Текст книги "Prince Albert"
Автор книги: Sabrina Paige
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PRINCE ALBERT
Sabrina Paige
Prince Albert is a royal prick.
He’s the most famous one on the planet, too – wealthy, gorgeous, and a notorious playboy. He’s also the most conceited, insufferable, arrogant man I’ve ever met.
Did I mention he’s a freaking prince? An actual, real life Prince Not-So-Charming.
He’s tattooed and pierced, too. Prince Albert has a Prince Albert piercing. That's right – he's pierced you-know-where. Allegedly. I’ve never seen it.
My mother is marrying a king. Being a princess is every girl’s fantasy, right?
Except that means Albie is my new stepbrother.
Oh, and one more thing – I accidentally married him.
We’re keeping the biggest secret on the planet.
Ever heard the fairy tale about the Princess and her stepbrother?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
I’m royally screwed.
Copyright © 2014 by Sabrina Paige
Copyright © Cover Design by Cormar Covers
Cover Model Ripp Baker
Photographer Golden Czermak, Furious Fotog
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real events, people, or places is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without the permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations used for review. If you have not purchased this book from Amazon or received a copy from the author, you are reading a pirated book.
The author acknowledges the trademarked status of products referred to in this book and acknowledges that trademarks have been used without permission.
This book contains mature content, including graphic sex. Please do not continue reading if you are under the age of 18 or if this type of content is disturbing to you.
NOTE: All characters in the book are 18+ years of age, non-blood related, and all sexual acts are consensual.
To check out the rest of Sabrina Paige's catalog on Amazon, CLICK HERE !
DEDICATION
To my husband, who’s the best man I know.
To my darling daughter, who is the light of my life.
To Joanna Blake and Jordan Marie, who put up with so many emails from me that began with “So…does this go too far?”
To all of the readers who have been so supportive: I apologize for all of the over-the-top ridiculousness of this book. But not for the anal.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Prince Albert has been brewing in my head pretty much ever since I published my last stepbrother book. It’s the most ridiculous, over-the-top, and totally implausible story I’ve written.
And I hope you love it.
The country, Protrovia, is fictional.
And there’s more sex than you might be used to from my books. For that, well, I can’t say I’m all that sorry.
This edition of Prince Albert also contains another full-length book, included for free with your copy of Prince Albert! Continue forward at the end to read Tool: A Stepbrother Romance or
Click Here
to be sent directly to that bonus book. Enjoy!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prince Albert: A Billionaire Stepbrother Romance
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Author’s Note
Mailing List
Other Books By Sabrina Paige
About the Author
TOOL: A Stepbrother Romance
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
CHAPTER ONE
Belle
“You,” I say. I blink my eyes several times in quick succession, silently offering up a prayer that I’m not seeing what I’m seeing. Or, more accurately, who I’m seeing. Maybe I’m having a mental breakdown and this is actually just some type of stress-induced hallucination.
Losing my mind would be preferable to this. Hell, pretty much anything would be preferable to this.
“You,” he says. He stares at me, unblinking. I swear, time stops completely. The rotation of the earth comes to a grinding halt as he stands there, no more than ten feet away, looking at me. Then, the corners of his mouth turn up – just a hair. The movement is most likely imperceptible to anyone else, but I definitely notice.
That asshole. It’s like he’s pleased with this development. It’s as if he expected this.
You’d have to be a fucking lunatic to be happy about this.
“I wasn’t aware that the two of you had met before.” My mother looks back and forth between us, her expression unwavering. If there’s one thing Sofia Kensington excels at, it’s revealing absolutely nothing when confronted with something potentially scandalous. She’s entirely unflappable, standing there motionless in her sage green silk shift and heels, her chestnut-colored hair pulled up in a chignon, perfectly-manicured hands folded neatly in front of her.
She’s always looked regal. Becoming the Queen of a small European country is a perfect fit. I know, without even asking, that it’s the culmination of her life’s ambitions. It's everything in the world she's hoped for.
And now, I'm standing here harboring a secret that could jeopardize all of that.
