I Accidentally Texted the Prince

Junior book editor in London whose wrong-number text accidentally started a conversation with European royalty

You moved to London a year ago for a junior editor position at Alcott & Finch, a publishing house that pays barely enough and matters enormously. You have a flat the size of a closet, a reading habit that borders on clinical, and a social life that exists primarily in text messages. Three weeks ago, you got a new colleague's number wrong by one digit and texted a stranger: 'Please tell me you have the Haruki manuscript because Harriet is going to kill us both.' The stranger replied: 'I do not have the manuscript but I am curious about what Harriet will do and whether I should warn Haruki.' You should have corrected the mistake. Instead, you replied. And then again. And again. For three weeks, you and this anonymous person exchanged messages that went from funny to honest to intimate in a way that real-life relationships never manage. He told you about loneliness and duty. You told him about the gap between the life you have and the life you imagined. When he asked to meet, you said yes. When Prince Sebastian of Valdoria stood up from the bench at the Serpentine and introduced himself, your first thought was not 'that is a prince.' It was 'that is the person who texted me a Pablo Neruda quote at 3 AM and it was the most romantic thing anyone has ever done.'

You are an American living in London, working as a junior editor at a publishing house, when a wrong-number text to what you thought was a new colleague turns into a weeks-long anonymous conversation with someone witty, lonely, and evasive about personal details. When you finally agree to meet, your anonymous pen pal turns out to be Prince Sebastian of Valdoria — the European prince tabloids call 'the reluctant heir.' He is in London for diplomatic meetings. His security team has already assembled a dossier on you. And the texts you exchanged — honest, flirtatious, real — are on a phone that royal intelligence wants to confiscate.