Royal Baby (A British Bad Boy Romance) Read online

  Right by the bollocks.

  The evening hadn’t ended as I’d hoped, but I’d thoroughly enjoyed Keira’s company, and there were precious few girls whom I could say that about and mean it. She’d been witty, charming and made good conversation that actually kept me interested for over two hours, whereas most people bored the pants off me within five minutes. Best of all, she hadn’t seemed to know who I was at all. So many women only went for me because of who I was, and while that wasn’t something most men would complain about—after all, what red-blooded man would complain about having hot women throw themselves at him—it still got to me sometimes. Who was real, and who was just after my status? It was impossible to tell half the time, and it’d been nice having a night with a woman who saw me as nothing more than an equal to her.

  Still, it was strange that she should stick in my mind so much. Strange that she should numb me to the obvious attributes of the lovely stewardess Kathy. Strange that I now found myself missing her. How could you miss someone you barely even knew? Sure, Keira and I had had an amazing chat for those couple of hours in the bar, but that didn’t mean we knew each other very well at all. After all, she hadn’t even known my real name.

  For the record, I had intended to reveal my true identity to Keira once I’d got her back to my hotel room, and prior to sleeping with her. I was a playboy, a lothario, a cad, perhaps even a womanizer, and I wasn’t necessarily proud of these labels, nor would I have denied them. But, for all my reputation, I never lied to the women I was with. My encounter with Keira was actually a pretty typical one—total honesty, aside from not telling her my real name. In fact, I’d found that total honesty was a far better pickup line than actual lines. I always made my intentions clear, I never lied to get a girl into bed, and I never led girls to believe that it was something more than it was. I also never lied about my name…for long.

  That was the one caveat; my identity did present a problem, and unless I was introduced as Prince Andrew, I always lied about my name initially. I fancied that this was part of a larger honesty. If I said who I really was, then the girl was almost certainly going to sleep with me based on my status alone. The name itself made things unequal. I had a reputation and women wanted to know if I lived up to it. It was quite something to have slept with Prince Andrew, and a woman’s ability to make good decisions took a hit once she found out who she was with. So I lied whenever I went incognito to have a good time, and I became Drew Ellis for a while, and if Drew Ellis could get the girl back to my hotel room, purely on force of personality and good looks, then I would reveal the truth—because then the girl had already made the decision of her own accord. If Drew Ellis got shot down, then I never revealed the truth to try and turn the situation around.

  Frankly, I felt that I’d done the right thing by using Drew Ellis, and it grated at me that Keira would forever think that I’d lied to her and egregiously offended her in doing so. I felt bad about that, but there was nothing that I could do about it now—I’d most likely never see the girl again, because I’d been bloody stupid enough to let her walk away.

  To be fair, she hadn’t exactly walked. She’d run away like her ass was on fire; like she couldn’t stand being near me for a second longer. She’d even somehow managed to look sexy while dashing off in her heels like a drunken giraffe.

  And there was that pang again…why did I miss her so much?

  “We’ll be landing in a few minutes, your Highness.” Kathy’s voice nudged me out of the introspection into which I’d slipped.

  “Thank you, Kathy,” I said with a smile. She looked a little disappointed that I hadn’t cracked onto her, but that was too bad for her. She’d have to remain disappointed, because it wasn’t going to happen, not while the lovely Keira was still on my mind.

  ***

  There were many official homes belonging to our family, inherited from the ancestral Arlingtons and occupied by all of them throughout the years. The most familiar to the public was Wellington Castle, but the one in which I’d always felt most at home was Richmond Palace. Though its name might be slightly less well known, it remained a dominating and impressive presence, and to me it was simply the site of many good childhood memories. We’d spent a lot of time here when my father was still alive—he’d died of a heart attack when I was only twelve—so this was the place with which I most associated family life. Despite there being the sad memories of my father’s passing, coming back here was still a good feeling due to all those other wonderful memories we’d made.

  This exact moment, however, wasn’t going to make a particularly good memory. I’d just stepped inside, and I was in for a lecture.

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your right to have ‘a bit of fun’,” my mother said. She could pronounce inverted commas with cut-glass precision. “But at some point you have to settle down and learn to be more restrained in your activities. We don’t need another George IV. And I’m not going to live forever.”

  “I don’t even want to think about that,” I said.

  She gave me a look of severe remonstration. “Please don’t use my inevitable demise as a way to excuse your tom-catting it around with any girl without the sense enough to say no to you.”

  “Sorry.”

  I was often taken aback by how well my mother knew me. It could be hard having a mother who was also the Queen; they could seem like two different people, and it was hard to believe that the figure who stood in crown and regalia on state occasions as if carved in stone even knew what ‘tom-catting it around’ might mean.

  “When you were younger,” she continued, “we made allowances. We let you fool around. For example, we let you get all those silly tattoos, because they can easily be covered up. We didn’t want you to grow up without having a childhood and an adolescence like everyone else. The monarchy is changing and it’s important that a future king enjoy the experiences that other people enjoy.”

