Page 17 of Royal Extra After

“I am a champion of you, Princess,” Benson said. “And I know you need to do this.”

When Benson got out and opened the door for her she hesitated. “Are you sure about this?”

“Do you still have questions about what happened?”

The princess nodded. “Yes.”

“Then go ask them,” Benson said as he opened the door wider.

This time the princess did get out. “Okay,” she said, gathering her courage. “You’re right. I can do this.”

Benson smiled back at her. “Absolutely.”

But as the princess started walking and got closer to the castle, self-doubt started to creep in. “What am I doing?” She stopped and looked back at their car.

“Can I help you?”

Startled, the princess turned back around and saw the same security guard walking toward her that she’d been stopped by the first time in Central Park.

“Hello, Hank,” the princess smiled a nervous smile.

“You’re back?” Hank asked, confused. “Your name wasn’t on the list to be on set today.”

“Surprise,” the princess said, trying to act excited and not as scared as she felt to see Ned again. “I’m here to see Ned.”

Hank nodded. “It’s no problem. I’ll call Ned right now and get you cleared.”

But that’s when the princess saw Ned walking toward them. His expression gave nothing away. He was all business, wearing another black baseball hat.

“It’s okay, Hank, I got this,” Ned told the security guard. After Hank walked away they just stood there for a moment staring at each other. Ned’s face was guarded. She couldn’t tell if he was pleased or upset to see her.

“What are you doing here?” he finally asked.

She cleared her throat to find her voice. “I talked to Gary.”

“I fired him.”

“I know,” the princess said. She struggled to find the right words to say. Finally, she just started talking fast. “We were driving to the airport, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, instead of being at JFK, Benson had brought me here.”

Ned nodded. “So, this wasn’t your idea to come?”

“No,” the princess said with conviction, but when she thought she saw a flicker of disappointment in Ned’s eyes, she quickly continued. “But I did want to talk to you.”

“Okay,” Ned said.

Silence.

The princess felt like a fool. “This was obviously a mistake.” She turned to leave, but Ned reached out and took her hand.

“Wait, please,” Ned said. He took a deep breath. “Don’t go. I’d like to talk to you, too. You just really caught me off guard. I didn’t plan to ever see you again…”

“And would that have mattered to you?” the princess found herself asking before she could stop herself. She slowly pulled her hand away from his and held her breath, waiting for his answer.

“Yes, it would have mattered,” Ned said, looking deeply into her eyes. “It would have mattered very much. I am truly sorry for everything that happened with the press. I don’t expect you to forgive me. It doesn’t matter how this happened or whose fault this is. Ultimately I’m in charge of this movie. I made you a promise, and that promise wasn’t kept. That’s on me, and I take full responsibility for that.”

The princess wasn’t sure what she expected, but Ned surprised her by owning up to what had happened.

Ned hurried to continue. “Our publicist is working on a press release to tell the press this was all a mistake and none of it was true. We’re going to say you were just randomly walking by, and we took that quick picture and then used it for a fake story we fed the press to get publicity.”

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