Royal Bachelor Read online

  Royal Bachelor

  New Adult Contemporary Romance

  (A Sexy and Fun Read Suitable for Readers over the age of 18)

  © 2013 Trudi Torres

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Trudi-Torres/327521007365436

  Personal Email: [email protected]

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrudiTorres

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and storylines are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One - Luke

  Chapter Two - Alice

  Chapter Three – Luke

  Chapter Four – Alice

  Chapter Five- Luke

  Chapter Six - Alice

  Chapter Seven - Luke

  Chapter Eight - Alice

  Chapter Nine - Luke

  Chapter Ten - Alice

  Chapter Eleven - Luke

  Chapter Twelve - Alice

  Chapter Thirteen - Luke

  Chapter Fourteen - Alice

  From the Author - Trudi Torres

  Chapter One - Luke

  “What are you smiling about?”

  Luke blinked at his drink and then turned his head to face the speaker, a red-headed girl wearing too much eyeliner. Luke tucked his chin in a polite but distant nod and said, “My mother.”

  “Oh, you sweet thing!” Her voice was gravelly with cigarette smoke. She was probably his age but looked nearly twice that, due to smoking or the makeup. Was that hair even her own?

  “Is something wrong with her?”

  Luke frowned in confusion. “Not really, no.”

  The girl lost her pout. Pouting for sympathy? And now she seemed stymied. “So you’re not looking for consolation?”

  Now Luke looked at the girl incredulously. “If my mother died, would I be here?”

  “Well, sure! To forget for a while and be happy.” The girl stroked the pink shell of his ear with a finger. “You look familiar. Have I seen you before, handsome?”

  Luke had to laugh at her audacity instead of squirming that she might recognize him. She wouldn’t—and even if she did, she wouldn’t believe it. But Luke knew that if Lucilla died, his world would grind to a halt.

  Trust Alfred to make him sit in a club like this. Luke usually didn’t mind, but tonight it was startling. This girl sounded like she would be a very casual and very easy hook-up.

  “If your mom’s doing so well, how about we celebrate?” she asked. The girl flipped her hair, a calculated action that caused her trussed-up tits to bounce in cartoon fashion. “I can increase your happiness. Cloud nine, baby.”

  Someone to his right snorted, and then started coughing and sputtering.

  The red-headed girl flounced off with a glare, probably expecting Luke to chase her. Instead, Luke turned in his stool to face the girl who’d snorted and was now paying the consequences. He reached out and thumped her on the back.

  “Ugh, damn, that went down the wrong pipe,” she said. Unlike the redhead, this one had a deliciously husky voice that went straight to his groin. She was probably a singer. She looked up from her handful of tissues and if Luke had been drinking, it would have been his turn to choke.

  Her hair was the complete opposite of the current trend of limp, stick-straight locks. It was an unruly mane of curls and colors that seemed to catch the light. She wore smudged, tortoise-shell glasses which immediately placed her as an alien among the bar’s seedy patrons. The dreary yellow glow of the bar gave her skin a golden hue and for a moment Luke was sure he had encountered an incarnated Rosetti painting, one of the prettier ones that jumped out at you after you’ve stared at it for a while.

  It was the quiet beauty that revealed itself to patience and a paintbrush. Light eyes contrasted by thick, black lashes, and pale skin shining against dark hair. But unlike the haughty women in Rossetti’s art, her lips had a natural upturn, even though she wasn’t smiling.

  Or was she?

  “What are you staring at? Do I have olive on my face?”

  Nope, not smiling, then. She was the only woman in the place wearing a button-down. All the other girls seemed to be stitched in something tight and skimpy. But Luke guessed that this young woman had hidden curves beneath her loose shirt.

  “Sorry,” Luke caught himself before he turned to full ogling. “What’s your name?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Dared-here-by-idiot-friends. Yours?”

