Free American Royals by Katharine McGee Page B

only people qualified to weigh in on them are the people in them.”
    “Except that you and Jeff aren’t in a relationship anymore,” Ethan pointed out ruthlessly.
    “For now.”
    They were both speaking softly, their eyes locked on each other. Daphne had almost forgotten that they were in the ballroom at all.
    “You’re wasting your time. You won’t snap your fingers and get him back, just like that,” he countered.
    “Not just like that. ” It wouldn’t be easy, and she might have to wait a while. So what if Jefferson hung out with some of those skanky, stalkerish girls from the prince posse? Those girls didn’t mean anything to him. He would come back to her, because in the end they belonged together, and he knew it as well as Daphne did.
    And yet … something in Ethan’s words gave her pause. “Where did Jefferson run off to?” she asked, wishing it didn’t sound so much like she was begging.
    “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
    “I’m asking as a friend.” The words were knives in her throat, but she delivered them with as much grace as she could muster.
    “Oh, are we friends now? I thought, after—”
    “ Don’t mention that.”
    “Careful, Daphne,” Ethan said meaningfully. “We wouldn’t want this to look like a lovers’ quarrel.”
    He was right. The way their heads were tilted close together, the quick play and ripple of their conversation—it looked suspect. Daphne put some distance between them, her face glazing with a smile, though it came out as hard and brittle as the crystal flutes lined up on the bar.
    “You can’t say those things,” she whispered.
    “You mean, I can’t talk about us?”
    “There is no us !” Daphne shook her head so violently that her earrings whipped around to smack the sides of her face. “What happened that night was an awful, terrible mistake.”
    “Was it? Or is going after Jeff the mistake?”
    “Don’t mention that night. Please,” Daphne entreated, scared into politeness. Normally she and Ethan didn’t bother with the niceties.
    The prince could never, ever find out what she and Ethan had done. If he did, all her plans would crumble to dust.
    “You seriously think you’ll get Jeff back, don’t you,” Ethan replied, with evident disbelief.
    But Daphne knew that she could make it happen. She could make anything happen for herself.
    “I know I will,” she told him.

    NINA
    “Nina! There you are!” Princess Samantha tugged her friend to one side of the ballroom, moving in the same impatient, long-legged way that she had since she was a child, no matter how hard the etiquette masters had tried to train it out of her.
    “More like there you are. You’re the one who went completely MIA.” Nina shook her head in amusement. “Where were you during the knighthood ceremony?”
    Sam’s hair was escaping its pins, her face glowing with a telltale flush. Despite her glittering gown and the diamonds flashing at her wrists and throat, she resembled nothing so much as a creature half-tamed, as if she might run wild at any moment.
    Sam lowered her voice to a near whisper. “I was in the cloakroom with Teddy Eaton.”
    “Who?”
    The princess tipped her head toward a guy on the dance floor, blond and aristocratic-looking. Nina would have said that he didn’t seem like Samantha’s type, except that Sam had never really had a type. The only consistent thing about her flings was the shock value they elicited. “He’s cute,” she said noncommittally.
    “I know.” Samantha couldn’t hide her smile. “Sorry I disappeared on you. How’s your night going? Are you miserable yet?”
    Nina shrugged. “These things just aren’t my scene.”
    She had already talked to everyone she actually liked at this party, which wasn’t that many people to begin with, except for her parents. Most of the guests seemed to look straight through Nina as if she were invisible. But that was just the way of things at court: until you were someone, you were no one