followed through on it.
I liked the idea that he’d made that promise to me, and had taken it so seriously that he’d actually gone to his own State Department and tried to get them to help him.
“Sadly,” he concluded, “Juan hasn’t been able to make any progress in that regard. The Americans are being… stubborn.” That last word came out in a low, intense voice—one that made his frustration clear.
And in that moment, I realized that I’d been a fool.
Francisco wasn’t calling to continue our relationship. He wasn’t calling to charm me or sit around telling jokes or remind me how good we’d been together.
He was calling me to tell me he wasn’t coming back. That he’d tried and hadn’t been able to get it done. I mean yeah, he was doing the right thing in letting me know. But that didn’t change the theme of the news.
“So, you’re not coming back,” I murmured, unwilling to admit how much that hurt.
“Not yet,” he countered. “I’m not finished working on it.”
Yeah, but that didn’t really matter, and surely he knew that. Because I didn’t think the State Department was going to change their minds. If they’d decided they didn’t want him back in the country, what could he possibly do to alter that decision?
A grand total of nothing.
Which meant I had to get over this whole thing.
I stayed on the phone long enough to get his personal number and wish him good luck, and then I hung up, my heart breaking a little bit the moment I pushed the red button that would end the call.
Well, I thought, that was that, wasn’t it? Because the guy wasn’t coming back. Period.
So that thing I’d been harboring in my heart, the thing about seeing him again and going on more grand adventures? The whole concept of actually dating a prince, and maybe even taking a trip to Europe?
The secret thrill I got whenever I thought about him?
Yeah, it all had to go away. It had to get cut off at the source. Francisco might have been the hottest guy I’d ever walked the streets of Chicago with, and he might have actually been a sort of Prince Charming—literally—but he was also a troublemaker. Someone who trotted around the globe getting into trouble with other women, and then getting arrested.
I had been stupid to ever think I could be anything more to him than another fling in a series of dozens.
And I needed to put this on my list of funny stories I told at parties, and then move on with my life. I had to get over Prince Francisco, and forget that weekend had ever happened.
I needed to stop thinking about him and start thinking about how to make more of my life.
Chapter 14
Francisco
I listened as Erika hung up, my heart sinking like the Titanic, and closed my eyes for a long moment, regretting everything about how that conversation had gone.
Well, not everything. I mean, it had started out just fine. It had started out with the same sort of effortless flirting we’d always had together. The same sort of back-and-forth that we’d lived off of for that entire weekend. The stuff I’d missed every second since I’d left her.
And it didn’t surprise me that it was still there.
I did regret, though, how quickly it had disappeared when I started telling her about what had happened. Not that I could have changed anything about that. After all, I wasn’t the one in charge of the State Department or their decisions.
I was doing everything I could to fix things.
And I was just going to have to keep doing everything I could. Because if that phone call had told me anything, it was that the magic between Erika and me was still there. And waiting for me to get back to Chicago and enjoy it again.
It had also made me even more dedicated to finding a way to do that. Even more obsessed with it, if I was being honest.
A knock at the door interrupted the rabbit hole I was about to go down, and I looked up at the door of my suite, wondering who the hell was in this wing of the palace. Yes, I still lived in the same house as my brother and mother, though ‘house’ was putting it pretty mildly. The house being, you know, a palace, and I had an entire wing of it to myself—which meant that I very rarely saw anyone I didn’t want to see.
“Yes?” I