  Luke coughed a laugh. “Kicked-here-by...” Luke floundered, unwilling to start such a promising conversation on a lie, “by-a-cousin-because-he’s-got-someone-in-the-house.”

  “Really? But you’re not relegated to this limbo by something as stupid as a dare. Freedom is yours, why aren’t you leaving? Or chasing after Miss Cloud Nine?”

  “Who says I want to leave?” Luke said smoothly.

  “Oh. You’re that type of guy, huh? This is less Purgatario and more Paradiso for your type. I thought you were different. Not many guys come here and then smile about their mothers.”

  “Perhaps I am bound by chivalry,” Luke countered, trying to salvage his image in front of this muse, “I can protect you from male versions of Miss Cloud Nine.”

  She smiled. Luke inwardly wondered what was wrong with him. He felt as though he had eaten something past its sell-by date. Surely a stranger’s smile couldn’t be that effective?

  “I’m Alice. Do you read?”

  Luke laughed again. She was incredible. “I’m Luke. Yes, I read.”

  “You do? Really? Give me names. Right up front, I’ll tell you that if you mention Dan Brown, I’ll have to ask you to move to that stool over there.” She pointed to the recently vacated stool on Luke’s other side.

  “Who’s Dan Brown? I read Dickens, Wilkie Collins, C.S. Lewis, Lee Child, some Rushdie—”

  “You had me at Dickens.” And then she blushed. It was a spectacular show. Her cheeks and throat bloomed red, like the flash of a sunset. Luke had to stifle the urge to touch her cheeks to see how hot they were. “I mean, OK, good, we can talk.” She adjusted her glasses over her nose, as if to hide behind them. She also sipped her drink and grimaced at it.

  “Are you a snob, then?” Luke signaled the barkeep and asked for a Nuts and Berries for the lady. Alice’s eyes narrowed a little, as if in disapproval, but she didn’t protest.

  “In this place and context, yes I suppose I am a snob. I don’t want to waste time on someone I’ll regret meeting.”

  “And you will regret meeting someone who reads Dan Brown, will you?”

  “Well, someone who reads Dan Brown and doesn’t think his writing is a waste of paper and ink.”

  “I see. Then, we share abhorrence for mediocre writers. If they’ll be immortalized on paper, they have to deserve it.”

  She grinned. “OK, I’m impressed, but beyond this barstool I’m not really a snob, so you don’t have to talk like that. I acknowledge your credibility and you are free to talk like a normal person.”

  “Normal pe
rsons don’t use the words ‘abhorrence’, perchance?”

  She laughed. “I’ve never heard perchance in conversation before! Stop it. It’s creepy.”

  Her drink arrived. She tasted it and raised her eyebrows but that was all. He knew that drink tasted divine: a mixture of hazelnut liquor balanced by sweet forest berries in cream. It was preternatural nectar, inspired by ancestors living off the simple delights of the land. Yet she only raised her eyebrows. Luke found himself smiling with interest. Gods, she was hard to please.

  Chapter Two - Alice

  She woke up with a headache that was more a nape-ache, a sign of the impending visit from Aunt Flo. Alice wasn’t the sort to whine over a bit of pain, but it definitely soured things when you couldn’t bend and check just where you’d kicked your slippers without having to groan.

  She left her slippers wherever they’d ended up and padded barefoot to her small balcony to sniff at her pots of lavender, jasmine and basil. She gave a satisfied sigh and felt better.

  And after downing two Tylenol, she felt ready to actually shower and go to work.

  At the shower, she found out that Aunt Flo was early.

  Or maybe Alice just never got the hang of how to count.

  And shit, she didn’t have any tampons left. She was supposed to buy some today.

  It was promising to be one of those days where nothing went right.

  Ok, now she had to count, right? This came in threes, they said.

  One: no tampons.

  She padded—bow-legged now—back to her bedroom, dug her phone out from the covers and called Rebecca.

  “You better be dying, dammit,” came the sweet salutation from her long-time friend.

