Royal Wedding (The Princess Diaries 11)

Damn! He must have detected the hint of stamp-lust in my voice.

“Michael, we can’t. I don’t want our future together to start off with us disappointing everyone. I’m willing to risk it with my grandmother—she’s always disappointed in me anyway—but not your parents. I couldn’t bear that.”

He lifted one of my hands and kissed it. “Well, when you put it like that, how can I say no?” He held my hand up so the diamond on my finger caught the moonlight. “But I don’t want you getting stressed out again.”

I hugged him. “I’ll never get stressed out again with you by my side. Our wedding’s going to be amazing, just like our future together.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy in my entire life.

Three things I’m grateful for:

1. Shooting stars.

2. Lab-engineered diamonds.

3. That I’m engaged to be married to Michael Moscovitz.

CHAPTER 18

3:05 p.m., Monday, May 4

HELV* from Teterboro back to the consulate

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*Hybrid Electric Livery Vehicle

So happy. Can’t even think of anything to write I’m so happy.

Except that I’m sorry to have left our little island . . . I wish we could live there, swimming and snorkeling and sleeping in the sun all day, then lying in our hammock and watching shooting stars (and satellites) at night. We even invented a new game . . . it’s called Space Alien. We pretended one of the satellites we saw was actually a spaceship visiting from a distant galaxy and it happened to land on our tiny island, and when the door opened, out

came Michael, who was an alien (with many humanoid qualities) who’d been sent to explore the far reaches of space because all the females in his sector had died out from a terrible plague, so he kidnapped me and took me back to his planet to help repopulate it (though I went willingly because he was quite handsome and more gentlemanly and intelligent than any of the men on my own planet).

Obviously, in real life it would not be fun to travel to a planet where you were the sole female and have humanoid males fight over you all day, but that’s what’s fun about fantasies: they’re not real. Another fun fantasy would be for us to live in the Exumas, where Michael could fish and I could sell the fish from a little hut on the beach, and we could play Space Alien every night and forget all our other responsibilities.

But that’s not real either.

Which is why I just had to switch my phone back on. I need to see how things are going at the center and with my dad and—

. . . and now it’s buzzing off the hook. What is going on? There had better be an international incident or—

I have 1,372 new e-mails, texts, and voice mails.

I was kidding about there better having been an international incident. Please don’t let anything bad have happened to my family or friends or kids from the center or the refugees from Qalif or the people of Genovia . . .

CHAPTER 19

3:15 p.m., Monday, May 4

Still in the HELV

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There hasn’t been an international incident. Well, there has been, but it turns out to be me. Once again, I’m the international incident.

At Long Last:

They’re Engaged!