Page 9 of The Prince's Green Card Scheme

He stares at me again, then offers me his hand. “Hello. My name is Paul. I’m twenty-seven years old. I’m from Bellamare. I’ve got two brothers who are older than me and I love to travel. My favorite drink is a tequila shot. My favorite animal is bears.”

“Bears?” I splutter, taking his hand. Damn him! That is stupidly cute. “What kind of bears?”

“Brown bears,” he says without thinking. I had almost been expecting him not to have a real answer, so the fact that he does takes me by surprise.

“Okay… Why?”

“They’re just interesting. Like, did you know, they can run up to thirty miles per hour. And they love eating salmon.”

His whole face lights up as he talks, and it gives me a light, fuzzy feeling in my chest. I bet if I got him going, he could carry on for a while. And I have a feeling it would be cute to watch.

But I’m interested in digging more into his life. “Business, then, huh? What does your company do?”

His expression falls and I feel a little bit bad about ruining his fun. “It’s like wealth management, property investment, that kind of thing. We do accounting for rich people, basically.”

“Sounds interesting,” I say weakly.

Humming in vague agreement, he reaches out for his drink, his slender fingers wrapping around the glass. I swallow some more of my own drink as I try to distract myself from thinking about his fingers somewhere else.

As we’ve been talking, we’ve been leaning in closer and closer, our bodies moving like they’re magnetically drawn together.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” he says. “I know it’s boring. But it lets me travel and meet people like you, so it’s worth it.”

I bite my lip again, unable to hold back the giggle.What is wrong with me?“I guess nobody dreams of being an accountant,” I say.

“I think my brother did,” says Paul thoughtfully, tapping his cheek. “Then again, Luca is really boring.”

I laugh aloud at that, deciding there’s no point in trying to hold myself back. I’m having a good time. Why should I pretend I’m not?

“All right — what about you?” he asks, and I take a deep breath. My life isn’t all that exciting, especially compared to his.

“Okay… My name is Chloe. I’m twenty-five. I work as a bartender because New York’s an expensive place to live and I need to pay my bills somehow. What I really want to do is be an artist, but there’s not much money in that. I don’t have a favorite animal, but my favorite color is red. And I haven’t had anyone come back to my place in years because I still live with my mother, and that’s not necessarily a hot look.”

“What’s the shame in that?” he says, genuinely meaning it. “I live with my parents.”

“You do?”

A faint blush rises on his cheeks like he said something he wasn’t supposed to, but then he nods. “Yeah, I do. I don’t think it’s weird at all. Sometimes you do what you’ve got to do.”

I have no reply for that, and I can’t help but notice that we’re so close together that it would be easy to lean over and kiss him right now.

Is that what I want? Is that what this burning inside my chest is?

“Tell me about your art,” he says, breaking the moment. “What do you like to do?”

“I paint,” I say with a smile, excited to talk about it — much like he was when talking about bears.

I hardly ever confess my passion to anyone. They either don’t care or act like it’s a cliché. And I can’t tell if Paul really does care or not, but it feels easy to tell him anyway. Something about the way he’s putting me at ease makes me want to spill my whole life to him.

“In an ideal world, I’d love to have a studio, maybe put up an exhibition of my work in a gallery one day. I really want to make something that connects to at least one person. If just one person really felt something as a result of my work, then it would be worth it to me.”

“Maybe one day you’ll show me,” he says, but this time he doesn’t grin. Instead, he keeps looking into my eyes, like he’s searching for an answer to a question I don’t understand.

It’s like he’s seeing straight into my soul.

And the worst part is, I think I like it.

CHAPTER 5

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