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

“‘My nipples beaded and my core moistened,’” he continued. He wrinkled his nose. “Core? Why does this sound like she’s describing the earth’s core? Is this poor woman full of lava?”

“It’s a metaphor.” I finally was able to snatch the book from his sneaky, princely fingers. “And yes, it’s ridiculously flowery. That’s why I like it.”

“I’m surprised.”

“That I read?”

“No. That you read books like these.”

At that, my hackles rose. I had a bit of a love-hate relationship with romance novels. Sometimes they could be so amazing that my mind was blown. But when they were bad, well, they were bad. Since I’d been reading them for many years now, I felt like I could criticize them fairly. But when someone—especially a man—talked derisively about romance novels, I always got defensive.

I could call them trash, but nobody else could.

“Do you want me to hit you upside the head again?” I held up the book. “Because I will if you keep going with that subject.”

Olivier jumped back. “Christ, woman. I simply meant that I’m surprised someone as bloodthirsty as you would read romance.”

I deflated. “Oh.”

“Yes. ‘Oh.’” He gestured at me. “Let’s go.”

To my surprise, Olivier paid for my book, despite my protestations. Maybe he was just trying to ensure that I didn’t smack him with it. Well, I wouldn’t promise anything.

We began to walk west toward the 7th District where the antiques shop was located. Considering that the Eiffel Tower and other famous landmarks of the city were located in this district, we were quickly walking amongst both Parisians and tons of tourists.

More than once I was asked by an American to help them take a photo. I had no idea how Americans always managed to find each other for photos in foreign countries, but we did.

“So did you have any luck with that phone number?” I said to Olivier.

Olivier sighed. “He insisted it was correct.” He pulled the piece of paper from his pocket. “All we can do is keep calling.”

I was about to once again ask, Then what? But Olivier’s expression looked so defeated that I bit my tongue.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t frustrated at our getting stalled. I wanted to find my da as much as Olivier wanted to find this clock. We both had stakes in this game. The fact that we seemed incapable of finding the one person who’d seemed like a sure thing was beyond annoying.

We walked past the boarded-up antiques shop. Olivier stopped in front of it, frowning.

“What?” I had no idea what was inside that handsome brain of his.

“Do we know who owns this building?”

“Um, no. How would we find that out?”

Olivier stepped back and gazed upward. The building was three stories, and above the abandoned store was a row of windows that looked like offices. Above that, I could see a cat in a window, so most likely they were apartments.

“We need to get inside somehow.” He stroked his chin and began to wander to the back side of the building. But the only door that led inside was locked. Olivier tried pounding on it, but no one answered. Since no one currently occupied the first floor, it made sense.

We returned to the front of the building once again. Pedestrians flowed past us. A few were annoyed that we were standing in the middle of the sidewalk like two gawking tourists. Except we were gawking at an abandoned store.

I looked up and down the street for some kind of clue. “Wait!” I grabbed Olivier’s hand and took him back to the alley behind the building. He grumbled at me until I pointed and said, “Look!”

“It’s a window. Unless you want us to break in—”

“No, look. It’s open.”

Olivier peered more closely. The window itself was small, the glass foggy with age. “Only a crack.”

“If we can find something to wedge it open—” I looked around, finding what looked like a piece of pipe that’d fallen out of the nearby trash bins. I began to press the pipe into the crack and slowly make a see-saw motion to get the window to go up.

At first, nothing happened. I kept going, hoping against hope that I wasn’t making myself look like an idiot with no results. A moment later, though, Olivier took over and added his strength to wedging the window open. Finally, we heard a creak and the window moved upward.

“Yes!” I pushed it open as far as it would go. Unfortunately, it was just big enough to let one small person through. Meaning, there was no way Olivier was going to get his princely ass through it.

“Hoist me up?” I said.

“And then what? You go upstairs and ask someone to give you a phone number?”

I wrinkled my nose. “No, dingus. I open the door to stairwell so you can do it. Duh.”

“I don’t think ‘dingus’ is a real word.”

“It totally is. Now, hoist me up already.”

Olivier sighed but finally kneeled at my feet, which was just about the greatest image ever. A prince, kneeling at my feet? Come on.

“If this were any other day, I’d totally swoon at having a prince on one knee in front of me,” I said, a hand over my heart.

He rolled his eyes. “Stop wasting time already. My trousers are getting dirty.”

I laughed at him, but then I was standing on his knee as he boosted me through the window that was about six feet off of the ground. I wiggled through, fearing for a second that my butt was too big to get through. When my hips got stuck, I made a rather absurd squealing noise.

“Are you stuck?” said Olivier. He sounded like he was laughing, the bastard.

I kicked my legs. “Yes! Help me!”

“You’re very demanding.” Then I felt hands on my thighs, way too close to my butt cheeks, and I couldn’t help but clench up. It was almost erotic…until Olivier pushed me through the window and I nearly broke my face as I fell.

Thankfully, I fell