A Princess Next Door (Rothman Royals Book 1) by Noelle Adams Page A

could
afford to take off so much time?”
    “It’s no problem.”
    I wasn’t sure how true the words were, since his expression
looked a little strained. He would have had to reschedule his entire week,
leaving at the last minute the way he had, and it couldn’t have been easy.
    It was a little thrilling. That he cared so much about
me—about exploring a possible future with me—that he was willing to do that.
    “We’ll have time this week,” I told him, “if you need to
work on your computer or make more calls. Our entire days won’t be scheduled
out for us. I made sure my mother didn’t do that.”
    “Good.” He paused. “Would she have done that otherwise?”
    “Probably. But I told her I wouldn’t come at all if I didn’t
have any free time, so I believe she’s making an effort to be good.”
    “What did you tell her about me?”
    “I said you were a friend.”
    “And what did she think about that?”
    My mother hadn’t been at all happy to hear I was bringing a
male friend with me on my trip home. She’d asked me all kinds of nosy questions
about him, and I’d had to tell her it was none of her business. She’d been hurt
and offended, and she’d probably ordered some sort of background check on Jack,
looking for dirt.
    I knew she wouldn’t find any. Nothing that would matter to
me, anyway. But it felt like an intrusion on my privacy, that she would be
looking into Jack.
    It might have been a huge mistake to bring him with me at
all, but it was happening so there was nothing I could do about it.
    “She was curious, but she said you would be welcome,” I
said, answering Jack’s question.
    “It will be fine then.”
    “Yes.” I swallowed, hoping the words were true.
    I had no idea if this week would be fine or not. I rather
doubted not.
    ***
    Villemont is made up of one small
city and some outlying rural areas. It takes less than an hour to drive the
length of the country, even with all the mountain roads. There is no airport,
so we landed in Geneva, where a limo met us to drive just over an hour to the
royal palace of Villemont.
    Jack didn’t talk much during the drive. He stared out the
windows at the gorgeous mountain scenery.
    “Have you been to France or Switzerland before?” I asked,
wondering what he was thinking about all of this. He’d been born and raised in
a small town in Minnesota. None of this would be familiar to him.
    “I’ve been to Paris, but not down this way. Did you grow up
skiing?”
    “Yes. We skied all the time. It’s not the best time of the
year for skiing now, though.”
    “I was never much of a skier. It sure is gorgeous here,
though.” He smiled at me. If he was uncomfortable about being here with me or
anything he was about to face when we got to the palace, he certainly wasn’t
showing it.
    I made myself relax.
    It didn’t matter what happened. If Jack got scared away or
disgusted by all of the royal attitudes or aplomb, then we wouldn’t have had a
future anyway. Better to find out now, before I fell for him any further.
    It wasn’t long before we reached the top of a mountain and
could see the walled city in the distance.
    Villemont had started as a medieval village and had been
built out from there. The “new wall” that spanned the circumference of the city
proper was a hundred and fifty years old. The palace grounds were within the
older wall that was more than four hundred years old.
    Many of the streets were still made of cobblestones and were
too narrow for larger cars to drive through, but there was a wide paved road that
led to the palace, and that was the one we took.
    Jack stared out the window, occasionally asking questions
but mostly just taking it in.
    If I’d been hoping for an easy entrance, I’d have been
disappointed. My mother loved ceremony of every kind, so she’d arranged the
full treatment for us. The green-liveried Royal Guard was in position as the
limo stopped, and my mother and father were standing at the bottom of