Royally Jacked (Romantic Comedies, The) (11 page)

“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 nimrod until he adds, “I just wanted to make sure you knew
who I really am. Before you get to know everyone else at school, you know, and you see how they treat me and 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.”

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
YOU

Hey Valeria,

You do know that you are living under the same roof as a prince named GEORG, don’t you? And that his parents are named MANFRED and CLAUDIA? How whacked is THAT?!?!

While Claudia is okay (but only because of Claudia Schiffer), I think that Manfred is probably the stupidest name ever given to a human being. Fred is bad enough, but MAN-fred?? How did thie guy
survive childhood? If he was my brother, I’d hava beat the crap out of him.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know I’m jealous as hell, because Georg looks like he’d be the best kisser in the universe. Track his gorgeous butt down and tell him I want to find out, okay? You’re more than welcome to give him my e-mail address and phone number.

But don’t tell him I work at Wendy’s.

And write back to me soon. Vienna is the most boring place on the entire planet.

Jules

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 torqued.

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 about this kind of stuff.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
RE: YOU

Hey, hey, Cool Jules!

You have no idea how awesome it was to wake up this morning to some friendly e-mail. Did Christie tell you how gray and boring this place is? It totally outbores Vienna. If it wasn’t for Dad being lonely, I’d be home tomorrow. I miss you guys like mad.

And don’t say you’d beat up Manfred for his name. One, you beat up your brother all the time, and his name’s Mike, which is completely normal. Two, Manfred isn’t bad looking, in an over-forty, dadish sort of way. Plus, I get the sense he wasn’t the type of guy who let anyone push him around when he was a kid.

Sorry this is so short, but I have twenty minutes to make it to first period and it takes me fifteen minutes to get to school. More later!

Val

PS—I will not spread it around Schwerinborg that you work at Wendy’s. But since I haven’t even seen one here yet (sorry, only McDonald’s and BK), I don’t think they’d know what it is anyway.

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. I mean, this is right up there with Joe Millionaire not telling that he’s flat broke (though some of those women deserved to be lied to). 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.

We also talked about Virginia, and my friends, and somehow we got going on skiing and snowboarding, and where we’d go on our dream trips. It was completely and totally cool. I had so much fun with him I even forgot about the kissing thing for a while.

Which is why the ignoring-me-on-theway-to-school thing is messing with my mind. And its still distracting me when lunch rolls around. There’s open campus, but other than a little pizza window across the street and a nearby quickie mart (where all the crackers and premade sandwiches are labeled in German, which makes me suspicious of what’s really inside) I don’t see too many choices. Everyone is pretty much lingering near the school and doing whatever homework they have due this afternoon and still haven’t finished.

Skipping the quickie mart, I backtrack to the cafeteria just long enough to buy a premade sandwich and a bag of chips—since here I can at least ask what’s in the
sandwich—then go back outside. No way do I want to sit alone at a long cafeteria table again. If I’m going to be alone, I want it less obvious.

Of course, I immediately see Georg out on the quad—the school’s shaped like a horseshoe, and the area in the middle’s called the quad even though it’s not exactly square—and he must have eight other people hanging out with him. Maybe more. They’re all so blindingly good looking I don’t think I can watch them without damaging my retinas. He’s grinning from ear to ear at this incredibly cute blond girl who’s giggling at something he said, and of course he looks hotter than hot.