Playing Dirty (A Bad Boy Sports Romance) (22 page)

I shrugged. “Sorry.”

“I’m not altogether sure that you are.”

I couldn’t escape the feeling that by enjoying my life, I had somehow let my brother down. In fact, I often felt that by existing I had let my brother down. I decided to try a different tack.

“You know, if you cut loose a little, it could be you on the front page surrounded by pretty girls.”

Michael pulled an affronted face—it was an expression to which his features were ideally suited. “You actually think I’m
jealous
of your deplorable escapades?”

I considered the question. “Well…yeah.”

He snorted. “I’m not.”

“I would be if I were you.”

“Well, I’m not. At this point we could find a better future king by throwing a dart at a phonebook and picking whoever it landed on.”

I chuckled. Despite being a very serious and often petulant person, my brother could be funny on occasion, whether he meant to be or not.

“Perhaps if you knew more of the details, little bro,” I replied with an exaggerated wink.

At this point I would’ve been willing to admit that I was deliberately riling Michael up. I knew he was at least a little jealous of my carefree lifestyle and attitude towards life, whether he would admit it or not. And by the same token and whether I would admit it or not, I was a little jealous of how easily studious adherence to duty came to my younger sibling. Somewhere between the two of us, there was a perfect monarch—one who was liked by his people, conscientious of his duties and happy in who he was. As things were, there were two people: a well-liked dilettante and a disliked but dedicated fusspot, and neither of us was altogether happy with who he was.

It was in a glacial silence that we made our way back to where our mother waited for us, doing the Radio Times crossword—the quick one, her Majesty had never had a mind for the cryptic clues.

“Ten letters, sugary quality?” She looked expectantly at us.

“Sweetness?” I suggested.

“That’s nine letters, you twat,” said Michael. “Saccharine.”

Our mother nodded. “Ah yes, thank you…but enough of that language, Michael,” she said. “Now, has anyone else noticed that this place is looking a bit down at heel?”

These things were relative, but given the sort of standards that a royal family was supposed to keep up—for the sake of visiting dignitaries, politicians and their ilk—Richmond Palace
was
looking
a bit shabby, as far as palaces go. The dust had accumulated on the priceless
objet d’art,
the silver was looking rather dull, and some of the centuries-old tapestries were starting to look their age.

“I’ve spoken to Rogers about it,” she continued. Rogers was the head of the household staff, a butler by any other name and a man who would’ve been a general had he been born in a time of war. “And he agrees that we need to take on more staff for general upkeep. Around thirty or so.”

“What has this got to do with us?” Michael asked. It might be our house, but hiring and firing was Rogers’ domain.

“As a monarch,” our mother continued, “running this house is like running the country. The real work is done by someone else, either Rogers or that dreadful little man in Number 10, while the monarch is a figurehead—ruler in name alone. But, every once in a while, for the look of things or simply to reconnect so as to remember that we are all one in humanity, it is necessary and desirable for the monarch to get their hands dirty and do some actual work.”

She looked directly at me and kept going. “I want
you
to decide exactly who to hire, Andrew, and when that is done, I want you to assign duties to the new staff. Rogers will give you their CVs and so on, and you should take advice from him, but the final decisions about where they work and what they do will be yours. It will be a useful experience of actually doing something.”

I nodded. “That makes sense,” I said, although I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the prospect of assigning cleaning duties to thirty-odd new staff members.

“Yes, I think so.”

“I’m being punished for going to that bar in New York, aren’t I?” I asked.

“Yes, you are,” she said without any attempt to hide it. “But that doesn’t mean that what I said about the monarch getting their hands dirty isn’t true. Which is why I wanted you both to hear it. Society has deemed us above our fellow men, but nature ranks us all together. As does God. And in the end it is them that you should listen to.”

***

Over the next couple of weeks, I trawled through the hundreds upon hundreds of CVs, references, background checks and career retrospectives, and I wondered if God or nature really cared about who I chose to clean the bathrooms. But my mother had a point—it was easy to become distanced from the people, and there were a lot of paintings hung around the place of various ancestors being beheaded that told you exactly what happened when royalty lost touch with the people.

My first thought on sitting down to work had been:
why the hell are all these people so keen to clean up after me?
But once I’d re-thought the question with a little more humility, I realized that they weren’t; they just needed a job and this one paid much better than most cleaning positions. I was somewhat proud of the fact that I understood, even if it took me a little time to get there.

