Princess Wanted - The Complete Book Set: An Alpha Billionaire Prince Trilogy (11 page)

“His Highness is not a seal,” said the first voice, which Will now recognized as the chief of his security detail.

“The principle’s the same.”

“Get her out of here!”

“Wait!” Will had decided that it was time he took a hand in proceedings. “She sounds as if she knows what she’s talking about and right now that puts her in a minority.”

“But your Highness,” the security chief objected, “she threw the oil over you!”

“I did not!”

“The jar was in your hands and you have been identified as a prominent environmental protestor.”

“Campaigner!”

“Has everyone forgotten that I’m covered in oil?” asked Will, his voice cutting through the argument with regal authority. “Right now I don’t care who she is or what she’s done, she seems to know a bit about getting oil out.”

A few minutes later, Will and the woman who had apparently assaulted him, were sat in a side room, waiting for the detergents the woman had requested.

“Is there a man on the door?” asked Will. He was grateful for her oil-cleaning expertise but still did not trust this woman.

“I don’t know,” the woman replied.

“Why not?”

“There’s oil in my eyes too.”

“Oh.” Will frowned. “That’s not supposed to happen, right? I mean is this the first time you’ve thrown oil over someone?”

“I didn’t throw the oil! I was trying to stop Rich… the man who was.”

“You were going to say his name,” Will pounced. “You know him. You were involved.”

“If I was involved would I be sitting here with oil in my eyes?” the woman asked hotly. “And, by the way, still handcuffed to a chair! Like I could make a bid for freedom without being able to see where I was going.”

“But you knew his name.”

The woman sighed. “Do you know the difference between a protestor and a campaigner?”

“I thought I did but I’m assuming it’s more complicated.”

The woman explained while Will listened.

“So if you stand close enough to these people you get tarred with the same brush,” the woman concluded.

“Or oiled with the same jam jar.”

“Exactly, your Highness.”

That, Will thought, was noticeable: she still referred to him with respect. Not an average protestor for sure.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your name.”

“Samantha.”

“I’m Will.” He said it without thinking. When was the last time he had been on first name terms with someone he had just met? Being covered in oil did seem to break down the social barriers – we’re all the same when covered in oil.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying this,” Will went on, “but you don’t seem like the sort of guest we usually have at these parties. How come you’re here?”

“I was hoping to get a few minutes of your time to talk to you about the oil deal you’re about to sign.”

“I’m not about to sign anything,” pointed out Will. “I’m just a Prince. And the middle son at that. I won’t even be King. And if I was, I still wouldn’t be the one signing it. The monarchy hasn’t run things in this country since my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, who got beheaded for his trouble. You want to talk to the prime-minister.”

“I really don’t,” said Samantha darkly.

“Good call. Irritating man. My point is: royalty has no say in policy, we’re just there to… Actually we’re just there.”

“Bullshit.”

It was not something people said to Prince Wilhelm very often. He found himself quite taken aback.

“You may not have any real power (and you’re not alone in that, by the way) but you have tremendous influence. Politicians listen to you because if they don’t you can go on TV and tell them off. You have the ear of the people in power. So don’t give me this poor little middle Prince routine.”

There was, Will had to admit, some truth to what she said. His arranged marriage to Lacey Brosnan would not be necessary if the royal family did not mean something. They might not wield the power, but their compliance could be a factor for those who did. For whatever reason, royalty still exercised an influence, even if it was only tradition.

“Talk to me.”

“What?”

Will shrugged. “You said you wanted to talk to me about this stuff. I’m not going anywhere and from the sounds of it neither are you. Talk to me.”

So Samantha did, she poured out her heart on the damage that this oil deal would do to the environment, setting back the cause of alternative fuels by decades. She recited the good science that her father had fed her in favor of exploring alternatives, and the economic benefits of reducing the oil dependency of a country with no oil reserves of its own. It was a passionate and persuasive speech.

“No,” said Will.

“What?! Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve said?”

Of course I have,” Will replied, and Samantha could hear an edge of sadness in his voice. “And I can’t argue with any of it. Certainly not the science. You’re very well-informed and I have no reason to doubt anything you say.”

