Royally Jacked (Romantic Comedies, The) (17 page)

“Before we go back”—he looks past me to make sure no one sees us, then back into my eyes—“I want you to know this has been one of the best nights of my life.”

“Me too.” I grin like a total goof, then take his tuxedo jacket off my shoulders and hand it back to him.

“I really like you, Valerie. A lot. I just—I mean—I want us to be together.”

The knot in my throat is threatening to choke me, even more than the bird on my dinner plate did. “Thanks,” I say, even though it’s probably moronic to thank someone for liking you. “I really like you a
lot too. If you didn’t notice out in the garden.”

He grins at that, and our freaky-cool connection feels stronger than ever. “So would you like to dance with me? In front of everybody?”

“Steffi will have a stroke.”

“Steffi won’t know.” He’s lying of course, and we both know it, because of course Ulrike’s dad will ask Ulrike who I am when he gets home, and he’ll tell her I was dancing with Georg, and Ulrike will tell Steffi. That’s just how things work. By tomorrow morning the whole school will know.

What Georg is really telling me, though, is that he likes me enough that he doesn’t care what Steffi knows or doesn’t know. Or what the world knows.

Which is completely, totally cool.

So we go back into the reception hall, and even though we don’t hold hands or dance so close we look like we need to get a room or anything, we have a great time. We’re the only people under the age of thirty on the dance floor, but it doesn’t matter.

And just when I’m thinking how glad I am Dad made me learn to dance like a proper lady, even though I’ve always been certain I’d never want to dance to anything like Mozart or Wagner or whatever it is the orchestras playing, I catch his eye across the room. He’s handing the minister of the treasury a glass of water like it’s no big thing, but he’s looking at me.

And he smiles. Well, until Georg’s facing the other way. Then he’s not. And it’s
not
good.

I can tell from the way he very pointedly shakes his head that we’re going to talk later, and it’s going to be, as he would put it, a bit
unpleasant
. But he’s beginning to warm to the idea of me seeing Georg, I can tell. He doesn’t want me developing a smoker’s rasp like Karl’s, or hanging out in the palace men’s room, but he wants me to be happy, even if getting to a happy place involves facing the risks that come with dating Prince Manfred of Schwerinborg’s only child. That much I can tell.

Geez, at least I hope so. What if he’s
really
ticked off this time? What if he
threatens to send me back to Virginia over this? It’s definitely possible….

No. I won’t think about that. I’ll deal with Dad tomorrow. There’ll be
some
way for me to get out of this. I have to. Because now I have a BOYFRIEND.

And I don’t want to have to leave him. Let alone live with Mom and Gabrielle and deal with all the crap that’s going to be coming my way from Christie, Jules, and Natalie.

Georg grabs my hand and spins me around, and I just can’t help but smile to myself.

Who’da thought that my mom announcing she was gay could get me a boyfriend? A boyfriend who isn’t a safety boyfriend, like Jason Barrows could have been, or someone like David Anderson either, who’d probably only think of me as his Armor Girl.

Probably.

Christie’s my friend, so I’ll let her say her piece, and I’ll even make myself think through everything she has to say—I owe a girlfriend that much, I mean, hos before bros, right?—even though I know in my heart I’m not going to change my mind about Georg.

I cannot believe I have actually found someone who makes my stomach do flip-pity flops every time I look in his eyes. Someone who
gets
me and doesn’t care if I’m popular or that my mother is a lesbian. Someone flat-out gorgeous who can kiss me inside out.

Someone who’ll let me see just what it feels like to hook my fingers in the back pockets of his Levi’s while he kisses me.

I can’t wait to try that.

No matter what it takes with Dad, I’m so not going back to Virginia. This is where I belong.

Valerie Winstow never thought life in Schwerinborg could be so great. But then she never thought she would be dating the prince, either!

What she doesn’t realize is that things are about to take a turn-for the much worse. Prince Georg decides they need to cool off for a while just as her dad decides to send her back to Virginia to visit her mom.

Valerie’s crushed-until she decides to go out with her old crush David Anderson. David may not be a prince, but he should be able to take her mind off Georg for a while-shouldn’t he?

Don’t miss the princely sequel to ROYALLY JACKED:

SPIN CONTROL By Niki Burnham

Available January 2005 from Simon Pulse