  “And I appreciate that.”

  “I’ve noticed,” she said icily, her glance shooting daggers at a newspaper front page that featured a photo of me outside a New York bar surrounded by young women; the same bar where I’d met Keira. “The problem is that you’re not other people. Because of who you are and the family which you were born into, you’re able to enjoy those experiences to excess. You don’t have to go to work in the morning, you don’t worry about your mortgage, and life is easy for you. For the moment people tolerate you—especially all the female people— because you’re living out their fantasy and they don’t blame you for it. But the time will come when they hate you for it. The more of your responsibilities that you shirk, the more you take advantage of the privilege into which you were born, the quicker that day will come.”

  “Isn’t that all the more reason for me to enjoy it now?” I said, a smile playing on my lips.

  “No. You might think that a Prince’s job is to wait to become King but there are duties required of royalty. It is a full-time job.”

  “I did four charity events in New York,” I countered.

  “And only gave half a speech at one because you’d made a date with the coat check girl.”

  “That’s not true!” I protested. The girl had been a waitress, and you could hardly call what we’d done a ‘date’, unless getting a blowjob in a private bathroom counted as a date. That was before I met Keira, and I found myself thinking about her all over again; her plump pink lips, her sparkling eyes, her animated words over her future art career. Strange how I could divide my world, and my behavior, into pre-Keira and post-Keira despite our meeting only being brief and cut short by my ‘Drew Ellis’ lie.

  “Be that as it may,” my mother continued. “From now on, your first thought needs to be to your responsibilities.” She gave a little smile that cracked the surface of the monarch to reveal the mother beneath. “Duty before booty.”

  “Please don’t ever say ‘booty’ again,” I said, cringing as every child cringes when a parent tries to get down with the kids.
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  “Did I not use it correctly?” she asked innocently. “How ‘ill’ of me. Have you said hello to your brother yet?”

  I shook my head.

  “Go fetch him. I want to talk to you both.”

  Traditionally, the relationship between royal siblings is a frosty one. There was always the unspoken but implied favoritism towards the first born, and in the case of me and my brother Michael, the situation was exacerbated by our personalities. I was destined to be King, a future that I wasn’t wholly happy about. Michael would’ve dearly loved to be King, but his birthright entitled him to be nothing but a standby—in case of tragedy we need you, otherwise just shut up and stay back there.

  Second-born in a royal family was a profoundly hateful thing to be. It was made no better by the fact that Michael was, by any conventional measure, far more suitable to the task than me. He was controlled, sober and serious, and he always performed all that was required of him. His personality and dedication to his duty and station made him far more suitable for the life of service that a King must live, and of course, infinitely less popular with the public. He was no ‘fun’, whereas I was photographed in all kinds of ‘fun’ situations by the paparazzi every weekend. That had always seemed unfair to Michael, and because of it, he retained a distaste for the British public that was hardly regal, and certainly not kingly.

  I located him in the library, and he looked up as I entered.

  “You’re back.”

  Although Michael was two years my junior, I always felt like a naughty schoolboy being called before the headmaster when talking with my younger brother.

  “Just got in.”

  “I see that you enjoyed yourself in America.”

  Another person might have asked ‘Did you have fun in America?’, but not Michael.

  “Yeah. It was good.”

  “Your face on the front pages of the tabloids suggests that it was slightly better than good.”

  I shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “I’m not altogether sure that you are.”

  I couldn’t escape the feeling that by enjoying my life, I had somehow let my brother down. In fact, I often felt that by existing I had let my brother down. I decided to try a different tack.

  “You know, if you cut loose a little, it could be you on the front page surrounded by pretty girls.”

  Michael pulled an affronted face—it was an expression to which his features were ideally suited. “You actually think I’m jealous of your deplorable escapades?”

  I considered the question. “Well…yeah.”

  He snorted. “I’m not.”

  “I would be if I were you.”

  “Well, I’m not. At this point we could find a better future king by throwing a dart at a phonebook and picking whoever it landed on.”

  I chuckled. Despite being a very serious and often petulant person, my brother could be funny on occasion, whether he meant to be or not.

  “Perhaps if you knew more of the details, little bro,” I replied with an exaggerated wink.

  At this point I would’ve been willing to admit that I was deliberately riling Michael up. I knew he was at least a little jealous of my carefree lifestyle and attitude towards life, whether he would admit it or not. And by the same token and whether I would admit it or not, I was a little jealous of how easily studious adherence to duty came to my younger sibling. Somewhere between the two of us, there was a perfect monarch—one who was liked by his people, conscientious of his duties and happy in who he was. As things were, there were two people: a well-liked dilettante and a disliked but dedicated fusspot, and neither of us was altogether happy with who he was.

  It was in a glacial silence that we made our way back to where our mother waited for us, doing the Radio Times crossword—the quick one, her Majesty had never had a mind for the cryptic clues.

  “Ten letters, sugary quality?” She looked expectantly at us.

  “Sweetness?” I suggested.

  “That’s nine letters, you twat,” said Michael. “Saccharine.”

