Alan and his best friend Ellie are enjoying being able to hang out on their summer break. Ellie has known about Alan's desire to be Allie for several years, and they plan one of their many shopping trips to the mall while their parents are at work. Little does Allie know that her simple day of secretly being out with her best friend would suddenly spiral into a whole new life!

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The Legal Stuff: Suddenly Royal © 2020 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface

I saw the announcement for Erin's Reluctant Princess Contest and immediately had an idea, but with everything going on in the world couldn't get much energy to write it. Since my last book that I posted on here it's been a really busy time in my life, but I really wanted to get a chance to put this story out there! Since I've procrastinated beginning to post there will be some days I'll throw another chapter up in order to make my goal of having it all completed by the deadline for the contest. I have eleven chapters written and plan on two to three more for this part of the tale. I hope you enjoy!

Chapter 9:

MOM WOKE ME the next morning with the smell of bacon in the air. I ran my hands through my hair quickly and went down in my pajamas.

“Power of bacon, it wakes zombies,” Mom said as I came up behind her and gave her a hug.

“Baaaacon,” I said in my best zombie impression.

She laughed, “You want to grab plates?”

Mom traditionally made breakfast on Sundays and I enjoyed the bacon, eggs, sausage, and pancakes that she had made. I was amused as I watched her force Giuseppe to join us for breakfast. He eventually gave in after a lot of cajoling and seemed happy with her offerings there.

Half-way through breakfast Mom started talking about the day, “Allie your grandmother wants the two of us to meet her for dinner at the embassy, but until then I thought maybe we could go shopping?”

“Shopping?” I asked, “Didn’t I just get the giant princess wardrobe to end all wardrobes?” I smiled, “Would any more clothes even fit?”

She laughed, “I’m thinking you have enough ‘princess’ clothes…” she shook her head, “No, I’m sure you don’t have even enough of those yet… but I’m thinking you could probably use some everyday things like pajamas still. Maybe some things to put up around your room?”

I smiled, “So I get a shopping trip with my mommy?”

She smiled, “You want to then?”

I nodded, “It would be a dream come true,” I said. I felt a tear in my eye as I really meant it. My mom loved to shop and I hated that she never knew I wanted to go shopping with her… just not for what she thought she needed to buy.

“Mrs. Nelson?” Giuseppe spoke up.

“Yes Giuseppe?”

“If I may suggest that you give me an hour, and I’ll have a car and a couple more security team members to accompany us?”

“Us?” Mom asked.

He pointed at yesterday’s paper still sitting on the table. I felt my shoulders deflate at the thought of dealing with the press. I’d never been allowed to look at the spread on my lawn, but I’d seen a few pictures of it online…

“Are we going to have to run around with security guards on all sides of us?” Mom asked wearily.

“Just me if you don’t mind?” he suggested, “But I’ll have a couple other people discreetly following us just in case?”

Mom nodded, “We can do that. We’re taking a limo though?”

“I’ll get them to bring an SUV instead?” he suggested.

“Much more discreet, we can do that.” She replied. “And I thought my only exciting thing this week was going to court tomorrow…”

“Court tomorrow?” I asked. Mom rarely talked about work with me.

She grimaced - her philosophy was to not bring work home. “I can’t talk about specifics Allie, but I have a client like you who’s due in court for a civil case tomorrow. It’s a big case with national attention.”

“So, I could look it up and learn about it?” I asked, “Tell me a little?”

“You know I don’t like to talk about cases Allie…”

“This one is big though?”

She nodded, “This woman, who’s like you, was outed at work and fired. She was also physically attacked by some of her coworkers, so she’s suing the company for discrimination.”

“That’s terrible…” I told her, “Is she okay now?”

She shook her head, “She’s had a really rough time since then. The firm took on the case pro bono, but some other groups have been helping finance it. The attack was especially bad… Anyway, that’s more than I should have said. Keep that to yourself,” she told me.

I nodded, “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Now, finish up that last bit of bacon and get dressed. Find one of those skirt and blouse outfits so you can try things on easily.”

