Royally Crushed (11 page)

“You okay?” Georg asks in English when I turn around.

“Um, yeah,” I manage, wondering if my day could possibly go any further downhill. I know how bad I look when I get into almost-crying mode. Before I can take two seconds and think, I blurt out, “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you getting on the
strassenbahn
and decided to follow you.”

“Saw me making a total dork of myself.” I give the woman I tripped over a weak smile, but she’s just staring at Georg.

“I told her it was an accident, and that you’re a very nice person but that you don’t speak German.”

“Or know how to stand up on a
strassenbahn
,” I say, trying out the German word for “streetcar.” “But thanks.”

I think I’m turning red now.

Georg puts his hand on my lower back, and the feel of his fingers through my clothes makes me freak out inside. “We’re here.”

I look out the window, and sure enough, we’re slowing down alongside a street-level platform. There’s a canopy over part of it, and in big black letters it says
SCHLOSS,
which Georg tells me is the German word for “castle.”

Schloss
doesn’t sound like a castle to me, but seeing as the rear gate to the palace is across the street, I trust him that
it doesn’t mean “sewage treatment plant,” which would’ve been my guess.

I still can’t believe that a prince is on this thing. And from the looks other people are giving him—most are more discreet than the old lady, either peeking from behind newspapers or past grab bars—I’m guessing this isn’t the usual way he comes home.

Once we’re through the gate and we’ve climbed up the back stairs into the wing where my apartment is, Georg stops.

“What?” I frown. I’m about to apologize for screwing up on the streetcar, but he crooks his finger at me, then puts it over his lips. I follow him down a long hall, wondering what’s with all the James Bond secrecy.

Oh, God. I hope I didn’t have an accident. If there’s a stain on my rear, and he’s about to tell me, I am going to call my mom and go home to Virginia. Tomorrow.

No, tonight. I bet I can at least get to Munich tonight.

“Here,” he whispers, then opens a door. I realize that we’re on a balcony overlooking a huge reception hall. The floor below us is hardwood, with all these beautiful inlays. Big velvet curtains are hanging from windows that are almost two stories high, ending right below the balcony that circles the room. I feel like I’ve escaped from a White House tour and stumbled into one of the secured areas.

“We’re not supposed to be here, are we?”

“It’s all right,” he says. “But I wanted to get you alone so we could talk.”

I start getting a creepy feeling. But excited, too, because he doesn’t look upset or stressed, and I know I sure would be if I had to tell a girl she’s been walking around with a big red spot on her pants.

This might even be something fun.

I eye the door we just entered through. “The library’s not good enough?”

He shakes his head. “Karl will show up the minute we go in there. Or my father will, if he knows I’m home from school. He’ll want me to tell him about my homework, what’s due, all that. He keeps a very close eye on my assignments.”

“That blows.”

He lets out a little puff of air, kind of a half laugh. “Well, that’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“About homework?”

“No. About the fact you say things like having my father watching me every second blows. You’re . . . you’re very normal.”

“Thanks, I think.” I’d rather he told me I’m hot, or maybe that I’m brilliant. At least that I’m a lot of fun. But I’ll settle for normal.

“Trust me, it’s a compliment.” He drops down into one of the straight-backed chairs along the wall at the back of the balcony, and waves for me to do the same. I set my backpack down between my feet, then take the seat next to him.

“So what’s up? You didn’t need to talk to me alone about that, did you?”

He turns his head to look at me, and since we’re less than an arm’s length apart, I think I’m going to fall over. His eyes are just amazing. Not as good as David’s—on the sparkly-cool scale, at least. But intense.

Georg takes a deep breath. “Do you know who I am, Valerie?”

“An ax murderer.” It just pops out. I know he’s trying to be serious, but I need
him
to tell me who he is.

He cracks up. “Would you have followed me in here if you believed that?”

“Not unless I had an ax of my own. And maybe a chainsaw.”

He smiles, then props his elbows on his thighs and folds his hands in front of him. For a second he looks away from me and stares at his shoes. I want to tell him that for all his dark hair and serious expressions, he looks nothing like an ax murderer.

Or a prince. I mean, a prince who wears Levi’s and rides
the
strassenbahn
? A prince who hangs out with
moi
?

He told me I was normal.

I think I’m neurotic. He’s probably the normal one.

I’m about to tell him this when he turns sideways in his chair and touches my hand. “I’m a prince. My dad’s Prince Manfred.” He looks up from where his hand is touching mine, and my heart stops cold the minute his eyes catch mine. “Did you know that, Valerie?”

Whoa.

“Yeah,” I whisper. “I know. But I didn’t. Not that evening when we first met in the library. I figured it out later.”

“So how come you didn’t say anything?”

I shrug, but all I can think about is how warm and strong his fingers are on mine. I wish they weren’t. And I wish I didn’t have such a thing about a guy’s hands. It’s distracting.

“I don’t know,” I finally answer. “You didn’t say anything to me about it, so I figured it wasn’t my business. That you’d tell me when you wanted to.”

“But you didn’t treat me any differently. You treated me like I was totally normal, even after you figured out who my parents are.”

“Was I supposed to bow or something?” Okay, stop me
now
. He’s going to think I’m the most evil, most smart-assed—

And then he kisses me.

