Becoming Prince Charming

  Copyright © 2018 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Darby Creek

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at

  www.lernerbooks.com.

  Cover and interior images: Igor Klimov/Shutterstock.com (background texture); GoMixer/Shutterstock.com (coat of arms and lion); KazanovskyAndrey/iStock/Getty Images Plus (gold); mona redshinestudio/Shutterstock.com (crown).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.5. Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bailey, Loren, author.

  Title: Becoming Prince Charming / Loren Bailey.

  Description: Minneapolis : Darby Creek, [2018] | Series: Suddenly royal | Summary: On his seventeenth birthday, slacker Mason learns his absentee mother is a member of the Evonian royal family and, with a little hard work, his life as a royal could be more interesting than video games. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017049271 (print) | LCCN 2017059831 (ebook) | ISBN 9781541525931 (eb pdf) | ISBN 9781541525702 (lb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781541526365 (pb : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Countesses—Fiction. | Mothers and sons—Fiction. | Conduct of life—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Europe—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B326 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.B326 Bec 2018 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017049271

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-44554-35485-2/16/2018

  9781541531307 mobi

  9781541531314 ePub

  9781541531321 ePub

  To Mitch—I’m forever grateful for all the love and support

  1

  Our team will need a couple hundred more points if we want to win this thing. Mason Everett checked the countdown clock on the wall—only thirty seconds left to go. He crouched behind a neon block, eyes scanning the black splatter-painted walls for any sign of the opposing team.

  In the distance, he heard a blast and a shout of frustration from his friend Andre. With the amount of time it took to recharge after a hit, Mason knew Andre was basically out at this point. He had no idea how Chase, their other teammate, was doing.

  Mason spotted a flash of blue. He darted to another neon structure and peered through a small peephole. Three of the blue team’s members were clustered inside a tall tower of painted plywood. Must be trying to ride out the clock, Mason thought to himself. If he could get all three of them, there was a good chance that his team would win.

  Fifteen seconds on the clock. It was now or never.

  He slipped out of his hiding place and jogged over to the tower. His footsteps gave him away. One of the blue team members looked over and spotted him. He gasped, and all of Mason’s targets raced away in different directions.

  “Go, Mason, go!” Chase shouted to him from across the arena. But Mason felt himself hesitate. These players weren’t sitting ducks anymore—he’d have to sprint after one just for the chance that he might hit him.

  “It’s pointless,” he said, as the clock counted off the last three seconds.

  “Whatever, Mason,” Andre grumbled as a loud buzzer went off. “You still could have tried.”

  Chase joined them, panting. “Please. Have you ever heard the words ‘Mason’ and ‘try’ in the same sentence?”

  “Yeah, here’s one for you: I’ll try not to smack you,” Mason snapped. “And hey, aren’t you supposed to be nice to a guy on his birthday?”

  “Yeah, as long as he helps you win at laser tag,” Chase joked.

  They made their way out of the arena, pulling off their orange chest plates. As they hung their gear on the designated hooks, a large screen displayed the teams’ statistics:

  blue team: 3,200 points

  orange team: 3,050 points

  congratulations, blue team!

  His friends sighed at the screen and Mason tried to pretend he didn’t notice. It was just laser tag. Who really cared?

  “Fine, sorry or whatever. Can we go now?” he grumbled.

  It was no secret that Mason wasn’t exactly the type to take initiative, but neither were his friends. It’s why they were friends in the first place. They spent their days sitting in the back rows of classrooms, trying to go unnoticed by teachers as they doodled cartoons on their desks and worked to get past the school’s website blockers.

  Mason and his friends trudged out of the laser tag arena, stopping by the arcade’s concession stand for one last round of nachos and sodas before heading home. As far as he was concerned, it was the perfect way to celebrate his seventeenth birthday.

  He told himself to ignore the needling guilt in the back of his mind, where his friends’ words kept bouncing around. They weren’t disappointed in him, not really. And even if they were, they’d get over it soon enough.

  ***

  Most of the lights in the house were out when Mason got home. It was late, so he figured his dad had already gone to bed. He was about to slip upstairs into his own bedroom when he spotted his dad sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Uh, Dad?” Mason said quietly, stepping into the room. “Everything okay?”

  His dad looked up at him with a tight smile. “Hey, bud,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “Happy birthday. Did you guys have fun?”

  “Yeah . . . what’s going on?” As Mason stepped closer to his dad, he saw there were dozens of papers strewn across the table.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” his dad suggested. “We need to talk.”

  Had he done something? Nothing came to mind. Sure, he and his friends liked to goof around, but they usually didn’t get into the kind of trouble that led to a sit-down with his dad.

