“Just you wait.” He rubbed his hands together.
Gaz made it all sound so entertaining, but I was increasingly nervous. Intellectually, I knew I wasn’t being introduced to the extended family as anything more than Nick’s friend, and that Cilla and even Bea being there would bolster that cover. But I wasn’t the kind of moneyed or titled aristocrat with a plummy accent and a Bentley that Nick’s relations were used to; I was a first-time skier whose father made comfortable appliances for beer lovers. I didn’t know how any of that would go over with them, no matter what they thought he and I were to each other—and on that score, Richard was still in severe, sometimes apoplectic denial.
Gaz studied me, then raised his glass. “No need to panic,” he said. “We’ll keep you out of the blast radius.”
As we clinked wine glasses, mine cracked and squirted thick red port all over my couch.
“Don’t tell Cilla about that,” Gaz warned. “She’ll say it’s an omen.”
“I don’t believe in omens,” I said.
Chapter Three
Freddie calls Klosters “ten degrees below narcolepsy” because of its lack of nightlife, but I have always found the sleepy mountain village enchanting: clusters of pitched-roof cabins flanked by towering pines, their branches heavy with snow—like Whoville without the Grinch, unless you counted Richard. But for jaw-dropping grandeur, the Swiss Alps might meet their match in the two chalets Richard always rents, for something like forty thousand dollars each. Each spread has four floors, a staff of maids and cooks on loan from Balmoral, a guesthouse for the PPOs, a seventy-two-inch flat-screen, heated bathroom floors, and Champagne on tap. Literally. Champagne actually comes out of a faucet. Once the Coucherator debuted in the SkyMall catalog it had changed my family’s life, but every Fourth of July we still holed up in the cabin in Michigan my mom and Aunt Kitty inherited, with its one bedroom and broken futon. So luxury purely for the sake of luxury was new to me, and as I unpacked in the fourth-floor master that I was sharing with Nick, Lacey’s words echoed in my head: Your life is insane, Bex. It hadn’t felt true then. It did now.
“May I come in?”
When I looked up to see Clive standing in the doorway, it struck me that all the gradual tweaks he’d made since Oxford added up to a comprehensive, carefully planned upgrade: He was now more muscular, his hair was artfully spiked rather than slicked, and his recent LASIK offered a better view of the indigo of his eyes. He looked great, even though I missed the brainy cuteness of his specs.
Clive stuffed his hands in his back pockets. “I just wanted to get any initial strangeness out of the way. We haven’t done a lot of sober socializing recently.”
“Good thinking,” I said. “A lot has changed.”
“And in a way nothing has,” he said. “Gaz and Cilla still haven’t had sex or stabbed one another, you and Nick are still a secret…”
“Is that what you came in here to talk about?” I asked, bristling, his words taking me right back to that night in Pembroke.
“No, no,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure everything is good.” He touched me on the arm, never breaking eye contact. It brought back more pleasant memories. “It’s important to me that you’re happy.”
“I care about you, too. Sorry to be so defensive,” I said, sinking onto the bed. “It’s just…well, you know. My situation is complicated. How is life at Top News?”
“Dreadfully dull. They made me do a story on holiday shopping,” he said, sitting next to me. “I had to hang about outside stores, flagging down anyone with a decent amount of bags, asking how the economy is affecting their spending.” He grimaced. “The ones that don’t run away immediately will talk for ten minutes and then say, ‘Oh, but you’re not using any of that are you?’ and then run away. It’s maddening. I’m so tired of working for a crap free paper doing the stories nobody else wants. I’ve paid my dues, but they keep saying, one more month.”
“You’ll get out of there soon enough,” I assured him.
“How’s the art?”
“I’m currently very occupied drawing comforting landscapes for the bereaved.”
He put an arm around me and squeezed. “We’ll both get there,” he said. “I’m sure it’s also quite time-consuming being the secret girlfriend of Prince Nicholas.”
“It’s hard not being able to grab a sandwich together on my lunch hour, like normal people. Especially with him being so busy,” I said. “And, I mean, look at this disgusting slum he’s foisting on me.”
Clive laughed.
“Cheers, Clive,” Nick said, walking in from the balcony, a pair of binoculars hanging from his neck.
Clive slowly lifted his arm from around my shoulder, standing up to give Nick a handshake.
“Just catching up with Bex,” Clive said. “We haven’t had a proper talk in ages. But I wanted to chat to you, too. I’m seeing somebody and I wanted to be the person who told you about it.” He took a breath. “Gemma Sands.”
Nick cocked his head. “My Gemma?”
I didn’t miss that. Neither did Clive.
“My Gemma,” he corrected.
“She never mentioned to me that she was seeing anyone,” Nick said.
This sounded a trifle like jealousy, and my mind screamed, How often are you talking to her?
“She may come by, actually,” Clive added. “She’s trying to find a flight so we can ring in our first New Year together.”
“Well, I can’t wait to meet her,” I offered.
I was, in fact, very curious about the mysterious virginity-grabbing Gemma Sands, whose very name had the glamorous, smooth finish of an expensive glass of wine, and whose family conservancy in Namibia Nick visited at least once a year. The last time, they’d washed elephants together and helped deliver a baby zebra. A wobbly part of me decided it was in my best interest for her to be romantically occupied.
“You really think Gem is coming?” Nick asked skeptically.
“Hope so, hope so,” Clive said, rubbing his hands together. “We’re both so busy, with my work at the paper and hers in Africa. It’d be nice to steal a moment together.” He smiled widely. “Now come downstairs, you two. Cilla and Gaz are fighting over whether one of her ancestors died while inventing the T-bar lift, and Freddie’s Icelandic party planner has lips that seem to vibrate. You must see it.”
Once Clive was gone, Nick turned to me and rolled his eyes. “He and Gemma are about as meant to be as Penelope Six-Names and my grandfather.”
“Your grandfather is dead.”
Nick was in the middle of taking off his sweater to put on another. “Exactly,” he said, through a layer of wool. His head popped out through the top of the crewneck, his hair standing on end like a child’s, and I felt a rush of love for him. “Exactly,” he repeated.
I did not have a lot of love for his tone.
*