Water streamed down my face. “This is my first hard-core English rain,” I called out to him, my words almost drowned out by the rhythmic pounding of the drops and our feet.
“It reminds me of the first time we met,” Nick panted. “You looked so put out from that tiny drizzle, I didn’t have the heart to tell you how bad it would get.”
“Please,” I said, grinning even as the rain got blown up against my teeth. “Winter at Cornell would make your face crack.”
We ducked down our cobbled drive and stopped outside the main doors, still giggling and breathless. The porter was long gone, so I had to fumble for my keys; Nick pulled off his coat and held it over us so that the contents of my purse wouldn’t get drenched. Not many guys would think of a girl’s handbag. If I hadn’t already started swooning for him, that would’ve sealed it.
“You’ve got some mascara on your cheek,” Nick said, his teeth starting to chatter. “Very Fawkesoween of you.”
He reached out to wipe it away, which meant half his coat-canopy sagged, so I tilted up my face and scooted closer to stay under it. His expression changed as he moved a wet hair off my cheek. My skin felt warm even with the cold rain hitting one side of it.
“We should get you inside,” Nick said, his lips so close to my face that his breath and mine were basically the same puffs.
“India is waiting,” I agreed.
“And your phone call.”
But we didn’t move. A jolt passed between us. I thought of high school English, and that part of the Keats poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” about how the breath right before you kiss your beloved is the sweetest one of all, because you realize you’re about to get exactly what you want.
Then something in my periphery twitched, and I jerked my head sideways. Pembroke’s main drive bent around and connected with a slim back street alluringly named Beef Lane, at the corner of which I could swear a camera lens was poking out at us.
“Nick,” I said, nodding toward it. “I think we’ve got company.”
Nick whipped his head around and squinted. “Are you fucking serious?” he said.
The heat between us evaporated as his coat fell down to his side, and I felt the frigid raindrops crash anew onto my head. As if he were conjured by magic, PPO Twiggy crept up Beef Lane and shoved the camera lens with his hand, as PPO Stout blocked me from sight and unlocked Pembroke’s door in a fraction of the time my freezing, stiff fingers could have done it.
Nick looked shaken and irate, the very image of a guy whose careful bubble had just burst. But he had nothing on the murderous expression on Twiggy, who had a cameraman by the scruff of the neck and was waving Nick over, his face scarlet with rage.
Lady Bollocks appeared in the open doorway, ready to pop open an umbrella. She stopped short at the kerfuffle.
“Now you’ve bloody done it,” she said to Nick, not unkindly.
“Can you get her inside, please, Bea?” Nick pleaded.
“Wait, is that seriously the paparazzi?” I asked.
But he’d already turned to go, Stout by his side. Bea all but lifted me inside the college and closed the door. I skidded on the wet stone entry and had to stabilize myself on her arm.
“Did they see your face?” she demanded. “What have you done?”
I was too breathless to do anything but stare blankly at the closed door. Bea grabbed me and forcibly turned my face to her.
“Were you snogging him?” she snapped, eyes narrow, which was their default state where I was concerned. “I could throttle that boy, carrying on with the Sofa Queen in public. You’d best hope you’re not the ruin of him.”
And she barged out the door, leaving me hot and bothered in several senses of the word.
* * *
The camera crew turned out to be from Prince Charming Productions, owned by Nick’s uncle Edwin, who is something of a gadfly and entirely a fool. After quitting the British Royal Navy claiming that he had raging seasickness, and then catting about being of extremely little use for two decades, Edwin was told in no uncertain terms that he had to do something. Evidently he chose the movie business, and planned for the first Prince Charming production to be a documentary about growing up royal, including candid footage—so he called it—of Nick being a university student. A documentary he’d told no one about, much less gotten approved.
“It was all a terrible misunderstanding,” the round, red face of Edwin had told the BBC. “The camera wasn’t even on. We’ve all had a tea and some biscuits and sorted it out.”
The papers had a field day with this, until a pop star on Celebrity Lawn Darts came down with necrotizing fasciitis. Never a speck of footage emerged, but Nick vanished to Clarence House yet again, presumably to figure out if further PR spackle was required, and I hadn’t seen him since that evening. I could still feel his hands on me, and I wanted to feel them again. It was like reverse electroshock therapy: one jolt and I was out of my mind.
“So, you two were just huddled up in the doorway. How close was he to you, exactly?” Lacey asked for the umpteenth time, on our umpteenth phone call, the week after Edwingate.
“Pretty close,” I said. “And he touched my face, and then it was like we froze.”
Lacey sighed dreamily. “Oxford is so romantic,” she said. “I went out the other night with a guy who spent the entire time talking about Tom Brady, and you’re five seconds away from making out with a prince. It’s really not fair.”