Do-Over (2 page)

“I just ate, but . . .” Georg glances at me, then at the counter, where Dad is ladling a yummy-smelling tomato sauce over chicken. “If you don’t tell my parents, I could eat again. That smells terrific.”

They are so polite to each other I could hurl. Guess that’s what you get when you put a prince and a protocol expert in a room together. They fight to out-nice each other. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou God, Georg isn’t that formal with me in private, or I bet we’d never have hooked up.

“If your parents would prefer—”

“No, they really wouldn’t care. They’d just tell me not to, um, mooch.” He says “mooch” as if he’s not certain that’s the word to use in this situation. He does that a lot
with American slang, which totally cracks me up. Even though his parents have him at the same private American high school I attend so he can improve his English—he’s going to be running the country someday and good English is apparently key to diplomacy in the Western hemisphere—he still gets confused about certain words.

“It’s not a problem,” Dad assures him with a smile. And a good thing, too, because I’d have been an eensy-weensy-tiny bit upset if Georg had gone back to his rooms on the opposite side of the palace just so I could eat dinner with Dad.

We spend most of dinner rehashing what we did over winter break. Georg went skiing in Switzerland, but stopped at a couple of hospitals along the way to visit little kids, which is the kind of thing he does every time he goes on vacation.

I talk about my trip home to Virginia, where I spent a week with Mom and Gabrielle. Not my choice of winter break destinations, but I got to see my friends and tell them about Georg in person. And although I’m not sure what Dad really thinks of Gabby, I suspect he’s glad I made
an effort while I was there to get to know her at least a little. And I know he’s definitely happy I’m getting along okay with Mom again, even if she is a zillion miles away and continues to mail me dorky teenage self-help books in an effort to fix my perceived shortcomings in life.

“I probably suck at skiing compared to you,” I tell Georg, though using the word “suck” garners me a warning frown from Dad. “I’m barely in the intermediate category. I do a few green runs to warm up, then blue runs most of the day. Though I have to go back to the easy greens again if I get tired. Otherwise it’s wipeout city. But I’d love to be able to try a black run soon. If I can work up the guts, anyway.”

Georg raises one dark eyebrow. I love when he does that. It’s goofy and sexy at the same time. “We don’t have green runs here. Blues are the easiest, reds are intermediate, and blacks are the expert runs. But they’re probably equivalent.”

“Oh.” I’m such a clueless American. “Well, I should be able to get out and see what it’s like to ski here soon. Right, Dad?”

His mouth is full of chicken, but he’s
nodding. He
did
promise to take me skiing lots when I agreed to move here from Virginia with him. I mean, we live in the middle of the freaking Alps now. Ski resorts everywhere. Back in Virginia, we’d have to drive all day just to get to a decent slope. Hence my ski suckage level.

“I was planning to talk to you about that later tonight, Valerie, but now’s as good a time as any,” Dad says, once he’s swallowed. “I thought we could go to Scheffau this weekend. It’s a rather quiet resort in Austria, without so much of the glitz or attention that St. Moritz and some of the other Swiss ski areas have.”

“I’ve been to Scheffau before,” Georg says, sounding excited. “It has some great runs. You’ll like it.”

“
This
weekend?” I just got home a few days ago, and things between me and Georg were a little rocky right before break, due to the whole tabloid fiasco. They’re great now (I’ve never had to make up with a boyfriend before—probably because I’ve never had a boyfriend before—and I’ve discovered that making up is way, way fun), but the last thing I want to do is spend another two or
three days away from him. Even if it is to go skiing in the Alps.

“What’s wrong with this weekend?” Dad asks. “Do you have something scheduled at school?”

I glance from Dad to Georg, then look back at Dad. “No, but—”

“I see,” he says with a grin that’s totally embarrassing. I hate that I’m so transparent. “Perhaps I can speak to Prince Manfred and Princess Claudia about having Georg come along. We’ll need to make some arrangements regarding the press, since it’s possible they’ll use the opportunity to take photos if they figure out Georg is in Scheffau, especially if they believe he’s there with you, but I’m sure we can work something out.”

Do I have the best dad ever, or what?

