Page 140 of The Thing About My Prince

“Welcome home,” he whispers as the driver pulls intotraffic. “I’d much prefer to be welcoming you intoourhome, but apparently you won’t have any of that.”

He wanted me to move in with him as soon as I got back to New York. But, despite Becca’s best efforts to talk me into doing just that, I’m sticking to my dating plan.

I nudge him with my elbow. “Told you, I don’t want to skip the fun part.”

“You don’t think the living-together part would be fun?”

“Yes. But I want the dating part to look back on too. I mean, the normal dating part. Well, as normal as it could ever be dating you. Rather than just the brief weird time we had in Scotland.”

“Weird but great,” he says.

I nod. “And I’m looking forward to seeing you when no one’s trying to listen in on us.”

“No one was listening in the church.” He takes my hand and kisses the back of it.

“Giles the perv definitely heard at least the end of it.”

“Lucky Giles.” Oliver wiggles his eyebrows. “Anyway, did you get time to tell your parents about us?”

I’d promised myself I would explain everything to them before I left Yemen but struggled with where to start. I wasn’t sure how I’d go from previously telling them to ignore any press reports about me dating Oliver because it was absolutely not true, to telling them it now is totally true, and it’s serious, and they should probably meet him.

“Yeah, called them from the airport before I left.”

“What, like five minutes before boarding so you could say,Hey, I really am shagging that prince guy now, but gotta run!”

“Damn, why didn’t I think to put it like that? No, I was there an hour early, so I had plenty of time.”

“And how did they take it.”

“Shocked. Stunned. I had to tell them each three times before they finally absorbed it. They kept passing the phone back and forth like neither of them could believe it.”

“And are they…happy about it?”

“Yes. When I landed I had a text from Mom. Hold on. I’ll show you.”

I pull the phone from my borrowed purse.

MOM

Sorry if we were a bit flabbergasted earlier. Not often you hear news like that.

So happy that you’re happy. He seems like a good man.

“Love her already,” Oliver says. “Clearly an excellent judge of character.”

“I’ll book them flights and a hotel so they can come visit and meet you. But we need to go through the work schedule first to see when you’re free and figure out dates that fit with their days off work.”

He wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me to his side. “Can’t wait to meet the people who raised this incredible woman.”

“Are you going to tell this incredible woman where we’re going?” I ask as the car turns north.

“Wait and see.” And there it is, that glint in his eye that says he’s up to something.

A glint I will never tire of.

When the car pulls over by the West 77th Street entrance to Central Park, Oliver picks up the bag with my cute-but-difficult shoes in it. Turns out, he’d stopped by yesterday to collect my sneakers from Becca for me to change into. Apparently we have to do a bit of walking. He’s clearly put some planning into this.

“I’ll carry these,” he says. “You can put them back on when we get there if you like.”