The Royals Next Door by Karina Halle

Four

“Falafel?” Cynthia asks, poking her head in the classroom doorway, her brows raised expectantly.

I’m already getting out of my chair and grabbing my purse.

Lunch hour just started, and today feels all over the place. Tomorrow is Friday, the last day of school before summer vacation begins, and it’s hot and strangely humid, and the kids are absolutely zooey, with zero attention span. As a result, I’m frazzled with no place for my focus to land, so going into town for twenty minutes is probably the right course of action.

“Want to do coffee instead?” I ask Cynthia as we head down the hall. “I think I’ve had nothing but falafel and chips all week.”

Ted’s Falafel and Chips is the island’s oldest food truck, located right across from the elementary school and the high school next door. There’s always a huge line of teenagers outside, but when I’m pressed for time, it’s literally the closest place to grab a bite on days I forget to bring my own lunch.

This week, that’s been every day. I don’t know if it’s because it’s the last week before vacation or what, but my mind has been scattered.

“Sure, I could grab an iced coffee,” Cynthia says, and then her eyes light up. “And a cinnamon bun!”

With that, I know we’re heading to Salty Seas Coffee & Goods, where I already stopped this morning for my pre-class fix. They have the gooiest cinnamon buns imaginable; they’re melt-in-your-mouth and caramelized and almost crispy. I’m drooling already.

But as we’re walking down the street, past the kids and teens lining up at the chip stand or getting slushies from the gas station, Cynthia mentions how much busier this place is going to get this weekend, when kids are out of school across the country and the island swells up like a balloon, and then my mind backtracks to two weeks ago.

It goes back to Monica and Eddie.

It goes back to Harrison.

That fateful encounter with the PPO was the last I’d heard of them being on the island. I never saw him again. They never moved in. The town very quickly, within a day, went back to normal, and all the British paparazzi vanished.

As for my podcast, well, it ended up being my most listened to episode, with it spreading all over the romance community. Tons of people messaged me, wondering who I was and where I lived, while an equal amount said I was lying and full of shit. The joys of anonymous comments and all that. I think listeners were disappointed when my next episode went back to reviewing romance books and I didn’t mention the royals again.

“Hey,” I say to her as we take a side street to the coffee shop. “Can I tell you something weird?”

“Weird?” Cynthia asks. “I love weird.”

I know she does. She’s wearing this necklace that looks like it’s made of tiny animal bones sloppily painted in neon colors. She says a student gave it to her for Christmas, and she hasn’t taken it off since, even though I think those bones belong to a frog and that the child may have cast a curse on her or something.

“Okay, so two weeks ago, when the duke and duchess were in town, well, I went straight home because you told me it was chaos in town, and you were right. Except when I went home, there was a PPO blocking the road.”

“What’s a PPO?”

“Like the royal bodyguard.” She gasps, her hands to her mouth. I go on. “Not just that, but the royal bodyguard. The sexy one. The brooding one.”

The asshole one.

“No way.”

“Uh-huh. He had to escort me to my house.”

“No! Piper. He escorted you to your house? Please tell me you let him do a strip search on you.”

“No,” I say, feigning disgust. His big, strong hands all over my naked body? I, uh . . . “No,” I repeat, more for myself. “He was controlling and a total prick on a power trip. Anyway, the whole point is that Monica and Eddie were looking to rent the place next to me. Obviously it would be perfect for them.”

She gives me a questioning look. “I’ve never been to your house. I don’t even know where you live.”

“Scott Point.”

She purses her lips. “Well la-di-da. Scott Point on a teacher’s salary.”

“It’s a long story, but believe me, it’s not what you think. I live in the old servants’ quarters, and there is no view. And anyway, he was all concerned that I would be a threat to their safety. I mean, me.”

She nods, taking that in. “That’s true. You’re the least threatening teacher on the faculty.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

I shrug. “I guess because he told me I couldn’t tell anyone and then I kind of forgot with all the end-of-school madness. Turns out, I never saw them again, and it all died down. It’s like it never happened.”

“I guess he really did think you were a threat,” she says, an amused smile on her hot-pink lips, which match her neon bone necklace. “Miss Piper Evans, the most feared teacher on SSI.”

I attempt to elbow her, but she moves her lithe body out of the way. “Hey, apparently he thought I was someone to reckon with.”

