The Anti-Cinderella Read online

  But Nicky wasn’t connected to Honey Bee. He came for three weeks every summer to stay with his grandmother, whose home was next to ours. For a long time, for most of our days together, I’d had no idea that he was anything other than just a kid who talked a little funny and had some very precise ideas about building sand castles. It had only been about four years ago that I’d realized that my summer vacation buddy Nicky was known to the rest of the world as Prince Nicholas.

  Even then, it hadn’t changed anything. He was still just Nicky. He came to Florida for those weeks in the summer because his grandmother was American. She had left the United States decades before to marry the Earl of Umbria, but before she had been a countess, she’d been Honey’s best friend, which was why the two women had homes next-door to each other on the Florida coast.

  “Kyra!” My sister’s patience, never one of her strong suits, was at an end. “Come on! Honey’s waiting.”

  “You go on.” I twisted to face Lisel. “I don’t want to go.”

  Her face went blank with shock and then twisted with the kind of frustration reserved for sisters. “But Kyra—”

  “Go on. I’m fine.” I turned my back to her and prayed she’d cut her losses and leave now, before this got embarrassing.

  After a few seconds, I heard her huff out a breath before she stomped away, muttering under her breath. Thankfully, whatever she was saying was unintelligible.

  “You could’ve gone with her.” Nicky didn’t look at me as he spoke. “You didn’t have to stay here because of me.”

  “I wasn’t staying here because of you.” The lie slipped easily from my lips. “I just didn’t feel like ice cream. It’s not always about you, Nicky.”

  One side of his mouth twisted up into the half-smile that this summer had begun to set my insides to shaking. “You’re always good to remind me of that fact. Thanks.”

  “Any time.” I bumped my shoulder against his and tried to think of something witty to say. Tonight was Nicky’s last night with me, since tomorrow, he’d be flying up to Boston with his grandmother, where they were taking a private tour of Boston College before they returned to the UK.

  Until last year, I’d never paid attention to when Nicky arrived or left. He’d show up one day on the beach, and it would be a happy surprise when he joined my sisters and me as we played. And then three weeks later, he just wasn’t there, and someone would say, “Oh, yes, they went back home.” On the beach, in the summers, time had no meaning to the young.

  But last year, when I’d been thirteen, everything had changed. Suddenly, I’d found myself hyper-aware of Nicky, of the way he moved, of the way his bathing suit fit and how his chest was now broad and the way his blue eyes smiled when he did. I knew the minute he arrived on the sand every morning, and I knew when he left.

  And this year had been even worse. I could feel Nicky’s presence, even when I wasn’t looking at him. His voice was deeper, and when he spoke, the timber of it echoed so deep inside me that I could hardly breathe. I tried not to look at him, to moon around him, as my mother called it, but it wasn’t easy.

  I’d treasured each day jealously, since I’d asked, in what I’d hoped was an off-hand manner, when he was scheduled to leave. It was killing me to think about being here alone after he’d gone. I wondered if I could talk Honey and Handsome into taking me on a trip to England sometime during the school year. I had my argument ready, all about the educational benefits of a tour of Europe.

  “You could write to me.” I spoke out loud before I realized it. “You know, you could write letters to me. So we could keep in touch.”

  “Aw, Ky.” He shook his head. “Guys don’t write letters.”

  “That’s not true,” I protested vehemently. “History is full of great letters, and most of those were written by men. Probably only because no one thought to save the ones women wrote, but still. Lord Byron wrote to his Teresa, and John Keats to Fanny, and—” I held up one finger in triumph. “Even your ancestor Henry VIII wrote letters to Anne Boleyn.”

  Nicky laughed. “You had me until the last one. I don’t usually claim Henry VIII as my favorite relative. Not a very good example, as he later separated poor Anne’s head from her body. No amount of beautiful love letters makes up for that kind of treatment.”

  “All right. I’ll give you that. Well, then . . . Shakespeare!” I grinned. “You can’t argue with that one.”

