Page 17 of The Thing About My Prince

After Lexi left yesterday, I barely held my head together for the documentary meeting. And ever since, my mind keeps drifting off and I catch myself gazing blankly out the window, at an increasingly cold plate of food, or right now, into the case I need to fill for my trip home tomorrow.

I don’t even know why she’s intrigued me this much.

Yes, she’s startlingly attractive.

And obviously incredibly smart.

And quick-witted.

And, if she works forThe Current, she must be talented.

I guess, when you look at it like that, those are the reasons.

But all those reasons are overridden by the fact she’s a fucking reporter.

I blow out a long breath that ripples my lips and rap my knuckles against my forehead to try to drum some sense into myself.

Why couldn’t the publisher have sent me a sixty-year-old,cozy, mild-mannered male writer who spends his days sitting quietly in a corner, penning biographies for famous people who can’t string written words together in coherent sentences?

“She’s the best person for the job,” they told my agent in the email he’d forwarded to me. “The ghostwriter who’s sold more books than any other that we’ve used. Her journalistic skills will give it a crisp, news-aware edge, and her compassion will add the touch of humanity that the book about your life needs.”

So here I am. Not only traveling to Scotland for two weeks with someone to whom I have to retell all the significant moments of my life, which will be hard enough anyway, but that someone belongs to a breed of people I’ve spent my life actively avoiding.

And the cherry on top of the shit sprinkles—I have to pretend she’s my girlfriend.

Hell, I thought the horror stories of my dysfunctional family and vile press intrusion might put her off. But no. She’s determined. And she strikes me as someone who’s like a hungry tiger with a fresh carcass once she’s set her mind to something.

Oh God, I need to let the guys know. I don’t want my Boston Commoners’ partners believing anything they might read over the next few days about me having a new hot reporter girlfriend.

I mean, justreporter girlfriend.

But it’s hardly wrong to say Lexi Lane is hot. It’s objectively a fact that she is. It doesn’t mean I’m going to try to pick her up or anything. God forbid. No, those days are long behind me. And I wouldn’t ever dream of giving a journalist anything other than the widest of berths.

Yeah, that’s what the world will think she is—my hot reporter girlfriend.

Which, now I come to think about it, might make me look good.

A hum of pride at the idea that people might think someone like Lexi might have picked me, makes me stand a little taller.

Clearly she never would though. She hardly seemed a big fan of the concept of royalty.

Heading to the living room, I pull my phone from my back pocket and call up the Commoners group chat with the three men I now call my very best friends—Chase the actor, Miller the Boston condo king, and Leo the billionaire who seems to have lots of fingers in lots of pies but I have no idea what he actually does.

ME

Hey guys, just a heads-up not to believe any stories that might come out about me having a new girlfriend called Lexi who’s a reporter. It’s not true.

I drop into the rocking egg chair and spin it to face the Empire State Building. The sun is setting and the lights are coming on.

Man, I love this city. I feel like a totally different person here. Here, it’s like everything is possible. Back home, it’s like nothing is possible other than what everyone else wants me to do.

MILLER

That’s one of the oddest and most suspicious messages I’ve ever read.

LEO

Did you do something bad?