Princes Waitress

‘Don’t tell me you’re worrying about him!’ Nicky had her hand in a packet of cereal. ‘He just pulls up his bloody drawbridge, leaving the enemy on the outside!’

Holly bit her lip. She was the one who’d kissed him by the window. She’d had no idea. ‘I feel guilty.’

‘Oh, please! This is Prince Casper we’re talking about. He doesn’t care what the newspapers write about him. You’re the one who’s going to suffer. If you ask me, the least he could have done was give you some security or advice. But he’s left you to take the flak!’

Holly’s spirits sank further at that depressing analysis. ‘He doesn’t know where I am.’

‘He’s a prince,’ Nicky said contemptuously, flopping back down on the sofa, her mouth full of cereal. ‘He commands a whole army, complete with special forces. He could find you in an instant if he wanted to. MI5, FBI, I don’t know—one of that lot. One word from him and there’d be a satellite trained on my flat.’

Shrinking at the thought, Holly slid back into the sleeping bag. ‘Close the blinds.’ What had she done?

‘Well, you can go on hiding if that’s what you want. Or you could give those sharks outside your flat an interview.’

‘Are you mad?’

‘No, I’m practical. Thanks to His Royal Highness, you have no job and you’re trapped indoors. Sell your story to the highest bidder. “My lunchtime of love” or “sexy Santallian stud”?’

Appalled, Holly shook her head. ‘Absolutely not. I couldn’t do that.’

‘You have a baby to support.’

‘And I don’t want my child looking back at the year he was conceived and seeing that his life started with me dishing the dirt on his dad in the papers! I just want the whole thing to go away.’

It was ironic, she thought numbly, that she’d fantasised about this exact moment ever since she was a teenager. She’d longed to be a mother. Longed to have a child of her own—to be able to create the sort of family she’d always wanted.

She’d even lain awake at night, imagining what it must be like to discover that you were pregnant and to share that excitement with a partner. She’d imagined his delight and his pride. She’d imagined him pulling her into a protective hug and fiercely declaring that he would never leave his family.

Not once, ever, had she imagined that she’d be in this position, doing it on her own.

One rash moment, one transgression—just one—and her life had been blown apart. Even though she was in a state of shock, the deeper implications weren’t lost on her. Her hopes of eventually being able to melt back into her old life unobserved died. She knew that once someone spotted that she was pregnant it wouldn’t take long for them to do the maths.

This was Prince Casper of Santallia’s child.

Nicky stood up. ‘I need to buy some food. Back in a minute.’ The front door slammed behind her, and moments later Holly heard the doorbell. Assuming Nicky had forgotten something, she slid off the sofa and padded over to the door.

‘So this is where you’ve been hiding!’ Eddie stood in the doorway, holding a huge, ostentatious bunch of dark-red roses wrapped in cheap cellophane.

Holly simply stared, suddenly realising that she’d barely thought about him over the past two weeks.

‘I didn’t expect to see you here, Eddie.’

He gave a benign smile. ‘I expect it seems like a dream.’ Sure of himself, Eddie smiled down at her. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

‘No. You broke off our engagement, Eddie. I was devastated.’ Holly frowned to herself. Her devastation hadn’t lasted long, though, had it? It had been supplanted by bigger issues—but should that have been possible? Did broken hearts really mend that quickly?

‘I can’t talk about this on the doorstep.’ He pushed his way into the flat and thrust the flowers into her hands. Past their best, a few curling petals floated onto the floor. ‘Here. These are for you. To show that I forgive you.’

‘Forgive me?’ Holly winced as a thorn buried itself into her hand. Gingerly she put the flowers down on the hall table and sucked the blood from her finger. ‘What are you forgiving me for?’

‘For kissing the prince.’ Eddie’s face turned the same shade as the roses. ‘For making a fool of me in public.’

‘Eddie—you were the one partying in that box with your new girlfriend.’

‘She was no one special. We both need to stop hurting each other. I admit that I was furious when I saw you kissing the prince, then I realised that it must have been hard on you, watching me get that promotion and then losing me. But it seems to have loosened up something inside you. A whole new you emerged.’ He grinned like a schoolboy who had just discovered girls. ‘You’ve always been quite shy and a bit prim. And suddenly you were, well, wild. When I saw you kissing him, I couldn’t help thinking it should have been me.’

Looking at him, Holly realised that not once during her entire passionate episode with the prince had she thought ‘this should have been Eddie’.

‘I know you only did it to bring me to my senses,’ Eddie said. ‘And it worked. I see now that you are capable of passion. I just need to be more patient with you.’

The prince hadn’t been patient , Holly thought absently. He’d been very impatient. Rough, demanding, forceful.

‘I didn’t kiss the prince to make you jealous.’ She’d kissed him because she couldn’t help herself.

‘Never mind that now. Put my ring back on your finger, and we’ll go out there and tell the press we’d had a row and you kissed the prince because you were pining for me.’

Life had a strange sense of humour, Holly reflected numbly. Eddie was offering to get back together. But she was already being propelled down a very different path.

‘That isn’t possible.’

‘We’re going to make a great couple.’ He was smugly confident. ‘We’ll have the Porsche and the big house. You don’t need to be a waitress any more.’

‘I like being a waitress,’ Holly said absently. ‘I like meeting new people and talking to them. People tell you a lot over a cup of coffee.’

‘But who wants to be weighed down with someone else’s problems when you can stay at home and look after me?’

‘It can’t happen, Eddie—’

‘I know it’s like a fairy tale, but it is happening. By the way, the flowers cost a fortune, so you’d better put them in water. I need the bathroom.’

‘Door on the right,’ Holly said automatically, and then gave a gasp. ‘No, Eddie, you can’t go in there.’ Oh, dear God, she’d left everything on the floor—he’d see.

Wanting to drag him back but already too late, she stood there, paralysed into inactivity by the sheer horror of the moment. The inevitability was agonising. It was like witnessing a pile-up—watching, powerless, as a car accelerated towards the back of another.

For a moment there was no sound. No movement.

Then Eddie appeared in the door, his face white. ‘Well.’ His voice sounded tight and very unlike himself. ‘That certainly explains why you don’t want to get back together again.’