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I laughed into my wine glass. “I once went to school with a girl who used to swear she only ate three pieces of lettuce a day and five pickles in order to fit into one of her coronation gowns.”
He rolled his eyes, walked around the table, and poured me more wine. “Women and their incessant need to impress one another, claiming they’re trying to impress men when really we just want a good non stilted conversation, something to hold on to when we’re in bed and someone who knows how to smile.”
I dropped my olive onto the table in slight shock, then quickly picked it up and shoved it in my mouth. That was a bold statement to make, or maybe I’d just been so used to palace life and dating prim and proper men who wanted to put me in my place that I wasn’t used to it.
He didn’t notice, I don’t think, just kept grabbing food and putting it on a small silver plate that had his family crest on it. He slid it over, rolled up his sweater sleeves, washed his hands in the sink and started humming Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire with a crinkled smile on his face while he sliced bread.
He sliced it with precision.
I whimpered in the back of my throat and kept popping green olives into my mouth like it was a challenge.
Was my brain warped?
Were we moving in slow motion? Why was I suddenly finding everything he did attractive? Cabin fever already? Insanity?
He rubbed his hands together, grabbed some fresh roast beef, and began slicing it into small pieces. “Onions?”
“No!” I almost shouted. “No, I mean, not on my sandwich.” Not tonight.
What the heck was I thinking? That I’d be kissing my own fiancé or something? I was trying to prove we weren’t a match, not launch myself at him. If anything, I should have made him put the whole onion on there. Instead, I stayed silent.
“No onions.” He repeated. “All right. Tomatoes?”
“Sure.”
“Mayo?”
Why did his list of ingredients have to sound so sexy with the way he growled it low in his throat, but in a cheerful, I want to serve you sort of way? When had my father ever even made a snack for my mom? When had my mom ever not been served on by staff? Furthermore, I nearly missed the chair to sit when he added extra lettuce to mine and cheese without asking because he remembered, then cut it into four pieces.
Something that etiquette taught you in the palace.
High tea always included smaller sandwiches, he’d made mine massive but still bless his heart tried to make it look dainty, fit for a princess.
He kept humming when he made his own sandwich, fit for a king, then sat down next to me, not across, but right next to me. His leg brushed mine.
Improper, but we weren’t in public, like he’d reminded me.
“Eat.” He shoved my plate in front of me. “You’ll feel warmer faster.”
I knew other ways to get warmer faster.
I nearly dropped my sandwich when the errant thought hit.
“Is it not good?” He leaned in so close I could see the flecks of gold in his bright blue eyes.
It was good, and the cabin was giving me some sort of fever, yes that’s what it was, we’d always been together during events, both too busy and isolated to go on dates that weren’t for the press. Ones were we awkwardly laughed during an outing, riding.
It was exhausting.
So then all the stories I heard were in the tabloids or from the other two kings who adored him, or the staff.
Yet all I saw was a Yankee getting ready to take the throne and I would be forced to sleep with him and create an heir, plus he’d always seemed so disinterested. Insecurity always crept in, making me think it was me, he didn’t like me. I was too boring, too rigid in all the wrong ways to his upbringing.
So maybe the problem all along wasn’t him, but me. I set down my sandwich and blotted my lips despite there being no lipstick there, then took a sip of wine. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” He polished off his sandwich.
I burst out laughing. “Okay, this wasn’t part of it, but did you chew?”
