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That wasn’t a question she could answer, but Henna had heard the curiosity in the woman’s voice and knew she had her. ‘You’ll have to meet with him tomorrow to find out.’
‘Heishandsome.’
Henna kept her tongue firmly in her mouth while her mind flashed back to the look he’d given her earlier on the lawn.
‘Okay,’ Natassia sighed. ‘What are the details?’
Henna rattled them off, disconnected the call and started the hour-long process of clearing Natassia and the dinner with the royal security team and the restaurant. Through it all, the email from the head-hunter kept sparkling at her like a diamond in her inbox. She’d replied when she’d got back from her meeting with Aleksander, thanking them and buying herself some time with a request to consider her options. And it hadn’t been a lie.
Henna knew that Freya was going to need her less as a friend, as a source of emotional support, and more as an assistant and the thought made Henna feel...lost. The thing that had made them work so wellwastheir relationship. It might be unusual for secretarial and assistant roles, but that was what made being a lady-in-waiting so different. But if their relationship changed, then wouldn’t her role also change? And she wasn’t sure where that left her. Marit was blossoming in her relationship with the Greek billionaire Lykos Livas and had started looking into ways she could share more royal responsibilities. And now that Aleksander was looking for a fiancée everything was changing.
Fear bloomed in her blood like ink in water just from the thought of it, having been scarred irrevocably by the monumental shift in her world when she’d lost the father who had never let a single day go by without telling her how much she was loved.
Her father had been a tech entrepreneur with a vast financial empire behind him, but the day Gustav Olin lost his wife only weeks after the birth of their child he’d handed over the reins of his company and spent every minute of the day raising his daughter. Henna’s love for her father was a wondrous, huge, bright, beautiful thing. And then one Christmas he’d developed a cough that wouldn’t go away. Over the next year or so, doctors’ visits and hospital stays had stolen weight, energy and years from them, but never love. She’d seen the worry about her future etched in his eyes and the only thing that had taken that concern away was when he’d met with the friend of an old business associate. Marcella, a Marchioness, had agreed to marry him and take care of Henna in return for the financial security he would provide.
Knowing that securing her future had brought her father peace in his last days, Henna hadn’t been able to protest, even though just meeting the woman had made Henna miserable. Focused on what was in front of her, Henna had spent every minute she could with her father, playing his favourite card games and chatting happily, ensuring he was entertained by silly futures that she made up. She was able to keep up a happy façade because she had felt loss before, she knew her mother’s absence, so she’d thought she would be able to handle it when the time came.
Only when her father passed it had been nothing like what she had expected. Henna had been hit with such an avalanche of grief she’d felt buried, suffocated by the weight of it. She’d been furious with her father and the world for not telling her how painful it would be—an acute betrayal, as if they had all kept this devastating secret to themselves. Because the distant throb that her mother’s absence had left her with was nothing like the searing, shocking horror of losing her father. Each day she’d felt as if a hand pressed down on her chest, trying to squeeze out more tears from a well that was exhausted and dry. She’d been so blinded by her loss that she’d not seen the changes that Marcella had started to make to the only home she’d ever known. The estate had been carved up, modernised, painted and wallpapered. Everything she’d ever known swept away by a decorator and she’d been numb to it all.
She’d seen the changes with her eyes, but she hadn’t been able to feel it until it was too late. And Henna just couldn’t shake the feeling that it was happening all over again. She was seeing the changes with her eyes, but she refused to sit around waiting for the blow to land, as she had done as a child. No. Now, she had a choice. Allow the tide to wash her towards something new or stand and buckle, as she had before, under the tsunami that was on the horizon.
Maybe the job offer was a sign that she should be moving on—it had certainly come at a fortuitous moment where she could take pause and consider her future. And if she did want to move on, then maybe helping Aleksander find a fiancée would be the full stop on this part of her life.