  “Good morning to you too.” Alice bit her lip to stifle a laugh. Rebecca didn’t like to be laughed at in the mornings. Rebecca didn’t like mornings, period. She hated it more than she hated being called Becky. “Do you have any tampons?”

  “Do you have any eyebrows?”

  “OK. Please, Rebecca, can you come over and give me one?”

  Silence.

  And then a click.

  A minute later, Alice’s kitchen window rattled ominously.

  Alice went there with trepidation and with her keys ready to be buried into an invader’s eyes. But it was only Rebecca, glaring at her from the opposite brownstone, still wielding the broom she’d used to rap at Alice’s window.

  “You scared me!” said Alice, realizing too late that a rapist probably wouldn’t scale a sheer thirty-foot wall. She dropped her keys on the counter.

  Rebecca mouthed, “Open the window.”

  Alice obeyed. And then got smacked in the face by a box of tampons.

  “Thank you!” Alice shouted, rubbing her nose.

  Did getting whacked by tampons on the nose count?

  One: no tampons. Two: tampons on the nose?

  But should she count her headache, too? In which case she had nothing more to fear because she already had her three bad things?

  On the way to work, she stepped in dog poop.

  And then the rush order of fifteen feet of leather-bound books was cancelled. Then it turned out the customer had apparently closed his account so his credit card bounced. Someone had to shoulder the loss, and that someone was usually Alice and her generous grandfather. She’d owe him a weekend visit, but that didn’t matter, pasta and wine with a rambling old man wasn’t so bad.

  Alice sighed. Between pasta and her period she was going to have to dig out the fat jeans just to make it through the month.

  To top it off, she lost the bet.

  “I told you those would sell. Never underestimate the power of lonely women and undersexed mothers.”

  “But it’s getting slammed left and right by critics!” Alice protested.

  Rebecca just grinned. It was already lunch time, so Rebecca was her usual perky self.

  “The bet wasn’t about what the critics would say sweetums. Now what should we make you do?”

  “Can’t you just take money like a normal person?”

  Everyone laughed while Alice blushed. Her workmates all teased her about being Miss Moneybags—an easy conclusion when someone with her paycheck managed to live in a New York apartment without roommates. Still, the consequence was that Alice rarely mentioned the “m-word” in their presence.

  Clay— accountant bookworm with Hugh Grant’s floppy hair, the color of Richard Gere’s—Alice wouldn’t have minded seducing him but he was gay—said, “No, we need something better. Oh, I know! We can make her sit somewhere she’d never sat before. It will be inspiring. Who said that again?”

  Alice answered automatically, “Dodie Smith. I CapturetheCastle: I have found that sitting somewhere you have never sat before can be inspiring.”Alice immediately snapped out of her geeky reverie. “But I don’t need to be inspired. I’m having a bad day. Don’t throw me to more sharks when I’m already bleeding.”

  Rebecca and Marsha, their floor manager-mom-figure, exchanged a look with Clay. Alice closed her eyes and groaned. Damn her mouth.

  “Shark’s Point!” chimed all three employees at once.

  Marsha looked conspiratorially at the others. She had the sort of warmth and that fashionable bob that bounced and made her look twenty-ish rather than fifty-ish. “For what, three hours? That enough?”

  “Plenty,” said Rebecca. “We just want to nip her, not get her nabbed. Don’t worry, Alice, we’ll have Marsha’s man on speed dial in case you need a rescue.”

  Marsha’s husband was in the NYPD and he often patrolled the street where Shark’s Point and other rowdy bars were. Comparably, Shark’s Point was quite mellow and catered not to drunks, but “skanks”, as Rebecca would say.

  “I just have to sit in Shark’s Point?” said Alice dubiously.

  “Yeah, easy enough right? But no reading!” Clay scolded jokingly. Alice slumped, she had already thought of a good book to bring. “You know what, I’ll come with you and keep an eye on you.”

