That’s not always going to be the case. Some hotels we’ll be staying in don’t have suites with attached exterior rooms. In those cases, we’ve reserved two-bedroom suites, and she’ll be taking the master bedroom. These details were ironed out long before I even went to Bretaria to meet Dmitri and his crew. Kynan insisted that such permission be granted before we agreed to the job. If the Winterbourne family wanted personal protection for Camille, they had to be okay with her bodyguard having very quick access. That means, in some instances, sharing a suite.
It’s not that big of a deal, to be honest. The king and Camille had no problem with it. I have no problem with it. We have doors on our rooms for privacy.
It is what it is, and I’m only here to protect her.
When I enter my room, I move to the connecting door and test the knob.
Unlocked since she now understands it to be very important. Satisfied, I take a seat at the desk and open my laptop, checking off events we’ve completed and looking at our schedule.
Tomorrow evening, we’ll leave for Atlanta. She has a CNN interview the next day about the Winterbournes’ philanthropic work, and then she wants to see the city’s renowned aquarium. From Atlanta, we’ll head to Miami where she’ll meet with one of the Winterbournes’ biggest customers, a famous jewelry designer who is in high demand and has an almost two-year waiting list for his work.
From there, the Florida Keys for fishing—another surprise, it’s something she does often in the waters around her home—and then it’s westward.
To my surprise, she chose a little town to visit called Jonesboro, Arkansas. I actually had to look it up—it’s your typical midsize city with nothing that I could see might draw a royal princess. When I asked her about it, using those exact words—“What is there that could interest a princess?”—she merely responded, “Nothing that I know of, and that’s exactly the reason I want to go.” She explained she just wants to see what typical America is like because she came to our country to figure out what we’re all about.
After Arkansas, she’ll see some of Dallas, Las Vegas, and Southern California. She’ll hit Lake Tahoe and Jackson, Wyoming for skiing—because as I just learned, she loves the cold—and then back to Washington, DC, where she’ll spend two days doing the ultimate touristy stuff followed by lunch on the final day with the president of the United States.
This was actually an event Cruce secured, given he’s married to the president’s niece, and this impressed King Thomas. Camille is, of course, beside herself—even though she’s royalty and one of the wealthiest women on the planet, she never thought she’d meet the leader of the free world, much less have lunch with him.
I smile to myself, finally admitting that I got her wrong. She’s not turned out to be anything like I’d stereotyped her to be. On the contrary, she’s fascinating, and I think about her far too much beyond the normal concerns of protecting her.
And let’s face it … she’s beautiful and sexy, and when you add that to the fact that she’s utterly intriguing, I can’t help but look at her outside the lens of just her bodyguard. It’s safe to say the man in me has pushed aside the protector a bit to take a closer look.
Of course, I know I can’t do anything about it. But as the saying goes, it’s okay to look.
I hear the TV come on in her suite, and I chuckle at the theme song from Friends. Another thing I was surprised to learn about Camille is that she doesn’t watch TV.
Like, at all.
She’ll watch a movie once in a while, but past that, the TV stays off. She gets her news from a daily summary put together by the king’s secretary, and if she wants a deeper dive, she goes straight to the web. And while access to satellite programming is abundant in her homeland, she told me she’s far too busy to invest time in TV.
But now … I hear her laughing, probably from something funny Phoebe did. Apparently the first night in New York, Camille was having a hard time sleeping due to the time difference from Bretaria to London to New York, so she turned on the TV and became hooked on Friends. That’s classic American television as far as I’m concerned, so good for her.
I move to the bed and settle in, propped against the headboard. I clasp my hands across my stomach and consider Camille next door.
Yeah, she’s totally different from what I thought she’d be, and I’m grateful. This assignment isn’t going to be the hot mess I’d been expecting. She’s actually fucking pleasant to be around.
But I’m still struggling to wrap my head around what I saw on the plane when we left London. I’d gone back to her seat to check on her. I knew her hangover had been bad.