The fact that it took fifteen members of the palace security team, three close protection officers, a press embargo and an hour and a half to get to the restaurant might have had something to do with why Aleksander didn’t date. Outside of that, he worked very hard to make sure the press didn’t find out about the affairs he did have—ones that were short-term, mutually beneficial and extremely pleasurable for everyone involved. Consenting adults who knew—and were happy with—the boundaries in place was easy, uncomplicated and all that he needed.
Anything more? No. It was off the table for him and had been ever since Kristine. A part of him hated that she was still a shadow hanging over him, but the other part welcomed the reminder. Always. Because it was a lesson he needed to remember, especially now—that he couldn’t trust anyone not to betray him, even those closest to him. The past swirled, thick and heavy, pulling him into a hurt he refused to revisit, but when his limousine pulled up to the back entrance of a Michelin-starred restaurant on the edge of Svardia’s capital city he turned his thoughts from the past, determined to make the most of an evening with an intelligent, beautiful woman.
He walked through the kitchen, nodding at the bowed heads of staff in chef’s whites, to where the head waiter greeted him at the kitchen pass as if he’d just stepped off the red carpet. Beyond the smartly dressed man was a restaurant entirely empty of customers. While it would certainly impact on the atmosphere, it would at least allow for privacy. Privacy that would be needed if they were to reach an agreement that suited them both. Just as he was taking his seat, the doors in front of him swept open and he stood, ready to greet the woman he hoped might turn out to be his future Queen.
His gaze started at her feet. He’d only ever really seen Natassia a few pages into the same newspapers he was regularly headlining so he was surprised by the impact the sight of an impressive height of heel beneath slim ankles and shapely calves had on him. His fist instinctively curled as if he’d taken her calf into his palm and smoothed his hand upwards. The black velvet dress clung to legs that made his mouth water, the tauntingly respectable hemline at odds with the direction of his thoughts. Soon his eyes were racing upwards, over hips, waist and, refusing to linger obtusely anywhere between there and her face, he finally looked up.
And was shocked.
‘I’m sorry. Natassia has—’
‘Stood me up,’ he concluded before Henna could finish. He mentally cursed and then, without a hope in hell of calling it back, laughed.
CHAPTER THREE
THEBARKOFlaughter caught Henna by surprise. Not for a second did she think it was aimed at her. No, he was many things but cruel was not one of them. There was something cynical, self-deprecating even, about it. Aleksander was laughing at himself, though she couldn’t think for the life of her why.
Frowning, she made her way towards the table that occupied the middle of the room, sure he was muttering about being careful what you wished for. She’d known that coming here to let him know that Natassia had been called away was going to be awkward, but now that Aleksander had his temples bracketed with thumb and middle finger, she was wishing she’d simply called him.
Only she could never have left him here, alone in a mostly empty restaurant that, she thought with a repressed shudder, looked horribly bare.Was this how a king was supposed to woo his future queen?She stopped a foot from the table and dropped her head to a bow—the subtler form of the curtsy staff used when there were no civilians present.
‘Your Majesty, I—’ As she raised her head, she faltered slightly as she caught his penetrating gaze.
‘If you’ve come to stand me up, Henna, there’s little point standing on ceremony,’ he interrupted.
‘Aleksander,’ she corrected, really not enjoying the feeling of his name on her tongue.
He nodded and she looked away, not that she could forget the way his dark wool jacket clung to his broad shoulders, or that the sheer arrogant laziness of the unbuttoned shirt collar made her want to clench her teeth together and the shock of his slow perusal of her body from foot to face had made her hot and damp and...
‘I should go. Natassia sends her sincere apologies but,’ she said, looking back to him, but still refusing to make further eye contact, ‘an unavoidable personal matter came up at the very last minute.’
There was silence until she raised her eyes to his and, even bracing herself this time, she was hit with that bank of heat, as if she’d just emerged from an air-conditioned airport into the height of summer. And then, as if she’d reversed the trip, it was gone. With a blink of his eyes he’d turned it off and she was coward enough to admit she felt relieved.
‘You might as well sit,’ he said, gesturing to the chair on the opposite side of the small square table laid for two.
