Courting Royal

Chapter Twenty-One

The next week of my life is insane.

And not just because I wrote about—and provided photographic proof of—my "second" encounter with the Davenports.

First of all, Alistair was none too pleased to find that I went to the polo match without telling him or pitching a story about it. When he asked me to explain why I didn't tell him, my flimsy excuse was that my landlord only extended the invite the night before and that I figured he already had someone covering it—which he did, turns out. But I've now learned that he's the type of editor who expects his freelancers to tell him every single time they're going to be somewhere a royal might show up.

Which means that my invite to Ascot is going to make him blow a gasket.

Second, my personal profile has risen substantially. Since writing about seeing the Davenports at the polo for my site as well as US HuffPo, my social media following has increased by several thousand, and I've been deluged by emails and tweets and website comments. I used to make it a point to reply to every email and be active in my my site's comment section, but now I just don't know how I'm going to manage it.

Third, the reports coming out of the polo match surrounding one Prince Liam are all, unsurprisingly, about him and Poppy. Every royal reporter from major sources in London are running with it, and the headlines have gone from the speculative "Liam and Poppy Spotted Together at the Polo" to "Back On: Prince Liam Rumoured to Be Proposing to Poppy".

For real.

I used to take these things in stride.

But that was before I was dating Prince Liam Davenport.

Now, seeing the rumor-mongering that are straight-up lies has driven me into a fury.

During one of my rants about it, Liam asked, "Do you just want to go public now? We can. Let's post a photo of us kissing on your blog. Right now."

I gave him a pointed glare even though I wanted to do exactly that.

He just shrugged and said, "This is just how it goes" before giving me a massive hug.

It made me feel a tiny bit better.

Unfortunately, Liam hasn't been around much since then, as he's been prepping for Trooping the Colour and his trip to Kenya, and I've been writing up a storm, planning my reader meet-up—which is happening while he's in Kenya—and getting ready for my dad to arrive next week.

Which I'm psyched about. I've made reservations for three different afternoon teas and am working on finalizing our very full itinerary. The big question about it right now is whether or not he'll be able to meet Liam.

He'll be in town the week between Liam's Kenya trip and Ascot, so my boyfriend will definitely be in town. I figured it'd be an easy thing to work out: Liam could just meet him at the flat for dinner one night, as going somewhere in public isn't possible. But, for some reason, Liam hasn't committed to that yet.

And I can't help but find myself paranoid that the reason has to do with Poppy.

The rational part of my brain knows that that can't be the case. That maybe there are meetings and events that Liam might have invites to that he's trying to determine whether or not he needs to accept for that week, and he doesn't want to commit to a night only to have to cancel.

But the insecure part of my brain is screaming that he doesn't want to meet my dad because he isn't actually serious about me.

An alarm goes off on my phone, letting me know that I need to get a move on to make it to Trooping the Colour early enough to post up on the Buckingham Palace Mall in order to get a killer view of the balcony.