I smiled and remembered one I liked that wasn’t too frumpy. About an hour and a half later Giuseppe led us cautiously out to a black SUV that had backed into the driveway. I had put on a white skirt that had little floral patterns in blue all over the two-layer design. A button up blue blouse that matched it had short sleeves that extended just past my shoulders. The skirt came to a few inches above my knees, and I had to be careful not to flash people as I sat down in the middle back of the SUV. Mom sat on my right side and Giuseppe joined us on my left once she was in. Another man dressed casually sat in the shotgun seat up front. He and Giuseppe both seemed like they were on high alert as the driver pulled away.

“Your Highness?” Giuseppe spoke to me.

I sighed and looked over at him, “Yes?”

“Please take this and keep it on your wrist or in your hair,” he told me. He handed me a white scrunchie.

“Why do you have one of these?” I asked as I grabbed it and examined it.

“It’s a tracker in case we need to find you,” he told me honestly.

“Uh…”

“Put it on Allie,” Mom told me, quelling any thoughts I might have of arguing.

“What do I do if the color doesn’t work with my outfit?” I asked him.

“We have other colors,” he said reassuringly.

I sighed and complied. It was a silent car ride until we pulled up to the large mall and they dropped us at an entrance. I looked over at a red store I wanted to go in so badly for years, but other than one-time Ellie and her mom ‘dragged me in’ I’d rarely been inside.

Mom must have caught my glance, “You never had any dolls, did you?”

I shook my head, “No…”

She put her arm around my shoulder, “Well, I think we can fix that before we go find clothes.”

“Really?”

“One… We probably should get some stuffed animals for your room too.” She said quietly.

I smiled and we walked together to the American Girl store and looked around for a half-hour picking out a doll that matched my eyes and hair color. We picked out a couple of outfits before Mom dragged me to the checkout before we bought the store out. I wasn’t sure about carrying the big bag everywhere around the mall, and wondered what to do about it. Just then Giuseppe nodded towards me and a man that was approaching, “Go ahead and give him your packages, we’ll get them to the car,” he said quietly.

I was kind of sad to see it go, but we hadn’t even entered the mall proper yet!

The next few hours with my mom were some of the happiest I had ever spent with her! Shopping mostly involved the girl’s department for me, but once in a while there was an XXS, or Size 0 outfit in juniors that didn’t dwarf me completely. Mom had years of shopping experience for smaller clothes that helped out. All of my pajamas though were certain to reinforce me being younger than my age, but I didn’t care because they were all soft - and who would see them?

We’d just sent a Build-a-Bear out to the car and were headed towards the food court when a camera flash went off to my right. I turned to try and look at it, but instead Giuseppe was right there, along with two other guys and quickly led Mom and I down the hallway. More cameras began to go off as we got closer to an exit and Giuseppe was muttering under his breath.

“It’s her! It’s the princess!” I heard someone say.

“Try and hurry,” he said to us, “But don’t run unless I say to.”

There was quite the crowd of people following us and more camera flashes as we came to an outer door and saw the SUV. Another man pulled the door open as Giuseppe pretty much pushed me inside, and closed the door after Mom got in.

As the tires squealed away from the SUV I asked, “What just happened?”

“You were recognized,” Giuseppe said, “And it seems that the press decided to get some more photos…”

“Is this going to keep happening?” I asked nervously.

He sighed, “At times Your Highness. It’ll be worse at the start if I had to guess…”

“And why is it that any girl dreams of being a princess?” I griped a bit.

Not far from home my phone dinged with a message and Ellie asking, ‘How come you didn’t invite me?’ with a picture of the escape from the mall that had been posted on Twitter. ‘JK that’s nuts!’

We traded messages before getting home and being sent inside while the security guys brought our bags in. Mom helped me go through and cut tags, peel stickers, and finally I got to the doll bag. I smiled as I pulled the cover off of the box and began undoing the straps and rubber bands holding her into the box. “What’s her name?” Mom asked a few minutes later as I hugged her.

“Umm…” I thought for a long time, “Emily?”

She smiled, “Well later I am getting pictures of you and Emily!”

I blushed then, “You never took pictures of me before?”

She wrapped me in a hug then, “By the time you were eight you complained anytime you knew I was taking one…”

I nodded, “I don’t know if it’s why, but I really didn’t like pictures that showed me as a boy.”

She squeezed me again, “Good thing you don’t have to worry that anymore, huh?”