She laughs, shaking her head. I’m only five foot three, so any ferocity I have can be likened to a chihuahua’s. “I can’t believe that happened to you,” she says with a sigh. “What a shame, huh? How cool would that have been?”

“I don’t know,” I admit as we approach the coffee shop and I hold the door open for her. “I talked to Bert, the head of the RCMP, and it seems a lot of people wouldn’t have been all that happy if they moved in. Crisis averted.”

“More like opportunity wasted.”

“Hey, it wasn’t my fault,” I tell her, and then bring my voice down to a whisper once we enter the shop. “There could have been a million factors as to why they didn’t settle here. Honestly, I couldn’t really blame them. This can be a strange place.”

Being lunch hour, there’s already a line, so I briefly consider going to another coffee shop and skipping the cinnamon bun, but who knows what the line will be like over there.

We’re almost at the counter when a woman sitting at the corner table loudly exclaims, “No!” and her friend leans over to see whatever it is on her phone.

She gasps.

They both gasp.

Then I see someone running past the shop.

And another person.

And another person.

Heading in the direction of the harbor.

My first thought is that there is some sort of emergency.

But then the woman and her friend jump to their feet and she quickly says, “Prince Eddie and his wife just arrived by seaplane!”

That’s all it takes for nearly the whole coffee shop to abandon their cinnamon buns and lattes and run outside, joining the pack of people already running to the harbor.

“This is insane!” I exclaim, looking around. “Everyone has lost their mind.”

Cynthia turns to me and gives me a pleading look with puppy-dog eyes.

“What?” I ask incredulously. “You want to join the mob and run down there too?”

“My mother is obsessed with Monica. It would make her day if I could send her a picture. Maybe she’d finally come and visit me.”

“Fine, go,” I tell her. “I’ll get your coffee for you.”

“And the cinnamon bun!” She grins at me, and then she’s running out of the shop too, her necklace swinging.

I shake my head, and suddenly I’m the next in line since everyone ahead of me ditched out. I look at the barista with her pale silver-purple hair and nose ring. She’s staring longingly at the door, her phone in her hand, mid-text.

“I’d take over for you if I could,” I offer.

She smiles begrudgingly and rings in my order for two oat-milk lattes.

I snag the last cinnamon bun for myself.

Afterward I walk back to the school, hoping Cynthia can tear herself away from the mayhem before the lunch bell rings. Every now and then another person runs or speed walks past me, and I have to wonder what the hell is going through their heads. Maybe it’s because I’d already had that meeting with Harrison, but I don’t understand the obsession. This is like Beatlemania for the twenty-first century.

That said, there is a smaller version of myself, adorned with furry devil horns, perched on my shoulder and whispering in my ear, “They’re back, the royals are back. They might be your neighbors after all.”

That version of me sounds a little too excited, so I flick her off my shoulder and try to regain my composure. The whole town is going nuts for these royals, not me. Besides, just because they’re back doesn’t mean anything, and it certainly doesn’t mean they’ll be my neighbors.

My thoughts become reality. Aurelie Lamont, the French teacher, is leaning against the main entrance into the school, staring off into the distance. She’s from Quebec, so there’s something about her pose that’s even extra dramatic, her dark hair flowing around her.

I give her a quick smile, about to make some passing small talk such as “Hot day, eh?” when she says, “They’re buying a place on Juniper.”

I stop in my tracks. “Sorry, what?”

She looks at me idly. “The duke and duchess. They’re buying a place up on Juniper. That big house behind the gates. Used to belong to Randy Bachman. The Guess Who. ‘Femme Américaine.’ ‘Pas de sucre ce soir.’ You know.”

“Really? Where did you hear that?”

She gives a light shrug with one of her shoulders. “A student told me. She lives in the neighborhood. Don’t worry, I made her tell me in French.”

I just nod at that and walk inside. I hate to admit it, but there’s a flutter of disappointment in my chest. It’s almost as if I secretly wanted them to move next door to me, even though I just spent my lunch hour chastising the idea. I guess having them as neighbors would have made me feel . . . special. Sounds silly and so stupid, but it probably would have been the most exciting thing that ever happened to me.

I shake it off. I have to. It’s dumb, and earlier today the whole thing seemed like a distant memory anyway.

