or Uncle Bobby or Uncle Wes or all of SEAL Team Ten... They’re not going to make me any more safe.”
“I know that you know that’s not true,” Mia said. “They absolutely will.”
“Not Thomas,” Tash admitted. She wasn’t sure what she felt when Thomas was around, but it certainly wasn’t safe.
And as for Thomas? There was no way she was gonna do this to him. Make him trail around behind her for a solid week?
No.
“Please,” Tasha said again.
Mia nodded then. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll talk to Alan.”
Tasha hugged her—this woman who’d been more of a mother to her than her own biological mom.
And if there’d ever been a time over the past few years when Tasha was sorely tempted to spill the truth—about everything—to someone who would absolutely understand, it was right here and now. But, God, she was still so embarrassed about the thing with Thomas.
And the other secret wasn’t hers to tell.
Instead, she went into the bathroom to pack up her toiletries and seal her bathing suit—which wasn’t quite dry because she still swam every day, as often as she could—into a plastic bag.
No doubt about it.
This was gonna suck.
Thomas hit pause on the poor-quality video and sat back from his laptop, feeling...
Unsettled, absolutely.
Sad? Yeah, that was in there. Angry? A little, for sure.
Disgusted at the world, and yes, if he was gonna be honest here, at Tasha, too.
What the hell was she doing? It was pretty damn clear—from the furtive glance over her shoulder she’d given the paparazzi scumbag who’d taken that last video—she knew that she and her royal boyfriend were being stalked as they’d left that upscale Boston restaurant. And yet, she’d instigated the PDA—and it was one hell of a Hollywood, big-screen-sized kiss she’d laid on ol’ Ted in the middle of the Newbury Street sidewalk. After which they’d quickly flagged down a cab. Didn’t take much imagination to figure out where they were rushing—home to their apartment. Or why they were in such a hurry to get there—for a replay of that kiss, with fewer clothes on.
Thomas sighed.
He’d gone online to do some easy research: Ustanzia 101. Bring himself up to speed both on the royal family and the current political situation in the country.
When he’d first started digging, Thomas had found out the basics: Tedric Cortere the Second, Crown Prince of Ustanzia, son of Queen Wila, had been named after his now-deceased uncle, the former crown prince of the tiny oil-rich nation. There’d been a great of deal of tension in Ustanzia after Ted the First—known for his excesses and bad behaviors—had drowned in a terrible Thailand tsunami. Although as Thomas dug a bit further, it appeared that that might’ve been a convenient cover for “died from a drug overdose.” Either way, the tragedy had a ripple effect. The reigning king had had a stroke at the news of his son’s demise, and died himself, mere days later.
The history got even more Shakespearian at that point. The king’s much younger brother, Hendrake—seriously, that was the guy’s name—had tried to claim the crown, but the Prime Minister, backed by the rest of Ustanzia’s government—along with most of population, too—pressed to put the beloved king’s surviving child, his daughter Wila, into power.
A popular princess due to her propensity for wearing blue jeans and speaking her mind, Wila had already given birth to two sons—the heir and a spare that her own father had failed to produce—so she could focus on running the nation. Which everyone who had working brains in their heads knew she’d already been doing for her elderly father for the past decade.
And although angry Uncle H did his best to usurp her rise to power, he’d failed—slinking off to Monaco where he still grumbled his discontent, despite the fact that he lived in a freaking palace.
Paid for by his niece.
That was all good to know—Queen Wila seemed cool, and not-too-dragon-like—but while Thomas had been Googling her, he’d discovered that the search bar’s primary autofill prediction following his typed words “Queen Wila of Ustanzia” was “reaction to baby bump.”
It turned out that everyone and their obnoxious paparazzi brother spent way too much time chasing handsome Prince Tedric and his mysterious red-haired GF through the streets of Boston. Oh yeah, and apparently the latest furor surrounded the burning question, Was that or was that not a baby bump? It all seemed to have started when some photo-“journalist” snapped a long-distance and badly focused picture of Tasha, dripping wet, one-piece bathing suit