Something in the Heir (It's Reigning Men, #1) (22 page)

Emma frowned as she thought about this. “I didn’t exactly fall for him. But I didn’t
not
fall for him, I suppose. I mean he was a really nice guy. And really cute. And the best kisser I think I ever met. And he had a custom-made tuxedo. When will I ever kiss a guy with his own tailor ever again? And did I say he was nice? And really normal too. He wasn’t pretentious at all. You’d think someone of his stature would be such a Snooty McSnootster. But he was really quite lovely. And he had a great sense of humor. And we laughed a lot. We sort of ‘got’ each other.”

“So when are you going to admit you fell for the guy?” Caroline asked, putting her arm around her friend’s shoulder.

“What does it matter? He’s there, and I’m here. He’s who he is and I’m not. Well, it’s okay that I’m not because if I was, then I’d be him and that would be weird. But I am who I am and I’m not for the likes of him.”

“How do you know?”

“I know because I know! He has to be with some fancy, wealthy, skinny, upper-class Monaforter. Or is it Monafortian? Or is it Monafortable? What would you call someone from Monaforte? Monafortese? This is going to drive me nuts until I look it up.”

She pulled out her phone and Googled the information. Only to find an image of Adrian, linked to a story about the holiday goings-on at the palace. She could feel those damned tears welling up in her eyes again, and she did her best to suppress the sniffle that she knew was just on the horizon once she started crying — yet again, dammit. She was so tired of boohooing in the quiet confines of her lonely split-level.

“I need to get a dog,” she said. “Maybe I’ll even get a male dog. That will be the extent of my involvement with anything with the XY chromosome. If male dogs even have that chromosome. I didn’t pay attention to that in science class.”

She mulled it over a bit more. “Yes, that is the perfect solution. I’ll get a boy dog and I’ll give him a good boyfriend name. John or Matt or Howard. Maybe for laughs I could even call him Adrian. Though if Adrian ever got wind of that he might be insulted. But then I can have the man of my dreams right under my feet, even if he is covered with fur and drools in his sleep. I could even have him sleep in my bed. That’s it! So I’ll be sleeping with Adrian for the rest of my life! But would I have to count that in dog years?”

“Why don’t you just reach out to the man?” Caroline said, chiding her.

“Because I have my pride. And because if he’d wanted to reach out to me, he would have. And because he’s him and I’m me and never the twain shall meet.”

“I’m afraid that horse is long out of the barn, sweetie,” her friend said. “The twain did meet, and while the twain maybe didn’t exactly have a full-fledged booty call, it was moving in that direction enough to justify the twain meeting maybe one more time to see where things might go.”

“Besides, he’s probably planning his huge nuptials with Bettina!”

“You mean Serena?”

“Bettina, Serena. Whatever. Yeah.”

“Maybe they won’t get married, Emma. You never know.”

“Please. No doubt they were going at it on that private jet all the way to Europe. You can only imagine what two young, virile adults could get up to for that six-hour flight with a gold bed in it.”

“They had a gold bed on that plane?”

“I have no idea. It seems like the type of thing they’d have though.”

“They weren’t even alone, you ding-dong. My man was there too, lest we forget.”

“Your man, eh?” Emma laughed. “You talk to him at all?”

“Maybe,” Caroline said.

“What do you mean maybe? It’s a yes or a no!”

“So maybe we haven’t actually talked.”

“If you haven’t talked, then what?" But then Emma eyes got wider as she noticed her friend pretending to be particularly interested in a loose thread on her shirt. “Really? You’re sexting with the guy? Are there pictures involved? Caroline, sweetie, have you no pride?”

“What? I didn’t say that! You said that!”

“Your beet-red face says it all.”

“I’m not blushing because I’m not embarrassed! So what if we’ve exchanged some racy messages. Maybe one or two pictures. All in good fun, right?”

“I truly do not understand how you can send pictures of your exposed body parts to this man halfway across the world from you. What if other people get hold of it?”

“You mean like some princely brothers maybe?” Caroline said with a sing-song teasing voice. “Maybe Adrian’s got some doubly hot brother he can hook me up with.”

Emma smacked her friend again. “I know you’re not that much of a tramp that you’d ditch Darcy for one of Adrian’s brothers.”

“Ya never know,” Caroline said. “I might just have a thing for crowns.”

