The Royal Pain by MaryJanice Davidson

Author:MaryJanice Davidson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2005-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

“Hi, Dad!” she said, giving the king her brightest smile as she swung the door open. She tightened the belt on her robe, then nearly went sprawling as her father marched past her.

“Got some good staff downstairs,” he commented. “You wouldn’t believe the shit they were shoveling in order to stop me from coming up.”

“What shit?” she asked innocently, raking a hand through her hair.

“Apparently, you’re drunk, with a migraine, and going into withdrawal from the heroin treatment, and can’t have visitors. To my own face they’re telling me this! I could have them imprisoned for fifty years!”

“I am getting a bit of a headache,” she admitted.

“My ass you are.” He was looking around the suite, then spotted Shel. His blue eyes went narrow and squinty and he lunged forward.

So did Alex, wrapping her arms around his (slightly thickened) middle. The tops of her feet dragged across the lush carpet as he dragged her a meter and a half, then gave up.

“For Christ’s sake, Alex. Leggo.”

She did, thudding to the carpet, then leaping to her feet before her father or Shel could help her up. “Dad, I’m warning you.”

His eyes went wide, and the corner of his mouth turned up in an expression she knew well: He was pissed, but trying not to laugh. “You’re warning me? Sweetheart, you might want to check the history books. I’ve got rank.”

“Dad, I’m serious. Don’t you touch him. Not one finger, not one knuckle. I’m twenty-five years old, for God’s sake!”

“Yeah, and I’ve been telling you for about that long to watch out for fortune hunters,” he snapped back. “This kid doesn’t have a penny to his—”

“Fortune hunters?” Shel repeated, sounding like he’d found a snake in the toilet. Alex groaned and made frantic throat-slashing motions, to no avail. “Not fucking likely! What, you think that’s the only reason someone would be interested in your daughter?”

“Who’s talking to you, boy?”

“Because it’s not, mister! King! Whatever! She’s smart and sexy and funny and chilly and tough and—”

“Quiet, you. Alex, what the hell? I gotta read this in the papers?”

“It’s not like that, Dad.”

“What’s it like, then?”

“Private. That’s what it’s like.”

“You didn’t tell him anything about us?” Now Sheldon sounded as if the snake in the toilet had hatched babies in his shoes.

“I did! Remember, Dad, on the phone the other—”

“Yeah, yeah. Get some pants on, boy,” the king ordered. “Then join me outside.”

“‘Join me’ better not be a euphemism for ‘let me beat you until you need a cast,’” Alex warned.

“You could stand to put some pants on, too,” the king said, mildly enough, and then stepped out of the room.

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