Before I know it, it’s time to go home. I never regained control of my kids after lunch, so I pretty much just let them run wild in the classroom, so long as no one got hurt and no one puked in my bag again. Cynthia never even came to get her latte, so I ended up drinking both of them, and when I get inside the Garbage Pail, my hands are shaking from the four shots of espresso.

That doesn’t prevent me from munching away on my cinnamon bun on the drive home, one hand on the wheel, one hand in the delicious gooey mess.

I’m almost at my house when I see him.

A black Range Rover physically blocking the driveway and Harrison Cole standing outside it, leaning against the door and facing me, arms folded, aviators on. Another sharp-looking suit that fits him like a glove.

My heart does something strange, like skips a beat, and I blame it on the caffeine.

I roll to a stop and then stick my head out the window.

“Excuse me, I’d like to get by now,” I say in my best Wayne’s World Garth Algar impression.

Harrison, naturally, doesn’t get the reference.

“I’m going to need to see some identification, miss,” he says to me in his raspy British accent as he walks toward my car.

I stare at him, openmouthed, until I realize I have sticky cinnamon bun all over my face. I can’t believe his nerve, and yet I’m also trying to subtly clean my face at the same time.

“ID? You know who I am,” I tell him.

“I’m afraid I need to see your driver’s license,” he says, stopping right outside the car, his Hulk-ish frame extra imposing from this angle. “Or is it still missing?”

“So you do remember me.”

“I wish I could forget,” he replies dryly.

I frown.

Dick.

“Then you know I live right there and you’re blocking my own driveway.”

“I can’t let you pass until I see some ID.”

I’m still staring at him. Is he serious? I mean, he looks serious and I think he’s always serious, but how dare he ask for ID when he knows who I am? What gives him the fucking right to prevent me from going home?

He cocks a brow expectantly, staring down at me. I wish I could rip those aviators off and run them over with my car.

I let out a huff of anger and try to get my driver’s license out of my purse. I’m lucky that it came in the mail two days ago. I’m not so lucky that I had the photo taken during my lunch hour, right after gym class, when Eunice dumped Gatorade over another kid’s head after a game of basketball and I got most of the blowback. A partially drowned rat with smudgy mascara is forever immortalized in black and white.

“Here,” I tell him, trying to hand over the ID, but of course it’s a sticky cinnamon bun–smeared mess.

Harrison scrunches up his nose distastefully as he takes the card from me. He raises it to his nose and sniffs the substance. “What is this?”

“It’s the remains of a baked good, what do you think it is?”

He sniffs again, seems to think about it, and then peers at the photo and then back at me. “These photos are never very flattering, are they?”

“Are you done?”

“Not quite, Ms. Evans,” he says, pronouncing my name like it’s some sort of alias before giving me the license back. “The duke and duchess have decided to rent the house.”

“I was told they were buying Randy Bachman’s house. You know, the Guess Who?”

“That was a decoy house to throw people off, at least at the beginning. They’ve decided that this is the place for them after all.”

“Are you serious?”

He nods. Dumb question, really.

“I expressed my concern over you, but they didn’t seem to be that bothered by it.”

“Excuse me?”

He goes on as if he didn’t just say that he told the royals that I was a security concern. “The gate will be going up as soon as possible. We’re installing cameras, and there will be a passcode that only you and your mother will be given access to. Until then, I’ll be parked here blocking the way, and my men will be in the trees.”

“Men will be in the what?”

Suddenly I hear a sharp whirring sound on either side of me, and I look up in time to see a man in camouflage gear rappel from the top of a hemlock straight down to the ground.

“Holy shit!” I swear just as another man comes down a tree on the right side of me. Tree men! Secret agent tree men!

Harrison just lifts his hand up, as if to tell them to stay back. “This is Isaac and Giles. They’ll be here temporarily. And if not, you’ll get used to them. But until the gate goes up, we have to ensure the couple’s privacy. I also have someone patrolling the water from a boat, just in case you see them.” He pauses, studies me.

His gaze is unnerving, even covered by his sunglasses.

“What?” I ask.

“You have pastry in your hair.”

My hand shoots up, trying to figure out where, when suddenly it becomes stuck and I know that I must have a huge blob of sugary goo in my hair.

Meanwhile, I swear I see a smirk on Harrison’s mouth, the corner of his lips turning up a millimeter. If he wasn’t so fucking aggravating I might actually find his lips quite lush and sexy, but that would only make things worse.

