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“You’re missing out,” she said.
She went to pay for the treat, and he stepped in, taking his wallet from his pocket.
“Of course we cannot ask Your Royal Highness to pay,” the woman said.
“On the contrary,” Javier said, his voice decisive. “You should be asking me to pay double. Consider it repayment.”
The woman did not charge Javier double, but she did allow him to pay.
“I didn’t need you to buy my ice cream,” she said when they were out on the street.
“It’s not about need. It is about... What feels right.”
“You’re that kind of man, huh? The kind that holds open doors and pays for dinner?”
He laughed, a dark, short sound. “You make me sound quite a bit more conventional than I am.”
“A regular gentleman.”
“I would not say that.”
“Well, what would you say, then? You’re single-handedly setting out to save the country, and you saved a little girl from child marriage. You worked for years to undo the rule of your father.” She took a short lick of her ice cream. It was amazing. “I would say that runs toward gentlemanly behavior, don’t you?”
“I think that’s overstating human decency. I would like to think that any man with a spine would do what I did in my position. Inaction in my position would be complicity. And I refused to be complicit in my father’s actions.”
“Well. Many people would be, for their comfort.”
She looked down the alleyway and saw a lovely hand-painted mural. She darted there, and he followed. It was secluded, ivy growing over the walls, creeping between the brick.
“I just need a picture of this.”
She held out her hand, extending her ice-cream cone to him. “Can you hold this?”
He took it gingerly from her grasp, looking at it like it might bite him. She lifted her brows, then turned away from him, snapping a quick picture and then another for good measure.
He was still holding the ice-cream cone and looking aggrieved, so when she returned, she leaned in, licking the ice-cream cone while he held it still.
His posture went stiff.
He was reacting to her, she realized. The same way that she reacted to him. And she didn’t like how it made her feel. Giddy and jittery and excited in a way she couldn’t remember feeling before.
And she should pull away. She should.
But instead, she wrapped her hand around his, and sent electric sensation shooting through her body.
“You should taste it,” she said.
“I told you, I didn’t want any.”
“But I think you do,” she insisted. “You should have some.”
She pushed his hand, moving the cone in his direction, and she could see the moment that he realized it was better to take the path of least resistance. He licked the ice cream slowly, his dark eyes connecting with hers.
She realized she had miscalculated.
Because he had his mouth where hers had been.
Because she was touching him and he was looking at her.
