Page 29 of Fake Dating the Prince

“You’ll have to make a statement, of course.” Flip’s mother addressed this to him, but she flicked her gaze over Brayden when she said it as well, as though to let him know she expected him to be there.

Flip had anticipated that, though he didn’t look forward to it. “Of course.”

“And I expect you’ll want to rearrange your schedule to spend some time together.” Flip’s trips home always included a plethora of visits to schools and hospitals, charitable foundations, and so on.

“I don’t want to take you away from anything important,” Brayden protested. “I haven’t been on an official palace tour yet. There are probably tons of things I can do to keep busy.”

“I’m sure we can work out a compromise,” Flip said, and suddenly his parents were looking at him as though he’d grown a second head. “What?”

“What?” his mother echoed, putting aside her tabloid and reaching for a legal pad and pen. “No, nothing, never mind.” She shook her head and uncapped the pen. “Let’s talk about this statement, shall we?”

The drafting itself didn’t take long. The royal publicist—“That’s not a real thing!” Brayden attempted to protest and was wrong again—revised it in a handful of minutes, but he took one look at Brayden’s outfit and sent him away. “You can’t appear on national TV dressed like that, not when you’re representing the Royal House of Lyngria.”

“We’re hardly married. We’ve been dating for five minutes,” Flip protested on Brayden’s behalf. Who cared if Brayden looked like, well, a commoner? He was one. So were most people.

“Is he going to send me back to Bernadette?” Brayden stage-whispered.

“Perhaps I can lend him something appropriate,” Flip suggested. Custom-ordering a new wardrobe seemed extreme.

Cedric blanched. “Good God, no. Do you know what people will say when they realize he’s wearing your clothes? And theywillnotice.”

Brayden raised his eyebrows. “That I’m sleeping in his bed?” he guessed. “Which I’m also doing.”

Cedric appealed to Flip. “This man is not to speak into the microphone.”

Oh no. Flip valued Cedric’s expertise, but occasionally his snobbiness conflicted with his general good intentions. Flip didn’t like to pull rank, but the situation called for it. Narrowing his eyes, he said, “This man has a name, and he will be treated with respect whether or not I am present. That includes the same self-determination accorded to anyone else in this family. Is that understood?”

Cedric flushed guiltily and cut his gaze back to Brayden. “Of course, Your Highness. Mr. Wood, I apologize. That was rude of me.”

Naturally Brayden shrugged it off. “It’s fine, dude, I definitely do not want to speak into a microphone about my relationship with the prince. Like, at all.”

With that settled, Flip let his hackles lie flat again. “That said, perhaps an etiquette lesson or two wouldn’t be amiss. Cedric, if you could arrange that?”

Brayden said, “Hey!”

Cedric allowed the tiniest fraction of a smile.

They left following Cedric’s promise to have a selection of suitable clothing in Brayden’s size sent posthaste to Flip’s apartment in the palace. As they parted, Brayden leaned in, and his shoulder bumped Flip’s. “Guess we better not tell him you lent me your pajamas.”

Flip didn’t bother to stifle his grin.

He made the official announcement just after four, with his parents behind him to one side and Brayden to the other in a smart navy cashmere sweater and wool trousers. But of course the press couldn’t simply leave it at that.

“Your Highness, after your appearance at the Night of a Thousand Lights, many people are drawing parallels between your relationship with Mr. Wood and Queen Constance’s romance with Prince Irfan. Can you comment on that?”

Flip’s parents had gotten engaged three weeks after the ball and married a year later—hardly enough time, he remembered his grandmother complaining fondly, to plan a royal wedding. “As Brayden and I were well acquainted long before the ball, I’m afraid those parallels are rather divergent.”

“Your Highness, you canceled an appearance at the Crown Mining Co. for later today. Can we expect more events to fall by the wayside as you spend more time with Mr. Wood?”

With the ease of years of practice, Flip bit back theoh sod off, I canceled one eventthat desperately wanted to slip out. “The mine appearance has been rescheduled to Monday to accommodate a necessary security check after Brayden’s privacy was compromised at his hotel. I don’t anticipate further emergencies.”

A handful of other members of the press asked questions of varying levels of impertinence, but the whole ordeal was over by four thirty. They spent a few hours socializing in the palace common area with his whole family—Brayden challenged Clara to a game of Sorry!—but when Brayden’s eyelids started to droop, they begged off a family dinner to eat at the table in Flip’s rooms.

“Are you going to make it through dinner?” Flip asked, only half joking, the third time Brayden yawned into his water glass.

Brayden made a sheepish face. “Sorry. I’m mostly over the jet lag, but today’s been all over the place, and I’m still not used to the whole ‘gets dark at two thirty’ thing.”

“To be honest, I’m tempted to retire early myself.”

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