Royal Pain (2 page)

Bronte so wanted to think of him as a pompous ass, but he made it all sound perfectly vital and joyful.
Who
wouldn’t want to go bonefishing in the Yucatán?
she argued with herself. Not that she would know a bonefish from a bone-in rib eye, but it all sounded so alluring when he said it in that carefree, optimistic drawl.

And she wanted to be a part of it all, laughing in the boat on the shimmering turquoise shallows as he caught the elusive bonefish and smiled that big Texan smile in her direction.

“This is me,” she muttered as they arrived at the sidewalk in front of her modest apartment building in the West Village.

He kept her hand in his and leaned in to kiss her briefly on the lips, nothing demanding.

Just right.

“Thanks for walking me home.”

“The pleasure was all mine. Are you around tomorrow, darlin’?”

“Sure.” She suppressed another blush at his familiar use of
darlin’
. “What’s tomorrow? Sunday? Yeah, I have to meet a friend in the morning, but after that I should be around.”

“Want to meet at Balthazar for lunch?” he asked.

“That sounds great.”

“All right then.” He leaned in and kissed her again on the lips, lingering a bit longer this time.

“Mmmm,” Bronte hummed as her tongue dragged slowly across her lower lip after he’d pulled away. She opened her eyes slowly.

“Good, right?” he asked, looking into her eyes until she nodded her agreement. “Right,” he said with confident affirmation. “Okay, you get up to your apartment before I ask to come up there. And I’ll see you at Balthazar tomorrow. About noon sound good?”

“Perfect.”

“Perfect,” he agreed, giving her another one of his trademark winks.

Bronte let herself into the vestibule and smiled over her shoulder as he watched to make sure she got through the second locked door safely.

She rolled into bed that night thinking that here was a man, a grown man, a gentleman even, who walked her home, kissed her good night, didn’t seem to have a single urban neurotic impulse, and thought that she was quite perfect.

***

Max left a note on the kitchen counter, then pulled the door shut quietly behind him, not that there was any possibility of waking David and Willa anytime soon. He had crashed in their guest room shortly after arriving at two in the morning and then had woken at six thirty when the garbage trucks started clanging and crashing down the street. The flight from London had been one delay after another and he could have used a few more hours of sleep, but once he woke up, it was impossible. He read in bed for several hours, then decided to walk up to Balthazar, telling Willa and David in his note to join him there whenever they could.

He arrived at the height of the Sunday lunch crowd and spotted an empty seat at the bar. He smiled at the hostess as he walked by, then sat himself so he could look up at the mirror behind the bartender for a great view of the bustling brasserie. He ordered a spicy Bloody Mary and started scanning the reflected room. Back in the corner, he let his gaze rest on a particularly attractive woman. She was flushed and animated while she listened to a blond footballer type. She was entirely wasted on him, Max thought coolly. Even from this distance, Max could see how her erect posture and attentive look barely concealed a concentrated energy. The tosser she was with just looked like he was moving at half speed compared to her, nodding and smiling like a bobblehead in slow motion. Not that Max was being overly judgmental—what’d he care?—but clearly those two were doomed to fail.

“Do you know what you’d like?”

The barmaid was a tall, angular blond, and even though she was asking what he wanted to order for lunch, her mouth quirked in a way that suggested she might be able to provide more than what appeared on the menu. If only his brother, Devon, were with him, he thought with a wry smile, someone might have been able to follow up on her unspoken offer.

“Just lunch, I think.” Max was a firm believer in the look-don’t-touch school of flirtation. One thing led to another and then it just got messy. Devon, on the other hand, had an honorary degree in touch-all-you-want. And he always managed to skip away without a second thought.

Max ordered an omelet then resumed people watching. His eyes trailed back to the far corner to check on the tightly wound brunette, but the booth was now empty.

“There you are!” Willa sang, then grabbed her forehead as the sound of her too-loud voice exacerbated her hangover.

“A booth just opened in the back,” David said, “Let’s go sit.”

