"Is he still alive?"
"Alive and well and has the second-largest number of semiconductor patents in the USA. He's on his fifth or sixth wife. I've lost count. Luckily, he makes enough money to support all of them. I couldn't wait until I got old enough to support myself and get off the payroll."
Zadir crouched, still listening. "Your mother is still alive?"
"Yes. If you can call it that. She rarely leaves her Upper West Side apartment. In fact, she spends most of the day in bed popping prescription pills. She was a singing star for about twenty minutes around the time she met my dad, but she lost all interest in working once he began to pay for everything."
"So she probably wasn't the greatest parent in the world, either."
She grimaced. "Not by a long shot. Lucky for me, I had a good nanny for some of my formative years, and I learned to depend on my own resources at an early age."
"Damn, your childhood sounds almost as fun as mine. Did you go to boarding school?"
"Of course." She smiled ruefully. "Boarding school is the salvation of wealthy and neglectful parents. I went to Smithson Ladies Academy in Foxton, Connecticut, which was an ongoing contest for who had the most expensive designer toys. How about you?"
"Eton. Not so different but pretty fun all the same."
"Were you there with Prince Harry?"
He nodded, blue eyes sparkling. "And he's every bit as wild as the newspaper stories would have you believe."
"I suspect you are, too." She said it with a joking tone, half hoping he'd contradict her. His reputation as a ladies man might be just a rumor.
"Probably." His mischievous grin confirmed her worst fears. "But now that I'm a monarch with a reputation to protect I've turned over a new leaf. I'm sober as a judge and twice as dull." He rose from the floor and sat in the pilot's chair.
"I find that hard to believe." Especially since he was flirting with her right now. She wasn't going to fall under his spell like all those other silly girls. "You must have more women after you than ever now you're going to be a king."
"The funny part is that I have to marry one in order to take the throne. It was one of the conditions of my father's will."
"Why would he do that?"
"To make us all settle down, I suppose. But he seems more than a little hypocritical, considering how he treated the institution of marriage. I'm sure he thought his wives were the ones with the problems. To tell you the truth, my father's behavior has always scared me off marriage."