Royally Crushed (34 page)

However, unable to handle living with her mother and ultravegan Gabrielle in their new apartment, which involved being forced to switch to a different high school—not to mention live on a diet of things like Tofurky and bulgur wheat—Val (again, me) opted to go to Schwerinborg, where everyone speaks German. There she lived in a tiny palace apartment with her father, which isn’t as swanky a setup as it sounds. Val and Martin discovered that properly heating—let alone renovating—the wing of the palace that houses the employees isn’t exactly a high-priority use for Schwerinborg’s tax revenue.

But then, because this is a fairy tale and I forgot to start at the beginning, everyone already knows what happened next. When Val was feeling lower than low (in other words, holding a pity party for herself), she bumped into a guy her own age who had a knack for making her laugh.

More precisely, she bumped into Prince Georg Jacques von Ederhollern of Schwerinborg. Not George, but
Georg
. Pronounced “
gay
-org.” Like the uptight Austrian Julie Andrews fell for in
The Sound of Music
. Watch it sometime and you’ll understand. Needless to say, Prince Georg was (and is!) totally, completely hot. Val really liked Georg,
despite his strange name, and it turned out that Georg liked Val back and could kiss like nobody’s business.

And right now, they’re living happily ever after. The gorgeous prince and the ordinary American girl with freakish red hair. Well, except for the fact that the tabloids once snapped a pic of them (us) and claimed that the country’s future leader might be hooking up with a “corrupt” American girl. Since we were seen coming out of a bathroom together, the paper speculated that there might have been drugs involved. (
So
not my style. Please.)

But that was just a blip. And things are really good between us now.

I know, because at this moment he’s knocking at my door with his homework-filled backpack slung over one shoulder and a bag from McDonalds—my nutritional Achilles’ heel—in his hand. I’m feeling very happily-ever-afterish watching him through the peephole, wondering how long I can torture him before I open the door.

Or how long I can torture myself, because I really want to plant one right on those delicious lips of his. Well, and then snag that Mickey D’s bag to see what fattening, artery-clogging delicacy he’s brought me.

I think this is how all fairy tales should be, really. No mean stepparents (much as Gabrielle drives me insane, she’s really okay), no evil witches with poisoned apples (though
there is this one girl at school, Steffi, who’s determined to snag Georg for herself, not that she’ll ever admit it in public), and lots of fast food and making out.

“I know you’re looking through the peephole, Valerie,” Georg says.

Shoot.
So
not what Prince Charming would say to Cinderella, even though Georg says it in the most delicious European accent.

I pull the door open and, as much as I want to play it cool, especially given that my very protocol-minded dad is just a few steps away in the kitchen—and it
is
literally a few steps, since this apartment is dinky—I can’t. Georg’s simply too phenomenal for words and too willing to kiss me blind during the few seconds I have the door open behind me, blocking Dad’s view of us.

And, thankfully, the door is also blocking Georg’s view of Dad. Dad’s been acting strange ever since I got home from spending my winter break in Virginia, and I don’t think Georg needs to witness any of the strangeness.

Dad is totally straitlaced—I mean, the guy accompanies VIPs to the royal ballet, and he knows the difference between a shrimp fork and a salad fork without even having to think about it—but a few minutes ago, he was dancing while he diced tomatoes for dinner.
Dancing.
Shaking his forty-something groove thang and the whole bit. When I
asked him what was up with that, he just shrugged and said it was because “Modern Love” was on the radio and everyone has to dance to David Bowie.

Um, I think not.

The only times I’ve ever seen my Dad dance before tonight have been at state functions where there are waltzes and such—no Bowie. While Dad seems to have a decent sense of rhythm when it comes to eighties tunes, I’m hoping he’ll keep it under wraps now that Georg’s here.

“What’d you bring me?” I ask Georg once we stop kissing and I wave him inside.

“Sundaes. So we’d better eat fast.” I shut the door and he instantly looks past me to the kitchen, which is open to the main room. “Hello, Mr. Winslow.”

My dad nods, acting all proper now. “Good evening, Prince Georg.”