  “Did the Bard write love letters? I don’t remember.”

  “The sonnets have to be letters. Or at least I think they are.” I smiled dreamily. “‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’” I gave a little sigh. Shakespeare had been my happy place ever since freshman English this past year. I’d begun gobbling up all of his works, aided and abetted by my grandmother, who had a weakness for him, too. Glancing sideways at Nicky’s face, awash in amusement, I back-peddled a little. “Anyway, I wasn’t talking about love letters. Just regular letters. Like, ‘Hey, Kyra, how are you? I’m here in England, where I’m . . .’ And then you tell me what’s going on with you, and I write back and do the same.”

  “I don’t know.” He frowned. “Maybe it was only people who lived a long time ago who were good correspondents. And I might not have been right about men in general and letters, but this guy doesn’t write letters.” He pointed at his chest. “I’d fail you miserably.”

  “I don’t agree. I still think you’re wrong, too, about writing. I know plenty of guys who are still alive and kicking who write letters.” I was bluffing, of course. Although, come to think of it, my grandfather wrote me beautiful letters.

  “Oh, really?” Nicky quirked a brow my way. “You know plenty of guys, do you?”

  For the first time in my life, I felt a small thrill of feminine power. “Yes, I do. Lots and lots. Tons of cute and funny guys.”

  Now I had his full attention. Nicky folded one knee back, bending it at an angle to his body, and shifted to face me. “Do you have a boyfriend, Ky?”

  “No.” Being coy was one thing, but honesty was important to me.

  “Do you want to have a boyfriend?” He tilted his head, examining me.

  I wanted to respond with a question—Are you applying for the job? But I wasn’t sure I could handle the answer.

  “I don’t want a boyfriend just to say I have one.” I scooped up a handful of sand and let it sift through my fingers. “Some of the girls I know want that. They don’t care who the boy is—they just want to be able to say that.”

  “But not you.” There was a bit of surprise in his tone.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I’d only want a boyfriend if it was the right person.”

  “Ah.” Nicky nodded. “That’s . . . mature.”

  “What about you?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer to this question.

  “No boyfriend for me.” He winked at me, and I rolled my eyes.

  “You know what I mean. Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Don’t you think you’d know if I did?” There was a thread of irony in his voice. “She would be on magazine covers. I don’t want to do that to anyone. Especially after what happened to my sister.”

  I winced. While I knew about Nicky’s family, more often than not I forgot that his parents, his grandparents and his sisters were on the world stage. But there wasn’t any avoiding the media coverage of his oldest sister and her fiancé.

  “Honey told me Alex is staying down here even after you go.” I nibbled my lower lip.

  “Yeah, she thought the space would be good. A break from . . . just everything, I guess. It can be suffocating. Not only all the attention from the press, which is horrible enough, but my parents and the rest of the family, they don’t know how to handle her. They don’t know what she needs—none of us do, to be honest. So it’s better for her to be here. Maybe she’ll get over it.”

  “Maybe.” I wasn’t as optimistic as Nicky. Losing the man she loved to a tragic accident didn’t sound like something a woman got
over—not quickly, certainly, and maybe not ever. Even at the age of fourteen I knew that much.

  “I don’t see how I could ever put someone through the nightmare of being linked with me.” Nicky scowled. “It’s brutal. And it’s not fair to a person who wasn’t born into it.”

  I had no idea how to answer that. I couldn’t make a good argument against his statement, as I didn’t have any experience with the life he led. But for reasons I couldn’t explain, I didn’t like what he was insinuating.

  “If your father and your grandfather thought that way, you wouldn’t be around,” I pointed out. “And maybe if the person cared about you enough, the other stuff wouldn’t matter to her.”

  Nicky didn’t answer me, but his frown deepened and his brows drew together. The waves crashed against the sand, and the last beams of the day’s sun glowed wanly. I wished desperately that I could think of something to say that would make him see me. Every once in a while, I had the feeling that he did—his eyes would warm, and his smile would seem to hold some kind of secret, as though it was only for me. But those times were rarer than I would have liked.