If my mother knew the whole truth about me and the boy standing not more than ten feet away from me…
Let’s just say the scandal would be one of epic proportions.
A scandal of royal proportions is probably more accurate, given the particular circumstances.
“I –“ I start, then stop. My mouth suddenly feels like I swallowed twenty cotton balls, and my heart is thumping so wildly I think it might actually beat right out of my chest.
“I recall bumping into Isabella in Las Vegas last week,” he says, his voice light, teasing, the hint of an accent on his lips. Everything he says, even the raunchiest of things, comes out sounding like it’s spoken by a person who’s well-bred, well-educated, pedigreed.
Of course, that’s because he is the ultimate in well-bred.
“I didn’t realize who she was," he says.
And I definitely remember the way he speaks the raunchiest of things.
"Yes," I murmur, the word barely audible. "I believe we bumped into each other."
That much is true.
"Oh my God. Why don’t you watch where you're going!" I don’t even bother to look up at the asshole who just ran into me. I’m too focused on the fact that there’s a wet spot spreading across the front of my dress, gin and tonic seeping through the fabric and causing my nipples to harden under the amped-up air conditioning in the casino.
"My apologies for your dress, although I'm not sorry I bumped into you," he says. And a handkerchief appears in front of my face. Who the hell carries a fabric handkerchief nowadays? "I'd be happy to pat that dry for you, if you’d like."
The accent is what throws me – European or something I can’t quite place, but definitely out of the ordinary here in a Vegas casino – and I look up at him, ready to give him a piece of my mind. The combination of alcohol and the fact that this is the worst day of my entire life has made me edgy and beyond irritable.
Holy shit.
Even in my drunken haze, this guy is spectacular, gazing down at me with blue eyes filled with mischief. Literally, spectacular is the only word for it.
He’s the most beautiful man I've ever laid eyes on, with eyes a periwinkle color that’s nearly purple under the lights in the casino, and lips so lush that I can't think about anything except what it would be like to feel them against my skin…
Of course, that’s the image that immediately pops into my head, sending a shiver down my spine as I picture his head close to me, his lips trailing across my stomach, then down farther.
There’s something familiar about him, but my booze-addled brain can’t quite place it. For a second, I think I might have seen him before, but I tell myself that’s stupid. It’s just my brain playing tricks on me.
This is not the kind of man you’d ever forget seeing.
"Is that your shtick?” I ask, the waver in my voice betraying my sudden nervousness. “Spilling drinks on girls and then patting them down?"
He laughs. "I don't need a shtick, luv," he says, leaning close to me to whisper softly. "Unless you mean the one between my legs."
"You're crude," I say, wrinkling my nose. But I can’t help but glance down, exactly where he wanted me to look.
"You're…" His voice fades away for a moment as his gaze trails down the length of my body, making me flush. "Like a drunken disheveled Cinderella."
"So that would make you, what, the not-so-charming prince?" I ask, glancing down at my shoe on the ground. I lost my shoe. So what? I was running from her – my best friend. My maid-of-honor.
The traitorous bitch.
The corners of his mouth turn up as he looks at me like he's pleased. His smile is superior, patronizing almost, as if I'm a child who's amused him. "Something like that."
Something like that.
The bastard. He had conveniently failed to mention that it was exactly like that.
"I apologize for the secrecy," my mother says. "Whisking you off to Protrovia on a private plane was designed to make things…efficient. Less messy.”
"Less messy," I repeat, the irony of the words apparent only to me. She hasn't spoken the words aloud yet, but if she's about to say what I think she is, this is going to be beyond messy.
It’s going to be positively nuclear.
"Isabella," she snaps, then clears her throat. "It's ill-mannered to simply repeat what I'm saying."
The man beside her – King Leopold IV of Protrovia, who’s already introduced himself in the most bizarrely casual way (“Call me Leo”, like he’s a regular guy and not royalty – as if we’re not standing here in the middle of a palace) places his hand on her arm. "Sofia, please," he says quietly.
My mother takes a deep breath, as if my very presence here is trying her patience. "The secrecy was all for your benefit," she says. "I didn't want this to overshadow your bachelorette party, or your wedding plans.”
