Majesty (American Royals, #2)(104)

“I’ve always been jealous of Beatrice.” Sam kept her eyes straight ahead; they were somewhere in the financial district now, monolithic office buildings rising up on either side of the road. “I fixated on Teddy, because it was easier to think about him than the fact that Beatrice is the future queen and I’m the useless one.”

“You’re not useless,” Marshall said heavily.

“I would say that I wish I could take it all back, but that’s not true,” she concluded. “Because if I hadn’t asked you to fake a relationship with me—no matter how messed-up my reasons were—I would never have realized that I want to be with you for real.”

There was a protracted silence. Sam swallowed. It would be okay, she told herself; at least she’d tried.

Then she heard the click of Marshall unfastening his seat belt. He braced a hand on the front seat and began climbing up over the central console.

“Seriously?” Sam veered wildly into the other lane, just barely managing to avoid colliding with a taxi. A chorus of angry horns shouted at them.

“Sorry.” Marshall lowered himself into the passenger seat. “But if we’re really having this conversation, then I need to be able to see your face.”

“I—okay.”

“Sam, did you really mean everything you just said?” he asked.

She darted a fearful glance over, but couldn’t read his expression. “Of course I meant it,” she told him. “I’m done with pretending, or performing. And I understand if you can’t forgive me. I just…I needed to say all of this, before you ran off to Orange and I never saw you again.”

Marshall turned to look out his window. For a heart-wrenching moment Sam thought he was done with her; and she steeled herself to say goodbye.

“Pull in there.” He gestured to a blue sign down the block that read PUBLIC GARAGE.

“What? Why?”

“Because,” Marshall said, and now there was a note of frustration in his voice, “I can’t kiss you properly while you’re driving, and we already went through this in the carriage, and god help me, why do we keep having these conversations in moving vehicles?”

It was the worst driving of Sam’s life. She cut across a lane of traffic, then bumped over a curb as she pulled into the garage—driving only with her left hand as her right reached hungrily for Marshall. She found a spot on the second level and pulled in diagonally, wrenching the car into park and killing the engine.

They were both out of their seat belts in an instant. The car’s interior lights dimmed, and the parking garage was shadowed, but the darkness didn’t slow them down. Sam leaned so far in to Marshall that she was almost in his lap, throwing her arms around his neck to hold him tight. “Oh my god,” she whispered, laughing, “where are we?”

“I really don’t care,” Marshall replied, leaning over the central console to kiss her.

His hands tangled in her hair. Sam made a pleading, anguished sound low in her throat, a sound she’d never heard herself make before. She grabbed Marshall’s shoulders and pulled him impatiently forward—

The car’s horn blared, loud and angry, into the interior of the garage.

They broke apart, laughing and breathless and utterly unselfconscious. Sam glanced up and saw that Caleb was standing behind the car, his arms crossed. He’d clearly tailed them in one of the other palace cars. His jaw was set in what he probably thought was a stern expression, but Sam saw the amused fondness beneath.

She shifted, and the seams of her ivory dress dug into the side of her body. She wondered, suddenly, what came next.

For months her attention had been fixated on this day. First because she’d resented Teddy and Beatrice, and then because it had become a deadline—because she and Marshall had only ever agreed that he would be her wedding date, and she hadn’t known what would happen once the wedding was over.

“So…we’re okay?” she asked, because she needed to hear him say it aloud.

“We’re okay.” Marshall shook his head, his eyes dancing with amusement. “I can’t be angry about your ridiculous quest to make Eaton jealous. Not when it’s the reason we found each other.”

Relief flooded Sam’s chest. “What now?” she asked. How did you start dating someone for real, when your entire relationship had been for show? Did you have to rewind all the way back to the first date?

Marshall glanced over as if he heard the thoughts swirling through her brain. He reached out a hand and Sam took it, lacing their fingers.

“I was thinking, do you want to come back to Orange this summer?” he asked. “There’s so much we still haven’t done—I want to take you hiking and to the beach in Malibu, and Rory says she wants to hang out. She’s a big fan of yours,” he added, and smiled.

Sam’s heart lifted, but then she remembered the promise she’d just made.

“Actually…Beatrice wants me to do a royal tour for her. To take over the one that she and Teddy were supposed to go on.”

She’d revealed more than she’d intended to with that statement, but she knew she could trust Marshall. He nodded, not pressing her for details.

“Of course you should go,” he agreed. “But your tour will pass through Orange, won’t it?”

“I think so.” If it didn’t, Sam thought, she would just have to add a few tour stops.