Royally Fake Fiancé

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

Frankie

“Oh yeah, baby. That’s the spot. That’s the spot.”

Not again. I swivel in my chair and give the kitchen wall the evil eye.

“Give it to me, big boy. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.”

The espresso maker gurgles and shoots a stream of frothed milk into my mug. I slide off the chair and walk around the bar to collect it.

The shrieking continues a few rooms over, faint but clear. “Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.”

I detour and slam my hand against a patch of bare wall between two oil paintings of lemons. “Will you stop?”

Silence. I check the paintings to make sure my thumping on the wall didn’t disturb them and head back to the new love of my life, the object of my desire, the fresh steaming liquid from heaven that is my morning latte.

I’m about to take a sip when the voice calls again, “Give it to me, big boy.”

“Enough!” I set down my cup with all the reverence of the Archbishop of Canterbury lowering a crown. Then I stride out of the palatial kitchen, my splurge purchase silk robe billowing out behind me like a cape. “I don’t think so. Not again.”

I round the corner and almost take out a giant vase. With a growl, I gather my robe close and ease sideways between two Louis XVI armchairs. I keep forgetting this place is a museum. It’s a miracle I haven’t taken out a Ming vase by now.

“Give it to me. Give it to me. Oh yeah. Oh yeah!”

Another corner, and I narrowly miss getting impaled on a lance. I stop long enough to carefully retract the gauntlet and its ancient weapon, glaring at the suit of armor as I maneuver its arm into its regular, upright position. “Bum arm, Sir Fred? Carpal tunnel?”

The suit of armor doesn’t answer.

I hustle past Sir Fred—gingerly—and speed through the outer hall, past more oil paintings full of naked folk frolicking through epic landscapes. The naked frolics are all the more creepy with the porn-like commentary.

“Oh yeah! That’s the spot!”

The closer I get to the voice, the smaller and more crackly it sounds, like it’s coming from a hidden radio. I open a door and humidity blasts me in the face. Sunlight shines full bore from a skylight onto a thick canopy of leaves. The room before me is a jungle. A literal jungle. Or as close to one as a sunroom full of jungle plants can be.

The voice falters a moment, then continues full force: “That’s the spot! Oh yeah!”

“Oh no,” I shout. “I’ve waited. I’ve been patient. You have been at it… All. Night. Long!” I step over the threshold to the grand sunroom, batting giant banana leaves out of my way. My robe brushes fountaining ferns that have been growing since the Jurassic era. I bushwhack gently towards the hot’n’heavy commentary, wishing I’d brought a machete.

Not for the plants. For the loud-mouthed ‘lover’ who has crowed for the last time.

“Big boy! Big boy!” The sound of wings fluttering makes me change course. I duck under a flowering branch and head to the front of the room where giant windows overlook a manicured garden.

A parrot, grey except for white patches around his eyes and a splash of red on his tail, sits on his perch in a patch of light, bobbing his head in time to his cries. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

I clear my throat.

The sound cuts off abruptly. The bird twitches, c*****g his head at me.

I fold my arms across my chest. “Are you finished?”

“Big boy?” the bird gurgles.

“No.” I raise a finger. “I’ve had enough. I was okay with this… the first time. Even the second and third times. I thought it was funny. Now you know what I’m thinking? No? I’ll tell you.” I level my finger at the bird. “Parrot à la King!”

I stalk forward, my finger still out. The bird dances from foot to foot as I approach, nervously fluffing his feathers.

“Roasted parrot,” I enunciate clearly. “Kung pao parrot. Parrot cacciatore.”

The parrot ducks his head as if in contrition. I’m not fooled. There is nothing but mischief in his beady little eyes.

His curved beak seems to grin as it asks again, “Big boy?”

“Parrot tikka masala!” I reach the perch. Ignoring my threats, the parrot scoots closer and cranes his head under my outstretched finger, begging me to scratch his neck. With a sigh, I oblige.

After a few seconds, the parrot lets out a crackly, “Oh yeah.”

“You just can’t help yourself,” I mutter, massaging the grey parrot’s feathered neck until bits of white fluff waft around us.

Instead of answering, the parrot angles his head in the opposite direction, pushing on my hand when I hesitate to keep scratching.

“Enough with the commentary while I’m drinking my coffee. I don’t know what i***t let you watch porn.” Actually, I do. It was probably the parrot’s owner, who by my guess is a little old lady. Never married, no children, and overly endowed in the bank account, with a passion for French revival furniture and garden topiaries. Oh, and for Elvis. The pompadour-haired singer, and the parrot she named after him.

“Are you going to be good?” I ask Elvis, who is practically crooning in pleasure as I scratch his scrawny neck.

“Oh yeah.” The parrot ruffles his feathers, sending out a fresh wave of dander to float in the sun. I back away, grab a hand vacuum, and clean up a little. At least the bird poops in one place. Either that, or the army of professional house cleaners that comes in once a week spends most of their time in here, washing and buffing the glossy leaves of the banana tree plants.

“Fine. I’ll play you some music.” A few feet away from the perch is a sleek console containing a vintage record player and records in sleeves. The room is rigged with state of the art speakers. No expense spared for Elvis the bird.

“All shook up, all shook up,” the parrot whistles as I load a record. “Give it to me, big boy.”

I leave him bobbing his head in time to ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and hope the neighbors have sound proofed their own breakfast nook. At this rate, Elvis will be singing all day, with angry porn-tastic narrative in between whenever the record turns over.

