Free Royal Baby (A British Bad Boy Romance) by Avery Wilde

of whom my friends had said, ‘ He’s not good enough for you’ . But—and this was important—they’d only ever said that after the relationships had ended. This might’ve been polite tact on the part of my friends, but I really didn’t think so. ‘ He’s not good enough for you, ’ was just something that friends said in that situation, because it was so much more comforting than, ‘ Wow, I can’t believe you let him get away, you’ll never do any better’ .
    No one wanted to hear that.
    The point was, I didn’t think I’d ever been in a relationship—even a short, ill-advised one that seldom left the bedroom—with someone who was genuinely ‘not good enough’ for me. I’d always made sound, sensible choices in who I dated, probably because I’d had a hectic, troubled home life when I was young, so I’d searched for stable relationships to make up for that. I’d always gone for solid, dependable and, above all, decent men. Nice guys. Men who were ‘good enough’ for any woman.
    And yet I was single.
    Of all those sensible, well-chosen men, I couldn’t think of one who I could’ve seriously imagined spending the rest of my life with. That suggested strongly that the problem was within me; I was attracted to the right sort of men, but, ironically, the right sort of men were apparently the wrong sort of men for me. It was hard to know what to make of that.
    Many times, I’d seen couples on the street and thought: ‘ girl, what the hell are you thinking? Have some self-respect .’ You didn’t have to be out on the streets of New York for long on a Saturday night to see some beautiful girl, immaculately dressed, hair neatly done, making a real effort, walking alongside a low-browed idiot in a vest and ripped jeans with his hand on her ass, loudly making sexist, demeaning comments and checking out every other woman that walked by, not even realizing what he had in the woman who was already on his arm. I’d always been grateful that I’d ended up living with Sarah during my college years, because Sarah didn’t make mistakes with the men she dated. As she was so fond of saying, she was the mistake that men made.
    The whole ‘bad boy’ thing—the idea that a man who was lazy, rebellious and disrespectful was in any way attractive—had always completely baffled me, and I wanted no part of it. And so I’d only ever dated men who were sensible, who played by the rules, who were responsible with money and who never tried to sneak a peek down my top when I bent over.
    And yet I was single…
    There was something very irritating about that, about having done the right thing and seemingly getting no reward for it. What was more irritating was that there was a lingering part of me, a part which I tried hard to deny, which thought that if a man didn’t at least try to sneak a peek down my top, then it was a bit of an insult to my breasts. Sort of like: why isn’t he trying ?
    I was willing to admit that this made me seem very hard to please, but that was probably because I was very hard to please in some ways. I was resolute in my desire for a man who respected me, but that didn’t mean that he shouldn’t also be attracted to me and want to get his hands on my goodies. Why wouldn’t he? I wanted a man who played by the rules, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t stretch them every once in a while. I wanted a man who acted like a grown up, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t, every once in a while, push a grocery store trolley down an aisle, jump on the back and yell ‘whooo!’
    Basically, I wanted a man who was a mass of contradictions in just the right amount. Was that really too much to ask?
    Even as I thought it, I knew it was. I was definitely too hard to please, and I needed to lower my standards.
    The reason that these issues were currently on my mind was, of course, because of Prince Andrew. Although I’d preferred him as Drew Ellis, I had to admit that Drew had no more been my usual