Page 3 of A Girl and HER Prince
“I’m not!” Livvy said.
She was.
Livvy tried to cover her face.
“We’re going to put all of our scuba diving certification to good use,” Deedee said. “We’ll go cavern diving and waterfall exploring and… well, I’m sorry about this, Livvy… cliff diving too, probably.”
Livvy gasped.
“She’s not an adrenaline junky like me,” Deedee explained, “but she’s going to love it when we’re through with her!”
Livvy glanced up and up and up at the oversized yacht that was docked alongside them. It seemed even bigger now as she peered up into its railings. Deedee got a lot of her trips for free. What strings did she have to pull for this one?
Was there a catch?
There was no way they were getting this superyacht to themselves. That meant they were in for quite the traveling companions—perhaps very rich ones, because who else could afford a price tag that these riches represented? Did that mean that this boating party was as wild as the ones Deedee attended on a regular basis on land?
Livvy couldn’t keep up with those high rollers. She’d never fit in.
But what did she care?
She was going on the trip of a lifetime with her boldest, most adventurous friend in the world, and they were tracking Odysseus’s routes, perhaps listening to historians explainexactlywhat they were seeing. That had to mean that whoever was on this vessel would have to be a geek like her.
She might actually find a soulmate there. This would be the end of watching life through the thick glass of a zoo cage because she could actually live it.
Livvy smiled at the possibilities as Deedee handed the camera phone back to her. By now, Livvy was used to the handoff. Her thoughts had turned to a blur by the time the lens was able to focus back on her friend, so that she could barely comprehend what Deedee was saying when she said, “Venice won’t even know what hit him.”
Wait, Venice?
Oh, no, no, and they were still live! Livvy couldn’t stop this train wreck. She tried to keep her hand steady on the phone while she shook her head at Deedee, whose smile only grew broader at Livvy’s every attempt to stop her.
“I’m sure you all know the guy I used to date,” Deedee said.
Who didn’t? He’d been a regular on Deedee’s travel vlogs to the Philippines and to Alaska, and then he’d been the topic of Deedee’s every discussion after the breakup—the ones that Livvy hadn’t managed to edit out.Everyone knows who he is. Drop him already!
“Yes, our favorite prince is holding this yacht party and I have an exclusive invitation to attend.” She held up an envelope. Livvy held herself back from snatching it from her friend’s hands. No doubt Venice had given her that invitation when they were still dating, and Deedee had the nerve to try to cash in on it?
From what Deedee had told Livvy about her ex’s mean streak, there was no way he was letting her aboard, and Livvy couldn’t say a thing in front of their live audience to make her pull back.
This was going viral—poor, poor Deedee—and for all the wrong reasons.
Chapter Two
Venice just wanted to live a normal life… of course, an argument could be made that this wasn’t exactly normal either.
A musical chorus of giggles burst from the vicinity of the pool on the lower deck. His best friend rammed through the door into the living area between their suites, the sound of partying following him inside before he got the hook fastened on the glass door.
Achilles was a tall muscular man, but even his arms couldn’t carry all those bags of chips and cases of sodas without a few casualties. A bottle crashed against the ground and shattered.
Venice grunted out his annoyance, still staring at the papers on his desk. Their sitting area was encased in a glass dome, so that the world was never far from them. Ponds and fountains trickling merrily next to wicker furniture made the room seem an extension to the turquoise ocean outside.
Paradise was always just out of reach.
Moving around the broken glass, Achilles dropped a bag of chips onto the papers to break his concentration. “Hey, in case you didn’t notice, there’s a party outside. Not that I mind being the only guy with a title out there, but what’s taking you so long?”
Venice had been going over the list of ceremonial duties that awaited him when he got back from this impromptu holiday, however, his attention kept drifting to the islands they were due to visit in the coming days. “Someone’s got to tell the pilot where to sail this ship,” he said.
Glancing up at the duke’s smirk, he realized that his friend didn’t care if they sailed to the moon and back, as long as he could have a girl on each arm and enough cheese dip to choke a horse. “How hard can it be?” Achilles asked. “Give him the name of the island and tell him to go. We’ve got conquests to make.”
