I’m a good person. I’m a good person. I’m a good person.
I stare at Maleficent’s luggage in the private elevator and repeat my mantra as I march in place to get a few extra steps in on my fitness tracker, even though I’m feeling awful damn tired and tempted to have some fun.
I know nothing good can come of booby-trapping her luggage.
It’s such fancy luggage, all brown leather and brass zippers and some logo stamped all over it that must be European. It’s practically begging for a trip to a pasture to be trampled by a few cows.
Or by a few city cabs, since I’m not sure where the nearest pasture is.
But honestly, I’d rather let Manning’s luggage get trampled. I sigh and lean back against the silver wall as the elevator slows.
Of course he’s engaged. He’s a royal heir already in possession of a fiancée, so all he needs is a mistress and a few bastards. And I’m a complete and total fool.
Joey warned me. Men want one thing, Gracie. They want to stick their dicks in any orifice you’ll let them stick it in, and then they’ll walk away and find the next orifice to stick their dicks in. And who knows if the next orifice will even belong to a human?
If Manning’s sticking his dick in Maleficent’s orifice, then Joey has a very good point about that human thing.
The fact that he didn’t seem happy to see her is little consolation.
Because it doesn’t matter that he knows how to kiss me like I’m the only woman in the world. It doesn’t matter that the sight of his bare chest makes me hot and wet. It doesn’t even matter that I’m pregnant with his baby.
There isn’t now, nor will there ever be, a we where Manning and I are concerned.
The elevator doors open, and I eye the luggage once more.
Can’t buy class, Peach told me once.
She was right.
The question is, do I care if I’m the classy one?
Oh, fuck it.
Who needs class?
“Miss Diamonte?” Manning’s ground-floor guard says. He’s a brick shithouse with dark hair and penetrating eyes, standing at a slender, tall, dark-paneled desk beside the private elevator. He peers at me with an unamused frown. I made a point of introducing myself to both him and Viktor the night I met Manning, because I might not have money or sophistication, but I have manners.
I smile at him as I lean in the elevator doorway, blocking the doors from closing. “Kristofer, do people call you names?”
He doesn’t wince exactly, but his left eyelid definitely twitches. Because people call him names or because he assumes that’s exactly what Maleficent did to me upstairs is anybody’s guess. “Names are child’s play, my lady.”
“But they can still hurt, can’t they? And please, call me Gracie. Though I’m tickled as all get out at the title. You’d fit right in back where I come from.”
His gaze shifts to the luggage.
Maybe it’s the suit, or maybe it’s the clean-shaven square jaw beneath dark hair just beginning to thread with silver, but it strikes me that Kristofer is a handsome gentleman.
Must be something in the air in Stölland. They make beautiful men. And I hope nobody’s calling Kristofer any names, because he was most kind when I showed up here completely unexpectedly and practically lost, asking to see his royal boss.
“It’s rather a pity when kindness is neglected in place of insults,” he says.
“I suppose that’s what karma’s for.” I smile sweetly. “Well, karma and a Southern woman alone in an elevator for thirty seconds with a banshee’s luggage. You enjoy your evening. I hope you don’t have to work too long tonight. And that the monkey knows where to poop.”
I wiggle my fingers at him and take off at a reasonable pace, though I’d love to get as far the hell away from here as I can as fast as humanly possible.
Because my baby isn’t growing up in a world where her fate can be decided by a king who would arrange for his son to marry a woman like that.
Which means I need to contact a lawyer.
Yesterday.
But I need to figure out this cab thing again first.
My phone buzzes. I glance at the screen, and my heart clenches.
Manning.
Of course. Of course he’s calling. Because it’s the right thing to do.
I hit the ignore button and head out of the building.
Not because I want to.
But because I need to. For my sake, and for my baby’s sake.
