The Billionaire Prince’s Fake Girlfriend by Leslie North

3

He had forgotten the kiss, for the most part, by the next day. Or at least he tried very hard to forget it. They’d had to actually work, which helped. Jane had to write an article on the rise of charcuterie board chic, which then involved sending him to the shops to grab various samples of cheese and meats, which was a bit insulting. He thought that, once she’d learned about his true purpose and had agreed to help him, he could just sneak down to the records room to his heart’s content, but no.

“You need me… and I need some brie and some gouda,” she’d said with a wry smile. “Don’t want people to think you’re not really an intern or whatever, do you?”

So here he was, a Crown Prince turned errand boy. On the plus side, he’d also helped her on another article on low-level celebrities who were offering personalized “video greetings” for pay, which was marginally more interesting, and made him wonder if perhaps he should get in on the gig as a lark.

As a result of all his tasks, there was very little time for the two of them to sneak over to the records room where he could spend more private time with Jane. Not that the purpose was to make out with Jane, he quickly chastised himself. He just wanted to get the information he needed and wrap up this mystery. To make matters worse, for the brief time period they’d been able to peel away and go through more past articles, they hadn’t escaped Emily Parker’s smug grin and wiggling eyebrows.

Ben suppressed a groan. Now, there were whispers throughout the department that he and Jane were somehow involved. He was irritated and flustered by this blatant falsehood. He knew Jane was absolutely right—having Emily dig into the true meaning of their records room rendezvous would be disastrous. But ever since that kiss, he’d found himself thinking of Jane. Specifically, of her lips against his, the heat of her body in such close proximity, the scent of her perfume. He hated lying, period. This was ten times worse, because he knew logically none of it was real, yet his body seemed to have missed the memo.

Jane, on the other hand, found the whole thing terribly amusing, and his own perturbed response only seemed to heighten that response. He wondered if she was as affected by the kiss as he was, then winced. It probably wouldn’t do to find out.

“C’mon boyfriend,” she’d cajoled, with that loud, infectious laugh of hers. “Let’s call for some pizza.”

Which is how he found himself in her apartment, surrounded by sticky notes, legal pads, and both of their laptops open. She had a tiny efficiency flat, with a dinette table that was littered with newspapers and files that she swore she had organized in her own special way, despite the fact that it looked like an unholy mess to him. They had the pizza box open on the full-sized bed. Their laptops were pushed off to the side, their screens gleaming.

It wasn’t how he thought he’d get in her bed, he thought cheekily, then gave himself a mental smack.

You are not getting in her bed, idiot.

The fact that they were both sitting on the bed, backs to the wall, sides pressed against each other in a companionable way might have his body developing ideas of its own, but he was a determined man. He could keep his body in check.

Until she licked her lower lip. He suppressed a groan, forcing himself to turn back to the list.

“Do we really have to go through every name?” he complained. “And do you have to take all those notes?”

She raised a well-manicured eyebrow. “Yes, we really have to,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Notes are the key to keeping our information organized. I don’t want to accidentally overlook or forget something because I didn’t write it down. Besides… good grief, it’s only, what, thirty or so?”

“I know!” He groaned. The number seemed ridiculously high.

“You need to learn to cultivate some patience.” She grabbed a slice of pizza—artichoke hearts and goat cheese on her side, three kinds of meat on his—and took a large, unceremonious bite.

He told himself he was only focusing on how quickly she was devouring the food, not that her lips were full and a deep, dusky rose color, even though he was sure any lipstick she’d worn had vanished by now. He swallowed his own bite. “This is going to take forever,” he tried again. “Can’t we just narrow down the list? To just women whose names start with K?” He glanced at the list she’d scrawled down. “Her letter was just signed with the letter K. She said that she’d come back home to England and visited a doctor here when she suspected she was pregnant. The doctor then provided confirmation. I think women with names starting with K are less than a third.” He’d had no idea so many women’s names began with a K, or that so many of them were in high society.

She held up a finger, making him pause as she continued chewing and then swallowed. “The thing is, what if K isn’t her first name? What if it’s her last name? Or a nickname? Or, I don’t know, a code?” Jane shook her head. “Nope. It’s a pain, I know, but the devil’s in the details. We stick to the plan.”

He sighed. He knew she was right. That said, he couldn’t help being impatient. His half-sister was out there, somewhere, alone. Not knowing her true parentage. Who knew what kind of life she was living? She could be a royal, if his father hadn’t bloody well lied and kept her hidden!

And what if this wasn’t the only half-sibling his father had sired? What if this was just the tip of the secrecy iceberg? His stomach fell at the thought.

Jane made a low, sympathetic noise. “Oh, I know that look,” she said. “Again, patience. I know it feels like it’s taking forever, but if we’re methodical, trust me, we’ll get it done. Okay?”

He sighed. Jane was right on that front, at least. Left to his own devices, he’d be stuck. She knew what she was doing. He just had to trust her.

Considering he hadn’t known who she was two weeks ago, the fact that he trusted her at all was monumental. And he trusted her more than he did people he’d known for years. He was self-aware enough to realize he was attracted to her, but he’d fallen for someone who had lied to him before, and he’d learned his lesson the hard way. This went beyond physical attraction to something personal, something reassuring. Something he wasn’t quite sure he understood.

They finished the pizza, then washed up and stretched out on the bed, respective laptops and papers in hand. “All right,” Jane said, rubbing her hands together, cracking her interlaced knuckles, and poising her fingers to type. “All right. Time to do some digging. We’ll figure out who was there, what kind of women they are, and how they might’ve crossed paths with your father. We’ll get some likely candidates, then we’ll do more individual searches and see what was happening to them in the subsequent months—if any of them vanished, or had babies in the right time frame. Who’s first on the list?”