Willa groaned as she settled into the booth between the two men.

“Ugh. I need a little something.” She looked around for a waiter, then back to Max. “I always swear I will not get pissed as a newt and then I do this to myself. I swear—”

Max smiled as he snapped his fingers and waved at a passing waiter. He spoke quickly in perfect French and the busy Parisian nodded, took the order for two more Bloody Marys, and continued on his way.

“Why are you the only person I know who can do that without coming off like a total ass?” Willa asked.

“Animal magnetism?” Max said with a grin of self-mockery.

“You think you’re joking, perhaps,” Willa said, “but it’s more than that. You just never come off as a pompous jerk—”

“Of course, we know better,” David interjected.

“Very funny.”

“No, seriously. It’s a nice touch. You seem, I don’t know, collegial somehow.”

“Why thank you, Willa. I’m glad you approve.”

“I do.” She smiled up as the waiter set down the two new drinks. “Thank you.” Her smile faded when she refocused her attention on Max. “But I’m still annoyed that you arrived too late to meet my friend. You two would be such a pair.”

“And why is that?” The image of the brunette he’d been admiring in the booth where they were now sitting flashed in his mind. He may try harder to be prompt for someone like that.

“Because she is vivacious and smart and funny. And you are… well…”—Willa paused thoughtfully—“you.”

Max smiled at Willa for the kindness. He had assumed she would round out that sentence with one of her typical most-eligible-royal-bachelor throwaway lines, and as much as he hated to admit it, he was pleased, even at the ripe old age of thirty-four, to feel that he was something more than the sum of his titles and holdings.

“Thank you, Willa. I think.”

“You’re welcome. I think.”

They ate lunch then headed back to Tribeca, where they settled in to watch some college basketball and hang out on the enormous couch. Max had given them both a good ribbing about their absurdly large American life, but he secretly admired the sheer audacity of American design and, ultimately, the American psyche. While he questioned the disposable nature and planned obsolescence of many American enterprises, he loved the guts it took to think on a grand scale and just go for it. He came from a long line of men and women who prided themselves on preserving things. It was admirable. But it was also stifling.

“So what happens next?” David asked.

Max looked up from his novel. He’d never gotten attached to watching American sports, but for some reason, he always found it enjoyable to read in the same room while the television hummed and buzzed with commentary and prattle. He knew what David was really asking.

“There’s not really much wiggle room, as you like to say. I finish out this semester, summer job in London, weekends at Dunlear being harangued by my mother, then return to Chicago next year to finish and defend my dissertation, and then… it begins.”

“Come now, Max, it’s not like you haven’t seen it coming.”

“Well, of course I’ve seen it coming. For most of my life it’s the
only
thing I’ve seen coming. These years in Chicago have been such a blessed relief. I am just myself there, rising and falling on my own merits. In
that
Hyde Park, I am not the son of the Duke of Northrop, nor am I the Marquess of Dunlear, nor am I the seventy-fourth person in line for the throne, nor am I on the eligible royal lists—”

“I get it, I get it.”

“—or any of that shit. But then I feel guilty for even thinking of it as ‘that shit’ because I really do want to succeed at it. To be worthy of it, I guess.”

David looked at the television. “It’s a lot. I’m not saying it’s not. But you are clever.” He turned and faced his friend, smiling because it was a huge understatement. Max Heyworth had been widely respected as one of the most gifted scholars ever since they’d been at Eton together. And not in the distractible, head-in-the-clouds stereotypical way. Max’s mind worked in a methodical, precise fashion. His doctoral work on theoretical economics at the University of Chicago was more or less incomprehensible to the rest of his friends and family.

“Is he whinging about becoming the duke again? It’s aeons away in any case. Get over yourself.” Willa’s posh accent derailed the serious conversation, and they all three started laughing. She sank into the couch next to David and put his arm around her shoulder to make herself more comfortable. “You really should have been on time last night, Max. My friend has been single for years—”

“Now there’s a ringing endorsement,” David said without looking away from the television.