We had enough time to wash everything and squeeze the new purchases into my drawers and closet. I’d named my new bear Sarah and placed her on my pillow. A few other accents around the room made it seem like a girl might live there now, and I was all smiles as I dressed for dinner with Grandma.

Mom wore a nice skirt suit, while I wore the navy-blue dress with the white ‘V’ design I’d first tried on yesterday. I cuddled up to her some as we were driven to the embassy a while later. At the gate there were more camera flashes as a bunch of press with cameras ambushed the SUV. Fortunately, security kept them outside the gate and Giuseppe opened Mom’s door right next to the entrance.

“Keep moving forward, Your Highness, don’t turn around,” he told me as I stepped out.

I nearly fell though as my shoe slipped off. Luckily, he grabbed me gently and I was able to slip my toe in enough to make it inside. I stopped just inside the door before the metal detectors and fixed it.

Geneva was standing on the other side of the detectors and motioned for Mom and I to follow her. “How are you doing this evening?” she asked us.

“Getting our excitement in,” Mom said with a shake of her head. “I didn’t miss dealing with those people.”

Geneva nodded, “I prefer back home where we have some laws in place to help out.”

“They can’t swarm me there?” I asked hopefully.

“Oh, they can still do that! But generally, it’ll be a bit more controlled. You wouldn’t have had to worry about it at home or the mall like you just did. Since you’re only fifteen… we have some laws that Parliament passed that keeps you from being hounded by them until your eighteenth birthday.”

“Those are new?” Mom asked.

She nodded, “Alexandros pushed for the changes with Parliament seven years ago. He remembered the way he’d been treated, as well as we have had some other royal family members mistreated recently. The big push though happened after a young actress from the country was photographed making out with another girl… her parents didn’t know about her and she committed suicide six months later.”

“That’s awful,” I said.

“Yes, it was,” she agreed. “Your father really wanted to ensure no one had to deal with that again, at least within the borders of our country.”

“It sounds like he did a good thing…” I said sadly. ‘I wish I would have met him.’

“It was, your grandmother is right through here,” she said and opened the door to a smaller dining room.

My grandmother smiled, “Already an attention magnet?”

“Sorry,” I told her.

She shook her head, “I’m not surprised by it since they learned about you. Come and join me, we’ll eat and talk about where we go from here.”

A man dressed in a suit directed me to sit to my grandmothers’ right side and my mom on her left around a smaller round table. You could fit a few more people around it if you wanted to, but its size was more appropriate to the intimate meeting.

For the next hour we enjoyed a pretty simple meal of soup, a fish course, a salad, then dessert. It was weird to me as an American to have salad so late in the meal, but I remembered learning one time that it was pretty standard in France. “Why is there so much of a French influence in Osané?” I asked Grandma then.

She smiled, “Well from what historians can tell us the island was originally settled by people long before France was thought of, back in Greek and later Roman times. There was a lot of trade that started around 600 AD, and the country’s history mirrored and aligned with France a great deal through to the early part of the 1200’s. Around then the island was invaded by the Spanish for around twenty years. Eventually the island became independent and your many many times Great Grandfather King Phillip began to rule our country as a separate nation around the year 1310”

“Wow… That’s kind of cool,” I said. “So, is there a Spanish influence too?”

“Not much of one, they were detested and most signs of their brief occupation were removed. The brief Greek and longer Roman influences are far more obvious with some ruins on the island.”

I was given a brief history lesson then and learned that the island had also been an unfortunate stepping stone in many conflicts. In World War II they managed to mostly stay out of the fray, but had been occupied by both Italian and German forces for a time before Allied troops invaded with the help of resistance soldiers. The royal family had hidden during the time amongst the people, refusing to flee the country altogether.

“That’s incredible,” I said.

“There are many incredible stories of your ancestors,” she told me, “I’ll make sure that you are taught all about them.”

“I’d like that,” I told her during the dessert course.

As those plates were pulled away, she led us to a small sitting area with a few comfortable couches and chairs. I found myself sitting next to Mom on a small couch while she sat adjacent to us in a cushioned chair.

“So… after this weekend we really need to formally introduce you – at least with a press conference,” Grandma said to me.

I gulped, “A press conference? Like I’d have to speak?!?” I asked nervously

She smiled, “I’d do most of the speaking and then let them ask you a few softball questions. We’ll ensure that the press we invite will exhibit their best behavior.”

