The Prince I Love to Hate: A Steamy Romantic Comedy (The Heir Affair Book 1) by Iris Morland (book club recommendations txt) 📕

The royal family did not have a dungeon where they tortured political rivals. (So Olivier claimed…)

He really didn’t appreciate my joke about his crown jewels.

“Wow,” was all I said after he’d given me the rundown. “So does that mean you’re rich?”

“What a gauche question.” He looked genuinely offended.

“I’m American. We’re all gauche.” I said this as I popped the last bite of brioche into my mouth and sighed happily.

“I’ve always heard Americans love to talk about money.”

“We do love money, guns, and freedom. I can practically hear a bald eagle soaring overhead as I say that.”

Olivier sipped his tea. “If you really want to know, I’m not rich, but I do receive an allowance as a member of the royal family.”

“That was a lot of words to say that you’re loaded.”

He scowled. “I’m not discussing this. It’s not relevant.”

Considering his “not-rich” state was what was paying for us to travel around Europe, I was skeptical of this claim. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was now gallivanting in Paris with a Royal Prince of Salasia. How quaint!

I desperately wanted to text Rachel about all of this. She’d die when I told her. She’d always been obsessed with the British Royal Family. She’d gotten up at the crack of dawn to watch Prince William marry Kate Middleton and had sighed over her wedding dress for way too long.

Honestly, I hadn’t understood what all the fuss was about. They were just figureheads. They wielded zero political power. They just had a lot of money and land, and they were hanging onto an obsolete system by the skin of their teeth. What was to admire?

Olivier continued to sip his tea. Never once had he eaten with his mouth open; he’d lay his knife down between individual bites of his meal. He dabbed his lips with his cloth napkin with such finesse that I felt like a bit of an ogre in comparison. I probably could’ve at least attempted to act civilized, but his expression of amazement/disgust at my eating so much was honestly so hilarious that I hadn’t been able to help from trolling him further.

Then he said, “You don’t seem impressed.”

“With what?” I’d been staring into my empty cup of coffee, wondering if three lattes in a row would kill me.

“With me. With what I told you.”

I laughed. “Why should I be impressed? You didn’t do anything besides get lucky when you were born.”

“True. But most people tend to look upon royals with a bit more awe than you’re currently exhibiting.”

“I’m an American. We don’t care about royals.”

Olivier snorted. “Ridiculous. You lot are way more obsessed with the British royals than anyone in Britain.”

Okay, he had me there. “Well, if you want me to scrape and bow and drool over you, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“I never asked for drooling.” His tone was wry. He fell silent again, studying me. I felt a bit like a bug under a microscope.

Had he really never met someone who didn’t care about his title? “Is there something on my face?” I said finally.

“No,” was all he said.

But his gray eyes didn’t leave my face for way too long. It was to the point that I muttered about going to the bathroom and hurried away. My heart was pounding in my chest, my cheeks flushed.

Why did this handsome jerkface get me so flustered? After peeing, I washed my hands with vigor. “Don’t let him intimidate you,” I said to myself. I splashed some cold water on my cheeks. The last thing I needed was Olivier to see that I was blushing like a teenage girl.

On my way back to our table, a woman stopped me, speaking in French.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t speak French.”

She switched to accented English effortlessly. “Are you dating Prince Olivier?”

I looked over at Olivier, and there was already a small crowd around him, all of whom were young women. Oh, great.

“Um, no,” I said. “We’re just…” My brain tried to scramble for some reasonable explanation. “Working together.”

“Oh, that makes more sense,” she said. She hurried off to catch Olivier’s attention before I could say something snarky.

I returned to the table, and I had to almost elbow the young women out of the way just to get my suitcase and bag. I rolled my eyes at Olivier. “Seriously?” I said.

He was standing already and ignored my remark. The girls spoke to him in French, and as I couldn’t understand anything any of them were saying, I placed some euros down and headed outside to wait for him.

I was tapping my foot with impatience when he finally joined me. I glared at him. “Seriously?” I repeated.

“Do you have a question?” was his overly calm rejoinder.

Okay, I didn’t. I was just annoyed at that woman thinking there was no way Olivier would ever date me. Because of course I wanted him to want to date me, even though I didn’t want to date him. Yeah, made sense. Niamh, you dingus.

“It’s nothing,” I said in irritation. “Let’s go check into the hotel.”

“You seem annoyed.”

The sun was way too hot right now. I could feel my lower back getting damp, beads of sweat forming on my upper lip. I wiped at the moisture. God, the last thing I needed was to get pit stains right now.

“I’m not annoyed,” I replied.

“You sound annoyed.”

“I do not.”

“You sound as though seeing all those women surround me made you unhappy.”

Oh, he was needling me, all right. I gritted my teeth. “If you want to know, my stomach hurts from eating so much. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Hmm.”

I glanced up at him, even more irritated to see that he seemed incapable of sweating despite the heat and dragging his suitcase behind him. His shirt collar was open, exposing golden skin. His clavicle looked so lickable that I nearly tripped over a sidewalk crack thinking about it.

“I don’t care if you don’t believe me,” I said, my voice taut. “That’s your issue, not