“What in the world would I do with an American bird, anyway?” Max asked.

David rolled his eyes.

Willa pressed on. “You would love her, of course. And then marry her!”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be the worst day of the duchess’s life?” Max said. “Might be worth it just to see my mother’s face when I come home with a
commoner
, and an American to boot.”

David burst out laughing. “Who’s she trying to set you up with these days? The twelve-year-old princess from Denmark?” Max rolled his eyes and David continued, “Or maybe the fourteen-year-old from Spain?”

“Just shut up, David,” Max said.

“You’re right; fourteen is way too old for you. Maybe there’s a royal toddler in Monaco?”

Max started laughing despite himself and Willa began giggling too. “You know Sylvia’s motto! It’s just as easy to love a royal as it is to love a commoner, so—”

“You might as well love the royal!” all three of them chimed in unison.

Willa’s laughter died down first. “Oh, that is the only thing that makes my hangover feel better… a good laugh. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Max said. “Always glad to be the brunt of your jokes.”

“You’re not the brunt!” Willa protested. “Your mother is!”

Max looked back at the book in his lap and felt the warm residue of humor slip away. “She’s not entirely wrong, you know.”

“How do you mean?” David asked.

“I mean, I am going to have to get married at some point—”

“Why ‘have to’?”

“I mean, I want to, but I also have to, you know… eventually. Heir and a spare and all that.”

“First things first,” Willa said, “Just get a girl. That tends to be a good place to start.”

“You make it sound like it’s as easy as walking into the local pub and picking up a pint.”

“Well…” David gestured toward Max as if he were exhibit A. “As Willa pointed out, you are
you
, after all.”

“Exactly. You’re pretty easy on the eyes, and don’t try to deny it,” Willa continued. “All that tall, dark, and handsome stuff is not to be tossed aside lightly. Think of it as a commodity, a bargaining chip”—Willa waved her hand in the air—“you know, some economic term that you can relate to… an option? A forward? Whatever it is, you need to
use
that shit.”

“Charming, Willa,” David murmured without looking away from the three-pointer that was being replayed.

“You know what I mean. He’s too… good.” Willa looked from her husband to their handsome friend. “You are, you know.”

Max rolled his eyes to shake off the joke, but the pressure of reality was there just the same. After he finished this semester in Chicago, his fifth and final year was all that stood between him and a future that felt like a slowly constricting collar around his neck. The job in the City of London was already on hold the minute he returned to the UK for good. The obligatory weekends out at Dunlear Castle with his parents. The blind dates. It had never been stated outright, but the unspoken expectation was that Max would begin to assume more and more ducal responsibilities over the next ten years. His decision to attend graduate school had already caused a huge fracas between his parents, with his mother wanting him to begin living at Northrop House in London immediately after he’d gotten his degree from Oxford. Luckily, his father had supported Max’s plan to buy his own place in Fulham, work in the City for a couple of years, and then attend graduate school in the United States.

Sylvia, Lady Heyworth, Duchess of Northrop, had finally relented. It was the only time Max had ever heard his father raise his voice, and apparently it had had the desired effect. But the duchess wasn’t happy about what she referred to as Max’s years of “faffing about.”

He shook his head and looked up from his lap to see Willa and David staring at him with genuine concern.

“You okay?” David asked.

Max gave his best all-is-well smile. “Of course! I mean, seriously, I have nothing to complain about. So my mother’s a bit pushy… like that’s news to anyone. I’m perfectly fine.” There wasn’t a hint of false enthusiasm. He had perfected that, at least. Keep everyone happy. No need to upset the applecart.

David looked skeptical. “Just get a girlfriend in Chicago to take your mind off things.”

“Not likely, but I’ll try.”

Bronte had slept like a baby that night after Mr. Texas had walked her home from David and Willa’s—and she slept well for many nights after. She slept soundly for months even, basking in the light of his attention, buoyed by his attraction and appreciation.

