Page 71 of The Bad Boy Prince in Love

As Hallie walked through the parkade and found her truck, she thought about looking up the prince of Sarkadia on her phone.Was it really him?A quick internet search could resolve the matter.Her finger trembled as she touched the screen...

She couldn’t do it.If she suddenly found out that the man she knew was actually the prince of Sarkadia, the effects could be mind-blowing.She just wasn’t ready.It had been a long day, and with midnight approaching, Hallie just wanted to go to bed.

As it happened, there was a couch available at Jessica’s place, and she had already arranged to stay there so she wouldn’t have to drive back and forth to visit Luke the next day.

***

“YOU WANT ME TO LOOKup what?”Jessica asked.

As usual, Hallie didn’t feel nearly as exhausted after talking to her best friend.They put on their favorite playlist and caught up on each other’s news, talking and laughing late into the night.

Jessica had recently moved into the apartment complex, which had a gym on the main floor, and she was excited to tell Hallie that there were two cute guys living in the building, and they worked out often.

“One of them has kind of a teddy bear look,” Jessica explained, “and the other one looks seriously handsome, like he could be a newscaster.”

“Hmm...teddy bear,” Hallie said, “that sounds comforting.”

“I saw him first, I got dibs!”

“Fair enough.What about the other cute guy, though?”

“I haven’t decided about him yet,” Jessica said lazily.“But I got dibs on him too.And you’ve got your poor injured fake boyfriend to think of.You should probably pretend to be faithful to him, at least until he gets out of the hospital.”

At this point Hallie couldn’t stop herself from telling Jessica about Miss Santer’s supposed revelation.

“Let me get this straight,” Jessica said, pouring herself another glass of iced tea, “You think this same guy we saw completely out of his face partying on the streets of Austin is the royal prince of some European kingdom?”

Hallie nodded, covering her face with her hands.“I just can’t take the suspense.”

“Why can’t you look it up yourself?”

“I can’t look!What if it’s him?”

Jessica rolled her eyes but smiled indulgently.“If it’s him, then Sarkadia is in deep trouble.”

“All this time, I treated him as just a regular person,” Hallie said.

“That’s okay,” Jessica said with a shrug.“Why was he pretending to be a regular person to begin with?”

“Right!”

“You don’t need to feel embarrassed about anything.He was the one who should have explained himself.”

“That’s right.”Hallie was a bit mad about being deceived, if Luke was in fact a royal prince.

“Of course, this whole conversation is ridiculous because it’s not him,” Jessica declared.

“Could you just look it up, please?”Hallie begged.

“Okay.What do you want me to do?”

“Try an image search.”

Jessica got up from the couch and woke up her laptop by moving the mouse.She typed in a few words into the search engine.

“Okay, I’m going to find out now...don’t you want to see?”

“No, you’ve got to tell me.”