I look at Georg, who’s eating his chicken as if he hasn’t had food in days. “Don’t you have soccer this weekend, though?”

“Nope,” he says. “Bye week.” But I can tell from his guarded expression that he’s not sure about going. Probably because of his parents. They’re just a tad over-protective.

When Dad gets up to grab some more
chicken and salad from the kitchen, I lean in close to Georg and whisper, “You can say no if you don’t want to go. I totally won’t be offended.”

Well, I probably would be offended, on the inside. But I’ve resolved not to take things like that personally. Before break, he told me he wanted us to “cool it,” and I got upset and jumped to the conclusion that he wanted to break up. In reality, he just wanted us to quit making out where we could get caught by some crazy photographer and end up on the front page of the local paper. But me taking offense almost screwed up our relationship for real.

“It’s not that,” Georg says. “I just figured you might want some time alone with your father.”

I shake my head, and the smile he shoots back renders my breath immobile in my lungs for a moment.

I resolve to always,
always
give this guy the benefit of the doubt from now on.

Dad comes to clear away our dishes and asks, “Are your parents in their apartments, Georg? I can give them a call while you two work on your sundaes.”

Georg tells him to go ahead, so after finishing in the kitchen, Dad takes the phone into his room to make the call—presumably because he’ll be talking with Georg’s parents about stuff he doesn’t want us to hear. What, I can only guess. Probably reassuring them that he won’t put me and Georg in the same bedroom or something.

“This is heaven,” I say after my first bite of chocolate sundae. I can almost feel my butt and thighs spreading, but I don’t care.

“Nope,” Georg replies, leaning over and giving me a quickie kiss. “Skiing in Austria with my girlfriend. That’s heaven.”

“If your parents let you.”

“If,” he agrees.

At noon the next day, I still don’t know if Georg can come to Scheffau. His father, Prince Manfred, was in the middle of some conference call about tourist-industry legislation when Dad rang their apartment. Princess Claudia seemed to think it would be fine if her son came along with us—given some quick planning—but first she wanted to talk it over with her husband.
And their security team. And the public relations office.

It’s the unbelievable drawback of dating a prince. Every freaking thing you do has to be cleared by what essentially functions as a behavioral review board.

So even as I’m sitting at the lunch table in the cafeteria—it’s too cold to eat outside at our usual spot in the quad—listening to my friends Ulrike and Maya talk about an upcoming school dance (where I’m guessing they won’t play David Bowie), my brain is totally focused on Georg and skiing.

Well, and on cuddling with Georg on the chairlift. Or in front of a big, warm fireplace. Or over a steaming cup of Austrian hot chocolate while we sit on a balcony and watch the sunset over the Alps and tangle our feet together under a blanket. Just spending some time alone, away from school and the palace and the city and the behavior police.

Yum.

“Um, the tuna’s not that good,” Steffi says to me as she plunks her tray down across the table from me. She tells Ulrike and Maya hello, then looks back at me. “So what’s ‘yum,’ huh?”

Did I actually say it aloud?

I give Steffi the Valerie Shrug. It’s what my parents say I do when I want to make it look like I don’t give a rip about whatever’s going on around me even though I really am paying attention. It’s usually enough to put people off. But not Steffi.

“I missed breakfast,” I lie. “Guess I’m hungrier than I thought or something.”

I learned my very first day of school that Ulrike and Maya are all right, but that Steffi, despite her innocent brown eyes and delicate appearance, usually has ulterior motives if she’s being nice to you. Since she’s good friends with Ulrike and Maya and they seem to be clueless about girls like Steffi—in other words, manipulative types—I figure my best option is to tolerate Steffi while staying below her radar. However, the below-the-radar part is becoming tougher and tougher to do now that everyone’s suspicious that Georg and I might be together. Mostly because Steffi thinks
she
and Georg should be the ones going out, and God forbid anyone get in the way of what Steffi wants. She instantly sees them as a threat to be annihilated.

Steffi seems to take my word for it on the “yum” thing, since she turns toward Ulrike after I take a stupidly huge bite of my tuna salad. “So, you guys talking about the dance?” she asks. “Who are you going to ask?”

Ask?
It’s a girls-ask-guys thing? Gag.