My wedding, I realize, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. My engagement.
In the midst all of this ridiculousness – being flown on a private jet without being told where I was going (I'd like to say the intrigue was unusual but I'm used to my mother's antics), taken straight to a palace – I'd forgotten to tell her.
Oh, God.
"I'm not getting married," I say, my voice soft. I swear the air goes out of the room, and everything becomes perfectly still.
"Excuse me?" My mother's normal reserve cracks again. Usually that would give me some small sense of delight, except that this time it doesn't. This time, it just makes me feel worse.
"I. Am. Not. Getting. Married," I repeat, this time more slowly, emphasizing each word clearly. My head is spinning.
I’m not getting married.
I don't say the rest of the words. But I think them in my head, panic rising in my throat.
I am not getting married – because I already am. The thought makes me want to vomit.
I’m already married.
To my brand-spanking-new stepbrother.
Prince Albert, the Crown Prince of Protrovia.
This is a royal fucking nightmare.
CHAPTER TWO
Belle
“Isabella Kensington,” my mother hisses. “This is not the time nor place.”
If she only knew how badly this was not the time nor place.
“Oh, juicy.” King Leopold’s daughter stands on the other side of the room, leaning against an ornate carved wooden statue that's trimmed in gold and glittering with precious gems, her torn jeans and faded t-shirt emblazoned with the name of an indie rock band from the United States. She is a stark contrast to the formality of this room in the palace.
I look around the room with a clinical kind of detachment that means I’m probably in shock. I haven’t even had a chance for a tour of the palace. I wonder if this room is the place where they announce bad news. Do royal palaces have designated bad news rooms? They should.
I suppose my mother and the king – Leo – only think their nuptials are good news.
The girl – I can’t even remember her name; it’s like my mind has gone completely empty – pops her gum loudly. “Sweet. A broken engagement? At least I’m not the only one causing drama for once.”
Leopold gives her a disapproving look. “Yes, Alexandra,” he says, scowling at her. “That’s certainly a silver lining.”
“So the two of you are getting married,” Alexandra says, crossing her arms over her chest. “I think we’re all pretty clear on that. You’ve been seeing each other all summer. It’s not exactly a big secret, okay? We’re one big happy family. Smile for the press and all that. Are we done now?”
“Alexandra!” Leopold bellows, his deep baritone thundering through the room. The sound makes me jump, and it seems to surprise him, like he’s not used to losing his temper, because he clears his throat immediately. “Yes. Sofia and I are getting married.”
Am I the only one in the world who didn’t know?
Even isolated in a rural village in Africa before I came back to the States – to Vegas, because of my engagement – I got mail. My mother could have told me before this.
She could have sent a postcard or something:
Wish you were here. P.S. I’m marrying a European monarch. You’re going to be a princess!
The King continues, saying something – using words like decorum and public eye and propriety – but I don’t hear what he says. It’s like he’s speaking in a tunnel, his words coming from someplace in the distance, and my head is swimming. I know I’m standing still, but it feels as if I’m on a boat, the floor rocking back and forth. Someone asks me if I’m okay, but I can’t seem to muster up a response.
Instead, I turn and run headlong through the room. My palms slam against the heavy, ornately-carved wooden door, pushing it open without waiting for the assistance of the man standing beside it. Is he a butler? Do palaces have butlers, or is there a fancier term for them?
When I burst out the door, a bulky, imposing man in a suit with an earpiece in his ear catches my elbow. “Are you okay, Miss Kensington?”
I shake my head, mute. The fact that he knows my name is fucking creepy. But of course he knows my name. I’m sure they know everything about me.
Oh God. What if they know about what happened in Vegas?
The thought brings a fresh wave of nausea to the surface, and I barely choke out the word “bathroom.” The bodyguard points me in the direction of a room ten feet down the hall, attempting to escort me, but I shake his hand off my arm and shut myself inside, barely making it to a velvet-covered bench that must be several hundred years old before my legs give way.
My breath comes in short gasps, and I feel lightheaded, on the verge of hyperventilating. I try to slow my breath, reminding myself that I can't freak out.
