Page 26 of Royally Knocked Up
“I know.”
“And what gets my goat about that is, I hadn’t even done anything.” He wasn’t laughing anymore. Anger had begun to simmer — anger that he wasn’t quite sure he knew what to do with. He forced himself to take a deep breath — getting mad at his father wasn’t going to do anybody any good.
He focused on Hailey instead. The sight of her was a balm. His rising temper was eased. He let out a sigh.
“All I did was go out for drinks,” he said. “And that had never been a problem before. I mean, I knew he didn’t think highly of my choice of recreational activities, but he’d never done anything like this. And suddenly I’m someone he can’t even have around, for fear I’ll ruin his chances of being accepted by thepeople of Monteverde. They don’t actually have toaccepthim as king. He’s going to assume the throne no matter what they think about it.”
“You can’t blame him for wanting their approval, though,” Hailey said. Her voice was gentle. “It makes sense to me that he would be trying to control things as much as he can.”
Enzo regarded her for a moment, toying with the question that was on his mind. Did he dare ask it? He felt acutely how much it could hurt him if she gave an answer that he didn’t like.
But the question was needling at him, demanding to be asked, and finally he spit it out. “Do you think he was right?”
“Do I think he was right?”
“I just mean, do you think it was the best thing for his reputation to get me out of the way like he did?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Hailey said.
But that was wrong. Somewhere along the way, it had begun to matter what she thought. Enzo knew that it shouldn’t, and he didn’t quite understand why it did, but he wanted her opinion and he couldn’t deny it.
“Tell me,” he pressed. “If you were in his shoes, would you have done the same thing?”
She looked away. For a moment, it seemed to Enzo as if she couldn’t bring herself to face him, and his heart sank. She was going to stay that his father’s choice made sense to her.
Well, and so what if she did? This was crazy. He didn’t need her approval. He sat a little straighter in his chair. He shouldn’t be allowing himself to get so worked up over the opinion ofa woman who didn’t even come from Monteverde. She didn’t know anything about what the people of this country wanted in a ruler, and she certainly didn’t know anything about Enzo’s family.
Then she looked at him again, and her eyes were shockingly warm.
“I wouldn’t have,” she admitted softly. “I wouldn’t have sent my own child away. Not for anything.”
A tremor passed through Enzo.
He hadn’t realized how badly he’d been wanting to hear those words. How badly he had wanted someone to tell him that his father was overreacting, and that he hadn’t deserved his punishment.
“But,” Hailey added.
“But?”
She bit her lip. “If I wasyou,” she said, “I also would have handled things differently.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You know your father is in the middle of the biggest transition of his life,” she said. “Would it kill you to stay out of the bars and the nightclubs for a few weeks? I mean, why didn’t you just tell him that if it was that big a deal to him, you’d keep a low profile for a while?”
“He didn’t ask me to do that.”
“But you must have known it was what he wanted, right?”
Enzo couldn’t lie to her. “All right,” he conceded. “I guess you have a point.”
“So then, why not just give him what he wanted?”
“I guess I thought it was unreasonable.” He shrugged. “And if I give in now, where does it stop? Am I going to spend the rest of my life listening to demands about what my behavior should be like?”
“That’s probably a little overdramatic,” Hailey said, offering a gentle smile.
Enzo’s irritation vanished. He just couldn’t seem to hold on to any negative feelings when she was smiling at him. That was probably going to be a problem one of these days.
