“I’ll be Genovian on paper,” Michael said, “but I’ll always be American in my heart. These colors don’t run.”
“Uh . . . maybe we’re rushing into this.”
“Mia, I’m kidding. We’ve been going out for eight years—more if you count high school. How can we be rushing into anything? And I couldn’t care less what last name I or our kids have, or even if we have kids, or what country I’m a citizen of. I just want to be with you, and I’ll renounce whatever I have to in order to make that happen.”
My heart swelled with love for him. “Aw. Michael, that’s so sweet,” I whispered (I had to whisper because of Lars, and also François, the driver. It would be nice to have some privacy, but privacy goes out the window when you get a chauffeur/personal security). “I just want to be with you, too.”
“Then how come at the first sign of trouble you’re ready to bail? I thought you were made of stronger stuff, Thermopolis.”
I had to ignore the little thrill I always get when he calls me Thermopolis. “I’m only thinking of you. Things are just going to get worse from here on out, you know. She’s trying to Game of Thrones us.”
“Who is? What are you talking about?”
“My grandmother! The story about our engagement is going to be everywhere in exactly one hour. Reuters. BBC. TMZ. They’re all going to be covering it. Our royal wedding will be the lead on the national news tonight. And after that, there is no way we’re going to get our small, private, family-and-friends-only wedding. We’re going to have to do what my grandmother says, which means there probably will be a national day of celebration declared, and a commemorative stamp issued of your head.”
“I don’t care,” Michael said, sounding bravely determined. “If that’s what I have to go through in order to marry you, I will.”
“Oh, Michael, thanks.”
“That’s the worst of it, though, right? There’s no weird secret royal Genovian marriage ritual I have to undergo, do I? Sacrificial scarring? Ritual cutting?”
“Well, you’re already circumcised, so no.”
There was silence from his end of the phone.
“Oh my God, I’m kidding,” I cried. “The first rule of being a royal is that you have to learn to take a joke.”
“The first rule of jokes is that they have to be funny,” he countered.
“Fine. Can we get down to the real question, which is how my grandmother even found out? I know Tina didn’t tell her.”
“It wasn’t me,” Lars supplied, from the front seat. “I didn’t tell.”
“Of course it wasn’t Lars,” Michael said, having overheard him. “Tell Lars no one is blaming him.”
Seriously, if my life were one of those romance novels with a love triangle, Lars and Michael would be the sexy paranormal alpha males, but the two of them would be in love with each other and just ignore me.
“We know it wasn’t you, Lars,” I said. “And before we left this morning, I put the ring on my snowflake necklace around my neck so no one on the plane saw it. It had to have been Gretel.”
“Gretel?” Michael echoed.
“The chef. Who else could it have been? I swear, I’m going to write the meanest review about her on TripAdvisor. Unless—” I gasped. “Unless there were cameras in the cabana. You don’t think—”
“Mia,” Michael said. “Calm down. I know who leaked the story.”
“You do? Who?”
“It was me.”
“You?” I was stunned. “Michael, what are you talking about?”
“That part of the press release about me asking your father’s permission to marry you was true—well, partly true, anyway. I didn’t ask permission—I knew you wouldn’t like that, it’s sexist. You’re not your father’s property. But I did see him before we left, to tell him I was going to propose to you this weekend, and ask for his blessing.”
I was stunned. “Wait . . . is this what you meant when you said before we left that you’d talked to my parents?”
“Yes. I spoke to your mother, too, because she played an even bigger role in raising you. I thought it was the right thing to do. How do you think you got out of doing all those events—and birthday Cirque du Soleil with your grandmother—so easily?”
“Oh, Michael,” I said into the phone. I was feeling a maelstrom of emotions. “That’s so . . . that’s so . . .”