I adjust my dark glasses and keep my gaze looking forward. I don’t want to appear to be in hurry either and possibly attract their attention.
Still moving forward, I steal another glance in their direction. The taxi is only half a block away. My heart is pounding and it’s not fucking easy to keep my pace purposeful and not rushed. “You’re just an everyday citizen walking down the street in Saintland,” I think to myself. “There’s no need for them to notice you.”
I’m only ten feet away from the taxi when one of them stops in their tracks across the street, staring in my direction.
The photographer he’s walking with comes to a halt beside him. I notice the one saying something to his colleague and he points discreetly in my direction. My instinct is to stop, to freeze, but I keep moving toward the taxi, my heart pounding so hard against my rib cage that I’m worried it might burst out of my chest.
There. I’m fucking there. My hand closes around the door handle to the taxi as prickles of sweat bead on the back of my neck. I open the door and slide into the back seat, struggling to catch my breath.
I just want this to be an uneventful escape.
I don’t want another goddamn media frenzy about me and Alec.
The gossip sites, after all, exploit their stories internationally, and I really don’t want anything more to do with this whole thing once I’m back in New York.
Safe in the taxi, I whip my head around to look out at the photographers, my eyes locked in panic on their faces.
“Miss?” says the driver.
“What?” I say, my voice sharp. I cut my eyes toward him and see that he’s looking at me cautiously. I probably seem like a crazy lady.
Maybe I am.
I smile at him and take in a deep breath.
“Where to?”
“I’m sorry,” I answer, trying my best to cover up the awkwardness that’s fallen over the car.
“Airport, please. I have a flight to catch.”
“We’re on our way.”
He returns his attention to driving, and shifting the car into gear, he signals to pull out from his parking spot.
As he pulls away from the curb, I look back one more time at the photographers, dreading what I might see. If they have their cameras…
But they don’t. The one who was staring at me from across the street is now rifling through his bag, a worried look on his face. The other man comes around to his side and peers into the bag, too. They’re clearly missing a piece of equipment or experiencing some other difficulty.
They didn’t notice me.
I sit back against the seat and breathe a sigh of relief. But every breath still hurts.
It might hurt for a long time.
I remind myself that I have a plane to catch.
I let that thought fill my mind. I don’t look back at the palace.
Chapter 40
Alec
Nate drives aimlessly for five minutes, and then he seems to make up his mind about a destination. He doesn’t say a word. The man always understands when I’m not in the mood for chatter, and he’s known me long enough to know intuitively where to go when I’m having one of my moods.
Ninety minutes later, we’re pulling into Forestbridge, a quaint fishing village on the shore of a massive lake. It’s the kind of place even a crown prince can go without getting mobbed by the goddamn media.
That general depiction of the media may be a bit callous and undeserving. With a few exceptions—that idiot climbing the palace wall immediately comes to mind—the media in Saintland are a different animal from the rabid paparazzi in the United States. Even when the news broke about my fight with Marcus and everyone in the country was talking about it, the television reporters never left their designated spot outside the palace. The photographer who climbed the wall had his credentials revoked immediately. His punishment would have been far greater except, I found out later, he had not been arrested for trespassing on palace grounds at Marcus’s urging.
Still, Forestbridge is a haven. It’s a town with more pubs than churches, which makes it the perfect destination for a prince on the run from the weight of his own jackass behavior.
Even if it was, ultimately, the right fucking thing to do.
But was it?
That line of thought is interrupted as Nate parks the car by the curb in front of the first of the five or six pubs we’d eventually visit in Forestbridge that day, moving on whenever the mood struck us.
It’s late afternoon and I’m tired, still feeling the effects of the last pint, when we decide to walk out on the public docks in Forestbridge.
The summer light is golden and hazy, reflecting its vivid hues on the ripples of the water.
“That’s a damned beautiful sight,” Nate says admiringly, crossing his arms over his chest as a breeze plays over us.
“Can’t argue with you there.” It’s true; the lake is gorgeous. I’ve been desperate for this type of serenity since Marcus died and everything was thrown into chaos.
But there’s something missing, and I know exactly who it is.