Spy Girl (Spy Girl #1)

“You talked me out of participating in the charity race. I’m not sure what kind of spell you have me under.”


“Love potion, probably,” I tease. “Ordered from Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes in Diagon Alley.”

“Harry Potter,” he says, doing a great imitation of Dobby the house elf, which causes me to burst out in laughter.

I stifle my laugh when a sommelier brings us a bottle of wine, allowing Lorenzo the opportunity to taste it and deem it good enough to drink.

He holds his glass up and touches mine. “Love is the beauty of the soul.”

I recite the rest of the quote. “Insomuch as love grows in you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.”

“Do you believe that?” he asks, holding my gaze.

“I think love grows in us, but I don’t think love is always beautiful.” An image of my mother clouds my vision, but this time instead of watching her head get blown away, I see her eyes before she got shot, full of love for me. Not caring about herself, only wanting to protect me at all costs. It saddens me to know that she died worried for me. I feel like I let her down.

Tears gather in my eyes.

“Huntley?” the Prince asks, searching my face.

“Sorry, the answer to your question is yes. I believe love to be a beautiful thing.”

“Where did you just go?” he asks. I put my head down. I’m not supposed to let him in. I can’t, but he gently touches my face. “Tell me.”

“I was just thinking about my mother,” I answer honestly.

“How old were you when she passed?”

“Fourteen.”

“And your father?”

“They both died then.”

“Then what?”

“Boarding school. College.”

“So you’ve been on your own for a while?”

“Pretty much.”

He sets his glass down without taking a drink and pulls me into his arms, kissing the top of my head, and hugging me. “I will admit to knowing all that, but I wanted to hear it from you.”

“Let me guess, your security checked me out?”

“Yes.”

“Is that normal protocol for everyone you date?”

“No, but it is for the girl who saved my life twice. I want to know everything about you. Is it bad that I read their report?”

“My life hasn’t been very exciting, other than a few detentions for sneaking out after curfew, so I imagine it was a rather dull read.”

“You are well-traveled. That was the most interesting thing. Passport stamps from all over the world, even from a young age.”

What he says gives me pause, because this was not in my backstory. But maybe my real story is my backstory, just with a different name. I realize that this is a do or die situation. If what I say and what he read in my file don’t agree, he will know I’m lying, and I’ll end up in a Montrovian jail—or worse, sent home a failure.

“My parents traveled a lot for their jobs, and we often stayed for months at a time,” I reply, then quickly try to change the subject. “I particularly love visiting ruins and museums.”

“You mentioned that at the castle. What do you like about them?”

“When you combine the literature and art from an era, you get a good idea of how people of different time periods lived. It’s intriguing that at the core, their lives weren’t all that different from ours. There was good and evil. Love and hate. War and peace. Happiness and tragedy. I find that comforting.”

“How so?”

“Because someone else has probably gone through something similar to what I have, if not worse.”

“We still haven’t sealed our toast,” he says, handing me back my glass. “To love worth recording.”

“I’ll drink to that,” I say, feeling like I just dodged a very big bullet.





We have lunch then sit on the pool deck for a bit, enjoying each class of the charity races and then a practice session for the professionals.

We’re cheering for his favorite driver, who is out on the track, when one of his security detail brings a wrapped package and sets it in front of me.

My immediate thought is that it’s a bomb. I consider picking it up and throwing it into the bay, hoping it wouldn’t destroy all these yachts. I must have a panicked look on my face because the man says, “It’s a gift for you from a friend. We opened it, checked to make sure it was legitimate, and rewrapped it. Sorry, it’s not quite as pretty as when it arrived.”

“What is it?” Lorenzo asks as the guard retreats to his position.

“I have no idea.” I carefully open the box and pray they properly vetted it. When I take the lid off, I find the Judith Leiber silver crystal clutch with red and pink lips that I was coveting at the store today. “Wow.”

Lorenzo takes the card out of the box and reads it. “You should never walk away from something you love, even if it’s impractical. It’s signed with just a W. Do you know who that is?”

“I think so. William Gallagher. He was at the store when I was considering buying it. Do you know him?”

“He’s British.”