Page 26 of Her Royal Daddy
I should have walked out. I willed my feet to move, and eventually they did. Exactly six steps. The exact number of steps that separated us from Mazi’s bed. All he had to do was take my hand and lead me there. I tried to shake my head, but he stopped everything when he cupped my chin between gentle fingers and tipped my face up to his.
He kissed me, because of course he did.
It was his signature move.
And yes, it always worked.
Chapter Nine
Mazi
The headlines were sensational. It had taken them exactly twenty-four hours to dig into my past and splatter the advertisement photo from the strip club on the front of every rag in several countries, and pretty much every internet gossip site in existence. They put it right next to the photo of my father placing the crown above my head.
The Crown Jewels and the Crown Jewel. That was one of the smuttier headlines.
I had expected this to happen at some point. My father, however, was livid.
He summoned Norah and me to his quarters early the next morning and didn’t even bat an eye when we arrived together.
He had never looked so frail as while lying in his bed on that small mountain of pillows, still in his blue and white striped pajamas, pain and anger both etched into every line of his face. I think I hated them for doing this to him—that faceless mass of people who had cheered us in our own conference room and snapped their many pictures.
“It’s okay,” I tried to tell him. “It’s just today’s news. Tomorrow, something else will happen, some big celebrity will cheat on his wife, and this will be forgotten. Just ignore it. Let’s have breakfast.”
“It’s not okay!” my father exclaimed, doubling over in the coughing fit that yelling had caused him. “I trusted every single person in that room yesterday, and someone betrayed me. I shall not rest until I find out who, and I will have their job!”
I frowned at Jax, hoping for help, but he just stood quietly by, watching and worrying.
I tried again. “I’m a stripper turned prince, about to be made king, and they only learned of my existence yesterday. This was bound to happen. It’ll blow over. Just let it go.”
Ignoring me, he beckoned to Norah. “You! You must print a retraction!”
“I...” She looked at me, biting her lip as she searched helplessly for a response. I was the one who answered.
“A retraction is what a newspaper prints when they report something that ends up being false,” I explained. “This isn’t false, and Norah can’t retract something she didn’t write.”
Breathing hard, the king frowned deeply, his brow furrowing. When I looked at him this time, I saw beyond the frail, sick old man, and saw a man who was, in more ways than one, an older mirror image of myself.
