ZANDER dropped Andi back at Pippa’s place on the way home from the mountains. He failed to mention either the rage-o-gram message from his mother or that little detail about Andi appearing on the cover of a tabloid. He was too afraid it would sink all the progress he’d made so far. He figured he could get things ironed out with his family, make sure everyone was on the same page, be sure to get Andi’s name on the list for the wedding, and all would be just fine.
~*~
Christopher intercepted Zander upon his arrival back at the palace.
“I am so damned lucky to have you as a big brother,” he said, smiling broadly.
Zander squinted at him, trying to figure out the joke.
“Because I look like a saint by comparison in Mum’s eyes,” he said with a chuckle.
“Ha-ha. So funny I forgot to laugh. How bad is it?”
“Be glad you weren’t here for breakfast. The woman needed no caffeine, she was so hepped up on fury,” his brother said. “Frankly, I don’t see what the big deal is. So you went skydiving. And you were off with some mystery woman. Sure, you could get killed doing that, but more likely by some disease you’d get from one of those women you pick up.”
Zander threw his keys at his brother, hard.
“Ow, that hurt!”
“Good.”
“Okay, let’s be serious here. I’m on your side. I’d do the same thing, especially if I found a hot blonde like that—”
“Let’s not start with the color commentary.”
“Just calling it as I see it. Long blond hair? Check. Looks hot even in a jumpsuit? Check. Legs that keep on going? Check. I’ll take her if you don’t want her.”
“Are you here solely to make me prefer facing Mum’s daggers rather than your interrogation?”
Christopher pointed the way to where their mother was waiting. “After you, Your Royal Highness.”
Zander quickly took the red-carpeted grand staircase two by two and turned down the corridor of elders to the family quarters, dreading the latest run-in with his mother. He loved her dearly, but she just didn’t understand him very well. He opened a paneled door hidden by a large seventeenth-century oil painting and entered his mother’s private sitting room. His mother, dressed in a crisp ivory linen shift dress and matching pumps, got up from her Louis XIV mahogany desk and walked toward her son, heels clicking ominously on the inlaid wood floor.
“Mother, I can explain,” Zander said. He felt like he spent far too much of his time uttering those very words around her, from the time he had drawn mustaches with magic marker over the faces in a centuries-old family portrait when he was four to now, trying to dispel her annoyance with him yet again. “I met a woman I have feelings for. She’s lovely. And kind. And beautiful. And warm. And I wanted—no, I very much needed—to impress her.”
His mother raised a hand to stop him. No matter how old he was, she was always his mum, with her cropped brown hair and soft blue eyes. As mad as she could get at him, he knew deep down that they were on the same team.
“Alexander,” she said. “I’ve had time to think about this.”
Zander’s face lightened up. “So you’re not angry with me then?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said, shaking her head. “But I’m practicing being in the moment and not letting little things get to me. Not that my son jumping from an airplane is little. But as your father reminded me, you could just as easily be hit by a bus crossing the street as hurt yourself jumping from sky. Nevertheless, what were you thinking?” She seemed to say that last bit despite herself, with a bit too much emphasis.
“So you’re disappointed in me?”
“No, I didn’t say that,” she said, coming around and putting her arm around his waist since his shoulder was too high for her to comfortably reach around. “I suppose I keep thinking about comportment. I was raised in an era in which much was expected from us as royals, both in our actions and in how we carried ourselves. I can assure you my father would never have allowed me to jump from an airplane. So I struggle with things like that, which are foreign to me. Your father and I want you children to have as normal of lives as possible under the circumstances, but there is that notion of ‘within reason.’ And I’m not sure jumping from a plane remains in that realm.”
Zander heaved a sigh of relief. His father had gotten to her first. He’d sanded down the sharp edge of his mother’s ire. He’d have to remember to thank him for his help.
“So what you’re saying is you’re not thrilled with it, but you understand that sometimes I have needs that must be fulfilled.”
His mother looked into his eyes, and he could see that she wasn’t being a queen, worried about the image of the royal family, but instead her apprehensions came from her role as a mother who was concerned for her child, regardless that he was now a man. “Please, honey, all I ask is that you use good judgment.”
“You know I always do, Mum,” Zander said with a crooked grin.
His mother shook her head. “Actually, no, I don’t know that.”
He shrugged. “Well, I try. Every now and again.”
Zander started to walk away, but his mother stopped him short.
“Not so fast,” she said, extending her arm so that he couldn’t pass.
Zander worried what now? Surely he hadn’t done anything else in the past day or two that would get him in trouble.
“Who’s the girl in the flight suit?”
“I think she’s someone special, Mum,” Zander said. “It’s early days, but she’s a great girl and we have a lot in common and seem to get along really well. I think you’ll like her.”
“That means I’m going to meet her?”
“Absolutely. I was hoping she could be my plus one for the wedding.”
His mother arched a brow. “Oh, really? It’s serious enough that you want to bring her to Adrian’s wedding?”
Zander laid on the puppy dog eyes thick. “I promise neither of us will do anything to embarrass you, or Adrian, or Emma. I mean of course Andi would never do that, but I’ve been known to occasionally do things that might border on the outlandish. This time I’m sworn to good behavior. And it’s even more likely it’ll stick if I’m with her. Don’cha think?”
“Son, you know I just want you to be happy, don’t you?” Ariana said, pulling his face down for a kiss. “And it sounds as if this young woman has touched something in you that I haven’t seen, in, well, ever. I’d be delighted if you could bring your young woman to the wedding. But we do need to meet her first.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Zander said. “I’ll bring her by for dinner. I promise.”
Zander would have loved to have held Andi’s existence in his world somewhat close to his chest, both literally and figuratively, for a little while longer. But with that picture surfacing in the tabloid, he’d been left little choice but to at least go public with the family on this one. And he wasn’t even worried that his brothers were going to pile on the shit. After all, he’d do the same thing to them.