Royally Crushed (33 page)

The pilot’s voice comes over the speaker, waking up half the people on the flight. We’re starting our descent into Munich, so he says anyone who wants to go to the restroom should either go now or hold it until we land in Germany.

I glance at my watch, then back at the huge screen covering the wall at the front of coach class. It alternately flashes a map showing the plane’s location over Europe with a list of our airspeed, altitude, and the distance to Munich.

I’ve been watching it count down the miles (and kilometers) ever since the in-flight movie ended an hour ago.
Thankfully, we’re on time and I won’t miss my connection to Freital, because I cannot wait to get there. Dad will be waiting, and he says we’re going straight back to the palace because he has to work today. Prince Manfred’s hosting the president of Taiwan tonight, so Dad needs to do his protocol thing.

Fine by me. The sooner I get to the palace, the better.

I glance down at the piece of paper on the tray table in front of me. I read nearly all of the
Is Homosexuality a Sin?
book, though I was getting some strange looks from other passengers and I finally put it away, figuring it’d be better to read the rest at home. Sometime when Dad’s not around.

So to kill time, I started making a list. Just to help me see everything in black and white.

Georg’s list is way shorter than David’s, probably because David and I have so much in common. Their cons are similar—they both have dads whose jobs change how they have to act when they’re with their girlfriends.

Except Georg doesn’t have the major cons that David has. Georg doesn’t care about my mom’s lifestyle. And even though he’s someday going to have his father’s job (as I suspect David will also, or something like it), he doesn’t let it change his everyday behavior or who he is on the inside.

And he doesn’t let it change what he feels about me.

I crumple up the list, push up my tray table, then yank the airsick bag out of the seat pocket and stuff the list inside. I glance toward the back of the plane, and since there’s no line, I unbuckle, walk to the minuscule airplane lavatory, then push the airsick bag through the trash slot.

In exactly fifty-three minutes, the plane will land and
nothing I wrote on paper matters. All that matters is that I’m dying to see a certain prince named Georg Jacques von Ederhollern. Even if I have to sneak out of a palace apartment to do it.

I want to be his princess.

I cannot believe it. No Dad. Anywhere.

I scan the entire area where passengers exit the security gate, but no luck. A half-dozen or so people are dressed in black outfits, holding their driving hats and clutching signs bearing the last names of passengers other than me. Otherwise, it’s pretty darned empty.

The plane from Munich to Freital ended up ten minutes late due to the perpetual rain in this country, so even if Dad is running behind, which he never is, he should definitely be here.

I walk across the open area of the terminal to a huge wall of television screens showing arrival and departure information. Yep, they got my flight correct. It shows us right there in green and says this is the proper terminal for meeting passengers. Even though it’s all in German, I can understand that much.

“Excuse me,” a low voice says next to me. Since most people flying into Freital speak various European languages, I’m wondering how this person can possibly pinpoint me as
American. But then I take a good look at the guy—who’s wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead—and drop my duffel bag on the ground.

“Georg!”

“Shhh!” He grins at me, then looks over his shoulder toward the passengers from my flight as they filter through the security gate to meet up with their rides. “I had to see you, so I talked your father into letting me come along.”

“Where is he?”

“Baggage claim.”

“Oh. Thanks.” I want to hug him right there, but I’m not absolutely positive where things stand.

“I think I made a huge mistake,” he says. “When I called you and said we had to cool it, I didn’t call back or e-mail you to explain.”

“That’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.” He looks at the floor while a young French-ish-looking couple with backpacks slung over their shoulders walks past us. “My parents were all on my case.” He frowns, then asks, “Is that how you say it? ‘On my case’?”

I think the smile on my face must be the dorkiest ever, but the way he always has to ask me about his English is delicious. “Yes, that’s it.”

“Well, they were all on my case about the newspaper
article, and telling me I had to call you that instant to make certain we weren’t seen together in public for a while, and all the press guys were in our apartment, discussing it with my father, and I caved.”

“I understand.”

He lets out an exasperated grunt. “It’s fine for us to keep things cool in public if we need to, but it’s not fine for you to think I don’t want to be with you. Because I do. And I told my parents that when I got home from Zermatt.”

He picks up my duffel bag and loops it over his shoulder, then reaches for my hand with his free one and leads me toward the escalator to baggage claim.

“I think the cold air on the ski slopes cleared my brain,” he says as we descend. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you—about how funny you are, or about how you tell me what you think and not just what I want to hear. And I kept thinking about our night in the garden, and how much I like hanging out with you and just talking. And I realized we belong together. If we really want this, we’ll find a way to make it work. I just hope you feel the same.”

My heart is thumping about a hundred miles an hour as we step off the escalator toward the rows of baggage claim carousels.

Man, do I want him. Bad. And not just for long, slow
kisses. For everything—walking to school, talking about the world, laughing at each other. Every freaking thing.

“But what about the reporters?” I look at the faces of the people passing through baggage claim—mostly dour-looking Europeans my parents’ age juggling their suitcases, trying to figure out how to find the taxi stand or the parking garage. “Didn’t your parents freak when you told them you were coming to the airport?”

“I promised to keep a low profile. But I had to see you. And what can reporters possibly say or photograph if your father is with us?”

“Or if you’re in that baseball hat,” I tease him. “You know you’ve gotta lose that. You’re not the baseball hat type.”

“Great. But you’re not answering my question,” he says.

“Which one?”

“Do you still want to be with me?”

I try to give him a serious look, like I have to think it over, but I just can’t. I’m giddy-happy-scary in love with the guy—even more than before spin control happened—and every second I wait to tell him is killing me.

Who knew going out with David would actually strengthen what I feel for Georg?