“At any rate, Ms. Evans,” he says briskly, “I’m going to need you to sign a nondisclosure agreement.”

I practically growl at him, my patience seeping out as I also wrestle with my hair. “An NDA? Why?”

“For obvious reasons.”

“And if I don’t?”

I don’t know why I’m arguing with him over this. I mean, of course I’ll sign an NDA, if it makes them comfortable, and I have no doubt that most islanders would band together to try to let them have as much privacy as they want.

But everything that comes out of his mouth pisses me off.

He looks behind him briefly at Isaac and Giles, who are similarly stone-faced, dressed in camo gear like it’s no big deal, their rappelling ropes leading back into the trees.

Then Harrison looks back to me. “If you don’t sign the NDA, things will get very difficult for you.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Does it sound like a threat?”

“Everything you say sounds like a threat,” I grumble. “Yes, of course I’ll sign it.”

“And have your mother sign it.”

“Yes.” I sigh loudly at that. I don’t know how that is going to go down. I’ll probably just have to forge her signature or something. It’ll be hard enough to explain why there’s a giant security gate going up, plus secret agent men in trees and officers patrolling in boats. She doesn’t leave the house very often, usually just goes for walks in the neighborhood when she’s feeling especially energetic or aggravated, but throwing all of this stuff into the mix isn’t going to be easy. I’m going to have to have a real talk with her and hope she listens and learns that the royals are not the enemy.

God, I hope they aren’t the enemy.

Harrison’s face remains forever grim. “British Columbia has a privacy act that protects people from the media, that specifically creates the right to sue if privacy is being invaded. That’s one reason why they chose this place instead of anywhere else. Keep that in mind.”

“Are you done for real now? Can I at least go home?”

He nods. “Sure. Might want to take a shower too.”

“What does that mean?” This guy gets worse and worse.

“Your hair,” he says, nodding at my gooey, frazzled blond mess. I make a mental note to get a blowout for the next time I see him.

Then, to my surprise, he fucking smirks. “I’ll be seeing you later to drop off the papers.”

He turns, gives the other men a nod as he opens the door to his SUV, and gets in.

The men begin to go up into the trees again.

Harrison drives out of the driveway, giving me just enough space for the Garbage Pail to sneak through.

I start the car and rev the engine to make the small hill that goes up the driveway, and I’m bouncing forward, glaring at Harrison as I go.

By the time I’m parked in my spot, I’m livid. Having the royals next door isn’t going to be fun at all, not if Harrison is going to be running the show.

I head into the house, and this time Liza comes barreling toward me, her tail wagging, tongue hanging out of her mouth. Judging by how excited/desperate she is and the silence in the house, my mother is asleep and Liza needs to go out.

I quickly take her through the woods and down the steps to the dock, stopping at the top just in time to watch a small dark speedboat slowly cruise past me.

I wave at the man, who then stops the boat and stares back at me.

He doesn’t wave back.

Instead, he presses into his earpiece and says something I can’t make out. He’s wearing glasses identical to Harrison’s, so I can’t see his expression, but I know he’s looking at me the whole time. Finally, after a staring contest that must go on for minutes, he looks away and the boat continues on.

I head back to the house with Liza, hating the fact that even being outside on our property is starting to make me feel watched, judged, and overall uncomfortable. Once I’m inside, I find myself pulling the curtains and blinds closed, and it dawns on me that I’m one step closer to turning into my mother.

It’s just after dinner, with my mother still sleeping (don’t worry, I checked on her), when there’s a knock at the front door. Liza starts barking like crazy, which scares the shit out of me, and I’m an angry barrel of nerves by the time I rip open the door.

No surprise, it’s Harrison. It won’t get dark here until ten at night, but even so I’d bet he’ll still be wearing his sunglasses.

He doesn’t have any papers in his hands, though.

“Yes?” I say to him.

“Are you busy?” he asks me.

Now my brows are raised. “Am I busy?”

“The Duke and Duchess of Fairfax request your company.”

Oh. My. God.

“Now?” I practically stutter.

He steps back and gestures to the path. “If you please.”

I could easily close the door on him and say hell no. I’m not at their beck and call, I have a life to live and a podcast to upload.

But I slip on my shoes, close the door behind me, and follow Harrison down the path toward my new neighbors.