“Then what?!”

“Do you know how many people in this country rely on the oil industry?”

“No.”

“Well, I do,” Will continued. “It’s not just those involved directly in the industry; it’s the infrastructure. It’s the people who need their cars to run and can’t afford a new one that runs on potatoes, the people who need their heating to work all the time, not just when it’s sunny or windy. Everything you’ve told me is very interesting but there isn’t a single alternative energy source that will replace our dependence on oil without passing on an enormous burden to the tax payer.”

“Then pass on the burden!” Samantha snapped. Her hold on her temper, always a tenuous one, had slipped. “If it’s costs people a bit extra, so what?! We’re not talking about some petty little thing here, we’re talking about the future of the planet! We’re talking about the planet
having
a future! But you know that! You just don’t care! All this crap about not wanting the people to have to pay more and not wanting people to lose jobs, it’s all an excuse cos you don’t want to lose the massive kickbacks you get from the oil industry!”

“Kickbacks?” Will didn’t take kindly to that sort of accusation.

“Kickbacks!” Samantha wasn’t backing down. “Everyone knows about it!”

“
I
don’t know about it!” Will returned angrily. “My family has never taken a kickback of any kind!”

“Bullshit!”

“How dare you! If I could see you I’d slap you!”

“Attacking the defenseless?” Samantha scoffed. “That sounds about right for your type.”

“Please tell me about my ‘type’.”

“You don’t care about anyone but yourself!” Samantha yelled, running on white-hot anger. “You don’t care who you hurt, you don’t care the damage you do, as long as you get yours! I didn’t throw that oil in your face but right now I wish I had.”

The argument was interrupted by the sound of a door opening. “Your Highness! We got the detergent!”

Will turned in the direction of the voice. “Get this woman out of here!”

Chapter Three - Aftermath

H
aving oil removed from your face is a tedious and unpleasant process and certainly not one to undergo when you are already, angry, impatient and urgently need to punch something. Samantha had fingernail impressions in her palms by the time she was clean. It did not help that whatever little time she did not spend mentally continuing her argument with Prince Wilhelm (and winning every time), she spent dwelling on what was going to happen next. She had thrown a jam jar of oil over the Prince; that was not the sort of thing that was just let go. The fact that she had not in fact thrown the jar (well… she sort of had, but only accidentally in the course of her struggle with Richie) might have counted for something had she not then yelled at the Prince and eroded any good she might have done by being quite nice and polite up to that point.

And he had been quite nice and polite up to that point too.

Until things had turned ugly, he had seemed a pretty reasonable man. He had let her call him Will. He had never talked down to her, played the royalty card or assumed he was better than her. He had listened to what she had to say and seemed to consider it. Then of course he had ruined things with his asinine arguments against her well-thought out plans! Admittedly she had lost her temper and so took some responsibility for the argument that followed but who would not have lost their temper in the face of such self-serving greed? Using the people as an excuse for short-changing the environment once again. Disgusting!

Still, that temper had landed her in a deal of trouble and it was with a heavy heart that, just as the last of the oil was being cleaned from her hair, Samantha saw an official looking man enter.

“Miss Dalton.”

Samantha nodded grimly.

“You’re free to go.”

“ I am?” Samantha’s mouth hung open, dumb-founded.

“Yes.” There was some impression that the man (whose voice Samantha recognized as that of the security chief) was speaking though gritted teeth.

“Why?” Probably a stupid question, she should just have been relieved.

The security chief shook his head. “I have absolutely no idea.”

There was no doubt that if this man could have had his way, Samantha would have been clapped in irons before the oil had been cleaned off her, so clearly orders had come down from on high. Though it went against all common sense, the only conclusion Samantha could reach was that the Prince had ordered her to be set free.

“In a way,” said Jack Dalton, musing over the day’s paper, “he’s right.”

“What?!” Having related her story to her father Samantha had, not unreasonably, expected him to be as incensed as she was.

But her father was, as ever the conciliatory voice of inconvenient reason. “Unfortunately, being right doesn’t always cut it. I’ve spent years telling people they have to look at the bigger picture – and they should. But sometimes we can forget that there even is a smaller picture. The future of the globe is the biggest picture of them all and it cannot be ignored, but how many people have to suffer to secure it? That’s a compelling smaller picture that it ill-serves us to ignore.”

