Page 30 of The Wanted Prince

I followed her gaze across the harbor, and there on the beach was a knot of tourists. They’d turned our way, and one was pointing. A glint caught my eye, a phone coming out. I slapped my hat on and spun away.

“Walk quickly, don’t run,” I said. “Keep your face turned away.”

“Don’t run?” Laura’s voice shook. I took her hand.

“If we run, they might chase us. Just breathe and keep walking.”

We did a sort of weird shuffle back to the car, heads down, necks scrunched, shielding our faces. One of the tourists yelled out my name.

“Don’t react,” I told Laura. She made a low sound. We half-jogged the rest of the way to the hatchback, dove in, then peeled out, speeding away. Laura covered her face and leaned back in her seat.

“We’ll need a new car.”

I groaned. “I know.”

“And we need to get out of Barcelona.”

Exhaustion swept through me at the thought of more driving, but Laura was right. Barcelona was hot now. The press would be vulturing every hotel, ready to pounce when we tried to take refuge. We needed to get out of here as fast as we could.

CHAPTER 11

LAURA

We made it to Modena just after midnight, stiff from nearly fourteen hours’ driving. It would’ve been twelve hours, but I’d got us lost. Or our phones had, according to Alessandro. Our signals had both dropped somewhere on the drive through France, and mine was still out, Alessandro’s phone dead.

“I don’t see any lights on. You sure this is the place?” He peered up the drive at the lonely roadhouse.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s too dark to see.”

“I don’t see any signs for an inn. Is this someone’s house?”

I killed the engine. “I’ll go up and check.”

Alessandro frowned deeply. “You can’t go alone.”

I was too tired to argue, so I just got out. I trudged up the drive, and there was the inn sign, hidden in some kind of unruly bush. The lights were all out, but I found a note on the door. My Italian was rusty, but I got the message: the innkeeper had chosen not to wait up for us. The keys to our rooms were on the hall table, and if we needed anything, we could wait till morning.

“Fair enough,” said Alessandro, when I showed him the note. They’d left the wrong key for his room, so we both went to mine, and he took the first shower. I fished out my phone and checked for a signal. None came, so I did the bar dance, waving my phone around, holding it up to the sky. I tried in the bedroom, then in the sitting room, then on the balcony, it finally worked. A chorus of chimes went off. My screen filled with pings. A news alert popped, and I swayed where I stood.

MISSING PRINCE SPOTTED IN BARCELONA?

There was the yacht, and the ocean, and us, two blurry figures out on the pier. The photo was terrible, shot from a distance, somebody’s thumb over half of the screen. Alessandro was turning, his face half in shadow. Mine was hidden entirely, my hair in the way. I skimmed through the article and my racing pulse slowed. It wasn’t a headline piece, just a short blurb, most of its content taken from socials.

I used to be a sketch artist, claimed one tweet. You’d be amazed what a simple jawline can tell you. 99.999999%, this is Prince Alessandro.

No way, said the next one, a reply to the first. I’m a plastic surgeon, and there’s four shapes of jawline…

The next few tweets were all about me: who was I? What was I to Alessandro? Someone had traced out a face that looked nothing like mine, from the shape the wind had made of my hair. My name hadn’t come up, at least not yet. But a text from my brother did, as I stood reading. He’d sent me the article, with a jokey this you? At least, I hoped he was joking. If he wasn’t…

A second text popped up before I could spiral. Seriously, though, did you get home okay? We were worried when you left without saying goodbye.

Guilt spiked up sharp, slicing through my anxiety. I typed and deleted. Typed again.

Something came up. I decided to

Yeah, got home fine. Sorry about

I deleted that too and stood biting my lip. Lying to Hugo didn’t feel right. But what could I say to him that was true, but not too true?

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