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“We? Oh no. I’m not a part of this,” said the stunning woman on the iPad screen.
“My friend Nyla,” Dani said.
“Your... friend,” he said, grinding his teeth so tight his jaw ached.
“Hi, Your Royal Highness,” Nyla said, waving. Her smile dimmed when he didn’t respond.
Instead, he gingerly maneuvered around the mess on the floor, trying not to touch any contaminated surface, until he reached his books. Rescuing them, and not caring one bit when her tablet fell flat on the counter, he shook his head in disgust at the flour and batter clinging to their spines.
He opened the drawer next to the stove and pulled out a hand towel. “You can’t bake?”
Pausing in the act of repositioning the device, she seemed startled by his question. “I have the ability to bake, obvi. I’m just not good at it.”
He delicately attempted to clean the book. “Then what in the hell possessed you to start now?”
“The Great UK Baking Championship!” she and Nyla said at the same time, although Dani said it with a “duh” tone while her friend’s intonation was more resigned.
He knew the show; one couldn’t live in the UK and not be aware of it.
“Bread week. It really is a fucking bitch,” Dani said, picking up a miraculously unscathed champagne flute and drinking from it.
A bag of flour wasn’t going to be the only thing to explode in this kitchen.
He knew he needed to calm down. He never let himself get this worked up. Over anything. But this woman had the uncanny ability to affect him like no one else.
“Where is Margery?”
He’d send his housekeeper to the store to get Dani any kind of bread she wanted if it meant this wouldn’t happen again.
“Don’t be mad at her. She offered to make this for me or even stay and watch, but I told her I wanted to do it myself.” She bit her lower lip. “That might have been a mistake.”
“You think?”
“Maybe I’m better at tarts? I’ll see if Margery has any tips for me beforehand.”
“Tarts?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m making tomorrow.”
Tomorrow?
A hiss followed by a gurgle emanated from the oven. He returned his gaze to her. “You plan to do this again?”
“Of course. Baking is one of those things you have to practice to actually get better at. Who knows when I’ll have the time off again to do this? And it’s such a nice kitchen.”
He looked at the mess all around his “nice kitchen” and groaned. His life was being wrenched upside down. The queen was shoving him into the limelight and forcing him to host a woman he didn’t know, a woman who couldn’t be left to her own devices and who seemed intent on tearing his quiet, orderly existence into pieces. He was actually going to have to babysit her... if he wanted the house, which had been standing since 1774, to survive her visit.
Never mind that he had his own responsibilities.
His grumbling stomach reminded him that he was starving. How was he going to find something to eat in this mess?
The silence must’ve gone on for longer than was polite because Nyla piped from the tablet, “Don’t worry, Your Royal Highness. Dani will clean this up.”
She didn’t have to keep calling him that. But she was American. He couldn’t expect her to know the proper protocol.
Dani turned an incredulous look at her. “Excuse me? I don’t clean.”
“You don’t bake, either, but that didn’t seem to stop you,” he said, before he could help himself.
