At the airport, I bought a magazine to entertain myself with. As I flipped the pages, I landed on a familiar face. My heart stopped. Prince Elias. That was the . . . surely it couldn’t be . . . except, it was. I knew it without a shadow of a doubt. I’d just lost my virginity to the future king of France.
Chapter 1
Five Years Later
Being back in Marbella sucked. My mother referred to this as home, and expected me to as well, but after living in so many places and finally settling in London, I didn’t consider this home at all. The last time I’d been here was two years ago; we celebrated Christmas here instead of Paris. Ever since I started my own event-planning business, I focused solely on work. That was, until a sex scandal rocked my entire world. It had been a few weeks, but after watching everything I worked so hard for going down the drain, along with the tears I had left to cry, I decided maybe going on a bit of a break like my mother suggested wasn’t such a bad idea.
It was confusing and hurtful to have people who claimed to be friends suddenly turn on me. For a few days, I was mostly just angry at my ex-boyfriend for letting the video leak, but it wasn’t his fault that his devices were hacked into and the world was skewed and unfair against women in these situations. It wasn’t like he’d asked for me to leave town and spend my summer in Marbella. It wasn’t like anyone asked me to leave the events I had planned in the capable hands of my mother and assistant while I helped my uncle run the bookstore that he was completely ruining by only stocking biographies and political books, and it wasn’t like anyone told me I’d be getting a huge slice of humble pie when he asked me to take over delivering baskets to the princes, who were back this summer, renting their usual four villas on our property. Nope. No one asked me to do any of this, yet here I was, angry and alone and completely hating every single decision I’d made in the last year of my life.
“My father said he could make the tabloid stories go away,” Etienne said, from the floor, where he was helping me stock new books I’d ordered for the store to liven the place up.
“It’s not your father’s job to erase my mistakes.” I walked over with another stack and placed them on the floor. “It’s my job to stay out of the tabloids. I should have known better.” I sighed. “God, it’s so embarrassing that your father even knows about them.”
“He’s a celebrity lawyer, Addie. He knows about everything,” Etienne said. “In all fairness, you were dating a banking heir. Staying out of the tabloids would have been impossible.”
“Yeah, but filming a sex tape was plain dumb.” I sighed heavily. “I’m an idiot. End of story.”
“Thomas is an idiot. He should have never let it leak and I’m sorry but I don’t believe he had no part in it.”
“Why would you think he had anything to do with that? Because he looked like a fucking god in the tape and I looked like absolute shit?”
“You didn’t look like shit.”
“You watched it?” I aimed a book at him, ready to throw it.
“No,” he said quickly. “I saw the stills on the tabloids though. Everyone did.”
“I hate myself.” I lowered the book and closed my eyes.
“You shouldn’t.”
“I should’ve worn a wig or something.”
“You shouldn’t have recorded it at all.”
“I was having fun with my boyfriend! I didn’t realize the entire world would have access to it.”
“Well, look at the bright side, some families have become billionaires because of sex-tape fame.”
“That is not how they became billionaires, but I see where you’re going with this and trust me, I don’t want my company to get any fame over my nudity.” I covered my face with the book in my hand and thumped it against my forehead. “I just want to fast-forward the next couple of months until a new scandal arises and I’m forgotten.”
“I’m sure it’ll happen soon,” he said. “The prince is in town, after all.”
My heart raced. I lowered the book. “Which one?”
“Didn’t your uncle ask you to take baskets to the villa every night? He didn’t say?”
“No.”
“It’s the summertime, Addie. It’s always the princes’ time here.”
“I really thought they’d be bored with this by now.”
“You thought wrong. It’s the only place they can escape to without the tabloids getting to them.” He chuckled. “I spoke to Aramis the other day and he said he wasn’t coming this time. It’s only Elias.”
“Which one is that one?” I asked, even though his face was seared in my brain. His face and other parts of him, which I wouldn’t discuss with my best friend, no matter how close we were.