Ulrike pushes her tuna salad around her lunch tray. She’s one of those impossibly skinny girls who hardly ever eats—and not because she’s obsessed with fitting into a negative clothing size. Sorry, but I abhor standing in a dressing room in the Gap or Abercrombie & Fitch trying on normal-sized clothes while girls in the other booths are whining aloud to their friends—who are usually standing outside the dressing room doors being total poseurs with their cell phones, checking for messages from their unfortunate boyfriends—about how they’re sooooo fat they’re almost out of a size zero and omigod their life is over! I want to rip the clothes out of their hands and tell them to get the hell out of my range of hearing. Maybe go to the food court and have something other than a head of lettuce for lunch.

But Ulrike’s not that way at all. She just
gets focused on other things—like the dance—and forgets to eat much. She would probably have to stop and check her clothing tags if you asked her what size she wears, since she’s not that into clothes shopping. Of course, she’s also really tall and has this shiny white-blond hair that makes her look like a movie star no matter what she has on.

Good thing she’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, or I’d really have to hate her based on nothing more than her looks.

“I’ve been so busy with the planning committee, I haven’t even thought about who to ask,” she says, and glances across the table to Maya, who’s sitting next to me. “How about you?”

“I’m still thinking,” Maya mumbles in a way that makes me think she wants to go alone but doesn’t want Ulrike or Steffi harassing her about it. She’s a junior—excuse me, a
year eleven
—but since she lives next door to Ulrike, she hangs out with us lowly year ten types. Maya pushes her dark hair back over her shoulders so it doesn’t hang in her lunch tray, then focuses on Steffi. “Why do you ask? Is there someone you’re planning to take?”

“We’ll see. No firm plans yet.”

Georg is unavailable
, I mentally telegraph in her direction.

As if she can hear my thoughts, Steffi looks straight at me. “And how about you, Val? Are you going to try to ask Prince Georg?”

I hate her. Really I do. Because she says this in a tone that sounds nice to everyone else, but that I know is meant to make me feel like dog crap. It’s that use of the word “try.” She just slid it in there. Like it’s sooooo cute that I have a thing for the prince and I’m going to be pulling a real goober move by “trying” to ask him to the dance.

“I haven’t really thought about it, what with the trip to Virginia and everything,” I answer honestly. She has to know there’s no one else I’d ask, which means she’s sniffing around to see how serious Georg and I really are. We’ve worked hard to keep things low-key just so we’re not the main topic of school gossip—and to try to overcome our recent tabloid snafu and the way it affected his parents—but all that secrecy does have one nasty side effect.

Namely, that Steffi still thinks she has a chance with him.

Before Steffi can say anything else, I ask Ulrike, “When is it, anyway? This weekend?”

I hope so, ’cause then maybe I’ll be off skiing with Georg and I won’t have to worry about Steffi giving me backhanded compliments all night while she tries to scam on my boyfriend.

“Next Saturday,” Maya says, since Ulrike has finally taken another bite of her tuna salad and is too polite to talk with food in her mouth.

“Only ten days,” Ulrike adds, dropping her sandwich back onto her plate. “And I’m panicking. We need to sell a lot more tickets. You guys have to promise me you’ll come, even if you don’t bring dates. Okay?”

We all promise. Steffi and Maya are fairly enthusiastic, but the last thing I want to do is go to a school dance. I’ve always felt like a loser at these kind of events, and even though I (finally!) have someone to go with, it’s not like we can go hide in a corner like other couples do and make out.

It just doesn’t work that way when
Majesty
magazine has a reporter whose sole job is to take photos of your boyfriend. The school is off-limits to the press, but still. We’re both bound to hear a “remember you’re in the public eye” lecture from our parents before we set foot out the door, and we’ve learned the hard way that we actually need to take those lectures seriously.

On the bright side, it’ll be a night out where we can listen to good music and see who’s hooking up with whom around school (even if we don’t get to be all lovey-dovey with each other while we’re there) and we can always hide out at home and do something fun afterward.

“Great!” Ulrike’s smile is cotton candy sweet as she sets down her fork. “And if you feel like coming early to help me set up, I’d really appreciate—”