Page 22 of The Prince's Castaway Baby

I don’t want to call it love — not yet, anyway — but I don’t want to lose him either.

That’s becoming more obvious to me every day. I don’t want there to be a day after this where we never speak again. Part of me wants something more, but I would take anything I can get. If he will be my friend, I will be happy.

That night, he tells me to sleep well and vanishes to his room, and I lie awake for a long time, trying to get that smile out of my head.

CHAPTER 11

JENSEN

After the turtles, nothing seems exciting anymore. Okay, that’s not exactly true. I am still overcome by the beauty of the natural world, but the turtles were an amazing sight, and nothing has beaten it so far.

Billie seems totally convinced that we’re going to get some sightings of some more birds this evening. But the evening is quickly turning into night and we haven’t seen anything in hours and hours — and I’m kind of getting hungry.

“Hey,” I whisper. “I want to go back.”

She shushes me with a glare.

“There’s nothing here,” I continue.

Her glare intensifies, her eyes blazing with the wordsshut up!

“Billie, come on. There’s nothing here and there isn’t going to be.”

“There might be,” she snaps quietly.

I bite my tongue from snapping anything in response. Instead, I just sigh and settle back down into the undergrowth. My legs are getting spiked by some weird plant, and my knees and back hurt. I shuffle to try and get more comfortable, and Billie glares at me again.

“Can you sit still?”

“Sorry,” I mutter and do my best to not move anymore.

Clearly, I don’t do well enough and my shuffling gets too much for her because she sighs, throws up her hands, and turns to me. “Okay, fine. Let’s go somewhere else.”

I sit up, my shoulders sagging in relief. “Thanks.”

“Nothing’s happening here — I’ll let you be right this one time. Let’s go stake out one of the turtle spots again, all right? You like the turtles, don’t you?”

“I’m not five, you know,” I grumble. “But yes, I do like the turtles.”

She gives me anI told you solook, then gets to her feet, offers me her hand, and drags me away. Our fingers almost interlock for a second, and the feeling of it makes me catch my breath. Embarrassed, I play the breathlessness off as a result of exertion, just in case she’s paying attention to me at all.

I don’t think she is, but it doesn’t hurt to be safe.

Billie told me after we saw the baby turtles that it was pretty unlikely that we’d see them again, but I begged her to let us try once more. She wasn’t happy at the idea, but I wasn’t happy at the idea of lying on the ground for hours waiting for nothing to happen.

Never mind that I technically never needed to come along at all.

We walk along the beach and go past the place where we hid out the other day. This time, Billie has a scheme to hide us behind a different bush in the hope that we might see something else.

This spot is slightly more secluded than the other one, and we have to squeeze into place together, our bodies bumping against each other, knees and elbows and hips.

I swallow hard, willing myself to pretend that it’s not that deep. We’re just friends hanging out, after all. A few days isn’t long enough to fall in love with someone.

Is it?

Before this, I would have taken that as a certainty. I should know — I’ve had more than enough flings to last me a lifetime. But with Billie… there’s something thumping away in my chest that feels far more than just superficial.

Yeah, she’s gorgeous, and smart, and funny, and maybe her not knowing who I am has something to do with it too, but I’ve never been with a girl as real as she is.

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