After he returned to Chicago, the long-distance phone conversations had been sublime. That voice. That urgency.

For the first weeks, they had spent hours every night sharing their life stories with each other. Later, all of those conversations melded together into a sort of first-blush-of-new-love montage in Bronte’s mind. Everything mattered.

“My mother is a schoolteacher also!” he said.

“That is so funny. And your father is a wildcat oil driller? That is so cool. Does he write
wildcat
on his tax form under ‘occupation’?”

“I guess, yeah,” he laughed. “He probably does.”

“Did you ever want to do that?”

“Of course, darlin’! What eight-year-old boy doesn’t want to strike oil?! But then I think, in a way, I’m kind of doing the same thing in my business but just on paper. Trading has the same speculative edge, you know what I mean? Risky. I’ve already gone belly-up twice.”

He said it as if it were perfectly normal to go broke. He was still a cowboy. (“Or still a boy,” her mother had quipped with blatant disapproval when Bronte told her that particular story. For some reason, Cathy Talbott was not thrilled about Bronte’s new boyfriend.)

Bronte had seen him as free-spirited. Bronte was sick of being judgmental. She loved how he lived at full capacity. Balls out, as he said.

Then, after they had succeeded in telling each other every possible detail of their lives, finding similarities and coincidences and meaning, they got into the habit of seeing each other every other weekend for lots of music and alcohol and sex.

Even months later, after the actual content had devolved into nothing more than loving murmurs, the sound of his voice over the phone was almost as sexy as the sex.

She remembered one night in July, at around two in the morning her time. Bronte had answered the phone to hear his throaty whisper, “Are you awake?”

“Barely, but talk to me while I pretend to sleep.”

“I just got back from the greatest meal. I can’t wait for you to get out here Friday night. I want to take you for dinner and watch you eat the best food you’ve ever tasted. I want to see your face when you bite into that crème brûlée.”

“Mmmm,” she hummed her appreciation through a fog of sleep deprivation. “Me too. I’ll see you then.” She said good night and rolled back over for a few hours of desperately needed sleep.

They spent that summer in a whirl: hotel rooms, concerts, expensive bottles of wine. Lots of those Big Weekends.

By early August, she was really beginning to fray.

“Are you there, darlin’?” he crooned into her answering machine as she ran to catch the call, fumbling with her keys in the lock before tripping over her dirty laundry on her way to the phone.

“Hey!” she answered, breathless.

“I’m thinking about you like crazy, Bron. Want to meet in Vegas this weekend?”

Did other people really just drop everything and go to Las Vegas for the weekend? She was starting to wonder. Bronte didn’t know any. Was he suggesting Vegas so they could elope? Was he asking her to marry him after five months of great phone calls? And some pretty great weekend sex, she amended.

“Uh. What’s in Las Vegas?”

She set down her huge bag. She was falling behind at work (from spending all her time at night on the phone with him and all her weekends traipsing around with him) and had had to carry a couple of presentation binders home with her.

“You know, the usual. A big, huge bed… and the Rolling Stones. Unplugged.”

And
a
$500 ticket
, she thought.

He wanted her with him, obviously… he was going crazy thinking about her, remember? But she was not in a financial position to buy a last-minute plane ticket to Las Vegas, nor, she suspected, her own concert ticket to a private, acoustic show with her good friends Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

“I don’t know,” she hesitated. “I am really behind at work and I have a huge presentation next week.”

“Did you hear what I just said? I have tickets to see Mick and Keith with like a hundred other people in a private club. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”

At the time, Bronte felt like every minute with him was once in a lifetime. His entire existence was made up of a string of once-in-a-lifetime moments. She ended up foregoing the trip to Vegas, but it made her realize how tired she was. She was sick of having to make what felt like life-altering decisions every time she wanted to hang out with him. It was all that urgency that made her contemplate a move to Chicago. She was simply exhausted trying to manage what amounted to two lives. Hers and theirs.

Then he told her he loved her. Really loved her.