Emma laughed. “A thing for crowns? How does one acquire such an addiction?”

“Well when they try them on with their wedding gowns on
Say Yes to the Dress
, I always think I’d like to wear one.”

“Those are tiaras, not crowns, stupid.”

“Close enough. I could see wearing that for fun,” she said. “Couldn’t you?”

“I refuse to dignify that with a response.”

“For all you know, Emma Davison, a tiara might be just around the corner waiting for you.”

“More likely it will be a mugger, but one can hope.”

~*~

“C
hin up, darling,” Ariana said to Adrian. “Must you look like someone just killed your puppy?” They were sitting in the royal box during intermission at the opera, not one of Adrian’s favorite activities, but one he acceded to as patron of the Royal Opera Society.

“Of course, Mother. Duty calls. I realize that.”

“What’s gotten into you? Since you’ve returned you’ve not been yourself one bit!”

Adrian sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“I would have thought you’d have been relieved,” she said. “What with your marriage called off and all...” She smiled at him and gently stroked his cheek with the back of her fingertips.

“Forgive me, Mother. Really. I can assure you I am more than thrilled to have that burden behind me,” he said. “I suppose it’s just that I’ve been thinking about someone I met, someone I grew to like quite a bit.”

“And this someone is a woman, I’d imagine?”

Adrian laughed. “That’s a safe bet, yes.”

“So you’re free now,” she said. “What’s holding you back?”

Adrian shook his head. “She’s no one you’d embrace, Mother. You scared me enough with that passing out attack you had. I don’t want to steer you to an official heart attack with this one.”

“Nonsense, Adrian,” she said. “I’m fine. Nothing you do will harm my heart. Besides, you’re the future king of Monaforte, my dear. There’s nothing you can’t have.”

“Mother, you said yourself that you want me to be with someone who is one of us. Someone with our culture, our background. Someone who can relate to our lifestyle. Emma is not that person.”

“Emma, eh?” she said. “That’s a pretty name. Tell me about this young lady.”

“She’s beautiful. And thoughtful. And smart. She never treated me as if I was special. She just acted like I was a normal man.”

“How dare she!” his mother said, joking. “Doesn’t she know you’re to be on a pedestal at all times?”

Adrian shrugged. “She never got the royal memo. But I liked that about her. I liked that she kept me on my feet, she kept me wondering. And she kept me interested.”

“Interested in what?”

“In her. In her likes and interests. In her mood and temperament. In her happiness. In everything about her.”

“Sounds like a special young woman.”

Her son just nodded, a faraway look in his eyes.

~*~

L
ater, as the royal entourage left the theater, the queen spotted Darcy. She locked arms in his and walked to the waiting car with him.

“You know I’ve still not forgiven you for playing that trick on me, pretending to be Adrian when my son ran off,” she said. “So you owe me. And now I have a job for you. If you pay that back, I’ll consider us even. Speak of it to no one, do you understand?”

E
mma
sat alone in the living room of her house, unopened gifts intended for her parents parked beneath her sagging little Christmas tree. Her parents had long ago made plans to travel to Nashville to the Opryland Hotel for their Christmas extravaganza. Her mother was nothing if not addicted to Very Merry Christmases. Though she failed dismally in recognizing her daughter’s lack thereof. It seemed nothing said Christmas quite like hoop skirts and a down-home twang, as far as her mother was concerned. But Emma had politely declined an offer to join them and swore to her folks that she would be fine, so what were they to do?

Emma had distracted herself all day long with a holiday filmfest, and had powered her way through several classics already, alternating cheerful with grim. Weird how that
Charlie Brown Christmas
seemed like a real downer if you weren’t in a Christmas state of mind, what with the lame tree, the kids being mean to Charlie Brown and the subdued music.
A House Without a Christmas Tree
left her bawling, being that the girl’s mother was dead and the dad had shut himself off emotionally. She’d already sat through
White Christmas
but had to turn it off when everyone ended up happily ever after. That was a foreign concept, thanks. Now she was engrossed in the more emotionally neutral
A Christmas Story
. Ralphie had just gotten his Red Ryder BB Gun. Clearly eye-damaging weaponry was much more her speed at the moment.

As Ralphie’s family dined on Chinese duck following the demise of their turkey, Emma started thinking about her own lacking Christmas dinner, hoping she could find a Chinese restaurant open to satisfy her now-grumbling stomach.