“He’s just protecting his own interests!” Samantha insisted. “His family’s got money tied up in the oil industry.”

Jack shrugged. “Well, you know the politics better than me. I wasn’t aware of the royal family having any oil interests. Scandalous.”

Samantha hesitated. “Well… I mean… I don’t know for certain. But it stands to reason don’t you think?”

“Not really, no,” said Jack, unhelpfully. “I’d have thought the royal family were pretty set, money-wise, without investing in oil concerns.”

Samantha slumped. Now she thought back on it, she had made some unpleasant accusations that might, perhaps, in the fullness of time, prove to be true, but which she could not at the present substantiate in any way.

“Perhaps he’s just trying to please his bride-to-be?” suggested her father, mildly.

“What?”

Jack held up the tabloid through which he had been leafing and tapped an article: ‘The Prince and the Heiress!’ It was accompanied by a nice picture of Will and Miss Lacey Brosnan standing hand in hand and smiling for the cameras, and by an article that went on to say that, since they met at the recent ball, they had been practically inseparable.

Samantha took in little of the content, as soon as she had laid eyes on the headline and the picture she had felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach. Why should that be? What an odd way to feel, just because Will… the Prince, was getting married. Why should that make her feel anything? Because it was surely tied to the oil deal! Yes, that was it. What other possible reason could there be for this gut-wrenching sensation that claimed her stomach whenever she looked at that picture?

In a room full of people, all of whom seemed to be talking over each other, Will stared across a table piled with pictures, CVs, swatches of cloth, flowers and an awful lot of other stuff. He had somewhat imagined that as the groom, and as a Prince, he would not have to deal with this stuff. To a degree that was accurate: he did not have any say in it. But he was still required to be there. That seemed like the worst of both worlds.

It suddenly seemed to him that he was going to get married. He had not really realized it before: he was going to get married. He looked across the room to where Lacey sat, discussing just how tiers a cake could have before it collapsed in on itself in a mushroom cloud of icing. He was going to get married to her. More importantly, once the wedding was done, he was going to
be
married to her. That was something he had not even considered. Getting married was one thing, he was a Prince for goodness sake - he went through enough ridiculous ritual on a daily basis that one more wasn’t going to make a difference. But
being
married? He had spent some small time with Lacey and they got on well enough, but the idea of having to spend more than some small time with her (in fact having to spend the rest of his life with her) terrified him. And also made him very sad.

“Is this what you want?”

The voice almost made him jump out of his skin: it was Samantha, he would have recognized that voice anywhere!

Except it wasn’t, it was a woman in her mid-forties showing him pictures of floral arrangements.

“Yes. Yes, certainly, whatever.”

That had now happened about five times. Maybe closer to ten. Or more. At first Will had written it off as being caused by his desire to finish his argument with the girl who had been so rude to him. But as time went by, and he continued to hear Samantha’s voice every day or so, it became harder and harder to write it off so easily. And the more he thought about it, the more he thought about her and the more he heard her voice.

He had looked up her secret service profile – as a high level protestor (campaigner, he mentally corrected) she had her own file with rather a nice picture. She was awfully pretty. Now he had also started seeing her where she was not. The girl was everywhere, which was ironic because the reason he saw her everywhere was that he was pretty sure that he was never going to see her again.

He had also taken a bit of time to look up some figures and get some expert advice on the subject of their conversation (or argument). Everything he found said that she was right – the country’s oil dependency was unsustainable and would have a terrible effect on the environment. But it also said that he was right – making the changes she was talking about would cost a huge amount and would financially cripple his country, plunging his people into appalling poverty. As an academic exercise, it is very easy to choose between the world and a single (very small) country, but when real lives are at stake it is a lot harder. If someone told you that killing a single man would save ten, could you kill the man?

Not that it mattered. Firstly because the money made it impossible, and secondly because he was Prince Wilhelm, a man whose opinion counted for nothing and whose position was purely honorary. What he thought didn’t matter and what he could do was nothing.