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“They took another angle. A comparison to a previous scandal.”
I stared at him. “What? Just spit it out.”
Instead of speaking, he took back the coffee and held out his phone. Onscreen were two pictures, side by side. In the first, I was under Raphael’s arm, my wig askew and the mask half off so it was clearly me. The photo cut off at Raphael’s chin, so only displayed him in a partial view. The second was of me exiting the house party at age eighteen, a half-naked Raphael behind me.
The headline screamed: ‘Sexy Lexi: Five Years of Hot Antics.’ The article claimed once a party girl, always a party girl.
I grumbled and pushed it away. “It was the photographer outside who took that shot, then. Not the man you tackled, so you did help.”
Still, Dori was regarding me with interest.
“What?” I asked.
He raised his phone again and enlarged the picture so it focused on Raphael’s jawline and down to his broad shoulders. He then dragged the photo to show the same in the second shot. The parallels were obvious. It was the reason the editor had picked that photo as a pairing to last night’s one—the framingwas almost identical. Except they hadn’t made the connection Dori was about to, only referencing an unidentified bodyguard in the more recent shot.
“I knew he was familiar,” my friend drawled. “He’s the same guy you moped over when you left Edinburgh. Tell me I’m right.”
“I don’t mope.”
He snapped his fingers in utter delight. “He used your name like you were friends, because he knows you. Why didn’t you say, darling girl?”
Why hadn’t I? I spoke to Dori every day about all manner of trivial things, but maybe that was the point. Raphael wasn’t trivial. He felt like a deeply buried secret, though that made no sense as I hardly knew him.
I stole back the coffee. “He’s no one, and there’s nothing to tell.”
There really wasn’t. At eighteen, I’d touched him, wanted him, and then I’d left him behind. When I saw him next, I’d apologise and we’d move on. I could only blame my hangover for how everything about that felt off.
Chapter 9
Raphael
Across the desk in the antiquated fifties-style office, Jared’s face mottled red as he tore me a new one, his screen displaying a tabloid picture of me and Alex last night.
“Look at that shit. You exposed the princess and the whole team to ridicule.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The story implies she was drunk. The photo suggests she couldn’t walk out under her own steam. That reflects on the Crown. What were you thinking?”
I stared at the image. Her pretty face. My arm around her, under her breasts. It looked like a boyfriend helping her more than a bodyguard, but that wasn’t the point. “I was doing my job.”
“You had no right to be there. You acted outside of your jurisdiction.”
A rush of anger had me balling my hands into fists on my knees. “I went in to protect her, and it’s lucky I was there.I pulled her out of a situation that could’ve turned ugly. One which your team refused to help with. Tell me how any of that is wrong.”
He slammed his hand down on the desk, rattling the wire trays and his stained mug. “As a temporary member of my unit, you jump when I tell you to jump. You’re on duty when I tell you you’re on duty. You don’t get to wade in whenever you choose.”
I snorted in disdain, disgusted with his behaviour and his management of the service. “So in your world, I should have just left her to the wolves?”
“You shouldn’t have been there. You didn’t have the right.” He held up a finger, stopping me as I was about to speak again. “I can’t have someone like you in my unit, even just as cover. From the start, I didn’t like you, and you only proved me right.”
I was so infuriated I wanted to yell. He didn’t know me and hadn’t taken the time to try. “There is nothing bad in protecting our principal when she needed it. You’re the one in the wrong. You need to find out how that photographer discovered her. You need to change everything you’re doing before someone gets hurt.”
Jared stood. “Don’t presume to give me orders, kid. You’re fired. Get the fuck out of my office.”
Fired? For a second, I stayed in place, unable to speak.
Jared smiled, and his haughty tone only got haughtier. “Maybe you’ll learn next time not to try to teach an old dog, you little punk. Now fuck off before I get the police in here to throw you off palace grounds. See if the press wantthatphoto to add to their collection.”