She’d just pulled her phone out to see if Peking Gourmet was open when she received a text from Caroline.

“Pack your bags for a week. We’ve got last-minute plans. Bring something dressy. Remember winter coat, and you’ll need a scarf and gloves. I’ll be at your place in fifteen minutes. Oh, and you might need your passport.”

Huh?

She told Caroline:
“Sorry, I’m about to run out to Peking Gourmet to get dinner. Nothing says lonely Christmas like Chinese food.”

Her friend replied:
“No worries. Duck can be arranged. Just be ready or you’ll go in your pajamas. And trust me, you don’t want to go in your pajamas.”

Emma tried to ask for details but her friend didn’t reply.

Without having a clue as to what to pack, she threw together a haphazard collection of clothes and shoes and toiletries and hoped for the best.

“I guess winter coat means I don’t need sunscreen or a bathing suit,” she mumbled. But the passport thing had her stymied. Maybe they were off for a rollicking week in Newfoundland. She always did like those dogs. Maybe they could seek out polar bears while they were there. But no, why would she need nice clothes for a polar bear trek? Unless it was a
Save the Polar Bears
cocktail party, in which case it might make more sense. She wouldn’t put it past Caroline to do something impulsive like that. Besides, no doubt it was a super cheap flight to the barren Canadian north in the dead of winter.

“You really need to get a life if this is the extent of your vivid imagination,” she said to herself.

Caroline arrived out of breath, pounding on the door.

“Hope you watered your houseplants. Let’s go!” she shouted as Emma opened up the door.

She grabbed her friend’s hand and pulled her toward the awaiting taxi. “You know how hard it is to get a cab on Christmas evening? Come on!” She practically shoved her into the backseat of the thing.

Emma squinted at her, trying to figure out what was going on. “You’re not going to give me even a clue?”

Caroline shook her head. “You’ll know soon enough.”

After a twenty-minute drive, they arrived at Washington Dulles airport.

“You sure have my curiosity piqued,” Emma said. “I mean I know you’re a good friend and all, but it’s not as if you’d spring for an entire vacation for me. Even for Christmas. Besides, weren’t you going to be visiting your family in Baltimore today?”

“Honey, been there, done that. Blew out of there early. With what I’ve got planned for you, Bal’more can’t hold a candle.”

The taxi pulled into the parking lot of a private jet terminal, where a uniformed pilot and two flight attendants were waiting to take their luggage.

“What the—?” Emma said, dazed.

“I know, right? Just wait. It gets better.”

They were led across a tarmac — no security line, no screaming kids, no scowling TSA agents, no water dumping, no inspections of mini-bottles of shampoo in small Ziploc bags, no shoe removal, no icky naked private part-revealing X-rays, no nothing that makes commercial air travel demeaning and dehumanizing — and mounted the steps to a gleaming white jet with no apparent identification on it.

“On the one hand I’d sure love for this to be taking us to, say, the Fiji Islands,” Emma said. “But the winter coat thing throws that right off. I can’t for the life of me imagine how you had the wherewithal to pull this off. And on the other hand, I could care less where this is taking us. Wherever it is, it beats marinating in winter doldrums, which was how I spent my day.”

The flight attendant gave them a tour of the jet, with reclining white leather seats as soft as kid gloves that converted into beds. Beds! There was a large bar stocked with top-of-the-line liquor and an ice bucket with chilled champagne, and a gargantuan flat-screen HD screen with any and every movie available to watch. Emma planned on finishing up her Christmas movie binge under the improved circumstances. To top it off, dinner, they learned, was to be a catered affair, direct from Peking Gourmet.

“Can we stay on board this thing for the rest of our lives?” Caroline asked the flight attendant, who laughed politely as if she wasn’t used to low-renters on board.

“Psst, Caro,” Emma whispered. “Check it out: there’s a shower. On a plane. A shower!”

“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” her friend said.

The plane took off a mere ten minutes after boarding. It was as if there was no other plane at this enormous international airport that had needs. Only theirs. And as easy as that, the two women took off into the friendly skies with nary a care in the world, champagne flutes of some lovely French champagne bubbling away in their grips. As the plane hugged the Eastern seaboard, the pilot made a custom fly-by over Manhattan, to Emma and Caroline’s great delight.