Page 2 of Fake Dating the Prince

Flip handed him the tiny remote, bemused. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d let someone schedule his life. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do right then, and if something could hold his attention, the flight would pass more quickly. “Rivet me.”

Flip was three episodes intoDirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, deeply invested in anyone on the show realizing the girl was in the dog, by the time Brayden came around with dinner. He didn’t ask which meal Flip preferred—though he probably didn’t need to, since the in-flight meal options didn’t vary much—but he did ask, “Good choice?”

“That depends.” Pulling the headphones down around his neck, Flip met Brayden’s eyes. “How many seasons are there?”

BRAYDENbid goodbye to his favorite guest at the jet bridge at Charles de Gaulle. He was polite—some would even say reserved—but he treated everyone well, and Brayden had a bad habit of tossing decorum to the wind in order to win a smile now and then. He couldn’t help it.

“Safe connecting flight,” Brayden said cheerfully, and Antoine Philippe, seat 3A, lifted his fingers in a wave and smiled as he left.

Joanna, the head flight attendant, elbowed him in the side when first class had emptied. “So he’s cute,” she whispered.

Brayden grinned as the business-class passengers began to depart, and varied his farewells between English and French. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he told Joanna out of the side of his mouth. “My interest in 3A is completely professional.” It wasn’t even a lie—the man was good-looking, with his smooth amber skin and movie-star-quality smile, but Brayden had a policy of leaving work at work.

“Checking out his butt as he went by is a funny definition of ‘professional.’”

Brayden covered his laugh with a cough. She’d caught him there. “What can I say? Some days I love my job.”

Joanna shook her head minutely as business class finished disembarking and the main cabin passengers started their exit. “Where are you off to this time?”

“Lyngria.” A tiny country tucked between Germany and Poland on the Baltic Sea. In his three years as a flight attendant, Brayden had never been to a Baltic country, at least not beyond the airport. “I’ve got three weeks, but I don’t know. It’s not a big country. I might make my way over to Berlin or Prague.”

“You said that when you went to Madrid,” Joanna pointed out. “And Sarajevo. And Budapest. And Zagreb. Every time. ‘Oh, if it sucks, I’ll just go back to the last place I loved.’ And every time you love the new place even more.”

Brayden shrugged. “What’s not to love?” Every country, every city had a different vibe, a different culture, a different take on what made life worth living. He didn’t have this job to ogle hot rich guys. He was in it for the travel. “Bon voyage,” he added to a departing five-year-old who was hiding her face in her father’s shoulder. She waved shyly, and a pang hit him. He missed working with kids—not a lot of those in first class.

Deboarding finished, and Brayden and the rest of the crew completed their checks.

“One man left behind,” Luis said mournfully, holding up a stuffed animal that had been loved into ambiguity. “42B.”

Brayden took it while Joanna looked at the passenger manifest. “What do you think? Is it a sheep?”

Squinting, Luis proclaimed, “A capybara.”

Before their argument could devolve into further silliness, Joanna made a sharp noise. “They’re off to Lyngria as well,” she told Brayden. “Might be on your flight, if you make it off Standby. You want to play hero?”

Brayden clutched the maybe-opossum to his chest. “I accept the assignment.”

By the time he’d retrieved his wheeled bag, he didn’t quite have to run to make it to the next flight, but only because he had the luxury of flagging down a cart—he was still in uniform and with the possibly-panda, he was technically on official airline business—to drive him across the sprawling nightmare spiderweb of Charles de Gaulle.

He made it to the departure gate just as general boarding began and made his way to the counter. “Room for two more?” He waggled the dubious bear’s paw.

In the boarding line, the little girl who’d waved at him raised her head from her father’s shoulder. “Alain!” Well, damn—that didn’t do much to help figure out what kind of creature it was. She let go of her father and stretched out her arms toward Brayden.

“He thought you might get lonely without him, so he asked me to track you down,” Brayden told her in French.

The girl’s father looked over, startled at first and then visibly relieved. “Thank you, monsieur. You’ve saved us some very difficult nights.”

Brayden waved off his thanks as the gate attendant checked the flight ability. “You’re in luck—one seat left, in business class.”

Perfect.

Brayden waited for the paying passengers to finish boarding, and then he wheeled his suitcase down the jet bridge. Just two short hours and he’d be on the ground in Virejas, ready for his next adventure.

This flight was too small for a proper first class. Brayden had seat 3B—a slight disappointment, since he wouldn’t be able to check out his temporary home from the sky, but he’d live. He rolled his bag to his seat and lifted it into the overhead bin—

Only to realize the man in 3A looked very familiar.

“Fancy meeting you here.” Brayden smiled and folded himself into the chair. So much better than the jump seats. “Hope you don’t mind slumming it with me for a few hours. I promise I can occupy myself.” He held up his phone as if for proof.

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