To me there seemed little to choose from between the applicants—how was I to know who would make a good maid? And once I’d decided that, how the hell was I meant to know which of them were best suited to the kitchens and which ones were suited for the bedrooms? What difference did it make? But, with the advice of Rogers, I made the selections, deciding who should be reassigned and who should be brought in for a chat before the final decision. There was only one on whom I went against Rogers’ advice.

“An American, your Highness?” Rogers arched a thick eyebrow, something he had been taught to do by a father and grandfather who had also been in the trade.

“I like Americans.”

Rogers pursed his lips in consideration. “I suppose they are fine in their place. That place being America.” I often got the impression that Rogers still thought of America as ‘The Colonies’. “But this woman has lied on her CV,” he continued. “She’s fudged some dates regarding how much experience she has.”

“Really? How can you tell?”

“It is a knack, your Highness.”

“Well, we’re still having her in for a chat,” I said with finality. “I like the name Keira.”

Rogers sniffed and cleared his throat. He clearly didn’t think that liking a name was adequate rationale for employment, but he said nothing as I placed the CV of Keira Valencia on the interview pile.

Of course, I knew that this Keira Valencia was not the Keira I’d met in the bar in New York; the Keira who had occupied my thoughts so much of late…the Keira who had seemed to make all other women so much less appealing. That was far too unlikely. But I liked the name, and the fact that it couldn’t be the same girl didn’t matter.

“Oh, this is her picture,” Rogers said, bending down to the carpeted floor. “Must have slipped out of the folder. Rather nice-looking young lass.”

“Let’s see,” I said, holding my hand out. Most of the CVs hadn’t included photos, as appearance simply had no bearing on someone’s ability to work unless they were a twenty-foot Godzilla clone, but a few had come with pictures attached. Keira Valencia’s must’ve been one of them.

Rogers handed me the photo, and at first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Jesus…it was actually
her.
Keira Valencia was my New York Keira! But how?

As my gaze rested on the sparkling brown eyes of the girl in the photo, I wondered what on earth had led to such an enormous coincidence. There was only one seemingly valid explanation—and that was that this couldn’t be a coincidence at all. She must’ve applied for the job specifically to see me again, which was a little crazy but hot as hell, and the thought of that made heat rush to my groin as my cock stirred in my pants. I’d never slept with any of the female staff; that was an unwritten rule of mine…but no rule was absolute.

Rogers arched an eyebrow again, as if he somehow knew what was going on in my head, and I placed the photo down, my eyes still glued to it as a wolfish grin spread across my face.

This was going to be a lot of fun.

Chapter 3

Keira

“This way, Miss. You and the other the new staff members will have your duties assigned momentarily.”

An older well-dressed man gave me a polite smile and gestured towards an open door on the first floor of Richmond Palace, and I smiled and followed him, taking a deep breath as I did so. As I stepped into the spacious room, I saw that most of the other new staff members were already there and standing in a line, being inspected by another older gentleman who the first man addressed as ‘Rogers’. I took my place in the line, followed by two other girls who’d arrived just after me, and as I waited, I stared out the window at the beautiful gardens just beyond the walls.

I’d been in England a couple of weeks now, and so far, I was absolutely loving it. Most pointedly I was loving the public museum system. The large museums in London (the Natural History Museum, Science Museum, and the National Gallery) were owned by the British public, paid for by taxes, and free to enter. That ‘free-ness’ was of course their main appeal for me, but there was also something to be said for the fact that theoretically, paintings such as Holbein’s
The Ambassadors
were the property of the British public. Any British subject was theoretically able to go into a state museum and ask to see any item not currently on display, and they would be shown it. Of course I wasn’t a British subject and would’ve probably been too embarrassed to ask even if I had been, but it was still a nice thing to think about.

The public art museums had occupied my first weeks amiably enough, but I was aware that I was running through money with housing, travel and food expenses, and I really needed to get some steady income sorted out, so it was a great relief to finally find out that my application to work at Richmond palace had been successful. On my first day, I was given a tour of the labyrinthine house, or at least those parts of it that a maid might need to know, and today I would be assigned my specific duties. I’d seen the Queen from a distance, but I hadn’t run into Prince Andrew at all, and I was keeping my fingers crossed that I never would.