Georg takes in the sight of my dad working his culinary magic and hesitates. “I apologize if this is inconvenient. I didn’t realize I would interrupt dinner—”

“It’s no problem. If you’d like to put those in the freezer for the moment and sit down with us, you’re welcome to stay. I made plenty.”

“I just ate, but . . .” Georg glances at me, then at the counter, where Dad is ladling a yummy-smelling tomato
sauce over chicken. “If you don’t tell my parents, I could eat again. That smells terrific.”

They are so polite to each other I could hurl. Guess that’s what you get when you put a prince and a protocol expert in a room together. They fight to out-nice each other. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou God, Georg isn’t that formal with me in private, or I bet we’d never have hooked up.

“If your parents would prefer—”

“No, they really wouldn’t care. They’d just tell me not to, um, mooch.” Georg says “mooch” as if he’s not certain that’s the word to use in this situation. He does that a lot with American slang, which totally cracks me up. Even though his parents have him at the same private American high school I attend so he can improve his English—he’s going to be running the country someday and good English is apparently key to diplomacy in the Western hemisphere—he still gets confused about certain words.

“It’s not a problem,” Dad assures him with a smile. Good thing, because I’d have been an eensy-weensy-tiny bit upset if Georg had gone back to his rooms on the opposite side of the palace just so I could eat dinner with Dad.

We spend most of dinner rehashing what we did over winter break. Georg went skiing in Switzerland but
stopped at a couple of hospitals along the way to visit little kids, which is the kind of thing he does every time he goes on vacation.

I talk about my trip home to Virginia, where I spent a week with Mom and Gabrielle. Not my choice of winter break destinations, but I got to see my friends and tell them about Georg in person. And although I’m not sure what Dad really thinks of Gabby, I suspect he’s glad I made an effort while I was there to get to know her at least a little. And I know he’s definitely happy I’m getting along okay with Mom again, even if she is a zillion miles away and continues to mail me dorky teenage self-help books in an effort to fix my perceived shortcomings in life.

“I probably suck at skiing compared to you,” I tell Georg, though using the word “suck” garners me a warning frown from Dad. “I’m barely in the intermediate category. I do a few green runs to warm up, then blue runs most of the day. Though I have to go back to the easy greens again if I get tired. Otherwise it’s wipeout city. But I’d love to be able to try a black run soon. If I can work up the guts, anyway.”

Georg raises one dark eyebrow. I love when he does that. It’s goofy and sexy at the same time. “We don’t have green runs here. Blues are the easiest, reds are intermediate, and
blacks are the expert runs. But they’re probably equivalent.”

“Oh.” I’m such a clueless American. “Well, I should be able to see what it’s like to ski here soon. Right, Dad?”

His mouth is full of chicken, but he’s nodding. He
did
promise to take me skiing when I agreed to move here from Virginia with him. I mean, we live in the middle of the Alps now. Ski resorts everywhere. Back in Virginia, we’d have to drive all day just to get to a decent slope. Hence my ski suckage.

“I was planning to talk to you about that later tonight, Valerie, but now’s as good a time as any,” Dad says, once he’s swallowed. “I thought we could go to Scheffau this weekend. It’s a rather quiet resort in Austria, without so much of the glitz or attention that St. Moritz and some of the other Swiss ski areas have.”

“I’ve been to Scheffau before,” Georg says, sounding excited. “It has some great runs. You’ll like it.”

“
This
weekend?” I just got home a few days ago, and things between me and Georg were a little rocky right before break, due to the whole tabloid fiasco. They’re great now (I’ve never had to make up with a boyfriend before—probably because I’ve never had a boyfriend before—and I’ve discovered that making up is way, way fun), but the last thing I want to do is spend another two or three days away from him. Even if it is to go skiing in the Alps.

“What’s wrong with this weekend?” Dad asks. “Do you have something scheduled at school?”

I glance from Dad to Georg, then look back at Dad. “No, but—”

“I see,” he says with a grin that’s totally embarrassing. I hate that I’m so transparent. “Perhaps I can speak to Prince Manfred and Princess Claudia about having Georg come along. We’ll need to make some arrangements regarding the press, since it’s possible they’ll use the opportunity to take photos if they figure out Georg is in Scheffau, especially if they believe he’s there with you, but I’m sure we can work something out.”