  He slid into the chair across from his dad, and the room was silent for a minute. Mason didn’t dare look down at the papers to see if he could get any sort of clue from them—all he could do was stare at his dad’s face and the frown lines forming there. His dad was still pretty young—he’d just turned forty a few months ago—but in this moment he looked much older than Mason had ever seen.

  “I want—” his dad started, then shook his head. “I need to tell you about your mother.”

  “Oh.” Mason definitely hadn’t expected the conversation to go this way. He knew very little about his mother, but he’d always figured that was because there wasn’t much to tell. He knew she and his dad were young when they met and had Mason, and that things didn’t end well—he didn’t need his dad to tell him that part. He figured that since they never spoke about her, things must have been bad. He’d seen enough friends deal with messy custody battles and difficult family drama that he’d decided he’d rather not know.

  His dad gathered several of the papers on the table, pulled them into a cluttered pile, and handed them to Mason.

  “Emails?” Mason asked when he glanced at them. “Dad, what’s going on?”

  “These are printouts of email conversations I’ve been having with your mother,” his dad explained slowly. Mason felt the pages drop out of his hands. One of them shifted to show a conversation dated from five years ago.

  “You’ve been talking to her? But I thought . . . For how long?” Suddenly there were too many questions racing through his mind. Mason couldn’t
get them all out at once.

  “We never really lost contact. It was more difficult right after you were born, but we’ve been speaking regularly over the past few years now.”

  “What?” Mason snapped. “And you never felt the need to tell me?”

  “I couldn’t,” his dad insisted. “Or, at least, I thought I couldn’t. It’s what we agreed on. And now . . . well, just let me tell you everything.”

  Mason angrily waved a hand in his dad’s direction and slumped back in his seat. “Go ahead.”

  His dad licked his lips and took another deep breath. He kept his eyes down as he began, “You already know some of this—I met your mother when I was in my early twenties. I’d just graduated from college and was traveling the country for the summer before I was going to buckle down and get a job. I met her somewhere along the way. She was doing the same thing.”

  Mason nodded. While he admittedly didn’t know much about the situation, his dad had mentioned a few snippets over the years.

  “We hit it off instantly,” his dad continued. “I’d never met someone like her—we fell in love. And then, before we really had a chance to talk about plans for the future, she got pregnant with you.”

  When his dad finally looked up at him, Mason was surprised to see the guilt in his eyes—he’d never seen his dad look like that before. “We made some fast decisions because we were worried about what her family would think. We decided to get married and tell everyone you were planned. We moved here, and things were fine for a while. But soon it became clear we didn’t actually know each other that well. We tried to make it work for a few months after you were born, but we just couldn’t do it. We were too different.”

  “So you got divorced,” Mason finished. He’d already known that part too. “But here’s what I don’t get: Why couldn’t she still have stayed around? Why keep all the secrets? Didn’t she want to know me?”

  His dad looked at him with pained eyes. “Of course she wanted to know you. But it wasn’t that simple.”

  Mason could tell there was something his dad was leaving out. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  “Well, your mom wasn’t—she isn’t American actually. She’s European. From a country called Evonia.”

  “What?” Mason frowned. “I’ve never even heard of it.”

  His dad sighed. “It’s a small country.”

  Mason’s head began to pound. He could barely comprehend what he was hearing. He looked back down at the papers in front of him and noticed a name. “Louisa. Louisa Valmont.” He glanced up at his dad. “That’s her?”

  His dad nodded again. “I should have told you about her sooner. I wish that I had.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Mason said.

  His dad picked up one of the papers and handed it to him. This time, Mason took a closer look at the actual document. There was a fancy crest at the bottom of each of Louisa’s email signatures, along with her full name: Lady Louisa Valmont, Countess of Wallinford.

  “We thought keeping you here with me would be the best thing for you,” his dad explained, “especially since your birth was sort of scandalous in her social circles. And her parents . . . well, that doesn’t matter now. The point is it’s time I told you—not only is your mother from another country, she’s a countess. She’s a member of Evonia’s royal family.”

  Mason’s jaw dropped. He certainly hadn’t seen that coming.

  “And that’s not all,” his dad continued. “As her only child, you’re next in line to inherit her title.”

  2

  His dad continued explaining it as best as he could—that Louisa’s parents thought it would be best for her to return to Evonia since there was no one else in place to take her mother’s title. So she did, and shortly after her return, her mother passed away. Louisa became a countess, and Mason’s parents never spoke about her returning to America again. Her branch of the family wasn’t directly in line for the throne, but she was a royal nonetheless. She was related to Evonia’s queen. Mason was related to Evonia’s queen. He still could barely wrap his head around the idea.

