Crown Jewels (Off-Limits Romance #1)(3)

I blow my breath out, feeling like an eighth-grade boy caught with my hand inside my boxers.

“I think he’s disgusting. There is nothing impressive about royalty in the age of presidents and prime ministers. Especially not Liam the manwhore. He probably has genital warts.”

I keep my tirade flowing as Amelia perfects my fake lashes.

He is an asshole. I can tell. A rich, beautiful playboy with the morals of a jackass and the conscience of a fly. If that picture of him with two models on his lap and a rolled-up dollar bill behind his ear didn’t prove it, the one with Liam getting a back-rub from that French girl sitting naked on his broad back did. I remember the look on her face as she sunk her hands into those thick shoulders: as if she’d won a prize. Crown Jewels my ass. I bet he’s not even a grower. It might look big flaccid, but it’s probably four inches hard. Royals are inbred. Everyone knows that.

It’s that smile of his that gets me—secretly, of course. It’s just so…cocky. And crooked. And charming. And real. His face is stunning—all regal cheekbones and princely lips—but when he smiles, he just looks mostly nice. Good ole average, nice-guy nice.

I tell myself, as Maggie does my lips, that that’s the only reason I stalk his Instagram account. Because I’m processing. That’s what my therapist, Paul, would call it. Trying to decide if there are any nice guys left. So I guess it does make sense I pick the prince who fan-mailed me that one time, back when I was a college freshman. Paul would say this is a sign I’m moving closer to dating again.

He would—if he knew.

He doesn’t need to, though.

Prince Liam might be hot as hell, but he’s just eye candy. I’m sure the fan mail was a bid to get inside my pants, back when the show was new and na?ve Lucy Rhodes was the hottest thing on TV.

I think of my cat Grey and make a mental note to check on him before we head out to the Carnegie mansion, site of tonight’s “it” party. If life goes according to my plans, I’ll have nine or ten more feline friends before I get my first gray hair.

And no man.

Never, ever again.





*





I used to love this house. I was thirteen when we bought it—and thirteen was young enough, I guess, for me to feel like I grew up here.

Some of the homes on Meadow Lane are weird: all fortress-looking, with big, gray stones and spiky iron fences; or covered with those wooden shingles—not just on the roof, but on the exterior walls, too. Some aren’t anywhere near the ocean, so you have to walk, if the owners even go down to the ocean. Other mansions are surrounded by huge mazes with those boxy bushes. In other words—not beach houses at all.

Our house in Southampton is perfect. White-washed clapboard walls, a wood-shingle roof, acres of lawn. Just lush, green grass, dotted by the occasional weeping willow. There’s a garden on the home’s south side that only grows white roses. Right behind the house, a huge pool with a waterfall in the middle, and a diving board Mom and Dad added when Tripp busted his head open diving off the pool’s side.

When I think about this place, I can taste the wooden stick of a popsicle, feel my lips, all slick and shiny from the frozen goodness. I remember how full my closet used to get, mostly with sandals, back when we were teens. Dozens and dozens—one summer more than two hundred—pairs of sandals. Sunscreens, tanning oils, the scent of swim suit toasted in the sun. All of us lining up in front of the mirror wall in my bathroom, comparing tan lines.

Charley, Mags, Amelia, and I would spend most of July here in Southampton. My older siblings only brought one friend each, but starting that first summer, I got Charley, Mags, and Amelia. Mom even had the designer re-model my room around us four. That’s why, to this day, I have two sets of lilac bunk beds.

And that’s why I came back here this summer.

Because I’m not giving up the Hamptons. I refuse.

I repeat that to myself as we climb into Maggie’s robin’s egg blue Bentley. Charley’s riding shotgun. Amelia hung back so she could sit with me.

“The fab fucking foursome,” Charley sing-songs as Mags starts around the circle drive.

Charley, Amelia, Mags, and I met at Brandon Hall, a private school in the Riverside/Dunwoody area of Atlanta. We’ve been best friends since second grade. But Amelia and I are slightly closer to each other than we are to Mags and Charley. I’m not sure when it happened—over time, I guess—but I’m grateful for it as Mags turns up the music and Amelia leans over the console between our two seats.

“So…you ready to help me get laid?”

The lewd words sound ridiculous coming out of Amelia’s sweet, Southern mouth. I can’t help smiling.

“Always.”

I try to mean it. I try to be happy that I’m out with my best friends; we’re back in the Hamptons for a few wild weeks—all out of school, off work from internships, between other vacations. Amelia hooks her arm through mine, and we’re swaying to the new Bey when the Bentley rolls past the Parsons’ home. My eyes pull to it like a magnet.

Dark.

Thank God.

Amelia gives me a look that says “I told you so” while lip syncing “I ain’t sorry.” When Maggie rolls off the road onto the grassy shoulder beside it, the car’s nose pointed toward the ocean water glinting between houses, I freeze up.