Eli’s pulse soared again, but this time out of apprehension. Was she going to just blurt out to her brother that they’d kissed?
Was their kiss really the best thing that had happened to her?
He couldn’t risk giving her the chance to bring it up. “Your Highness, we’re here on a matter of some urgency. I apologize for not stipulating this previously, but you need to be on social media lockdown. No emails, no Instagrams of the palace, and definitely no Twitter.”
“What? You can’t cut me off like that. This isn’t a police state. Is it? I’m still an American citizen. I have rights, and one of the main ones we hold dear is freedom of speech. If I have to march out of here straight to the American embassy, I’ll do it.” She’d climbed out of bed and gone toe to toe with Elias. Her eyes flashed and her chest heaved and holy hell, she was beautiful all worked up like that.
After clearing his throat, Christian added, “You also need to quit your job.”
Whew. Glad Christian took the lead on that pronouncement. It should at least shift her ire to the prince for a few minutes.
Instead of more fiery anger, Kelsey deflated. The corners of her pale-pink lips drooped. Disappointment muted her like fog rolling off the ocean and blocking the sun. “And here I thought we were making progress.” She crossed over to Mallory and whipped away the curtain. “Stop being ridiculous. We have bigger problems than your sudden, weird shyness. Christian’s family now. Get used to it.”
“He’s not my family,” Mallory muttered. But she did sit down in a chair. Drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them in tight with her arms, though.
Kelsey stayed by the French doors, one hand tight on the gilt handle. Eli hoped she wasn’t about to make a break for it. She’d be safe on the palace grounds, but it’d be harder to keep her true position a secret if she streaked across the formal gardens in her nightclothes.
She put her other hand on the side of her throat as if her head was too heavy to hold up by itself. “Christian, you can’t tell me what to do. Perhaps technically you can, since you outrank me. As my brother, though? Nope. Ask Mallory. She’s tried to boss me around our entire lives. Does it ever work?”
“Almost never,” her sister affirmed in a disgusted tone.
“And, Elias, unless you’re giving me an order that’ll get me out of the way of a bullet, you can’t tell me what to do, either. I’m fairly logical, reasonable. If you talk to me like a person, with, oh, explanations for a request, I’ll listen with open ears and a mostly open mind. Ordering me around? That’ll just make me dig in my heels.”
Eli didn’t dare risking a look at Christian. No doubt his friend regretted the way they’d handled this as much as he did. Why had they charged in, issuing commands? Was it a knee-jerk reflex to Kelsey being an American, rather than thinking of her as a Villani? Or was it an instinct to overprotect because they knew she was the princess?
One thing was undeniable—they’d screwed up. And he wouldn’t wait for Christian to kick off the apologies. Elias needed to do this for himself. For her. To keep the tenuous trust they’d built so far.
“Your Highness, I’m sorry if I came off as high-handed. We were concerned, convinced that every lost second could result in another tweet you fired off.”
Her hands fell to her sides. “What on earth is so concerning? Do you think I’m leaving bad reviews for your country on Yelp?”
Elias bit back a grin. It would draw Christian’s attention if he reacted. “Right now, very few people know we’ve found you. Revealing your return will require considerable strategy. For every one thing we control, there will be a hundred world-wide actions and reactions that are out of our control.”
Batting away his words with her hand, Kelsey said, “A surprise, yes. A headline blip for a few days, but after the big reveal, there isn’t any more news. Then it’s just a private matter as we work out how to be a family.”
Christian, in his own half-assed apology, squeezed her upper arm. “It is considerably more complex than that. You’ve come back to Moncriano at a…tricky time. Our country is caught up in a divide the likes of which hasn’t been seen for centuries. Tensions are high. Everything the royal family does has a ripple effect on those tensions.”
She gathered her hair into her fists and held it on top of her head. The motion pulled her top taut against her breasts, and Elias honestly wondered if he’d get an erection in front of the prince for the first time in his life.
Unprofessional.
Unacceptable.
Almost unstoppable.
He looked away, over to the antique clock on the mantel. It was fanciful; pale-green porcelain with pink roses and gilt curlicues around the edge. Staring at it dropped his lust surge immediately.
Then Kelsey laughed. And Elias realized there was nothing that could tamp down his attraction to her. “Considering I didn’t know anything about Moncriano a week ago, I can easily promise not to weigh in on whatever this is. I’m not qualified to go spouting off opinions.”
Shaking his head, Christian said, “Your mere presence will be an influencer. You see, there’s a vote coming up about our joining the European Union. I presume you know what that is?”
Mallory’s legs fell to the floor, and she straightened. “The grouping of twenty-five nations that came together politically and economically approximately twenty years ago.”
Evidently spouting facts cured her shyness.
It earned her a tight smile of approval from the prince. “One faction sees it as a leap toward the future. The other faction would prefer to cling to the nationalism of the past. Support of the monarchy is a big piece of that.”
Something that looked an awful lot like hope brightened Mallory’s eyes. “If you join the EU, will it dissolve the monarchy?”
It was almost laughable how much these Wishner sisters considered being a princess a problem. In fact, Christian’s mouth twitched and came damned close to breaking into a grin at the ridiculous prospect.
“No, but how we reveal the princess, every statement made about the royal family being made whole again, those will trigger a strong—to put it mildly—response by the monarchial party. It could be seen as us trying to tip the vote. When, in fact, we bend over backwards to not do that. That would, of course, enrage the other side. Nationalism versus opportunism.”
Kelsey hoisted herself up onto the foot of the bed. “I only emailed my boss to explain that I’d be unavailable for two weeks on a family emergency. Then I emailed a profuse apology to the man who’s going to be stuck covering for me. Oh, and I tweeted a happy birthday gif of a cat drinking beer for my friend Priscilla.”
Thank goodness. Of course, Eli would still comb through every post she’d made to check. “At first blush, that seems harmless, yes? But what if someone sees it as a Marie Antoinette moment? That now that you’re a princess, you’ve embraced a life of drunken debauchery and urge your friends to do the same.”