It was the middle of August. They were walking around Millennium Park, enjoying a surprisingly fresh wind sweeping in off of Lake Michigan. And he was so gentle and tender. And he loved her. And then… she just went for it. Head first.

It was only
after
her feet left the emotional diving board that she discovered the pool was empty. In hindsight, it seemed glaringly obvious that his I-love-you declaration was nothing more than a reflex, a placeholder, a dating Post-it Note (Month Five: Say, “I love you”), whereas her I-love-you reply was meant to impart the weight and bliss of eternity. It was the first time she’d said it to anyone other than her mother.

Of course she was moving to Chicago. There was a man there who loved her. A man she loved. From the very beginning, she thought she was getting something that everyone else was too shallow to perceive. Beneath his bawdy jokes and big vodkas, she thought, he was really sincere. They shared a deep, quiet connection. The killjoy part of her brain sassed that the connection might be quiet because it was unspoken lust… or unspoken because it didn’t exist… but she shoved that aside. It was her turn to have the great love chapter of her life. She had always dated artsy, intellectual types. As her college roommate used to jest, Bronte liked readers. And here, instead, was a broad-shouldered, high school football captain, card-carrying male. He read Tom Clancy, not Tom Wolfe.

So what?

He had always dated pert blonds; for the long haul, Bronte argued with herself, he wanted the artsy intellectual. It was a twisted sort of justice for them to end up together.

She tried to be rational, weighing the pros and cons of uprooting herself and moving to Chicago to be with him. Mr. Texas looked great on paper. He had his own successful investment business, came from a great family (parents who loved each other!), and had lots of funny, engaging friends.

They had not been dating long enough to warrant a marriage proposal, but she thought they might have a real chance. She didn’t care if she ever got married, technically. If she was with the right person, she would know, and it would be right. Right?

If she moved to Chicago, she would finally be able to see how they would be together in real life, on a daily basis. If not, she was sure she would spend the rest of her life feeling like she hadn’t tried hard enough to secure her own happiness.

She wanted to go for it.

By mid-September, certain that seeing each other every day would alleviate some of that crazy urgency and let them settle into a more normal relationship, she applied for a job at a fantastic boutique advertising agency in Chicago and got it. She wanted to surprise him.

He was surprised all right.

He was psyched she was moving to Chicago. He told her he was psyched.

“Yeah, I’m psyched.”

But Bronte was never able to shake the feeling that he couldn’t quite get himself fully behind anything that wasn’t entirely his idea.

“Sure, that’ll be great, darlin’.” He sounded like he was watching television and having a beer while he talked to her. Half-listening.

There was no way any relationship could or should sustain the level of full-throttle intensity that they had shared those first few months, she assured herself. It was perfectly fine that he wasn’t, you know, ecstatic. They were mellowing. They were both exhausted, she told herself when, occasionally, he was unable to talk as long.

She still slept like a baby, but a teething one. With the croup. And diaper rash. And colic. Once she got back in his arms, she reasoned, all would be well.

When she called her mother to let her know her decision, she wasn’t surprised at the reply.

“Well. It’s your life. You do what you think is best.”

Bronte ignored the sledgehammer subtlety. Despite the soft, controlled tone of her voice, Cathy Talbott might as well have screeched and flapped dragon wings that not in a million years would
she
move to another city without at least the verbal promise of a long-term commitment.

Of course, Bronte knew that quitting a perfectly good job, leaving a perfectly good, rent-controlled apartment in the West Village, and moving halfway across the country to “be with” a guy was probably not the smartest move.

At the very least, it was risky.

“A marriage proposal would be nice, for example,” her mother lobbed.

But Bronte was liberated, wasn’t she? She could pick up and move if she felt like it. She could adapt. Moving seemed like the only solution. How else would she know for sure if he was “the one”? All she had to go on was six months of panting, late-night phone calls and every other weekend spent in a mad rush of togetherness. And that was not cutting it.

And he loved her.