  They all laughed. Marsha pinched Clay’s cheek. “And the other eye?”

  “Looking for cute boys, of course.”

  Marsha laughed. “All right, that’s settled. Back to the stacks with you lot.”

  They obeyed their manager, Clay with a slight sashay to his hips.

  Alice felt safer. Clay was a black belt in karate and wouldn’t let anyone lay a hand on her.

  But the day wasn’t done with her yet. Half an hour before closing, Clay began vomiting spectacularly and had to be assisted home. They called his mother, who cried, thinking Clay was dying. Clay cursed them for making his mom cry. It was only bad turkey from the sub vendor.

  Alice went alone to Shark’s Point.

  Rebecca tried to come with her, but Alice convinced her to stay home for backup. What would happen to Rebecca if she did come? Clay had already been touched by the bad luck dogging Alice. Alice would prefer the bad luck to strike her and her alone. What was the worst that could happen anyway? They said the bar man at Shark’s Point was a former Olympic wrestler who didn’t like men who disrespected women, no matter how disreputably the women were dressed. Alice planned to sit her dare out at the bar with the bar man.

  It wasn’t so bad. She crossed from the door to the bar without incident, peeling off her winter coat from the biting January outdoors. She planted herself on the stool and watched how much she drank so she wouldn’t risk encountering anything dodgy by going to the restroom. She looked around. Clay would have been disappointed. The men weren’t “fine pickings” as he would have said.

  But it was dull. She’d left her phone at home to keep it safe from any mishaps, so she didn’t have any options for private entertainment.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  Alice stilled. Oh. Here was potential for entertainment. The guy on her left had been there before her. He hadn’t looked like a wrestler or anything scary, so she’d sat down beside him, the side he hadn’t been facing anyway. The rest of the seats had been taken. />
  Now it seemed the guy himself was about to be taken. Alice smirked at the thought. She didn’t get a chance to hear many pick-up exchanges.

  “My mother.” The guy’s voice had a hint of fondness, as if he couldn’t help it, even though it was a stranger prying.

  “Oh, you sweet thing! Is something wrong with her?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “So you’re not looking for consolation.”

  “If my mother died, would I be here?” Now the guy’s voice sounded slightly offended.

  “Well, sure! To forget for a while and be happy. You look familiar. Have I seen you before, handsome? If your mom’s doing so well, how about we celebrate?” The girl prodded hopefully. “I can increase your happiness. Cloud nine, baby.”

  Really? Alice couldn’t help snorting in derision. And then regretted it. Counting and snorting were two things she didn’t have in her repertoire. She always messed them up. Her eyes burned. The bar man was quick with the tissues. What a sweet old guy. She’d leave a huge tip.

  Someone was thumping her on the back.

  Not the bar man.

  She saw the guy from the corner of her eye and coughed some more. Clay would go absolutely bananas that he’d missed this. How did she miss him?

  “Ugh, that went down the wrong pipe. Do I have olive on my face?” she asked defensively. The guy was staring.

  Before she knew it, they were talking and he’d gotten her a drink. She’d given him her name. Luke the reader. Heavens, gods, goodness. There was something familiar about him. Luke was out-of-place at this bar in just the same way she was. She knew that if he had given her a line or shrugged off reading as something boring then he wouldn’t be so handsome to her. But as he described the first time he had read Great Expectations Alice couldn’t help watching the way his Adam’s apple moved under his tanned skin, or how the dip of skin between the bones in his hands created shadows that mesmerized her.

  Alice sipped at her drink again. Nuts and Berries, he had called it. It was delicious but she had no idea how strong the drink was, and that put her on guard. Something as potentially dangerous as alcohol shouldn’t be masquerading as candy. There was a chance that Luke could be dangerous or sleazy, but that chance became smaller as he told her about The Satanic Verses and flashed his teeth in a lopsided grin.