Page 86 of Tabloid Princess

“Why aren’t you dropping this? Oliver, go back to your world, to your life, please. Please leave me.”

He lifted my hand, brushing his lips across the back of it. When he lifted his face to mine, the burning need in his gaze bordered on an intensity I didn’t understand.

“I can’t.”

“And when you have your way, and then people find out, and Daisy’s life is ruined because her mother is the woman who couldn’t keep a prince?”

“Why do you even think that?”

“Because it’s the truth. I won’t be able to keep you. One day you will realise how wrong I am, or someone will tell you.” I breathed deep. “You will find a woman who the headlines will love and then Daisy will know you as the man who didn’t stay.”

“That’s bollocks.” Hearing him swear almost made me laugh. “You are ending us before we even get a chance to try.”

“Because there is no us, Oliver. There isn’t.”

“I’m finding utterly ironic that I never get to date anyone because of who I am, yet the first woman I find who I’m willing to consider, has her own rules that crush it before it’s even started.”

He ran a hand though his dark hair, frustrated fingers gripping the strands. “Okay. I can’t have made my case any clearer. If you want to walk away, I won’t come to find you again. I’ll leave you alone.”

I nodded, my throat painfully tight. “Good.” This was it. He’d let me go now…

“But know this, Leia.” His voice dropped a notch while within me the desperate monster we’d created together screamed and tore at my insides. “I will never not be thinking of the girl from Hackney who finally woke me up.”

Eighteen

“So you are going out on a date again?” Nana sat on my bed and watched me put my make-up on.

“Yes.” My voice shook. Oliver had captured me with his words at the lake. It should have been so easy to walk away, but he’d made it physically impossible.

“Twice in one week, after years of nothing.”

I put the wand back inside my mascara and twisted it shut. I didn’t know if mascara was a good thing as I couldn’t guarantee the night wouldn’t end in tears—again.

“Maybe I listened to your advice and decided to take it.” I met her gaze in the mirror.

“Mm.”

“Mm, what?” Nana had a pretty astute mental grip for a woman of advancing years.

“Well, I don’t know. Look at you, Leia. Your face is flushed. I can’t remember the last time you ate a meal that wasn’t a digestive biscuit dunked in tea.”

“It’s a new slimming approach.”

“It’s lovesick. That’s what it is.”

My eyeshadow slipped out of my hand and bounced along the carpet. “Well, as this is only the second time you’ve babysat for me to go out, we both know it’s not that. That would be ridiculous.”

The monster who now never slept snorted.

“You aren’t like other women, Leia. You are either one hundred percent committed or not in it at all.”

“Nana, stop analysing everything! Maybe I’m just having some fun.”

She shrugged, but her gaze still lingered. “Maybe.”

“Are you okay to have Daisy?” I turned then. “I hate leaving her. And if it’s a problem for you, then I won’t go.”

“Leia! It’s not a problem. I’m just making sense of what’s going on. Last week you were devastated because you had the press camped outside the house all because of some silly mistake and now you are going out again.”