I tilt my head so I can see into his eyes despite the silly baseball hat. “What if I told you I really want to kiss you like you’ve never been kissed before? Right here, right now,
in the middle of the Lufthansa Airlines baggage claim?”

“Please don’t.”

I spin at the hissed words coming from behind me in a way-too-familiar voice. “Um, Dad. Hi.”

“Hi, yourself.” He has a welcoming sort of smile on his face, so I hope that means I haven’t made him mad by wanting to jump Georg, especially given the fact I’m supposed to be controlling spin. “I have a car waiting at the curb, if you can hold off on your plans for about two minutes. This is a public area, you realize.”

I can feel myself turning bright red all the way to my ears. There are certain things a father is just not supposed to hear.

“Thank you, Mr. Winslow,” Georg says, sounding all princely and polite despite his casual clothes.

When we get to the car—a black Mercedes with tinted windows that, believe it or not, doesn’t stick out in Schwerinborg, since everyone here drives high-end European cars—I realize that Dad is driving. No one else from the palace came.

“You guys really are trying to be discreet,” I say to Georg as I look around for reporters lurking curbside, but see none.

“Just get in,” Dad says, so I do.

I cannot freaking believe it. Dad and Georg have
McDonald’s for me. And a huge bouquet of flowers. All of it’s in the middle of the backseat.

“I figured you’ve been eating Gabrielle’s vegan food all week,” Georg explains.

“You’re bribing me?”

“Whatever it takes.”

As we pull out into traffic, heading away from the airport, he leans across the seat (well, as far as his seat belt will allow, since Dad’s a stickler for seat belts), puts his hands on my cheeks, then pulls me toward him for a major mind-blowing kiss.

“Ahem. This isn’t a limo. There’s no privacy panel.”

“Sorry, Mr. Winslow,” Georg says. He leans back in his seat and winks at me, making me feel completely warm inside despite the drizzle hitting the windshield and the gray Schwerinborg skies. Then, just so I’m completely happy, he opens the Mickey D’s bag and hands me the fries, which smell absolutely decadent.

“Fortification against Steffi,” he says. “Though I think we’ll be able to deal with her better now. Ulrike’s on our side, too, since you left.”

I see my dad grin to himself in the rearview mirror.

“That’s something.” Though I couldn’t care less about the girls at school right now. All I can think about is Georg. I offer him a few of my fries, but he waves them
off. Instead, he reaches back into the bag and offers me my favorite—a McChicken. And it’s fixed just the way I like it.

“True love,” Georg mouths to me.

I think I’m going to cry, but I manage to hold it in long enough to smile and mouth back, “I love you, too.”

Because I do. I just know.

For all the readers who’ve sent me letters and e-mails or posted to my message board to say you like my work. You’ve made a good gig great.

I’M IN LOVE! I’M IN LOVE! I’M IN LOOOOOOVVVVVE!

I’m in love with a guy who I think is completely and totally perfect—he’s got brains, he’s funny, and best of all . . . he actually likes me. He’s one of those guys who, if he were famous, everyone would constantly mention how hot he is and flip through copies of
People
looking for a really good pic of him, but if he happened to be the guy sitting next to you in Chemistry every day, you’d describe him as being decently good-looking (if you took the time to actually think about him) but not drool-worthy.

But the thing is, he
is
kind of famous. At least in a small, German-speaking part of Europe.

That’s because I’m in love with a prince. And I don’t mean that I’m in love with a prince from seeing him in a magazine and thinking he’s gorgeous. Oh, no.

I’m actually going out with one.

I kid you not. With a prince. And it’s not like I love him because he’s a prince. I love him and he
happens to be
a prince.

And sometimes, I love him
even though
he’s a prince, because there can be some serious downsides to dating a guy who actually has a “lineage” instead of plain ol’ relatives like the rest of us.

Since my English teacher back in Virginia was always trying to bash into my head that stories all have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end—I tend to jump around from place to place in my essay assignments—I’ll start at the once-upon-a-time beginning before I get into the whole love part.

Once upon a time, there was this not-quite-cool, average-looking, redheaded girl named Valerie Winslow, or Val for short. (That’d be me.)

One night, over a dinner of Kraft mac and cheese, Val’s (my) mother, Barbara, announced that she wanted a divorce from her husband, Martin (yep, my dad), thus ending their storybook relationship. Barbara claimed she’d discovered her True Self and needed to follow her destiny.

And she did . . . right over the rainbow.

Her True Self, it turns out, had fallen in love with someone she’d met at the gym, a skinny blond vegan named Gabrielle, about ten years Barbara’s junior.

Yes, it’s a strange fairy tale. And yes, Gabrielle is a female.

By a cruel twist of fate, Martin just happened to have a cushy job as the chief of protocol in a very conservative White House, where having your wife step out of the closet is frowned upon, particularly when the president decides to run for reelection and tout his family values on
Meet the Press
and during campaign trips to all fifty states. So Martin quietly relocated to the tiny European principality of Schwerinborg (yeah, don’t even try to pronounce it), where the royal family agreed to do the president a favor and employ Martin until after the next U.S. election, at which time it was understood Martin could return to his duties in the good ol’ U.S. of A., advising the White House on such important topics as the appropriate colors to wear while attending a state funeral in India or whether it’s okay to serve lamb chops to dignitaries from the Seychelles.

In the meantime, this situation left Val (yup, still me) with quite the fairy-tale-ish dilemma: where to live?

Staying in northern Virginia held its appeal, namely Val’s best friends, Christie, Jules, and Natalie. Then there
was this gorgeous guy named David Anderson, whom Val had been crushing on since they met on the first day of kindergarten, and who had finally noticed her in
that
way.