The Playboy Prince's Baby - Ana Sparks Page 0,22

guy for a few days. Yeah, we’d had a great weekend, but what did he really mean to me? What attachment could I actually have to him?

Even more than I’d realized, if my body’s reaction was anything to go by.

“Home?” I whispered. “You’re leaving? Just like that?”

“I’ll be back,” he promised. “Soon. But I’ll have to go home first, to smooth things over with my brother. I want to see you again, Erika. I want to… I want to see you again. If I return—when I return—will you still be here?”

His voice was so hopeful, so torn up, that I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the chances of us seeing each other ever again—him a prince from Tarana, and me a bartender from Chicago, with nothing between us but one weekend of intense experiences—were slim.

I didn’t have the heart to even think it.

“Of course I will,” I said.

I gave him my number and wished him a safe trip. And then I hung up the phone and stared at it for several long moments, trying to make sense of everything that had just happened, and how I felt about it.

Chapter 12

Francisco

A Week Later

“I’m sorry, sir, but I just don’t know what else we can do to smooth the situation over,” the voice on the other end of the line said—without all that much apology in the tone.

I pulled my own phone away from my ear and stared at it, like the pure energy coming from my eyes would somehow change the answer. Make the man on the other end see the light and come up with something different.

It didn’t, of course, and after a moment of completely futile staring, I put the phone back up to my ear to try to handle this like a normal adult. With words.

“What do you mean you don’t know what else you can do?” I asked sharply. “I’m the goddamn prince of Tarana, and that comes with some rights. The American government isn’t going to let a little thing like a drunk and disorderly charge get in the way of diplomatic relations, surely.”

“That’s true, but they are also well aware of your… reputation. And it’s not as though they’ve insulted the king of Tarana by saying that they plan to become yet another country that doesn’t want his brother crossing their borders.”

“Ouch,” I said. “That one hurt, Juan.”

The man on the phone chuckled softly. And he could do that, because he’d been handling my family’s affairs ever since I could remember. “You know it as well as I do, Francisco. Your reputation has preceded you here, and there’s very little I can do about that.”

“It’s shocking that they arrested me for something so small in the first place, honestly,” I grumbled.

“Another repercussion of your reputation, I’m afraid. A lack of diplomatic protection. Particularly when you insist on gallivanting around without even taking your security staff.”

Now that, I didn’t have to accept. Because Juan had watched me grow up, struggling for any sense of importance as nothing more than the second son. He’d been the first one I went to when I decided that I wanted to start traveling, so I could at least see the world if I was going to be locked out of any form of governing at home.

He also knew that Javier was the one who assigned my guards. And that they were there less to guard me and more to guard the family’s reputation.

“That’s unnecessary, Juan,” I finally said. “You know as well as I do why I have to get rid of them when I can.”

“I do,” he said, and I could hear the resignation in his voice. “I also know that it doesn’t matter how often you get rid of them. There’s always another one. And there will always be repercussions.”

Well. He was right on that one, too, unfortunately.

I’d arrived home to find actual hell to pay with my brother for the things I’d been getting up to in Chicago—and for getting rid of the guy he’d paid to watch over me and make sure I got home safely.

That didn’t mean I wouldn’t fire the next guy he assigned, though. And the one after that. Call it my own little form of rebellion. My way of trying to maintain control over my life.

My way of making sure I was living the way I wanted to live rather than just being tossed away and told to sit down and be still, the way Javier mostly wanted me