him from running through
the various excuses he kept filed in a corner of his brain for such
emergencies.

“Mother, she’s an American, yes, but she’s
far more than that.”

“How can she be far more than that, you’ve
only just met her. You can’t possibly know anything about her.”

“That’s not true,” he said, recognizing some
attitude of his own. That tone usually quelled her, a bit.

“It isn’t?” She eyed him with suspicion. He
wasn’t intimidated by her regal air, her perfect hair and makeup,
or the expensive clothing she wore. She had birthed him after all.
And while she’d been royalty before his father had met her, she was
only minor royalty then.

“No, it isn’t. Tia Morrison has a near
genius IQ, she’s beautiful, has perfect manners, and is a
microbiologist.” He didn’t mention that she was so sexy she made
his teeth hurt and that she had the funniest quirks. Like not being
able to walk without tripping or knocking something over.

His last comment temporarily stopped his
mother’s rampage. “A microbiologist, you say?” She slanted him a
look of hope.

“Yes. She was several years behind me at the
University of Pennsylvania. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in
microbiology at Princeton.”

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