A Princess Next Door (Rothman Royals Book 1)
Read A Princess Next Door (Rothman Royals Book 1) Online
Authors: Noelle Adams
A Princess Next Door
Noelle Adams
This
book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright
© 2016 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce,
distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.
They say some children are born with
silver spoons in their mouths. I wasn’t one of those children.
I am Amalie Rothman, and I was born with a crown on my head.
I assume those silver spoons are figurative, unless there
are strange goings-on in certain quarters involving newborns and high end
cutlery. But the crown on my head was entirely literal. My mother has a
photograph of me, only one hour old and wearing a tiara, in her private lounge
to prove it.
She had the same picture made of my older brother and my two
younger sisters. She’s very proud of my father’s royal lineage. My parents kept
having children, hoping for a spare heir after my brother, Henry, but they only
ended up with more daughters. Not that extra princesses of Villemont are
useless. After all, there are plenty of dull, unattractive men of distinction
to marry us off to.
For centuries, that has been the primary royal duty of a
princess of Villemont—to marry whomever is most advantageous to their family
and country.
My mother had a certain Edward Farmingham Channing IV in
mind for my future husband. He wasn’t noble, but he was the heir to a
multi-billion dollar fortune. Noble blood is well and good, but money is even
better.
At least, it is if you are a Rothman.
Four years ago, when I was twenty, I dug in my heels and
told my mother I wasn’t going to marry the man. I wanted to go to university
and study art instead. After endless rounds of debate and argument, I finally
announced I was leaving whether she wanted me to or not. She still says I ran
away, although all I did was move to Minneapolis for college to study under a
specific art history professor who’d published books I loved. I’d always
assumed I’d return home when I graduated.
That was how I ended up getting whistled at in the hallway
of my apartment building.
I was unlocking my door, but I paused when I heard the wolf
whistle. It was so out of place and so unexpected that it took me a minute to
even recognize.
I finally turned my head to see Jack Watson grinning at me
from down the hall.
“Did you whistle at me?” I asked, trying not to smile back
as he approached.
Jack lived in the apartment next door, and he wasn’t
anything like the men I was used to, who were all well-groomed, over-educated,
and oozing a kind of privileged ennui. Jack was big and handsome with rough
edges and a blunt candor that always surprised me. I’d known him since he moved
into the building last year, although we only ever interacted in the hall or
the parking garage.
“I did,” he admitted, his eyes traveling up and down my body
with open appreciation. “You look good.”
It was an unseasonably warm day for April, so I was wearing
a little green sundress. I thought I’d looked pretty when I finished dressing
that morning, and it was nice that Jack thought so too. “But why did you
whistle?”
“That’s what guys do here. Didn’t you know that?” His brown
eyes were still warm and amused, but I could tell he was asking a genuine
question.
As much as I tried to speak with a normal American accent, I
still sounded European. Villemont is a microstate tucked in the Alps between
France and Switzerland. It’s been a sovereign nation for more than three
hundred years, but it only spans twenty-five square miles and boasts a
population of about 15,000. I’ve been told my accent sounds in between French
and German, which makes sense since they’re both official languages of
Villemont.
There was a lot about American culture that was still new to
me, but I did know about wolf whistles. “Yes, of course,” I said, answering
Jack’s question. “But I thought it was a rude thing men did to women on the
street.”
“It is.” He glanced away, looking momentarily sheepish. “It
was dumb. Sorry.”
I wasn’t used to guys apologizing so easily. “So why did you
do it?”
“Because I do a lot of dumb things around you.” His mouth
twitched up slightly. “Haven’t you realized that by now?”
He’d made no pretense of his attraction to me over the
months I’d known him. At first, he’d always been asking me to go to dinner or
the movies with him. After a while, when I kept telling him no, he stopped
asking me out, but it was clear he was still interested.
I tried to remind myself that I was graduating next month
and would have to return home—probably to marry someone politically or
diplomatically advantageous to my family. There was no sense in indulging the
flood of attraction that suddenly consumed me when I stared up at Jack’s
handsome face, broad shoulders, and sexy smile.