Having said that, there were no words I knew that could adequately describe the shock I experienced when I saw Andrew himself enter the room and stroll down the line of new staff, looking unbelievably handsome and also unbelievably smug. He briefly stopped at me and flashed me a mischievous smile and wink before moving on.

What on earth
? What was that about, and what was he doing here amongst the staff?

I would’ve bet good money that a royal prince didn’t handle the day-to-day duties of the servants, and since the royal family had several houses, I’d thought my chances of bumping into him were satisfyingly low. But here he was, and that was that. But why? Had he somehow come across the pile of job applications and seen my name?

I thought back to the night we met, trying to remember if I’d even told him my last name. If so, was he the one who’d hired me? Did he think we could pick up where we’d left off that night in New York, as if I were some sort of unfinished business to him? Somewhere deep within me, a heated pocket of my libido hoped the answer to all those questions was yes, but I immediately quashed it. I wanted nothing to do with the man—I was here to clean the palace, and definitely not here to clean off his abs with my tongue…

Jeez, snap out of it,
I told myself, standing up straighter.

A Google search for ‘Prince Andrew Arlington’, which I’d made the other day despite myself, had confirmed all my worst suspicions about the man. I’d been absolutely right to run away from him that night and never look back. He’d had a string of high profile girlfriends that could’ve stretched from London to Edinburgh, and a string of scandalous one night stands that could’ve twice looped the equator. The man clearly used women for sex; that was all he was interested in. I’d had a lucky escape, although that annoying little voice inside my head pointed out that a man with that much practice presumably knew what he was doing.

Circumstances being what they were, my pre-assignment interview was a somewhat tense affair. It was predominantly conducted by Rogers, the head of the Queen’s household, who appeared to have been built at the same time as the palace itself. I’d only met him briefly during yesterday’s tour and found him imposing and unapproachable, but I’d still rather speak to him than Andrew, who was leaning against the wall behind Rogers, observing me with an appreciative and roguish eye. He said nothing as Rogers asked questions, and I tried my best to remember the embellished information I’d written on my résumé. At first, I felt he was mentally undressing me, and by the end of the interview I felt that he was mentally lighting a cigarette and calling me a cab.

After a few more hours of orientation, during which I struggled to commit to memory the convoluted layout of the house, the new staff were finally assigned specific duties. I was last, and Rogers took me to one side.

“You are to be Prince Andrew’s personal maid.”

What?

Rogers arched an eyebrow when I didn’t immediately respond out of pure shock, and I swallowed uncomfortably and choked out a response. “I see.”

“You are unhappy with this,” he said. It wasn’t so much a question as a direct statement, and I tried to wipe the horrified expression off my face and adopt a neutral one.

“No, sir, it’s just…I didn’t realize I’d be working so closely with the royal family. You surprised me, that’s all.”

“Valencia,” Rogers continued. He had a curious habit of addressing people by surname alone. “The family are our first responsibility, and keeping them happy is our primary concern and duty. Prince Andrew personally requested you after the interviews today. That’s why you’ll be working so closely with him.”

I nodded. “I understand,” I said, more than a little despondent. I’d hoped to avoid Prince Andrew, but this assignment was literally the opposite of that.

Dammit, why hadn’t I just taken another job, well away from the royal family? Sure, they didn’t pay anywhere near as well, but I’d accept a twenty-percent pay cut if it meant being at least twenty miles away from Andrew at all times.

“That said,” Rogers continued pointedly, “there are limits to those duties.”

“I see,” I said, feeling a ray of hope shine through.

“Fetching, carrying and, of course, cleaning.”

“Indeed.”

“What I am trying to say,” explained Rogers in his clipped, British tones, “is that if you feel the need to kick the randy little bastard right in his regalia, then by all means do so. You will not be fired. In fact, I might be tempted to give you a raise.”

My eyes widened in surprise at that, and then I grinned. Rogers returned the smile. He didn’t have a face which seemed suited to smiling, and yet when he did smile, I saw a whole other man peeping through the façade.

“Keep your chin up, girl,” he finished before nonchalantly going back to his duties.

As unlikely as it might be, it seemed I’d made my first tentative friend in the palace. Maybe working here wouldn’t be so bad after all…

***

It was only that afternoon that I was first called to my new boss’s chambers to be acquainted with my new set of duties. The Prince was waiting for me, smiling and looking as handsome as ever, as much as I hated to admit it.