  “I’m going to miss you, Ky.” He said the words so softly that I almost thought I’d imagined them. For a moment, I just held onto that and basked in it, not only in what he’d said, but that he’d used the name no one else did. My family wasn’t big on nicknames—aside from affectionate titles for grandparents, obviously—and so no one ever called me anything except Kyra. Only Nicky had ever—and always—called me Ky.

  And then the meaning of what he’d said sank in. Nicky was going to miss me. I chanced a sideways glance and realized that he was watching me again. Studying me. Waiting for a reaction.

  I ran the tip of my tongue over my lips. “I’ll miss you, too.”

  “Sometimes I wish . . .” He trailed off and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, does it? My grandmother says something—if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. So they don’t help.”

  “But maybe—I could visit you. During the year, you know. I’ve never been to England. Or you could come back here.” When he remained silent, I added, “Or we could write.”

  “I don’t have the freedom to just take off for trips that aren’t planned in advance. I’ll be in school, and my term holidays are already set. And I wasn’t lying before. I’d be a lousy letter-writer.”

  I nodded as reality swept over me. “Okay. Yeah, you’re right. That was just—I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Ky.” Nicky sounded so tired. “It’s not that I don’t want to—you’re my friend. Sometimes I think the three weeks I’m here, with my grandmother and you—that’s when I’m who I really am, and the rest of the year, I’m just playing at being someone else. But when I go back there, Florida feels very far away. Like a dream. So to write to you, or to try to keep in touch—to believe I could see you or visit and it would be anything like the summer—it wouldn’t work.”

  “Okay.” I swallowed hard. “Yeah. Summer—um, things. Friendships. Whatever. They don’t usually work the rest of the year, do they?”

  He lifted one shoulder, as if that was some kind of answer. I closed my eyes and hoped that I wasn’t going to cry. That would be ridiculous. I wasn’t crushing on Nicky. We were friends. He was my friend, and it was only natural that I’d think he was cute. I’d think the same about any guy I only saw once a year, when I was on vacation.

  A breeze blew over us, and I shivered. Twilight had fallen, and it was fully dark over the ocean, so that I could see stars begin to twinkle just above the line where the water met the sky.

  “Ky.” Nicky whispered my name, and he touched my cheek with one finger, using that gentle caress to turn me to face him. He was close, those vivid blue eyes staring down into mine. What I saw there was confusion and uncertainty and something else that I thought might be want. Need. But I was too young to be sure. No one else had ever looked at me the way Nicholas Windsor was looking at me right now.

  My heart thudded against my ribcage. Nicky’s fingers slid over my cheek, brushing my jaw before he cupped the back of my neck, wordlessly urging my head to tilt up. In the moment before my eyes slid closed, I saw the way his eyelashes fanned against his skin. I inhaled the scent that was unique to Nicky, a mix of suntan lotion, some kind of light cologne and man-smell. I thought about everything he’d said and how his fingers felt against the back of my head, and I worried that maybe I was sweaty back there, from where my hair had lay while the sun was still high in the sky.

  And then his lips touched mine, and all other rational thought ceased. I didn’t worry, I didn’t stress and I didn’t think. I only felt the way his mouth pressed into me and the tickle of his breath as he exhaled through his nose. Every nerve in my body jumped to life and exploded in a new and joyous dance.

  He eased back a little, gazing down at me before he breathed out my name once more.

  “Ky.” When he kissed me again, his tongue teased my closed lips until I parted them slightly. He didn’t thrust his tongue into my mouth; he only traced the sensitive inner flesh with a gentle sweep. I didn’t know what to do—should I meet his tongue with mine? By the time I’d made up my mind to try, Nicky had pulled back.

  He was still right there, close enough that I thought he might kiss me again. I hoped he would. My lips tingled, and it felt as though my skin was buzzing, longing for more. I tried to remember the stories about making out I’d heard from other girls or read about in books. Would he want to touch me? I wanted to be brave enough to press my hands into his chest, to skim them down his back and to lean my body against his.

