When you tell the world you're mine

Chapter 7: Turning the tide

What Carol didn't know is that Harry was expecting something to leak. Every morning he would wake up expecting to see a missed call from Edward or his grandmother with the new tabloid's headline. He was expecting a history about how he had dinner with a co-worker in Brazil or details about his night in a Brazilian night club. He could almost see all the made up things the press would publish, but although he wouldn't admit it he was expecting that things he had told her to make the headlines. If they ever made the headlines, it'd disappoint him in so many levels. Even though he knew they all had signed NDA's, he knew that sometimes it wasn't enough for someone not to sell him. He waited the ball to drop every single day after he left São Paulo, but since after he was back in London, not a single word about the time he spent with her hit the news. And he was grateful for that. Grateful for having trusted her with small bits of information. Some of them were true and others were not, something that he hated doing to anyone he met, but that was necessary for him to know if he could trust the person or not.

Four weeks have passed since he left São Paulo, and specially that morning, he'd have to talk to her again. He was surprisingly excited. He kind of missed their banter. And Edward needed some more explanation in one of the reports she made. Harry had wanted to talk to her since he left, but he couldn't find a good reason to. And this morning he took advantage of the British punctuality to time the best hour to speak. Harry made sure to ask for Carol's report when Edward was busy and with packed work. He played an act of "I need it now", and Edward just asked him to wait a little bit before he would look for Carolina's number and call her. If it was any other day, Harry would just come back to his office and wait for the paper, but now he wanted an excuse to talk to her.

"I'm going to call her myself, Ed.", Harry said already looking through the files where she added personal information in. He got her phone number and with a mischievous smile he went back to his office.

He sat a his chair with her number in his hands and wondered a little bit if it was the right thing. If he was completely honest, the report was already very good and it was ready to be signed and archived. Harry had spent the last three days looking for faults in it, and it was so damn hard to find. But he found some information that hadn't made the cut (because they weren't needed in the report) and started asking Edward to change it or have someone to do it. He grabbed his work phone and added her number. It took him a couple more minutes before he texted her.

H: Hey Carol. What's up?

He didn't want to check on his phone every five minutes, so he set it aside and found something to work with. He started sorting his emails and trying to not think about it. He even scolded himself for being so nervous about talking to her again. She was a colleague. She's Carol. Only Carol. And he had a girlfriend. 45 minutes later an answer made his phone buzz.

C: Who's it?

Her phone buzzed beside her and woke her up. Who was texting her at 6:00 am? She could sleep at least 40 more minutes before she had to get ready for school and someone was daring to text her at that time of the morning. She cursed a bit before grabbing her phone to discover who was about to hear a very pissed Carolina complaining about messages at that ungodly hour of the day.

She thought she was still sleeping when she saw way too many numbers in the screen. There was a message from an unknown number, from London (which she discovered after a quick Google research). She wasn't going to answer it. She didn't know anyone that lived in London anyway.

She got up and went to the bathroom to have a shower. After she finished, and she was more awake now, it hit her: It might be Harry. But she then laughed at herself. Why would Prince Harry be texting her? She was going crazy. Prince Harry wouldn't waste his time texting her. But the message did say "Carol", so it wasn't just a coincidence, was it?