Page 20 of Fake Dating the Prince

Flip agreed and tried not to think about how getting messy with Brayden might not be so bad.

BRAYDENwould happily have spent the entirety of the evening in that back room with Flip, either shooting tequila or shooting the shit, but he knew they couldn’t. He made sure they exited the room one at a time—he could only imagine the field day the Lyngria tabloids would have if someone thought the crown prince had snuck out of the party for a quickie—and resigned himself to an evening of schmoozing and maybe another dance with Flip if he got lucky.

Unfortunately it turned out he had made the dangerous mistake of underestimating his fake boyfriend’s mother.

“Brayden,” she said smoothly as she glided over to him not twelve seconds after he left the storeroom, leaving him almost certain that she’d seen Flip exit a minute before him and that she 100 percent thought they’d been boning. “There you are. I’ve been hoping for a dance.”

Shovel talk! It’s a shovel talk! Abort! Abort!shouted Brayden’s hindbrain. But what was he going to do, run screaming from the queen at her own party? That seemed rude.

Dear Lord, if she’s going to murder me, please ask her to make it quick.Amen.“Of course,” he said, offering his hand and hoping his French accent wasn’t too provincial. Speaking with Bernadette was one thing; this was royalty. “Do you fox-trot?”

Queen Constance did, it turned out, fox-trot, and while Brayden didn’t enjoy dancing with her as much as he had with Flip, she also didn’t scoop out his liver with a rusty spoon, so he was calling it a win.

On the stage, one of the current scholarship students was belting a lively show-tune-type number, and Brayden easily led the queen through the steps. She didn’t offer much in the way of conversation until they were halfway through the dance, but perhaps she’d been lulling him into a false sense of security.

“You’re an excellent dancer,” she commented as he swung them expertly to avoid a collision with a skilled pair of dancers. “When did you learn?”

“Kindergarten, more or less.” He navigated them through an easy spin. “My grandmother had a dance studio, and I used to go there after school. Grandma figured I might as well do the lessons too.”

The queen tilted her head. “A shrewd woman.”

“She would take that as the highest compliment.”

She smiled. “How are you settling in this evening? You seemed out of sorts earlier.”

Ma’am, I was flat-out shitting my pants.He chose his words carefully. “To be honest, meeting Flip’s parents, who happen to be the queen and prince consort of a European country, and then being introduced to the rest of said country as their crown prince’s boyfriend was kind of a lot to handle in five minutes.” The song had come to the key change. It would be winding down soon, but not soon enough to get him out of this. “I should have agreed to meet you earlier, when he asked.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Shit, he shouldn’t have ad-libbed. Now he had to come up with an answer.

It shouldn’t have surprised him that the truth fell out. “Deep-seated commitment issues.”Fuuuuuck.No more drinking tonight. “It’s a long story. But I’m glad I’m here now.”

“Hmm,” said Queen Constance. “Me too.”

Oh God, she knows everything, Brayden thought, but fortunately the song ended, giving him an opportunity to escape. He bowed, and Her Majesty curtseyed and thanked him for the dance.

Brayden had sworn off more alcohol tonight, but he needed to do something with his mouth that wasn’t talk, so he wandered to the outskirts of the room, found a server with tiny plates of some unrecognizable hors d’oeuvre, and took three of them to the first unoccupied table he found.

He was halfway through the second hors d’oeuvre—some kind of fish egg with cheese on toast? With capers? He had no idea, but it was delicious—when he realized that, in fact, he wasn’t alone.

“Oh my God,” he said automatically in English before switching to French. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

The blonde girl in the corner couldn’t have been more than ten, and she was pushed as far into the corner as possible, as though she were becoming one with the wall. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m used to it.”

Brayden pushed his plate toward her. “You want one of these? They’re weird but good.”

She looked like she wanted to say yes but thought she shouldn’t—fair, since she didn’t know Brayden from Adam. But eventually hunger won out and she pulled the plate in front of her. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Brayden glanced around. Where was this kid’s guardian? Did nannies attend things like this? Or maybe they just posted security at all the exits and that was that? Or, shit, maybe she was one of the scholarship kids. Somehow that was even more horrifying. “So. Why are you sitting in the corner?”

She picked a caper off the top of the sandwich thing and ate it. “Why areyou?”

Ouch.This girl knew where to aim. “There are a lot of people here that I don’t know. And the people I do know are important and busy.”

Another caper. “Me too.”

“Well,” he said philosophically, “now we know each other. I’m Brayden.” He held his hand across the table.

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