Suddenly, she was sick of her mother’s wisdom. Wisdom was for the timid.

“Hey, Mom, that’s my other line. I have to go. I’ll see you this weekend.”

It wasn’t really the other line, but her friend April’s desk was close enough that Bronte could give her the now-familiar rotational hand gesture for make-your-phone-ring-really-loud-right-now-so-I-can-get-off-the-damn-phone.

Apparently, that’s what mothers were for, right? To make you question (to death) every (goddamned) decision you ever made in an effort to save you from going to all the trouble of making a complete ass of yourself. Or maybe it was just enlightened self-interest on the part of mothers everywhere to save
them
the hassle of having to pick you up and scrape you off and listen to all the heartache (again) when “the one” turned out to be “that piece of shit” and you were left without that perfectly good job, without that perfectly good, rent-controlled apartment, and (patently) without that boyfriend.

After more or less hanging up on her mother, Bronte went into her boss’s office and collapsed with a melodramatic huff onto the chair across from the older woman’s desk. Carol Dieppe swung her ergonomically correct, black mesh chair a half-turn away from her computer screen and raised one eyebrow.

“Please tell me you are not going to move to Chicago to be with this guy.”

Bronte repressed a sigh and tried to look over Carol’s shoulder and out across the midlevel rooftops of SoHo. This was more than just a perfectly good job she was about to give up; this was
the
perfectly good job. Carol had faith in Bronte. She had actually negotiated two years ago to take Bronte with her from their previous advertising agency, from which Carol had been vigorously recruited.

Carol was a successful, strong, kick-ass career woman. And she was forty-eight, single, childless… even contemplating that laundry list of antifeminist claptrap made Bronte feel guilty—but why?! Was
she
supposed to feel guiltier because she wanted all of that supposedly antiquated nonsense?

“Fuck. What am I supposed to say?” Bronte murmured.

“You’re supposed to say, ‘I’m not quitting my job and leaving New York until he goes to Harry-Fucking-Winston and rains rose petals down on Mercer Street outside this office window that spell out “will you marry me”… in fucking italics!’ That’s what you’re supposed to say. But—”

Bronte couldn’t help laughing. Carol smiled across the desk and softened her tone, picking up a pencil and holding an end in each hand as she rotated it distractedly.

“Look, Bron. I know you think I’m some dried-up old bitch from
Sex
and
the
City
, but I promise you I want what’s best for you and”—Carol held up one hand to stop Bronte from interrupting—“and… I know that what you want for you is not what I would choose for me. I mean, I am not waiting for anyone—ever!—to spell out anything in rose petals, but I know you have that dreamy, romantic, blissed-out side of you that is waiting for prince charming… that is perfectly entitled to that… but I just don’t think Mr. Texas is your man.”

Bronte sighed, audibly this time. “It’s hard enough for me to convince myself to leave all this behind, much less convince you, my mom, my friends, and my landlord, but unless I move there, how will I ever know if he’s the one?”

Carol did her best cynical stare, then dropped the pencil on her desk and raised her palms in an I-give-up gesture.

“I gather that is not a rhetorical question? Off you go then. What more can I say? I don’t ever want to say ‘I told you so,’ but if nothing else, this is going to teach you one very good lesson.”

“And what lesson would that be?” Bronte asked skeptically.

“Oh, just you wait and see.”

Bronte forcibly ignored the ominous reverberation that followed Carol’s pronouncement.

After packing up her New York apartment and transferring the lease to a friend of a friend (it’s amazing how easily a perfectly good life disassembles), the movers arrived and shipped the contents of said life to an apartment across the street from
his
apartment. This was one more layer of her idiocy: the thought that if she got her own place, she wasn’t
really
moving there just for him, but to have some new, important life experience too.

Crap. Double crap.

After saying all the cheerful, tearful, I-hope-I-am-not-making-a-complete-cake-of-myself farewells to friends and family, Bronte hopped a flight to Chicago and then: The Bag Incident.