“I know.” I lean in for a kiss. “That’s why it’s so easy for me to let it go. Well, that and the fact that I can’t even imagine what the Presidential Suite in this place looks like.”
When he laughs, the storm clouds in his eyes dissipate, turning them back to the pure crystal blue that I love—especially when they gleam a little wickedly, like they’re doing now. “There’s a nine-foot-long tub in the master bath, with a view of the Eiffel Tower. I mean, in case you’re interested.”
“Nine feet? Really?”
He nods.
“Well, then, what are we waiting for? Let’s go try it out…”
* * *
—
We never make it to the bathtub—through no fault of the George V, the Presidential Suite, or Garrett. No, we don’t make it because I totally freak out before we even get to the room.
While I’ve had my phone on for most of the day, I’ve been ignoring it. I turned my Google alerts off yesterday—the article about me being a whore was more than enough to teach me a lesson on that front.
As we walk through the hotel, I dart into the small necessities shop in the hopes of grabbing a couple of Tylenol to relieve the low-grade headache I’ve had since the airport. But I barely make it in the door of the shop when I’m ambushed by pics of the two of us staring out at me from nearly every magazine cover and the front page of every newspaper in the place.
None of the photos are from our pap walk today, obviously, but I would totally have preferred that. That version of me—of us—was prepared for the public to be spying on us. Hell, we were courting the paps. But the pics they’ve got, which, to be fair, were probably the only ones available when they went to print? They’re of the two of us on our date the other night, when we didn’t have a clue we were being watched by anyone but a few locals, let alone that we were about to bring a shitstorm of massive proportions down on our heads.
“What the hell?” I demand, all wide-eyed and wild, as I reach for a copy of People. People, for crying out loud, who usually only have massive celebrities on the cover. “How?”
“We hit the news cycle at just the right time,” Garrett tells me as he endeavors to steer me toward the small medicine aisle—and as far away from the magazines as we can get. Which isn’t very far, considering they’re everywhere in this place. Which means I’m everywhere.
The mind boggles—and not in a good way.
“The right time?” I respond when I finally find my voice again. “Is that what you call it?”
“Not usually, but think of the plan. Considering how much coverage these photos are getting, not to mention”—he holds up his phone—“the fact that every gossip site in the Western world has picked up our airport stroll this afternoon, the bright side is we are way ahead of schedule.”
“Yay.”
“Not actually caring about the schedule right now, huh?”
I grab for the closest magazine and hold it up so Garrett can see the pic of me on the cover—along with the headline asking if I’m having His Royal Hotness, Prince Garrett’s, alien baby.
He grimaces. “Okay, I admit. That’s not one of the better ones.”
“There are better ones?” I’m doing my best not to shriek, but I’m pretty sure it’s a losing battle. Especially when I hold up a British rag that has somehow managed to get a pic of me from Halloween a couple of years ago—a pic that they’ve captioned “Is Prince Garrett a Va Voom Vintage Sex Slave?”
This time he winces. “Yeah, that one’s bad too. But you make a really hot dominatrix.”
“It was a retro party. I was dressed as Elvira!”
“Who?”
“Oh. My. God! Now is really not the time to discuss the divide between American and Wildemarian pop culture!”
“You might have a point.” He nods toward the medicine. “Why don’t we just get your Tylenol and then we’ll go to the room and forget all about the fact that you’re carrying my alien love child?”
“Seriously?”
“Too soon?”
“Way, way too soon.”
He wraps an arm around me, then leans down to drop a kiss on the top of my head. “It’s going to be okay, you know. They didn’t have much info so they ran with stupid stuff, just to get a story about us out there. We’re giving them pictures and a narrative now—that’s what most of them will go with from here on out.”