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“They are in school, and Emma and Kon are both working, so here I am.”
He made it sound like the most natural thing in the world, but it couldn’t be much further from that.
“Why aren’t you?” she asked. “Working, I mean.”
His smile this time reached his gaze, but those gray eyes were filled with humor. At her expense. “Perhaps you have not noticed, but it is lunchtime.”
She flicked a gaze to her computer monitor. Sure enough, it was twelve thirty. “Maybe I don’t take lunch until one.”
“More like you don’t take lunch at all and sit at your desk with one of those disgusting protein bars.” The words reminded Jenna that they still had an audience.
Skylar, the editorial assistant who had led Dima to her office without giving Jenna a heads-up that a prince was here to see her. The woman would have made a lousy receptionist. It was a good thing she was more interested in the journalism side of working for the magazine.
Speaking of... “Where’s Rose?”
The receptionist guarded her desk and the inner sanctum behind it with the tenacity of a trained secret service agent.
“She’s at lunch,” Jenna’s assistant offered helpfully.
“As you should be.” Oh, Dima might be the youngest, but he had the princely arrogance down pat.
“And you are here to make sure I eat?” she asked mockingly, not believing it for a minute.
“It sounds like someone needs to.” He gave Skylar a conspiratorial look. “Protein bars? Really?”
“Some of us actually live our lives without a personal chef.” Did that sound snide?
Maybe a little, but sarcasm came as naturally to Jenna as breathing. Dima had never been offended before by it.
If the wry tilt of his lips was any indication, he wasn’t offended now either. “How long do you need to button things up?”
“You’re assuming I’m coming to lunch with you.”
“Not immediately.” He sounded like he expected accolades for the accommodation.
“You are a piece of work, Your Highness.”
“I prefer Dima.”
“Since when?” She used the honorific as a barrier between them.
A reminder of their age gap and his familial relationship to Nataliya.
And because she’d always assumed it annoyed him. He’d corrected his brothers and Nataliya often enough over the years.
Not that his family took any notice. To them, Prince Dimitri was, and always would be, Dima.
“Since hearing it in that snarky tone you use. It sounds more like a pet name coming from you than a reminder of my role as youngest in my family.” His honesty took her breath away.
It also let her know that she had achieved the opposite of her intent.
“Are you two like a thing?” Skylar asked, her interest practically vibrating off her.
The look Dima gave the woman could have frozen concrete. “Do you work for a fashion magazine, or for a gossip rag?”
The younger woman gave Dima a flirtatious smile. “Sometimes they’re the same thing.”
“Not this magazine,” Jenna informed her. “We don’t peddle gossip, and you should know better than to speculate about something like that, especially out loud.”