“Abigail Cartier,” he said. “We can probably strike that one.”

Jane frowned. “Why?”

“Because she’s married,” he clarified.

“So was your dad,” Jane pointed out. “That might not have been a deciding factor.”

Ben winced.

“I’m sorry,” Jane said. “I didn’t mean to be so blunt. I just...”

“No, you’re quite right,” he said. “She most likely was married at the time, or else she could go to a Reinian doctor. That said, it seems like Abigail Cartier’s husband was at that party. They never had children and seem to have been very in love.” He grimaced. “We can keep her on the list, though, I suppose.”

“We’re working with the assumption that the child survived. If ‘K’ was married, then presumably she either divorced her husband and had the child on her own, or she raised the child with her husband. If Abigail Carter didn’t have any children, the point’s moot,” Jane said, striking the name from the legal pad. “I think she’s safe to cross off the list. Who’s next?”

“Lady Katarina Edmondstone,” he said, then remembered something. “Actually, you can take her off the list as well.”

“Her, too?” Jane said with disbelief. “Why?”

“Because I know her personally,” he clarified. “She’s ninety if she’s a day, which would’ve made her almost sixty back then. If she’d had a child with anyone, trust me, it would’ve been a different kind of newsworthy.”

Jane let out a burst of laughter. “Okay, good point.”

He liked the sound of her laugh. She was almost irrepressibly cheerful and quick with a smile or a laugh. Even in the mornings, in the office, before she’d had any sort of coffee or tea. It would’ve been irritating with most other people, but he found her happiness contagious. Like now, when she was cheering him out of his doldrums—which, considering the situation, was a neat trick.

“How about...” Jane looked at the list. “Diane St. John? Likely candidate?”

He shook his head. “I sincerely doubt it. My father hates her with the passion of a thousand suns.”

Jane’s eyes went round. “Really?”

“Really.” He shook his head. “They’re polite about it, when they cross paths socially, but he’s said that she makes Cruella de Vil look like Mother Teresa.”

“No!” She laughed again. “So, no hate sex in an elevator or similar?”

“More like cage match where only one emerges,” Ben said dryly, then cracked his own smile as she continued laughing.

If her laughing wasn’t addictive enough, the warmth that he felt, knowing he was the cause of making her that happy was downright intoxicating.

Stay focused.

She wiped at tears that had formed at the corners of her eyes from her mirth, then she sobered. “You know,” she said, “it might help if I had a better sense of your father. Getting a picture of who he is, and what his past was like, will only help us piece together who this mystery woman is, and where she might’ve gone off to.”

All his light, happy feelings vanished, like steam on a frigid winter night. His father had seemed larger than life when he was a child, so intent on ruling the kingdom that he didn’t have much time for his son. Then, as he grew older, his father seemed more intent on molding Ben into a model prince than bonding with him as the person he was. Ben knew that by that point, he’d also withdrawn from his father, but either way, there was a gap that wasn’t easy to bridge—and that was before he’d discovered this recent deception.

“What do you want to know?” Ben asked carefully.

She grabbed another legal pad and propped it on her lap. “Let’s start with basics,” she said, poising the pen. “Just... what’s he like? What kind of person is he?”

“He’s a liar,” Ben said, each syllable taut. “Obviously.”

She just stared at him, patient. Expectant.

He huffed, running his fingers through his hair, even though he knew it would make his curls rumple wildly—hardly a royal, dignified look. Then he sighed.

“Honestly... my father and I aren’t that close,” he admitted. “I’ve always been closer to my mother. If you asked me about her, I could tell you that she likes cross-stitching and that she throws these benefit events for her favorite charities. She makes up her own curses, too, like ‘filbert’ and ‘sugar bowl.’”

Jane snickered.

His shoulders went tight. “My father has always been there, for birthdays and my graduation and such. But we’re very different people. I’ve been in training to be the royal heir, but other than actual talk about the kingdom and my role in taking care of it, we really haven’t... I don’t know. Connected.”

Jane nodded. She looked sympathetic. It rubbed him raw, and he shifted on the bed, putting his notebook down.

“The thing is, I didn’t realize until he had his stroke just how tenuous our relationship was,” he found himself admitting. “I may not be close to him, but I didn’t want him to die without feeling more than just a sense of distant obligation. He is my father, and I love him. I just didn’t know how to get that across.”

Without warning, she took his hand in hers, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Parents are hard,” she said quietly. And he abruptly remembered her own issues with her mother... and her father.

“Did you forgive him?” he asked her quietly. “Your father.”

“For keeping that secret?” She bit her lip, and he was momentarily distracted into wishing he could bite it for her. “Well... yes. Sort of? It was hard. I feel like, in trying to protect me, he just hurt me more. And I kind of feel like it wasn’t me he was trying to protect, really—it was himself. He couldn’t deal with the truth, or my reaction to it, so he just lied and shut me down.”

“You understand,” Ben said.

She was still holding his hand. “I get it,” she agreed.

He looked down where their hands were clasped and almost instinctively wanted to brush a kiss across her knuckles—maybe in gratitude for her understanding. Instead, he released her. “My father’s keen on justice,” he said. “And he believes in change, and he made a lot of policy shifts once he ascended the throne. Mother said that he’s always been very passionate about the things he cares about, even when he was a child. She said it’s one thing that I’ve always seemed to take after him in.”

“He’s a hard-line traditionalist, keen on justice,” she jotted down. “Passionate idealist. Got it. Now let’s see who might be a good match for that.”