I’d always turned down his advances because it was smart and
because I knew the relationship could never go anywhere. But I was finding
myself more and more tempted to say yes.
“Oh,” I said, lowering my eyes, wishing I was just a normal
college girl who could respond to any man I wanted.
“Are you going out tonight?”
“No.” It was a Friday night, but I never went out much. I
had some casual friends, but it was hard to get close to anyone and keep the
fact that you were a princess a secret.
No one knew who I was here, and I wanted to keep it that
way.
“I was thinking about ordering a pizza. You can come over
and have some if you want.”
I swallowed hard, giving myself a quick mental lecture about
how silly and futile it would be to spend time with this man, when a future was
already mapped out for me back home. “Thank you. I probably won’t, though.”
“I was afraid you’d say that, but it’s a standing offer.
Just knock on my door any time you want.” Jack wore khakis and an untucked
black T-shirt. I knew he ran his family’s sporting goods retail stores, but he
rarely dressed up for work. He looked around thirty, and I liked just about
everything about him—even the way he always needed to shave at the end of the
day.
He was so different from everything I was accustomed to.
“Okay. Thank you.” I inhaled deeply and then let my breath
out, forcing myself to turn away and finish unlocking my door.
I glanced back one more time before I stepped inside. He was
still standing there, gazing at me with those deep brown eyes and an almost
wistful smile.
Damn, it was hard to say no to him.
But I was Amalie Rothman. I was a princess of Villemont. And
Jack Watson wasn’t for me.
***
My apartment was in a very nice
building in downtown Minneapolis, not too far from my university campus.
When I’d decided to go to college, against my mother’s
wishes, I’d planned on getting a job and trying to make it on my own. That
wasn’t acceptable to my mother, however. She wouldn’t sleep sound unless I had
a very nice place with extra security and a bodyguard from the Royal Guard.
I was fine with the secure apartment, but I objected to the
bodyguard. We finally compromised that Hans, my bodyguard, would have to
maintain a discreet distance at all times, so people wouldn’t know who he was.
So he dressed like another college student—one who took all the same classes as
me. My father might be a king, but he wasn’t an important man in world
politics, so kidnapping wasn’t a real threat for me or my sisters. But I wasn’t
going to be stupid and refuse protection completely. Hans was good about
lurking in the shadows. Only a couple of people had noticed him, and they’d
assumed he had a thing for me. It never occurred to anyone that he was hired to
protect me.
In addition to the apartment, my mother had insisted on
sending me here with a collection of the Rothman family antiques for décor.
As in everything else, her tastes were more lavish than the
family coffers could easily afford, which was why it was so imperative to marry
us off to wealthy men.
I did like my little apartment, though, with its high
ceilings, wood floors, and expansive views of the city skyline.
That afternoon, as I walked in the front door, I knew
immediately that something was wrong. I heard a dripping sound, and that
couldn’t be good.
When I passed the short wall that divided the entryway from
the kitchen, I found the source of the dripping.
The ceiling above the dining area had caved in, and water
was leaking in a slow trickle from above.
Right onto the Elizabethan sideboard that had been in the
Rothman family possession for three hundred years.
My reflexes are not like lightning. I tend to be more of a
thinker than a doer. But I was hit with a panic that couldn’t be denied and ran
over to the sideboard immediately. The polished mahogany surface was covered
with a pool of water. I moved to one side and tried to push it out of the way
of the waterfall, but the piece was heavy and I couldn’t budge it.
I tried for a minute, only managing to move it about an
inch, and then I straightened up, almost crying as I saw the water was covering
the entire surface.
My mother would be heartbroken if the sideboard was
irreparably damaged.
I had to get it moved out of the way, so I followed the
first instinct that came into my mind. I ran out of my apartment and down the
hall to Jack’s unit next door.
I pounded on the door.
He swung it opened in less than a minute, blinking as he saw
who it was. “That was fast,” he said with a slow smile. He must have been in
the process of changing clothes, since he held his shirt in his hand and his
chest was bare.