  Since his dad hadn’t wanted to move to Evonia, his parents had faced a tough decision about how Mason would be raised. In the end, they agreed the simplest plan would be for Mason to grow up away from the public eye and avoid having to travel between countries every year. Their plan was that Mason would live with his dad until he turned eighteen, then he would go to Evonia to meet Louisa.

  But now his dad was beginning to question their arrangement. “I was only twenty-three,” he explained. “We were panicking—we didn’t know anyone who’d been in a situation like this before. We did what we thought was best. Throughout the years, though, it’s become more and more difficult to keep this from you. Seeing you become your own person, so independent, I just had to do something.”

  He paused for a moment. “Your—Louisa doesn’t know about this. She still thinks I’m planning to wait to tell you until you turn eighteen. I just wanted to give you some time to think about it before you have to decide if you’d like to see her next year.”

  “What does she think about all of this?” Mason asked.

  “It’s been difficult for her too,” his dad insisted. “More so, in some ways. But she’s gone along with it this whole time because she truly believed it’s best for you.”

  “Does she know anything about me?”

  “A little. We email a few times a year, as you can see from these printouts. I’ve sent her things occasionally—photos, report cards.”

  Mason flushed at that. While he’d never cared about his grades or lack of after-school activities before, he couldn’t help but worry about what his mother had thought. He wondered how his dad had explained it: “It’s not that Mason isn’t good at anything, he just doesn’t care.” It sounded worse when he thought about it like that, so he tried not to think about it at all.

  Completely overwhelmed and wanting to be alone, Mason went to bed. But a half hour later, he was lying awake, unable to stop thinking about his mom. He was angry—downright pissed off—that his parents had made what seemed like such an incredibly stupid decision. But he also couldn’t stop himself from wondering about her—what did she look like, what did her voice sound like, how much time had she spent with him when he was a baby?

  Mason’s fingers twitched against his head, and he held out for one more minute before scrambling out of bed and opening his laptop. He pulled up a search and typed in his mom’s full name.

  It was surprising to see how many hits the search called up.

  There were quite a few European articles about Louisa and her family—even some from the United States. Most were about some foundation she’d started. Mason found the website for the foundation, which was dedicated to children’s health research. Not that Mason knew much about foundations, but hers seemed pretty impressive. It looked like she worked hard to raise money through charity events and other fundraising. He found a page filled with event photos and scrolled through them. Most of them were of children the foundation had supported. Some donors and volunteers. A silent auction fundraising event.

  He was clicking through the photos so mindlessly that he actually jumped when he came across a photo of a woman posing with a group of kids and saw the caption beneath: “Lady Louisa Valmont, founder and Chairperson of the Board, with several attendants of last year’s annual Children’s Dinner.”

  It was a small photo. The image of Louisa’s head was barely larger than his thumb. But Mason could clearly see himself in her. She had long brown hair, darker than his, but it was clear that they had the same square facial structure. Her eyes were slightly different than his, but he found himself trying to remember if his creased in the same way when he smiled.

  His heart pounded in his chest as he stared at her picture. He didn’t know what he was expecting her to look like, but something about her already seemed so familiar.

  He searched through the menu at the top of the page and found an �
�About” section. There was a page dedicated entirely to Louisa. The bio didn’t give much information—mostly just details about her schooling, her work as the Countess of Wallinford, and how she began the foundation. What stood out the most to Mason, though, was the fact that there was no mention of her ever remarrying or having another family.

  ***

  The next morning, Mason woke up early to catch his dad before work. He found him skimming through several of the printed emails while sipping coffee.

  “Morning,” his dad said hesitantly, clearly trying to guess how Mason was doing.

  But Mason was ready to get right down to it. “I want to meet her,” he said. His dad opened his mouth to reply, but Mason carried on. “I still think what you guys did was stupid—and I’m still super pissed about it. But she’s my mom and I want to meet her.”

  After a moment of thinking, his dad nodded. “Okay. We can—”

  “And I don’t want to wait till I’m eighteen,” Mason continued. “I don’t even get where you guys came up with that number anyway.” As if turning eighteen would magically make me ready to meet the mother I never knew about, he thought to himself.

  His dad scratched the back of his neck. “Well, I don’t even really remember, to be honest. I guess we figured you’d be old enough to understand the situation better—how things were different for us because of who Louisa is.”

  Before Mason could respond, his dad coughed nervously and fiddled with one of the pages in front of him. “And, I think Louisa has been thinking you might want to make some decisions about college . . . career stuff . . . whether you want to take up her title when the time comes.”

  That caught Mason off guard. Is that what this visit is supposed to be about? Am I gonna get sucked into this job without even knowing what it is?

  His dad seemed to sense Mason’s mind reeling and lifted a calming hand toward him. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” he explained. “That’s not what this is about. She just wants to meet you.”