Royalty Exposed

Chapter 14

A week later as I was behind the cash register in the bookstore I worked at, I heard the bell chime letting me know that someone was either leaving the store or coming into it. I looked up and saw that Carter's bodyguard was walking over to me. It had been a while since I had seen Carter's bodyguard, whose name I still did not know, but I had a feeling that I would eventually seen him again. In the back of my mind, I had always thought since the first day that I had met him and overheard his conversation with Carter, that he would want to talk to me.

 I'm sure he wanted to warn me that it wasn't a good idea to get involved with Carter. At least I would get the chance to ask him why he hadn't told the king and queen where their son was. Unless he came here to talk to Carter, which was useless since Carter wasn't here at the moment. He had the day off today so Carter hadn't come to work with me.

"Hi, how can I help you?" I asked him once he had approached me. I glanced around the store to see if there were any other customers nearby. There weren't.

"Is Carter here?" he asked me. I noticed that he hadn't bothered to take off his sunglasses even though he was inside where the sun wasn't shining down on him.

"He doesn't work today. I thought that you would already know that," I replied as I put a price tag on a book and then put that book off to the side before grabbing another book out of a box that had just come in this morning.

"Your boss is doing a good job of keeping his work schedule off the records," he said.

"Well you'll have to come back another day to talk to him. Or you can just come to my house since I'm sure you know where that is," I responded as I continued putting price tags on the new books that we had gotten.

I expected Carter's bodyguard to walk away after that, not giving me any chances to talk to him and ask him why he hadn't told the king and queen where Carter was, but the next time I looked up to check if he had left, he was still there. It seemed like I had been right. He did want to talk to me. But I wasn't sure if he had actually wanted to talk to Carter or if that just had been a cover to come into the bookstore. Maybe the reason why he hadn't shown up at my house instead was because he wanted to make sure that Carter wasn't around to overhear anything that he wanted to say to me.

He didn't know though that I was just going to tell Carter whatever he had said to me. I had learned a long time ago that secrets were never good to keep in a relationship and while Carter and I might not be in an actual relationship, I certainly wasn't going to keep secrets from him. He already knew that Zach had noticed that something was going on between me and him. I had told him the next day after Zach had said something.

"Is there anything else I can do for you? Maybe there's a particular book I can help you find?" I asked when I noticed he was still standing before me.

"Why are you helping him out? You should know that he belongs in a palace," he said.

"It wasn't my idea to help him out. I was more than happy to send him on his way, but my best friend can be quite annoying when she really wants something," I replied choosing to ignore the insult that had been in his second sentence. I could tell he didn't approve of whatever he thought was going on between Carter and me.

"So, there's no other reason why he's staying?" he asked me placing his hands on the counter. I could tell that he was trying to intimidate me into telling him the truth.

"No, I'm just giving him a place to stay because he doesn't want to go home right now. You should give him time. Eventually he'll decide to come back home. Or you can just tell the king and queen where he is and he'll be back in no time," I said smiling at him.