Royal Wedding (The Princess Diaries 11)

Are you just sitting there writing in your diary or are you actually making progress?

Oh my God. How does he DO that?

HRH Mia Thermopolis “FtLouie”>

Michael, this is very sweet of you, but you KNOW whatever it is you’ve got planned, I can’t go. It’s absurd. Why won’t you pick up your phone?

Because I don’t want to get into it with you. What part of “don’t argue” did you not understand?

I’m not arguing, I’m telling you facts. Seriously, this is a terrible time for me to leave. The country of Genovia needs me. The center needs me. My family needs me.

I need you. We need to have a relaxing weekend away from orange-throwing Genovians and your insane family.

There’s been a DEATH in my insane family, Michael, and another ALMOST death (if you count my dad). And what about my grandmother? I can’t leave.

Yes, you CAN leave, and you will. Perin and Ling Su can handle the center—that’s why you hired them. And Frank died a year ago. And don’t worry about your dad, he can take care of himself. And your grandmother’s been taken care of, too.

What? What is that supposed to mean? No one “takes care” of my grandmother. Grandmère’s like that old dowager countess on Downton Abbey (only not as nice). She takes care of herself, although occasionally she allows servants to prepare her food and drink and drive her around (thank God, since they took away her license years ago, which they should probably do to my dad).

It’s sweet of you, Michael, whatever you have planned, but you know this is crazy. It’s because of the orange-throwing Genovians that I can’t leave. And in addition to everything else, I have that charity gala I promised to attend on Saturday night. And I can’t leave behind my laptop. Neither can you! Do I have to remind you that you own a computer-based business?

I don’t want to think of myself as predictable (who does?) but it almost seems as if he anticipated my response, he wrote back so quickly:

We both need to disconnect from work and the Internet. Don’t even try to tell me that you didn’t see RTR this morning. I know you check it every five minutes to make sure you’re in the top three.

This is a scurrilous falsehood! I check Rate the Royals no more than once a day.

But before I could protest, I received this:

I already asked Dominique to give your regrets about the gala and she said she’d be glad to. I know how anxious you are to rebuild what you consider your family’s “tarnished reputation,” but I think throwing your support behind every charity that asks for your help (such as a society hoping to reverse the “alarming decline of butterflies and moths in urban areas”) might not be the most effective way to do it.

He’d spoken to my publicist behind my back? How dare he?

But again, before I could text a word in reply, I received this:

And both your mom AND dad say they’ll be fine without you. They agree with me that you need a break after all the stress you’ve been through this past year. It’s making you physically ill.

Lilly would rightfully have accused her brother of being both patriarchal and controlling here, talking to my parents behind my back like I’m a child . . .

. . . though I sort of love it when he tells me what to do, especially in bed, like when we play Fireman, the game we invented where he’s the fireman and I’m the naughty resident who ignored the smoke detector and didn’t evacuate the building in a timely manner.

Then he finds me sprawled half conscious on my bed in my sexy lingerie, and has to give me mouth-to-mouth to revive me. Only when I get revived, we realize burning timbers have fallen across our only form of egress, so he has no choice but to spend his time waiting for rescue giving me a sexy lesson in fire safety.

Plus I ran the whole trip through the RGG and they cleared it. The youth of New York City, the women and children of Qalif, and the genetically modified oranges of Genovia will be all right without you for one weekend.

Now grab the bag and get downstairs. Are you even dressed? The clock is ticking, Thermopolis. The jet leaves from Teterboro at eleven.

Jet? He’s hired a private jet?

Who does he think he is all of a sudden, Christian Grey?

I am not okay with this. I’m not some shy virginal college student who only owns one shirt. I am a twenty-six-year-old woman fully in charge of making up my own mind about whether or not I want to go on vacation.

I do love it when Michael calls me Thermopolis, though. Even when it’s only in writing, it does something to me, something that normally only happens when he walks into the room after I haven’t seen him in a while and hugs me, and I get a whiff of his amazing, clean, Michael smell, or when he comes out of the shower wearing only a towel and his hair is all wet and plastered down darkly to the back of his strong, newly shaved neck, and he announces he smells smoke—

Maybe he’s right. Maybe I do need a relaxing vacation. Especially away from my crazy family, and the consulate, and the Internet, and . . .

Oh, crap. Might as well admit it: after all these years, I’m still disgustingly, revoltingly in love with him, exploding penguins and all. I’d even go on some kind of weird, wireless retreat with him.