  Behind us, from one of the houses, a voice called, breaking the spell between us. I thought it was probably someone looking for Nicky, since I knew that if Lisel and Honey had returned from the ice cream shop, they’d just walk back onto the beach to find me.

  Nicky muttered something under his breath, releasing his hold on me as he flipped his wrist over to check his watch.

  “Kyra, I’m sorry. I have to go inside. My flight tomorrow is early, and I promised my grandmother I’d eat with her tonight.”

  “Oh, sure.” I forced a smile and hoped he couldn’t hear the pounding of my heart. “Of course, you should go in. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

  “I know you are.” Nicky brushed my hair back over my shoulder. “I just wish—part of me wishes that I’d done this the first night I was here. And the other part of me is glad I waited, because maybe it would have ruined our time together. Maybe I shouldn’t have—you know.”

  “I’m not sorry you did.” I held his gaze steadily. “I wouldn’t want my first kiss to be with anyone else but you, Nicky.”

  “Your first kiss.” His mouth quivered between a frown and a smile, as though he wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or upset. “Kyra, if there was a way—”

  “It’s okay.” I blinked rapidly, furiously fighting back the tears I hated. “It’s okay. Really. You have to go. I’m fine. My grandmother and Lisel are going to be back in a minute, too.”

  He nodded and stood up, pulling me to my feet as well. “I’ll try to write. I can’t promise, but . . .”

  “Then don’t. I’ll see you next summer. It’s all right, Nicky. I’ll see you next summer.”

  He pulled me into a hug, but I could already feel him drawing away. “Goodbye, Ky.”

  “Bye, Nicky. See you next year.” He released me, and I watched him turn away and jog up the beach toward the lights beyond the dunes. For a few long minutes, I stood still, hugging my arms around my ribs, holding onto the magic of this moment.

  When I began trudging in the direction of my grandparents’ home, I wasn’t one bit sad. I’d just had my first kiss. It had been as perfect as any girl might dream it to be. And although I knew I wasn’t going to see Nicky any time soon, next summer would come quickly. I’d be a year older, and so would he, and maybe . . . maybe there would be more kisses.

  I’d see him again. Next summer.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” />
  I didn’t take any time to think before I blurted out the words. What was going through my mind tumbled out of my lips, which wasn’t anything new. As Shelby often said, my filter was faulty.

  Nicky didn’t seem surprised by the greeting. “Well, your grandparents heard I was going to be in the area, and they very kindly invited me to dinner. And then they thought it would be fun for us to see each other again, since it’s been a while.”

  “Ten years. But who’s counting?” I flipped my hand over. “Not me.”

  “I can see that.” He grinned. “Aw, c’mon, Ky. Aren’t you even the least bit pleased to see me?”

  I rolled my eyes, but at the same time, I felt my initial shock giving way to pleasure. This was Nicky, after all, my childhood playmate and my very first crush. After the disappointment of the summer after our first—and, as it turned out, our only—kiss, I’d come to a place of acceptance as I’d grown up. The more aware I’d become of who Nicky was to the world at large, the less real that night had seemed to be. Within a year or so, I’d realized that the kiss—that magical fairy-tale moment in my life—couldn’t have meant to him what it had to me. He was a freakin’ prince in England, and I was just a kid. Just Kyra Duncan, the scrawny kid from the states.

  I’d gotten over it—and him—years before. I didn’t even think about him, beyond an occasional smile when I caught his image on the cover of a magazine. So while I was not thrilled about being hoodwinked by my grandparents, I wasn’t altogether unhappy to see Nicky.

  “Maybe just a little bit,” I conceded, feigning grumpiness. “As long as you’re not going to get pushy about sand castle design or call me Kyra-Myra. I won’t put up with that crap.”

  My grandfather laughed. “Not quite the warm and tender reunion your grandmother was envisioning, Kyra. But I’d expect nothing less of you.”