I know I had other things to worry about at the moment, but
I couldn’t help but notice that his chest was very fine indeed with a
scattering of dark hair and well defined muscles.
I dragged my eyes back up to his face. “Can you help me?” I
gasped, a little breathless from my anxiety and my attempt to move the
sideboard on my own.
His expression changed, and the concern on his face was
strangely comforting. Since I’d moved here, I’d felt mostly alone, and it was
nice to know there was someone I could rely on for help. “What’s wrong?”
Figuring it would be easier to show him than to explain, I
said, “Can you come look?”
He followed without argument, and when he’d entered my
apartment, it didn’t take him long to size up the situation. “Whoa. Either a
pipe burst or a tub is overflowing upstairs.”
“The sideboard is an antique.”
He acted immediately. He strode over to push the sideboard
out of the way, making it move with impressive ease, given how hard it had been
for me to push it even an inch.
I hurried to get a couple of towels and wiped down the
surface. The vase of flowers I’d had on top were soaked, but that was no
serious problem. The polished surface was dulled by the water, but it didn’t
look like the mahogany itself had been damaged.
“Thank you,” I told Jack, who was staring up at the hole in
my ceiling. “I appreciate the help.”
“No problem.” He turned to smile at me sympathetically. “Is
it totally messed up?” he asked, gesturing toward the sideboard.
“I hope not. It belongs to my family. My mother is already
angry with me. She’d never forgive me if I damaged a family antique.”
“Why is she mad at you?”
I swallowed, realizing I probably shouldn’t have shared such
personal information. Just because Jack felt familiar, safe, incredibly
attractive, didn’t mean I could get close to him. “She, uh, she didn’t want me
to go to college at all.”
Jack’s frown deepened. “Why the hell not?”
“It’s a long story.” I gave the surface of the sideboard one
more swipe with a dry towel. “I think it’s going to be okay. You saved it in
time.”
“That’s me. Savior of sideboards and damsels in distress.”
His tone was light and teasing and ironic, and I really liked the sound of it.
“Why don’t you call the building manager, and I’ll go upstairs and see if I can
figure out what’s going on?”
Since this was a very reasonable idea, I nodded and went to
find the phone number, telling myself that this was all the interaction with
Jack Watson I should indulge in.
I’d be graduating in just over a month. I’d have to go home.
No use to get too attached to my sexy American neighbor if I’d just have to
leave him in five weeks.
***
An hour later, the leak had been
stopped by the simple step of turning off the bathtub the idiot upstairs had
left running all day.
The manager had come by to inspect the damage and promised
to get someone in to fix the ceiling the following day. Everything was taken
care of, and I was left alone in my apartment with a gaping hole in my ceiling.
I told myself to ignore it and tried to focus on what I
wanted for dinner.
What I mostly wanted was to get out of this apartment, since
the sight of the stained and torn plaster made me feel kind of depressed, and
the smell was faint but noticeable. But I had nowhere to go except a hotel, and
that would make me feel like I was just a spoiled rich girl.
I wasn’t really a rich girl—at least, not if I continued to
refuse to marry Edward Farmingham Channing IV.
Please understand, the Rothmans weren’t poor by anyone’s
standards, and by most of the world’s criteria we were loaded. But when you’re
the king, your lifestyle expenses are ridiculously high, so I’ve spent my life
on this strange high wire, teetering between indulgence and financial anxiety.
I was staring into my refrigerator, telling myself to stop
being ridiculous about wanting to get out of the apartment, when there was a
knock on my door.
No one ever knocked on my door, so I just stood in a daze
for a moment until I realized the best way to find out who was there was to go
and open the door. Hans wouldn’t have let anyone in from outside without
letting me know they were coming up, so it had to be someone from the building.
It was Jack. He’d changed into sweats and a T-shirt, and he
was grinning at me from across the threshold. “Just thought I’d offer pizza and
beer again. It’s got to suck to be stuck in there with a hole in your ceiling.”