The Billionaire Prince’s Fake Girlfriend by Leslie North

19

Afew days later, after she’d returned in disgrace from Reinia, after Martha had offered her a shot at the investigative journalist position, and she’d decided to keep Jess a secret, Jane sat at her desk. She’d already filed her article for the day, hurrying through it by rote. Now, she was working on a different article for the position. She still wanted to be an investigative reporter, no doubt about it. She just needed to cover something else.

She pressed a hand to her chest. She still missed Ben, even though she was angry with him about how things shook out. And now, she had other things on her mind... that afternoon’s medical appointment at the forefront. She took a sip from the mug of now-tepid tea on her desk, wincing at its bitterness, then looked at the words on her screen.

After spending over a week in Reinia, and meeting with Ben’s friends Erik and Nic, she was sketching an article on the changes that were happening to the island kingdoms beyond England. Nic’s family was on the forefront of massive changes to healthcare policy. Erik’s kingdom of Fervia was becoming an economic trade powerhouse. And the more she dug into Reinia, the more she was impressed by Ben’s father.

He may have cheated early in his marriage, which was terrible. But his father, Ben’s grandfather, had been a capricious ruler, one who had thought of the monarchy in old-school terms, who favored the nobles of the island and treated the “commoners” as mere servants to the whims of the crown. Ben’s father’s choice to abolish royal arranged marriage wasn’t just because he was upset about his own marriage... it was because he didn’t think that the noble families should be jockeying for positions of power. It was the first of a number of policies the then-young king had created, which had caused an uproar among the Reinian nobles.

From there, he’d actually strengthened the kingdom’s parliament and the position of prime minister. The monarchy still had power, but the people had power now, too. It had been a momentous achievement. If Ben’s speech to the hospital, impromptu as it was, was any indication, then Ben was going to follow in his father’s footsteps, championing the needs of his people.

She wondered if Ben was going to reconcile with his parents. They had a sad past at this point, but she had to have hope that they would be able to fix things enough to move forward together in the future. She knew that Ben’s relationship with his mother meant too much to him for him to throw it away. She also wondered how things were going with Jess. It would change the woman’s life.

Jane harbored no illusions that Ben was going to contact her again. Even if he gave her the green light to write about Jess, she wasn’t sure she wanted that story anymore. It felt... wrong, somehow. She still needed to think about that. But again, she had her own problems right now.

She frowned as she heard a commotion, starting from the far edge of the bullpen, then getting closer as people started murmuring and pointing. She glanced up to find a huge bouquet of flowers, a veritable duck blind, slowly weaving its way through the cubicles. The person carrying it was making weird choking noises, she noticed, her eyes narrowing.

The bouquet sure had a lot of chrysanthemums woven in.

By the time the large arrangement had made it to her cubicle, the delivery person was sneezing up a storm and all but dropped the large vase on her desk. He then stepped aside, wiping at streaming eyes.

Ben.

She blinked. She did not expect him. And she certainly did not expect him like this.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, stunned.

“Sneezing, mostly,” he said apologetically. His eyes were rimmed in red, and he pulled out a monogrammed handkerchief to blow his nose. “You had to love chrysanthemums, didn’t you?”

She was overwhelmed by feelings. She’d missed him, and he was here. But she was also angry at him for how they’d left things. He’d accused her, and yelled at her, and sent her away. She crossed her arms. “What did you think these chrysanthemums were going to accomplish?”

He had the grace to look sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, his eyes imploring. “These flowers are actually the first in a multistep process of apology,” he said in a low voice. “If you have a moment, I’d like to officially start the groveling.”

She fought to suppress a smirk. She did like his dry sense of humor, but he’d broken her heart. She wasn’t going to just roll over, let all be forgiven, just because of some flowers, a cute smile, and a quick wit. She glanced around to see everyone staring at them.

It was then she realized that he didn’t have his disguise on... his curly dark hair tumbled against his collar and shoulders rather than being constrained in a tight man bun, and he didn’t have the fake glasses he’d sported when he first started “working” at the paper. The flowers had camouflaged him this time as he’d made his way to her cubicle, but now that he’d put them down, he was exposed for the whole bullpen to see. She sighed.

“We can’t have this conversation out here,” she said.

“Maybe you could leave early?” he asked hopefully.

She shook her head. She actually was leaving early today; she’d already negotiated for that. She didn’t want to think about that right now, though.

“Why don’t we see what your next step is in this ‘multistep process’, and then we’ll move from there,” she said, her voice almost prim. “Hold on a moment. Not too close to the flowers,” she said, and he took a step back.

She quick-stepped to Martha’s office, knocking on the doorframe.

“Martha? Is it all right if I use one of the conference rooms for a moment?”

Martha had apparently been watching the whole circus through the window of her office, and her eyes rounded. “Is that... are you telling me that ‘shadow-the-job Ben’ has been Prince Ben of Reinia? How the hell did I miss that? I’m going to kill Holly!”

“It’s a long story,” Jane said. “One I will explain at length later, but right now, I just need to see what he wants.”

Martha nodded quickly. “Take conference room A,” she said. “And you are totally telling me everything!”

Jane nodded her thanks, hurriedly returning to Ben and gesturing to him to follow her. She led him to the small conference room, ignoring the stares and Emily Parker’s slack-jawed staring. She closed the door behind them, and then, when she saw that most of the bullpen was staring at them like a tropical fish tank, she closed the blinds. Finally, they had some privacy.

She turned to him. “So. You’re apologizing,” she said, leaning against the table and looking at him warily. “What are you apologizing for, exactly?”

