Royals

And then I realize I’ve been staring at him for several beats, and when I lift my gaze back to his face, he’s watching me, and I realize that he may not have understood that I was mentally composing a text message to my best friend about how disappointing he is.

In fact, he might think—

I can’t even finish the thought before Seb is letting go of the bedpost and moving toward me with the same grace I’d admired earlier. There’s no time to admire now, however, as he immediately swoops down on me, his lips meeting mine.

Chapter 11

He must take my gasp of surprise for an invitation because he is full-on kissing me immediately. No lead-up, no questioning, just a royal tongue in my mouth, and oh my god.

I place both hands on his chest and shove hard.

Seb lets me go immediately, stumbling back a few steps, his brow furrowed. “What?” he asks, and I stand there, gaping, the taste of whiskey—which, turns out, I really don’t like—still stinging in my mouth.

“You kissed me,” I tell him, and he nods, even as he keeps looking at me like I’m speaking another language.

“I did . . . yeah,” he says slowly. “Because you were looking at me in such a way that seemed to indicate you’d be amenable to such a thing.”

I am shocked and still a little jet-lagged, so it takes me a second to work out that sentence, and when I do, my face heats up.

“I was not amenable,” I assure him, wrapping my little blanket cape more tightly around myself. “I was looking at you and thinking you weren’t really what I expected.”

That seems to take some of the wind out of his sails. Backing up a few more steps, he sits heavily on the edge of the bed, the whiskey bottle still dangling from one hand. He hadn’t even put it down to kiss me.

“Not. What you. Expected,” he says, shoulders slumping, and for a second, I feel kind of bad. I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings.

“You’re still really good-looking if it’s any consolation,” I offer up, and he raises his head, smiling a little.

“It is, thanks.” Then he sighs again before bringing the bottle back to his lips.

“Sorry,” he says once he’s finished, and wow, that bottle is a lot emptier than it was a few minutes ago. His eyes are starting to look hazy, too, not quite as bright as they struggle to focus on my face. “I only . . . that interview. With your sodding boyfriend.”

I stare at him. “Michael?” I squeak. Somehow, it never occurred to me that someone like Seb would actually read that. I understood people who worked for the royal family, people whose job it was to keep an eye on that kind of thing, knowing about it, but the actual prince?

“He said you dumped him to shag me,” Seb goes on, and I would throw my hands up if I wasn’t clutching the blanket so tightly.

“He was lying,” I said, but Seb isn’t really listening.

“Besides,” he adds, “it’s what everyone expects.”

He gestures between the two of us, the bottle wobbling in his hand. “You and me. Alex’s brother, Ellie’s sister. And people bloody love Ellie, so now they bloody love Alex.”

His blue eyes move up and down my body again, and I’m pulling the blanket so tightly around me, it’s a wonder I still have circulation in my arms.

“So maybe people will love you, and if I loved you—well, not loved, exactly, but you get the idea—that would mean they love me.”

He frowns, a trio of creases appearing between his auburn brows. “I said love too many times, I think.”

“People totally love you,” I say. “Maybe not random farmers your friends try to duel, but back home, you’re pretty freaking popular, dude.”

He just shakes his head. “You clearly didn’t do your research, Ellie’s Sister.”

“It’s Daisy,” I remind him, but he just shrugs.

“In any case, I thought we might as well get it over with.” He jerks his head toward the bed then, and this time, it’s not fancy sentence structure or flowery words that have me struggling to process what he just said. It’s shock.

“You came here to . . .” I can’t even finish the sentence because it’s too mortifying, so I just jerk my head toward the bed. “With me? A girl who’s known you for five minutes?”

He blinks at me, and I remember that he’s famous, rich, extremely attractive, and a royal to boot.

“Okay, so the five-minutes thing is probably the norm for you,” I allow, “but for me—wow, you do not have to roll your eyes at me.”

But Seb is not rolling his eyes at me. His eyes are rolling back into his head because he’s passing out.

I watch as Scotland’s most eligible bachelor slides off the edge of my mattress and crumples to the floor.

My very own Sleeping Beauty.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I mutter as I look at the unconscious body slumped on the carpet. He’s over six feet tall and definitely outweighs me, so it’s not like I can help him up. Is there someone I should ring for?

I look around the room, either for a phone or for some kind of old-fashioned bellpull. They have to have someone who deals with this kind of thing, right? Was Glynnis around? Because I do not want to explain to Ellie why Seb was in my bedroom at night.

I’m just about to panic when there’s another knock at the door, this one softer than Seb’s, and for a second, I hover between my bed and the door, not sure what to do.

Then the knock comes again, and I dash to the door, opening it just a crack.

The douche guy from the farm, Miles, is standing in the doorway. He’s changed clothes since I saw him earlier and is wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt now. But he’s standing up so straight and looking at me so coldly that he might as well be wrapped in nine sweaters and maybe some tweed.

“I’m looking for Seb,” he says, lips quirking with irritation. “He’s not in his room, and my inner best friend alarm sensed he might be here, making bad choices.”

I open the door wider, letting Miles take in the fact that the man who’s second in line for the Scottish throne is currently out cold on my floor.

“Ah,” Miles says. “Alarm still functioning, then.”

I have to say, for a guy who just came to a strange girl’s room to find his bestie passed out, Miles is pretty chill about the whole situation. It takes both of us, but we manage to maneuver Seb up off the floor, draping his arms over our shoulders.

“Luckily,” Miles says once Seb is more or less on his feet, “his room isn’t far.”

Patting Seb’s face—okay, patting is a nice way of putting it, it’s basically gentle slapping—Miles says, “Gonna need you to wake up a bit, Seb. Use your feet. One, two, one, two, one in front of the other.”

Miraculously, Seb does as he’s told, and the three of us shuffle out the door.

It’s dim in the corridor, and between the crazy-patterned carpet, the paintings and paneling on the walls, and the doors all being identical, I get a weird sense of vertigo, like I’m in a funhouse. How does anyone find their way around this place?

Also, Miles’s definition of “not far” does not line up with mine. We half carry, half drag Seb down this corridor, then turn into another. At one point, we go through an arched doorway, and the hall we step into looks exactly like the one we just walked down.