“When would you do that?” Mom asked.

“I was thinking at ten in the morning tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” I asked, and heard Mom in stereo with me.

“I think you can handle this,” she told me.

“Mom can you be there?”

She looked at me and shook her head, “I have that case I was telling you about in court at ten too, and there’s no way to get the judge who’s presiding to put that off…” She looked at me for a second, then a Grandma, “You’ve already scheduled it I’m guessing?”

She looked a bit taken aback but nodded, “Yes we have. The politics of the situation demand that we get something out there no later than then.”

Mom squeezed me, “You’ll be okay here… I’m sure of it.”

“I agree, you have a good head on your shoulders Alexandria.”

“What do I wear?” I asked.

“I’ll have Tyler send you which outfit he thinks you should wear tomorrow morning. I made sure we could consult with him on your wardrobe from here on out while in the States.”

I nodded, “Okay.”

“Now, the next thing though, we need to get you over to Osané.”

I looked at her with concern but nodded, “I guess that makes sense… but I’ve never been that far from home,” I said sadly.

“I know that is the case,” Grandma told me. “Because of that, how about we take this one step at a time? Say you’re coming for the summer to begin with?”

Mom and I had talked about this before, but it was so much more final when she talked about it. Summer break had just started a couple weeks ago, “The whole summer?” I asked. I thought of Ellie and knew I would miss her.

“We would figure out school and everything else before the end of it,” she assured me.

“What do you mean?” I asked nervously.

“Well, I’d prefer you be in a proper school somewhere.”

“Somewhere? Not in Osané?”

“The way I see it is there are some options that I think could be accepted by others,” she told me. “You could come back here and finish, but I don’t know that your school has the rigorous curriculum you need. We need to especially make sure you know how to behave and present yourself in society… for that it might be best to send you to a private school.”

“But what about Mom?” I asked.

“We would still see each other,” Mom sighed. “Look, we don’t have to decide on your entire school future right now. You have to consider the fact you’d probably have more privacy in a private school than if you stayed here. I’d worry about you at school a lot – even if you were going to be a prince instead of a princess.”

I felt tears go down my face then, “This is going to ruin everything,” I said.

Mom hugged me, “No it won’t, I promise you that. And, I’ll make sure I get some time off after this case and I’ll fly over to Osané for at least a few weeks too to help.”

Grandma spoke up when I was a bit calmer, “Alexandria I promise you will have a say in every decision for your education. I won’t just pick and say go there,” she smiled, “I understand how you feel though. My parents sent me away to my first boarding school when I was eight.”

I looked up at her in shock, “You stopped living with your parents when you were eight?!?”

She shrugged, “I at least knew it was coming… Didn’t make the first year any easier. For you just maybe think of it as preparing to go to college earlier.”

I nodded, “I’ll think about it.”

“For now, you two should probably be getting home.” She stood as she spoke.

I received a hug from her, Mom a feminine handshake, and we were soon in the car being driven home. Mom tucked me in wearing some of my new pajamas that night. I was hugging my bear Sarah tightly as she did so. “You keep tucking me in like I’m little,” I told her sadly. “Where’s the bedtime story?”

She laughed at my joke, “Seems like it would be kind of weird to tell you a fairytale with your life becoming one?”

“What am I going to do? Mom I never wanted to be a princess… I mean more than wearing a pretty dress and a tiara?!?”

She kissed me on the forehead, “You remember when you were little and I put something new on your plate to eat for dinner?”

I nodded.

“What did I always tell you?”

I sighed, “Try it all, if you hate it, I’ll never make you eat it again.”

“Just try this sweetheart. Give it a good attempt, and if you really hate it, we’ll let you renounce the throne.”

I nodded, “I guess…” I told her.

I cried as she closed the door and turned off the light. Sarah was my first bear since I was a kid, and I was glad to have her to hold tightly against me as I again quietly cried myself to sleep.

.

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I'll be posting another chapter tomorrow. Thank you to all of you who have pressed the Kudos button or posted a comment! I very much appreciate it! Though I don't have to have the story finished for the contest entry, I'm still trying to get it completely up by the deadline for my own internal goal. Please consider leaving me a comment to help motivate my brain and fingers! Thanks for reading!