Page 1 of Scandal Queen
One
“Thanks, so much, guys.”
My eyes stung, willing me to close them and take a few minutes of respite while Daisy slept. But I couldn’t shut them. I didn’t want to see the vision seared into my memory. A forest green gaze that stared at me with tortured depths. I didn’t want to remember the kiss of farewell that grazed my cheek.
Goodbye, Princess Leia.
So instead I sat as far forward as the seatbelt would allow and slid my hands around the headrest of the passenger seat. Patrick threw a smile over his shoulder but then quickly turned his attention back to the road. Molly, who in the last seventy-two hours had elevated herself from the position of mere best friend to the rock on which I could cling to while everything else swept away in a storm, lifted her hand and squeezed my fingers.
Seventy-two hours.
Seventy-two hours to think I’d lost my daughter; to lose the man I’d come to love. Seventy-two hours for the British press to go wild at the scent of my blood spilling on the pages of their newspapers.
I glanced to where yesterday’s papers piled in the footwell of Patrick’s car. Images stared back at me of Oliver and I standing in the reception area of King’s hospital. From the front page, his pensive face, his hand holding me up while everything I thought I knew crumpled around me, stared back at me.
Oliver, the future King of England.
Oliver, who some arsehole—who’d been at the hospital for reasons of their own—had snapped with their camera phone so they could sell the moment. Sell my devastation and his response.
I mean why would he come back? His family were the bloody monarchy for Christ’s sake.
It seemed almost stupid now when I thought about it.
The charity worker and the prince; what a damn headline.
My eyes flickered to my daughter again as I checked her leached skin tone. Outside the car, the dark hours of the night hadn’t lengthened into the early rise of the sun. Shadows fell across her face; occasionally the yellow glow of a streetlamp brightened her complexion.
“Leia. We’ll stop at Exeter so we can stretch our legs and grab a coffee.” Molly turned and shot me a smile.
I flinched back against the leather seat of Patrick’s BMW. I didn’t want to get out of the car; didn’t want to be seen. Not in Exeter, not in London, not anywhere ever again.
I rubbed at my chest and tried to push back the scorching ache that had burned into existence days ago.
An ache had arrived the day I met him. He'd created a response in me I'd never felt before. Under the surface of his handsome face lay a complicated puzzle I'd wanted to solve.
But then three days ago when I said goodbye to him it had flared into excruciating pain.
The moment he’d left I’d known it was wrong. I’d reached out to him. I told him I'd made a mistake. Two days of radio silence stretched between us in a never-ending wave of static… My text remained unanswered.
Since then, breathing around the pain had been almost impossible. Every breath hurt. It reminded me of how I’d felt when I’d stood in King’s hospital with him holding me up when I’d thought Daisy was dead.
The two pains were distinctly similar. Except for one sharp difference. I’d have died on the spot if something had happened to Daisy. I know that. I couldn’t exist without her. Yet here I was existing without him, living in almost indescribable torture.
I’d made a terrible mistake.
I’d tried to protect us, but I hadn’t protected my heart.
With the compulsive obsession of someone truly twisted in the head, I grabbed the burner phone he’d given me, and pressed my thumb against the screen. Blank.
I dropped it back in my bag and then lifted my gaze to find Molly watching me, her eyebrows pulled tight together.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back against the headrest. Better to look asleep then to see that shadow of sympathy in my best friend’s eyes.
Sympathy, because I, Leia Lawrence, daughter of a drug addict, resident of one of the poorest housing estates in London, had gone and fallen in love with a prince.
Best to shut my eyes to that.
Better not to think about it.