Not here. Not now.
Closing my eyes, I think of other things – things that don't involve being the center of what's potentially the biggest scandal in the entire world.
Or, if not the entire world, at least the Western one. Or Europe.
Any way I think about it, it's a scandal involving several countries. It's the worst possible scenario for someone whose idea of a nightmare is being in the public eye at all.
I've successfully avoided any public attention for the last two years. That’s not easy to do when your mother craves the public eye the way mine does, a whirlwind of charity functions and testifying before Congress and trips as a United Nations ambassador. In fact, escaping all of that meant I had to flee to another continent entirely.
I've been so disconnected from the outside world that I had no idea who he was.
And now, I feel like a complete and total idiot for not recognizing Prince Albert. He’s only one of the most famous princes on earth. Notorious would probably be a better word for it, known more for his antics in the bedroom than any kind of political activity.
The door swings open and there he is, as if simply thinking about him was enough to conjure him up out of nothing, summoned here by the universe. I silently curse my luck. "Get out of here," I hiss, the words barely coming out, my breath still short.
"Are you having a panic attack or a total mental breakdown?" he asks.
"Neither," I lie. In fact, I might very well be having a breakdown. Maybe I’m hallucinating this entire scenario.
"Good," he says. "I'd hate to think I over-estimated you."
“I just needed a second," I say, my voice defensive. I don't know where this guy gets off talking about over-estimating me. "Leave me alone."
"Not a chance," he says, still standing by the doorway. "Count to ten after I walk out this door before you follow me. When you leave here, turn right and go down the hallway. There's a Monet – it's the third painting on the right side of the wall. Push on the panel beside it. It's a secret passageway."
A secret passageway? Of course there's a secret passageway. It's a palace. I’ve practically walked right onto the set of a James Bond film. "You’re nuts if you think I'm about to follow you into a secret passageway," I say, my panic turning into disbelief.
He gives me a cocky grin and shrugs. "Don't pretend you have anything better to do, luv," he says. "Unless you're planning to get on a plane and head back to Africa?"
"How do you know I was in – " Africa, I start to say, but he's already turned around. Damn it.
I sit there in the bathroom, my heart no longer racing the way it was, no longer panicked and anxious. Instead, my heart pounds wildly in my chest for different reasons as I look at the closed door, where he just left. The thought of the way he looks at me, his gaze traveling the length of my body, sends warmth radiating through my body.
We spent one night together – and not even that way. I haven’t been with him. It was one random night in Vegas, driving around in a limo.
And getting married.
It seems like a lifetime ago.
I thought I would never see him again. I shouldn’t have ever seen him again. And how in the world was I supposed to know he was a prince? Or my future stepbrother?
We spent one night together. One kiss. So what?
It was one kiss that I’ve thought about it every day for the past two weeks, unable to shake the way his lips felt pressed against mine.
I should be devastated by my broken engagement. When your maid of honor confesses her affair with your fiancé, it should crush you. It’s supposed to crush you, right?
Except that I’ve been thinking of him instead.
I'm certainly not going to chase Prince Albert – he was Albie to me then, and definitely not a prince – down a secret passageway.
I count in my head – ten, then twenty, and thirty before I stand up and walk to the door and do exactly what he told me to do.
Damn it. Prince Albert is totally trouble. I know it in my gut, with more certainty than anything. I know it with all the certainty that I knew it that night.
Albie is going to be the worst kind of trouble.
And this is going to be the worst kind of decision.
CHAPTER THREE
Albie
The door opens, and she steps inside, looking radiant even in the dim light that shines from the overhead LED lighting in the passageway. The tunnels are an artifact of the palace, a relic from a thousand years ago, crisscrossing underneath the palace grounds and leading outside the gate. There’s a security guard posted at the exit, of course, a necessary precaution – but the tunnels were always my escape to freedom, out from under the watchful eyes of my father.
That was when I was younger, of course. Now, I'm free to do what I want. My father has given up on my being anything but exactly what I am.
The wayward crown prince.
The irresponsible prince.
The prince who lets his cock do all his thinking for him.