Not a big, deep kiss, just a quick, soft kiss. Almost polite, but not quite. I mean, there’s definitely more behind it than the David cheek kiss, and not just because this one’s on the lips.

And the worst part is, it’s over before I can even think about it.

“Um, I guess that’s a no,” I manage.

“It’s definitely a no. I hate when people bow.” He gives me this lopsided, embarrassed smile, and for a second I wonder if he’s going to kiss me again. This time I’m definitely going to kiss back.

Definitely.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he shakes his head. “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

I try not to let my mouth hang open. I’m stunned. Why the hell shouldn’t he have done it? Because it’s improper or something? Because I’m butt ugly and he had a momentary lapse of judgment?

Or because I totally screwed up the simplest kiss and he doesn’t want me to think it’s going to happen again, because there’s no way on God’s green earth his lips will ever come within a mile of my icky ones again?

He lets go of my hand and leans back in his chair, tilting
on the rear legs so his shoulders are braced against the wall. “It’s just . . . everyone I’ve ever met treats me differently. People who I know, just
know
in here”—he points to his chest—“don’t really like me, but are always nice to me. I hate that. I hate that everyone is fake with me all the time. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s not.”

I’m not sure what to say, so I just sit there looking like a total imbecile until he adds, “I just wanted to make sure you knew who I really am. Before you get to know everyone else at school and you see how they treat me, and then think that’s how you have to treat me.”

I’m trying to absorb what he’s telling me, really. But all I can think about is the fact he kissed me, and what I can say to make him realize it wasn’t a mistake.

“Hey, no problem,” I say, “as long as all the people around here don’t mind that I have no sense of what’s proper”—I make a gesture encompassing the palace—“which is kind of funny, when you think about it, since knowing what’s proper is my dad’s whole job.”

Georg laughs and stands up, so I do too. I guess in his mind, the conversation’s over. There’s this look of relief on his face, and I can actually feel the beat of my heart all the way in my ears.

And then he gives me a hug. It’s all warm and tight and
I can feel the muscles of his arms against my back.

Do people still swoon? Or is that considered out? ’Cause I feel a definite swoon coming on.

I start to turn my mouth toward his, but before I can, he says, right into my ear, “Thanks, Valerie. You have no idea how much it means to me that I can be myself with you. I really want us to be good friends.”

It takes supreme effort not to hit the delete key and pretend I never received Jules’s e-mail, sort of because she apparently has the temporary hots for Georg, but especially because the way she and Natalie acted all pissy my last week in Virginia still has me a little peeved.

But since deleting isn’t cool—I mean, she’s still on my A list, and I guess I can understand her whole
Four Feathers
attitude, in a backward sort of way—my next urge is to ignore her until I get back from school and can say something intelligent about my new classes or some new friend I (probably won’t) make or anything at all that has nothing to do with Georg, let alone how good a kisser he is.

That’d lead to a whole discussion of how awful I am at kissing, since I didn’t even kiss him back, and I don’t want to go there. I really want to talk to Christie first, but she
didn’t call and I simply
cannot
e-mail her with my whole Georg saga.

Some things just aren’t for e-mail.

I stare at the screen for another minute before I click on the reply button. Since I know Jules always sends her e-mails with a return receipt requested, which means she knows who’s opened her stuff and when, I can’t blow her off. She’ll check her e-mail first thing when she wakes up in the morning, and she’ll know I didn’t respond right away.

For being as tough as she is, Jules can be a real girly-girl sometimes.

I feel guilty as I shut off my computer. I’ve never out-and-out lied to Jules before. I mean, I know I didn’t tell her the whole truth about my parents’ divorce. I just left out the fact that my mom has a girlfriend. So it wasn’t really a lie.

But this time I’ve
really
lied.

For one, Dad is
not
lonely—he’s having a blast here, going to parties and meeting new people who take his mind off Mom. And for two, school doesn’t start for over an hour. I just figure that if it sounds like I’m in a hurry, Jules won’t notice that I blew off the whole Georg topic. Because I lied to Georg, too.

When he said he wanted to be friends, I told him that’d be
awesome
.

Yep, awesome. Right.

Apparently I’m a terrible liar, even when I don’t open my mouth. Just
thinking
a lie is enough. I know this because Georg has obviously figured out that I’m crushing on him. He must have realized it even before I did, which was sometime last night while I was lying in bed, trying to focus on David and what Christie said about him being jealous, but really thinking about Georg.

Otherwise, if he hasn’t figured this out, what was with kissing me and
then
giving me that whole “I really want us to be good friends” speech? And what was with him ignoring me on the way to school this morning? He left the palace at the same time I did, but walked about twenty steps ahead of me, acting like he hadn’t seen me come out the side door.

I think he did, though.

It really bugs me, because after the whole hugging-just-friends thing, we had a great afternoon. I mean, we hid out in the balcony and talked for hours about what kind of music we like and how his parents have such impossible expectations of him. It turns out he has hardly any
real
friends, because the way things work for security reasons—and kind of for etiquette reasons—is that he
always has to be the one to call his friends. They can’t call him. And he sometimes wonders if his e-mail’s monitored or his phone calls, since he uses the same phone line as his dad. So he just doesn’t bother.