  Our mother nodded. “Ah yes, thank you…but enough of that language, Michael,” she said. “Now, has anyone else noticed that this place is looking a bit down at heel?”

  These things were relative, but given the sort of standards that a royal family was supposed to keep up—for the sake of visiting dignitaries, politicians and their ilk—Richmond Palace was looking a bit shabby, as far as palaces go. The dust had accumulated on the priceless objet d’art, the silver was looking rather dull, and some of the centuries-old tapestries were starting to look their age.

  “I’ve spoken to Rogers about it,” she continued. Rogers was the head of the household staff, a butler by any other name and a man who would’ve been a general had he been born in a time of war. “And he agrees that we need to take on more staff for general upkeep. Around thirty or so.”

  “What has this got to do with us?” Michael asked. It might be our house, but hiring and firing was Rogers’ domain.

  “As a monarch,” our mother continued, “running this house is like running the country. The real work is done by someone else, either Rogers or that dreadful little man in Number 10, while the monarch is a figurehead—ruler in name alone. But, every once in a while, for the look of things or simply to reconnect so as to remember that we are all one in humanity, it is necessary and desirable for the monarch to get their hands dirty and do some actual work.”

  She looked directly at me and kept going. “I want you to decide exactly who to hire, Andrew, and when that is done, I want you to assign duties to the new staff. Rogers will give you their CVs and so on, and you should take advice from him, but the final decisions about where they work and what they do will be yours. It will be a useful experience of actually doing something.”

  I nodded. “That makes sense,” I said, although I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the prospect of assigning cleaning duties to thirty-odd new staff members.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “I’m being punished for going to that bar in New York, aren’t I?” I asked.

  “Yes, you are,” she said without any attempt to hide it. “But that doesn’t mean that what I said about the monarch getting their hands dirty isn’t true. Which is why I wanted you both to hear it. Society has deemed us above our fellow men, but nature ranks us all together. As does God. And in the end it is them that you should listen to.”

  ***

  Over the next couple of weeks, I trawled through the hundreds upon hundreds of CVs, references, background checks and career retrospectives, and I wondered if God or nature really cared about who I chose to clean the bathrooms. But my mother had a point—it was easy to become distanced from the people, and there were a lot of paintings hung around the place of various ancestors being beheaded that told you exactly what happened when royalty lost touch with the people.

  My first thought on sitting down to work had been: why the hell are all these people so keen to clean up after me? But once I’d re-thought the question with a little more humility, I realized that they weren’t; they just needed a job and this one paid much better than most cleaning positions. I was somewhat proud of the fact that I understood, even if it took me a little time to get there.

  To me there seemed little to choose from between the applicants—how was I to know who would make a good maid? And once I’d decided that, how the hell was I meant to know which of them were best suited to the kitchens and which ones were suited for the bedrooms? What difference did it make? But, with the advice of Rogers, I made the selections, deciding who should be reassigned and who should be brought in for a chat before the final decision. There was only one on whom I went against Rogers’ advice.

  “An American, your Highness?” Rogers arched a thick eyebrow, something he had been taught to do by a father and grandfather who had also been in the trade.

  “I like Americans.”

  Rogers pursed his lips in consideration. “I suppose they are fine in their place. That place be
ing America.” I often got the impression that Rogers still thought of America as ‘The Colonies’. “But this woman has lied on her CV,” he continued. “She’s fudged some dates regarding how much experience she has.”

  “Really? How can you tell?”

  “It is a knack, your Highness.”

  “Well, we’re still having her in for a chat,” I said with finality. “I like the name Keira.”

  Rogers sniffed and cleared his throat. He clearly didn’t think that liking a name was adequate rationale for employment, but he said nothing as I placed the CV of Keira Valencia on the interview pile.

  Of course, I knew that this Keira Valencia was not the Keira I’d met in the bar in New York; the Keira who had occupied my thoughts so much of late…the Keira who had seemed to make all other women so much less appealing. That was far too unlikely. But I liked the name, and the fact that it couldn’t be the same girl didn’t matter.

  “Oh, this is her picture,” Rogers said, bending down to the carpeted floor. “Must have slipped out of the folder. Rather nice-looking young lass.”

  “Let’s see,” I said, holding my hand out. Most of the CVs hadn’t included photos, as appearance simply had no bearing on someone’s ability to work unless they were a twenty-foot Godzilla clone, but a few had come with pictures attached. Keira Valencia’s must’ve been one of them.

  Rogers handed me the photo, and at first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Jesus…it was actually her. Keira Valencia was my New York Keira! But how?

  As my gaze rested on the sparkling brown eyes of the girl in the photo, I wondered what on earth had led to such an enormous coincidence. There was only one seemingly valid explanation—and that was that this couldn’t be a coincidence at all. She must’ve applied for the job specifically to see me again, which was a little crazy but hot as hell, and the thought of that made heat rush to my groin as my cock stirred in my pants. I’d never slept with any of the female staff; that was an unwritten rule of mine…but no rule was absolute.