Royal - Danielle Steel Page 0,84

as she smiled at him, “and we had a barbecue.” He didn’t tell her the details of what he’d been doing in Saint Tropez, but a family barbecue with teenage boys present had not been on their agenda, much to his relief. But Annie had loved it. She was at a very different point in her life than he was and family-style weekends didn’t thrill him, even with the royal family. He wanted racier diversions and couldn’t see himself ever content with a life like that. And he knew that Princess Victoria was far more like him. But Annie’s innocent enthusiasm seemed sweet to him.

She was already busy with the horses by the time he got there. His father was annoyed with him for returning a day late, but Anthony was used to it, and the lecture he got didn’t impress him or bother him at all. He’d had a lifetime of them, about responsibility, his least favorite word.

Annie hardly saw Anthony all week, and the following weekend she went home to Kent for the twins’ birthday. She had promised to be there, and wouldn’t miss it. It was a very different weekend from the previous one at Balmoral. They went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant, and bowling afterward, and the Markhams let them use their pool because they were away. Annie spent hours in the pool with her brothers, and had given one a camera, and the other a stereo for their birthday. She was happy spending the weekend with them, with their father looking on. She had two families now, one royal, and the other, the one she had grown up with, as the daughter of employees on a big estate. The two lives were entirely different, and yet she was at home in both of them. She had adapted surprisingly well to the new one, as the niece of the queen, and the cousin of the future King of England. She was both people now, the simple girl she’d grown up as and a royal princess by birth. The boys teased her about it when she went bowling with them, and they asked if the queen had her own bowling alley at Buckingham Palace. Annie said she didn’t, and Jonathan laughed.

“If I were king, I’d have my own bowling alley, a pinball machine, a jukebox, my own movie theater, and an Aston Martin,” Blake said, imagining it, and his older sister grinned at him.

“Why an Aston Martin?” she asked him, thinking of Anthony Hatton’s Ferrari, which seemed more glamorous to her.

Her brother gave her a look that implied she didn’t know anything. “James Bond drives an Aston Martin,” he said with a supercilious look, and she laughed again.

“Of course! Silly of me,” she said, kissed him on the cheek, and went to buy popcorn for all of them. She was still smiling at the image of Blake as king with his own movie theater, jukebox, pinball machine, and bowling alley. She wondered if her new cousin George had those on his list too. More likely on Albert’s, or maybe William’s. There was something universal about teenage boys that was very sweet, even if they grew up to be king one day.

Chapter 14

The month of September went by too quickly for Annie. She loved her duties at the queen’s stables, and her internship had only been for two months. She was sorry to see it come to an end. Anthony’s had been for a shorter time, and he left in the middle of September. He was starting a new job at a public relations firm in London, which sounded interesting to her. He said it would be mostly organizing parties and special events for VIPs, and using his connections to get wealthy new industrialists introduced into society, and helping them get into the right circles. It didn’t sound like a serious job, but it sounded amusing and right up his alley, since it involved parties.

“They pay dearly for that kind of service,” he explained to her during dinner at their favorite pub the night before he left. She had enjoyed their friendship of the last month and a half, more than she’d ever expected to. He was deeper than he looked, although he never set the bar high for himself, and having fun was always the top priority to him. It sounded like he had found a job that met that criterion and he got paid for it. It was the best of all possible