He sighed, and took a step closer to her, his arms outstretched like he wanted to hold her. And a big part of her wanted exactly that: for him to wrap her up in his arms and not let go. But they needed to talk this out. He stopped just short, pulling his hands back and sighing.

“I never should have spoken to you the way I did,” he said. “You had every right to talk to my mother first, to get the facts straight, before you talked to me. You didn’t owe me anything.”

She let out a slow exhalation, feeling tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

“And I shouldn’t have accused you of doing everything just to further your career,” he continued. “That was a terrible and ugly accusation. You had only ever helped me. I know that you’re tenacious, and I know you’re ambitious. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I also trust you. I know that you wouldn’t publish anything if I didn’t give you an explicit go-ahead. My only excuse was that I was angry, and I felt betrayed, and I lashed out. You were there, and you caught some of that backlash.”

She sniffled. “You hurt me, Ben,” she said, her voice quiet but firm.

He looked agonized. “I know,” he said, his voice rough and broken. “I am so, so sorry.”

She studied his face. It seemed like she knew every curve, every feature. She could see his sincerity writ large, from his soulful dark eyes to the iron clench of his jaw.

“Don’t do it again.”

He nodded. Then he held out his arms again, giving her the opportunity to make the choice: accept him, or turn him away.

She swallowed hard. Took a deep breath, like she was going to skydive.

Then she stepped forward, moving into the circle of his embrace, resting her cheek against his broad, hard chest. She felt his heart beating beneath her ear, pounding quickly and erratically, as his arms closed around her tightly, as if he were afraid she’d vanish if he let go. She snuggled against him, feeling safe and grounded and cared for.

“I have missed you,” he said, kissing the top of her head. She pulled back enough to look him in the eye.

“I missed you, too,” she admitted.

They stood like that for a few moments, just existing together. Then she felt as well as heard him sigh. “I found Jess,” he said.

Now she fully took a step back. “How did that go? Are you all right?” She knew that had to be momentous.

He gave her a small half-smile, more rueful than happy. “It... did not go as planned,” he admitted.

“Is she all right?” Jane pressed. “What happened?”

“She’s fine. She just doesn’t want anything to do with the Reinian monarchy,” he said, shocking Jane. “It turns out, she knew about my father—our father—for years now. And there were a lot of extenuating circumstances for the secrecy... it would have been painful, possibly even dangerous, if the truth had come out sooner. She wants to stay relatively anonymous. She has a good life—she’s a physiologist over in Manchester. She doesn’t want any scandal, especially anything that might hurt her mother. I can’t say that I blame her.”

Jane nodded. She hadn’t thought of that, but given what she knew of the queen, and the fact that the queen was part of the alleged cover-up... it made sense. Jane was gratified her impression of the queen had proven right.

“She helped me see things I hadn’t realized,” Ben continued. “I’ve always hated lies. My experience with Alessandra calcified that into an immutable fact: lying was tantamount to evil. The truth was meant to be a freeing thing, something to strive towards. When I found out about Jess, I thought that my father, and then my mother, had both lied to me and tricked me. They not only made a fool of me, but they were betraying my father’s other child. I was so fixated on righting that wrong, and that being the only interpretation of what I knew, that I was blind to the harm I could’ve caused.” He sent her a lopsided, rueful smile. “Turns out I was being a self-righteous prick about the whole thing.”

“That’s a bit harsh,” Jane said.

Ben laughed, shaking his head. “Actually, Jess basically said as much.” He grinned. “I like her. We’ll have to be quiet about being siblings, but I look forward to keeping in contact with her. She is still family.”

It made Jane feel good, that Ben had found his sister, even if it wasn’t in the manner he’d thought.

“I’m just sorry I can’t give you that story,” Ben said. “I know it meant a lot to you—”

“Nonsense,” Jane cut him off. “I’d already done a lot of thinking about that. And the more I think about it, the more I know I want my stories to reveal the truth to help others. If I’m just exposing others in my stories to help myself and my career, then I’m doing something wrong. That’s not why I wanted to go into investigative journalism at all.”

He looked at her, stroking her cheek. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I fell in love with you.”

It was like her heart stopped. She stared at him in shock.

He cursed below his breath. “That’s... I didn’t mean to admit that quite so quickly,” he said. “I don’t... I know it’s going to take you some time to trust me again. But we got so close in the past weeks, and I just care so much about you. If you could see a way to give me a second chance...”

She smiled, even though a few tears tumbled down her cheeks. “I love you, too,” she said.

Now it was his turn to look stunned. “You do?”

“You’re passionate, you want to help people, you believe that it’s necessary for good to fight evil,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “Sometimes you jump the rails a bit, admittedly. But your heart is huge and you want so much to do the right thing, and I adore that about you.”

He smiled, then framed her face in his hands, kissing her like he needed her more than he needed his next breath.

After the long, promising kiss, he pulled away. Their breathing was ragged, and she smiled at him sweetly.

“I love you,” he repeated. “Can I take you out, away from here? I just want time with you.”

“As it happens, I do have the rest of the afternoon off,” she said, her heart beating a little more rapidly.

“Then let me take you out,” he said. “Or... maybe... back to my hotel?”

There was hope, but also space... like he didn’t want to make assumptions, even though his eyes were hot and hopeful.

She smiled. “I imagine we could do that,” she said, feeling some heat herself, but shook her head. “But not right away. I have something to do first.”

“What is it?”

She looked at him, swallowing against the lump in her throat.

“I have a medical appointment that I’ve been putting off.”