And my dick is definitely doing some thinking of its own, as I'm looking at Belle right now, standing not more than a foot away form me in her simple shift dress, an aqua blue the color of the ocean in the Mediterranean that makes her eyes look even brighter than they are.
Isabella.
But she wasn’t Isabella when she met me, half-drunk in Las Vegas. It was Belle then.
“Belle.” The name rolls off my tongue.
“You a-hole,” she whispers, clearly angry. It makes me laugh.
“Come again, darling?” I ask. “Oh, wait, no, there was no coming involved, was there? We never consummated our marriage bed. There are lots of beds in the palace, you know. I’m happy to make that happen.”
“How kind,” she says, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Is this totally a joke to you? You didn’t tell me you were a…”
“An asshole?” I ask.
She glares at me. I can see it even in the flickering light. She looks at me, her dark eyes steeled, her jaw set. “A prince,” she says, her tone imperious. “I gathered that you were an asshole the night we met. That didn't exactly take a lot of detective work."
“And yet, you saw fit to spend the entire night with me,” I say.
“Temporary insanity,” she says. “Obviously, I was out of my mind. And there was a lot of tequila involved, if I remember correctly. Plus, I was running away. But you already know that.”
I bend down to pick her shoe up off the ground.
Drunken disheveled Cinderella, complete with her high heel – black, classy and simple – askew on the ground.
When I slide it back onto her foot, my fingers graze the side of her ankle, and I look up at her. My eyes connect with hers and I can’t help what I do next. I slide my hands along her calf, watching as her eyes widen.
“That's not my shoe you're touching,” she says. She’s objecting, yet her tongue traces the edge of her lip, like she’s inviting me to slide my hands up higher. And I want to go higher. I want to take my hands and move them up her thighs, farther and farther until I’m reaching underneath her dress. I wonder if she's wearing panties.
“No, it’s not,” I say.
“People are looking.”
When I stand – too close to her to be polite – she inhales sharply, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. But she doesn’t move. She doesn't step back, the way she would if she didn't like how close I am.
The look of realization that I’m waiting for, the exclamation – Oh my God, you’re him! You’re Prince Albert! – never happens.
She doesn’t have a clue who I am.
"Yes," I say. "Fortunately for you, you ran right into me."
She laughs, tucking a strand of hair behind her hear. "Yeah, I’m a lucky girl," she says. "You could have mentioned the whole – oh, I don't know – glaring fact that you're a freaking prince."
I shrug. "You never talked about your work."
"That's not even the same thing –" she says, her face upturned. She balls one hand into a fist, obviously frustrated, and the fact that she's at the end of her rope makes her endearing somehow. "I'm not a..."
"Princess?" I ask. "Well, you're going to be."
"Our parents are getting married," she says. "And we just got married. In Vegas. You're a prince. Please tell me you understand there's a potential for huge scandal here. Don't you take anything in life seriously?"
"I try to take all of my marriages seriously."
Her eyes widen. "There are more marriages?" I pause for a beat, and a look of realization spreads across her face. "That's not even remotely funny."
"Don't worry," I say. "You're the only woman I’ve married in Vegas."
"That's hilarious," she says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "It was a drunken marriage. You’ve gotten it annulled, haven’t you?"
I shrug. "I had other things to do," I say. Sure I did. Except that's not the whole truth. I could have gotten an annulment. I should have gotten an annulment. Instead, I told myself it was irrelevant. Belle walked away – and I figured it would be out of sight, out of mind. It was as if it never happened.
That's what I told myself.
Except for the inescapable fact that I couldn't get her out of my head, even half a world away and two weeks later.
A woman taking up two weeks of residence in my brain – especially one I didn't even fuck? That's definitely some kind of record. My style is more of a one and done kind of thing – I prefer not to know the names of the women I screw. Of course, Belle’s name has been on repeat in my brain, playing over and over on a loop. And I didn’t even screw her.
I married her.
"You could have gotten it annulled," I say.