“Come in, Keira. Take a seat.”

I looked at the chair warily. “Is there something you needed, your Majesty?”

“Nothing specific. Would you like a drink? You’re still standing.”

“I prefer to stand, your Majesty.”

“Call me Andrew. Drew if you prefer, seeing as that’s how we were introduced. Drink?”

“No thank you, your Majesty,” I said, making a point to ignore his request to call him by his real name.

Andrew paused and eyeballed me, clearly displeased with how this was going. “Highness, actually,” he finally said. “Only the Queen is Majestic.”

“Sorry, your Highness.”

“Like I said, call me Andrew. You’re sure you won’t have a drink?”

“Quite sure. Would you like me to pour you one, your Highness?”

“I can do it myself.” A snap of irritation had entered his voice, and I couldn’t help being quietly pleased by it.
You can’t have everything you want, you spoiled man-whore. Especially not from me.

Andrew poured himself a drink, took a deep breath and seemed to calm himself. “I wanted to apologize for the other night.”

I suppressed the sudden urge to roll my eyes. “Indeed, your Highness.”

“I would have told you who I was.”

Sure.

“Indeed, your Highness,” I repeated like a robot.

“But if I say it upfront then…well, people make a whole bunch of assumptions about me. Many of which I don’t like. And while it’s quite possible that I don’t like them because they’re true, I prefer to be judged for how I am over who I am. Be honest, if you’d known who I was, you’d have treated me differently, wouldn’t you?”

It was a reasonable point, though I waged an internal war with myself against allowing it. “Perhaps, your Highness.”

“Of course you would!” Andrew leapt at the slight capitulation as if it was a lifeline. “But instead, you got to know me for myself and I got to know you without any of that baggage. And it seemed, for a while there, that maybe you actually liked ‘Drew Ellis’. I certainly liked you.”

I said nothing. I’d been waiting for something like this, some way he would try to get past my defenses and get me into bed like so many other women before me. It did look like a very comfortable bed, but that wasn’t anywhere close to the point.

“You can admit it, Keira. I won’t judge you,” he said when I still hadn’t responded yet.

“Admit what, your Highness?” I asked.

“You applied for this job for a chance to see me again. Whether it was more of a subconscious decision, I don’t know, but part of you wanted to see me again, because you did like me.”

This time I almost snorted. Out of all the ridiculously arrogant things he could’ve possibly said, this really took the cake. He really thought I’d applied for this job, packed up and moved to England for a year just to see
him
again? Anyone who actually did that sort of thing probably needed a stint in a mental health facility.

In fact, maybe
he
needed some time in a mental health facility, because he was clearly suffering from grand delusions.

“Sorry, but you’re mistaken, your Highness. I’ve been planning this gap year in England for quite some time,” I said. “And I applied for the job here weeks ago.”

He smirked, eyes sparkling with humor. “If you say so.”

“I was under the impression that you needed me for something?” I continued, trying to get off the subject before I was tempted to wipe that smirk off his face with the back of my hand. “Perhaps to explain my duties as your personal maid?”

“I was hoping to get to know you better,” Andrew said. “I liked what I learned about you that night, but I’m sure there’s more, and it doesn’t have to be about…you know. I mean, I know that’s what it was about that night—for both of us, you were just as guilty as me. But now I find I want to know more about you. Tell me about yourself.”

I wondered just how many other women he’d used that exact speech on in the past, and the thought steeled my resolve to never let him get to me.

“I’m your personal maid,” I said. “There’s nothing else you’d need to know about me.”

The glimmer faded from his eyes. “I see. Well, I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“I don’t understand, your Highness.”

“No?” Prince Andrew looked away, then back at me, then away again. “Well, I think I do understand. I was wrong, and I apologize for making you feel awkward. That’ll be all, thank you.”

Well, at least he was polite about being rejected. Some men went bat-shit insane when women made their disinterest clear.

I left the room, proud of myself for having kept my temper and not succumbed to the silver-tongued words of the experienced womanizer. And yet…god, I couldn’t forget how he’d made me feel in those moments back in the bar in New York, and the way my body had responded, practically begging me to throw caution to the wind and take him home for the night. He was just so sexy, and….

I shook my head clear, one thought reverberating throughout my mind now.

Remember who this man is.