By the time I’ve traversed the mile back to the kitchen, my latte is cold. I drink it anyway.

I knew this pet sitting job would be different from my usual, but this is another dimension. Lately, most of my clients have been well off, wealthy enough to hire someone to care for their pet while they’re traveling for months at a time.

But there’s wealth and then there’s wealth. The fact was impressed upon me when I went to rap on the door to Elvis’s home, and the door opened before I could touch it. I promptly overbalanced and fell over, right at the butler’s feet. A butler. In this day and age! I gaped at him from the polished floor. He looked at me like I was a bit of muck stuck to his shiny shoe.

That’s when I knew I wasn’t being hired to watch a parrot for a year. I was being paid to nanny a bird the owner loved more than a child. A child you left at home with a nanny while you traveled the world for a year, but apparently, rich people do that.

Elvis came with a ninety-five page handwritten manual, which is one page shorter than the manual issued with the space-age espresso maker built into the kitchen wall. But the job comes with a free stay in a nine thousand square foot mansion. No gardening or house-cleaning required—the owner has separate staff who visit for that.

And she’s gone for a ‘grand tour’ which includes several continents, and traveling by planes, trains, and automobiles. And boats. Can’t forget the boats. Or yachts, as rich people call them.

Luckily, the butler isn’t around to look down his nose at me. Once he’d let me in and given me a tour, he left to catch up with his employer. Lady Drey is paying him and a maid to travel with her.

Leaving me and her espresso machine to live happily ever after. Or, at least, for the next ten months.

I finish a second latte—I deserve it—and stretch. My agenda for the day: coffee, check on Elvis, take a long bath, check on Elvis, watch an old movie in the theater room. Maybe I’ll let Elvis watch with me. He loves Cary Grant.

My room is in the east wing, near to Elvis’ jungle room. But it’s no servant’s quarters. I have a private bathroom, and a walk-in closet bigger than the bedroom at my old apartment. The bathroom has a bathtub in the corner, with windows overlooking the garden and the Tudor style mansion next door. A lot of windows. More windows than anyone should be comfortable with in a bathroom, but okay… I shrug off my robe, exhibitionist style, and fill the bath, adding a generous amount of bubble wash. I don’t bother with modesty—even if someone wanted to spy through the second story windows, I’ve never seen anyone next door. Once in a while there’s a car in the drive, but they probably avoid the side of their house closest to Elvis. Even from here, I can still hear faint strains of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, along with the occasional shriek from the parrot.

I sink into the luxuriously hot water and frothy bubbles, and prop my feet up.

“A bath at ten in the morning. So leisurely.” I do my best Katherine Hepburn impression. One must always talk like Katherine Hepburn when one stays in a mansion.

I never thought I’d ever live like a rich person. My parents were barely working class. I thought I’d be more uncomfortable living in a mansion, but I quickly got used to it.

Maybe I can add mansion-sitting to my resume. Find another lady on grand tour, with a house full of antiques and a garden full of topiaries, and a parrot perched… in a tree?

“Elvis,” I gasp, jolting up in the bath. I lose my balance and fall back. A tsunami of soapy water hits me in the face.

“s**t!” I sputter and haul myself out, my feet threatening to slide on the soaked marble floor. I grab my robe and pelt downstairs, wet hair flying. I pause before the door to the garden, my robe twisted around my wet body, and spot Elvis perched on a Japanese maple.

“How did you get out?” I cry, and throw open the door. My exit startles the bird, who flaps away, over the low stone wall dividing Lady’s Drey’s property from her neighbor’s. Ducking low, in my own version of stealth mode, I scramble over the wall and sneak through boxwoods and rhododendrons, clutching my robe tight to keep the silk from snagging on the manicured branches.

The grey parrot lands above me, on the rail of the neighbor’s sprawling deck.

“Elvis,” I hiss.

The parrot c***s his head at me, not impressed. I need to trap him, but all I have is my robe. I tug it off and sneak around to the deck stairs, where I pause to say a prayer to St. Francis, patron saint of animals. Surely he’s also the patron saint of pet sitters.

Elvis glides down to the deck, four feet in front of me.

Thank you, I mouth, and stalk forward, bare-assed, robe outstretched between two hands. I’m just about to snag the escapee bird when the deck door glides open. A tall, dark-haired man steps through, mug in hand, undoubtedly about to enjoy his coffee while looking over his garden on this fine, quiet morning.

A quiet morning that is ruined by Elvis, the African Grey parrot, zooming past his head and me, wide-eyed and completely nude, streaking after it, screaming, “Don’t let him out!”

Two hours earlier…

Benedict

The woman across from me doesn’t look happy. “Benedict, I’m pregnant.”

“Congratulations,” I say solemnly, matching her serious tone.

“Indeed.” The queen’s mouth sets in a hard line. Not quite a frown.

She couldn’t have picked a better place to deliver the news. Palaces are such gloomy places. Their exteriors are so grand on TV, so beautiful and luminous, with guards and gates surrounding them to keep out the commoners. But inside is palatial and dark, with that particular smell I associate with antique furniture. No matter how often the place is cleaned, no matter how spic and span the huge expanses of parquet floors and thick carpets are kept, the air feels heavy and old, pregnant with the weight of centuries and countless decisions made by my ancestors. Every conversation gains gravitas. The fate of nations rests in each word.