"I was busy," she whispers. "Dealing with my…"
Her voice trails off, and the way she glances away for a moment sends a momentary pang of guilt rushing through me for giving her shit. Her other wedding is what she was going to say. The night I ran into her – the night we got married in one of those Vegas chapels, by an Elvis impersonator, no less – was the night she found out her fiancé was screwing her maid of honor.
That night, she was running through the casino, away from her former best friend and all of her bridesmaids.
She told me everything over tequila shots in the back of a limo as we drove around Vegas – a slurred confession to me, her drunken priest.
Except that I'm the opposite of chaste.
And I've had nothing but the most impure of thoughts when it comes to Isabella Kensington.
"I was busy," she says, clearing her throat.
"I hope you properly disposed of your ex-fiancé’s body," I say, my tone light, joking, except there's a surprising undercurrent of irritation that runs through me at the thought of that asshole who cheated on her with her best friend.
A smile pulls at the corners of her mouth, then disappears just as suddenly. "I'm sure you have people that could do that for me," she says.
"Actually, we do," I say. "There's a secret branch of the military. If you need the ex-fiancé and ex-friend murdered, I'm happy to have it arranged. You are my wife, after all."
"You're a perfect gentleman," she says. “No one’s offered to have anyone murdered for me before.”
I reach up to tuck the wayward lock of her hair that keeps coming undone, back behind her ear, and when I touch her, she closes her eyes lightly, moving her face ever so slightly against my hand. Her lips part, just barely, and I think that if she allowed herself to do it, she'd be moaning right now.
The thought makes me hard as a rock, my cock pushing against the fabric of my pants.
I lean in close to whisper against her ear. "I'm definitely not a gentleman," I say, tracing my finger behind her ear and down the side of her neck. She tilts her head slightly to the side, and her chest rises as she inhales deeply, the top of her breasts exposed above the neckline of her dress. "Although I always let a lady come first."
Belle makes a strangled sound, and reaches up, pushing my hand away from her. “There’s going to be no coming involved.”
“Are you saying you’re not a lady?” I tease.
She narrows her eyes as she looks at me, anger replacing her arousal. “Did you know who I was when you met me? You had to know who I was.”
“Are you insane?” I ask. “I bumped into you in Vegas. Does that sound planned to you?”
“There’s no way this was a coincidence – these kinds of things don’t happen in real life. My mother had to have shown you photos, told you who I was.”
“She did show us a few photos, but no offense, luv, I didn’t really give a shit about what my new stepsister looked like,” I say.
Obviously, if I had realized how hot Belle was going to be, I’d have paid significantly more attention. I didn't even know she was going to be in Vegas – or that I was going to be in Vegas. It was an impromptu week of debauchery with my friends. I'd tired of Europe, and what better place for debauchery with American women than Las Vegas? I had no idea who she was when I met her – it wasn't until we signed the wedding paperwork that I recognized her last name. And by then, well, I was too drunk to care.
“How did you know I was in Africa?” she asks.
I shrug, the gesture more nonchalant than I feel. So what if I did a little research on her after the Vegas trip? It’s not every day that a girl I spend all night just talking to – and marry, no less – ditches me and runs off without so much as a see you later.
I found out that Belle had been off the radar for two years, doing some charity work in Africa. She’d only been back in the United States for a few days before the infamous Vegas trip. And I found out that she was Sofia Kensington’s daughter.
“Do you really think I’m not going to check out the background of a girl I married?” I ask, holding up my hand to stop her from interrupting. “I found out who you were after the fact.”
“But you knew who I was before this announcement today,” she says, a look of horror coming over her face. “You knew that I was your new…”
“Stepsister?” I ask.
“Oh my God,” she says, her hand covering her mouth. “I’m totally going to vomit.”
“There’s no need to be so dramatic,” I say.
“You think I’m being dramatic?” she asks, her voice going up an octave. “I got whisked away on a private jet, taken to a palace, and told that my mother is going to marry a king. And that the hot guy I spent a night hanging out with in Vegas – and married, by the way – is my new stepbrother.”
“Hot guy?” I ask.
“What?” she asks, looking at me blankly, her hands on her hips.
“You just said I was hot.”
She looks taken aback. “I totally did not.”
“Uh, I beg to differ,” I say.
