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“Look at us. We’re turning out to be very efficient at hashing out details.” She grinned. “Which might mean we can hash them out here in the car on the way home, and just be done with it.”
“Whatever you like.”
“I would prefer to do all the hashing now. Because when we get home, we have Star Wars to watch, do we not?”
“Yes, I believe we do. Also perhaps some seldom-used muscles to find.”
“Well, let’s get a move on then.”
Epilogue
One year later
His Majesty King Emil and Her Royal Highness Princess Marie
request the honor of your presence
at the Eldovian Cocoa Ball
at the Royal Palace
on December 24 at seven o’clock in the evening.
Kindly RSVP.
****************************
You are cordially invited to
a Boxing Day reception
at the residence of the Eldovian Ambassador to the United Nations
in New York City.
December 26 at four p.m.
RSVP by December 11.
*****************************
“One thing I didn’t really think through in getting together with you was how much Christmas hustle was going to be required,” Cara said as she did her makeup in the mirror in one of the palace guest rooms. She and Matteo were back in her old guest suite, in fact, having spent the week leading up to the Cocoa Ball vacationing in Eldovia. Vacationing!
Well,shewas vacationing. Or at least she was trying to—she was still pretty new to the concept. It helped that her parents were in town, installed in the suite next door. Matteo was working, and his schedule had been wall-to-wall meetings. Cara and her parents had been doing all the Christmas stuff in the village, had taken the baths in Biel, and had even gone to Gimmelmatt, aka the cutest village in the world, along with Matteo’s mom.
“I know,” Matteo said from where he was perched on the edge of the tub watching her get ready. “And here I thought that giving up my Witten Santa duties would make the Christmas seasonlesshectic.” He leaned forward and studied her reflection. “Don’t paint over that Cupid’s bow,” he said with a kind of growly urgency that made her want to jump him even though she had done just that not an hour ago. She met his eyes in the mirror, and in typical Matteo fashion, he added, “Ignore me. Of course you should do as you like.”
She rolled her eyes but proceeded to overline her lips, exaggerating the V at the top of them. She secretly loved how obsessed he was with little bits of her—that Cupid’s bow, her nails. Well, her entire self, really. He was always there with an admiring word or a thoughtful gesture. That’s what happened when you entered anon-time-limited affair with a former equerry, she supposed. The man had an eye for detail.
Her cheeks heated as she thought about the details he had attended to over the past hour, after he’d come rushing in from a meeting declaring they had only a small window of time before they had to be at the ball and that they’d better make the most of it because it was going to be all royalty and parents and airports and parties for the next few days.
Being back at the palace was surreal. She’d been in such upheaval when she was here a year ago. Now, she was firmly established as a partner at CZT. She had found a balance of traveling less, but not a ton less, it turned out. With Matteo and Mom and Dad in New York—he was, of course, excessively devoted to her parents—she was less stressed about being gone. Shelikedtraveling for work.
She also liked coming home from traveling for work.
“Oh, don’t you look so handsome,” her mother cooed over Matteo as they swung by her parents’ suite on the way to the ballroom. Cara rolled her eyes fondly—the excessive devotion went two ways. “What?” her mother said. “Don’t you think he looks handsome?”
He did. He was in his tux, and his hair was his usual short style, but somehow, in her eyes, the whole look was overlain with a kind of sexiness that only she could see. Well, shehopedonly she could see. As if he could hear her thoughts, he caught her eye and smoldered—there was no other word for it. “He looks okay, I guess,” she said, answering her mother as she made a silly face at him.