Do I have the best dad ever, or what?

I look at Georg, who’s eating his chicken as if he hasn’t had food in days. “Don’t you have soccer this weekend, though?”

“Nope,” he says. “Bye week.” But I can tell from his guarded expression that he’s not sure about going. Probably because of his parents. They’re just a tad overprotective.

When Dad gets up to grab some more chicken and salad from the kitchen, I lean in close to Georg and whisper, “You can say no if you don’t want to go. I won’t be offended.”

Well, I probably would be offended, on the inside. But I’ve resolved not to take things like that personally. Before break, he told me he wanted us to “cool it,” and I
got upset and jumped to the conclusion that he wanted to break up. In reality, he just wanted us to quit making out where we could get caught by some crazy photographer and end up on the front page of the local paper. But when I took offense, it almost screwed up our relationship for real.

“It’s not that,” Georg says. “I just figured you might want some time alone with your father.”

I shake my head, and the smile he shoots back renders my breath immobile in my lungs for a moment.

I resolve to always,
always
give Georg the benefit of the doubt from now on.

Dad comes to clear away our dishes and asks, “Are your parents in their apartments, Georg? I can give them a call while you two enjoy on your sundaes.”

Georg tells him to go ahead, so after finishing in the kitchen, Dad takes the phone into his room to make the call—presumably because he’ll be talking with Georg’s parents about stuff he doesn’t want us to hear. What, I can only guess. Probably reassuring them that he won’t put me and Georg in the same bedroom or something.

“This is heaven,” I say after my first bite of chocolate sundae. I can almost feel my butt and thighs spreading, but I don’t care.

“Nope,” Georg replies, leaning over and giving me a
quickie kiss. “Skiing in Austria with my girlfriend. That’s heaven.”

“If your parents let you.”

“If,” he agrees.

At noon the next day, I still don’t know if Georg can come to Scheffau. His father, Prince Manfred, was in the middle of some conference call about tourist-industry legislation when Dad rang their apartment. Princess Claudia seemed to think it would be fine if her son came along with us—given some quick planning—but first she wanted to talk it over with her husband. And their security team. And the public relations office.

It’s the unbelievable drawback of dating a prince. Every freaking thing you do has to be cleared by what essentially functions as a behavioral review board.

So even as I’m sitting at the lunch table in the cafeteria—it’s too cold to eat outside at our usual spot in the quad—listening to my friends Ulrike and Maya talk about an upcoming school dance (where I’m guessing they won’t play David Bowie), my brain is totally focused on Georg and skiing.

Well, and on cuddling with Georg on the chairlift. Or in front of a big, warm fireplace. Or over a steaming cup of Austrian hot chocolate while we sit on a balcony and watch
the sunset over the Alps and tangle our feet together under a blanket. Just spending some time alone, away from school and the palace and the city and the behavior police.

Yum.

“The tuna’s not that good,” Steffi says to me as she plunks her tray down across the table from me. She tells Ulrike and Maya hello, then looks back at me. “So what’s ‘yum,’ huh?”

Did I actually say it aloud?

I give Steffi the Valerie Shrug. It’s what my parents say I do when I want to make it look like I don’t give a rip about whatever’s going on around me even though I really am paying attention. It’s usually enough to put people off. But not Steffi.

“I missed breakfast,” I lie. “Guess I’m hungrier than I thought or something.”

I learned my very first day of school that Ulrike and Maya are all right, but that Steffi, despite her innocent brown eyes and delicate appearance, usually has ulterior motives if she’s being nice to you. Since she’s good friends with Ulrike and Maya and they seem to be clueless about girls like Steffi—in other words, manipulative types—I figure my best option is to tolerate Steffi while staying below her radar. However, the below-the-radar part is becoming tougher and tougher to do now that everyone’s suspicious that Georg and I might be together. Mostly
because Steffi thinks
she
and Georg should be the ones going out, and God forbid anyone get in the way of what Steffi wants. She instantly sees that person as a threat to be annihilated.

Steffi seems to take my word for it on the “yum” thing, since she turns toward Ulrike after I take a stupidly huge bite of my tuna salad. “So, you guys talking about the dance?” she asks. “Who are you going to ask?”