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She took a quick breath. “So I need to be semiformal.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Okay. Scram. I have some work to do to be presentable.”
“I can have a hairdresser sent up. Manicurist. Masseuse.”
“Why would I need a massage?”
“Maybe what I should get you is a rundown on my dad. Then you’d very clearly understand why you want to be Zen and you’d get the massage.”
“Great.”
She took advantage of the hairdresser and manicurist, and ten minutes before it was time to leave for dinner she wished she’d agreed to the masseuse.
Dressed in a lightweight blue dress that stopped midcalf, with her hair in an updo suitable for a woman of seventy and old-fashioned pumps dyed to match the dress, she stepped out of her bedroom.
Standing in the great room, Dominic smiled. Unlike her ugly blue dress, his tux appeared to have been made for him. Again he was every inch a prince. Handsome. Debonair. Regal.
While she looked like a frumpy old bat.
“You look lovely.”
“I look like the Queen of England. Get me a hat and one of those sedate purses she carries all the time and people would probably get us confused.”
He laughed. “You are meeting a king.”
“Who wants to be reminded of his grandmother?”
“You do not look like a grandmother.”
“Well, I sure as hell don’t look like a twenty-five-year-old guidance counselor in the coolest school in Texas.”
“Trust me. You will want the armor of a grandma dress when you meet my dad.” He took her elbow and led her to the door, out of the apartment and through the echoing lobby to the waiting elevator.
As they stepped inside and the door closed behind them, she said, “You have some impressive art.”
“We are royalty.”
“I guess I’d better get used to that.” That and ugly clothes.
“That’s why we’re giving you the week. To get accustomed to us.”
She released her breath in a slow sigh. She knew that, of course. She also suspected the clothes weren’t ugly as much as they were dignified.
“Who picked out these clothes anyway?”
He stared straight ahead at the closed elevator door. “I did.”
She pulled the skirt of the too-big dress away from her hips. “Because you think your dad will like me better in baggy clothes?”
“I was a bit off on your size. But it’s better to be too big than too small.”
“Couldn’t you at least have gotten something red?”
“Blue matches your eyes.”
The sweetness of that caught her off guard. For a second she’d forgotten he knew the color of her eyes. But thinking about it, she remembered that gazing into her eyes, making her feel special, had been his seduction superpower.
“Besides, red would have reminded me of that night.”
Her lips lifted into a smile. “Oh?”
“You were devastatingly beautiful.”
Her heart skipped a beat. He’d made her feel beautiful. “If you hadn’t been staring straight ahead when you said that, it would have been romantic.”
“We don’t want to be romantic, remember?”
“So that means you’re not going to look at me?”
“I’m not going to make eye contact. I’m pretty sure that’s what got us into trouble on our date.”
She laughed, but happiness bubbled inside her. He liked her. A prince liked her. At the very least, he liked her looks.
It was heady stuff.
The elevator bell rang. The doors opened. Dominic led her out. “The family dining room is this way.”
They walked across a short hall to open doors that ushered them into a formal dining room. A table that could have seated forty dominated the space. Four places were set near the head. An older man dressed in a royal uniform and a younger man in a tux like Dominic’s rose as they entered.
“Virginia Jones, this is King Ronaldo Sancho and my brother, Prince Alexandros. We call him Alex.”
Ginny froze. What was she supposed to do? Curtsy? Bow? Damn it. Why hadn’t she paid attention to etiquette—
What etiquette? Guidance counselors knew the basics but nothing else. And she certainly hadn’t expected to someday meet a prince, let alone a king. She hadn’t attended etiquette classes. Was there even such a thing anymore? She couldn’t be mad at herself for not knowing something she’d never been exposed to.
“You hold out your hand,” King Ronaldo said irritably. “And it’s my choice to kiss it or shake it.”
“Oh.” She held out her hand. The king shook it.
Great. She’d already blown her first introduction.
Dom turned her in the direction of his brother. As tall as Dominic and every bit as good-looking—though his face had a roundness to it that made him appear kinder, with eyes that sparkled—Alex smiled warmly at her.
“It’s a pleasure to meet the woman who snagged my brother.”
King Ronaldo growled. “We do not speak that way in this house.”
“Really, Father,” Alex said, as he took his seat and opened his napkin. “This house is the only place we can speak like that.” He smiled at Ginny as Dominic seated her. “It’s a pleasure to have you in the family, Ginny, even if my brother does intend to dress you like a grandmother.”
With a gasp, she faced Dom. “I told you!”
He almost smiled, but his father let out one of those low growls of disapproval again, and Dominic’s face shifted, returning to his formal expression.
As a servant brought in salads, King Ronaldo said, “So, Miss Jones, tell us about yourself.”
She swallowed. “Well, you know I’m a guidance counselor at a high school.”
“Which is where you met Dominic.”
She nodded. “My mother was a teacher. I loved the relationships she had with her students.”
Alex said, “So why not teach?”
“I wanted a chance to meet all the kids, know all the kids, not just the ones I was teaching.”
The king said, “Ump,” but his tone of voice was positive.
She relaxed a bit. But when she glanced at the row of silverware, sweat beaded on her forehead. Seven forks. Just what in the name of all that was holy were they about to eat?
Remembering the rhyme she’d been taught in grade school, she started with the outside fork.
“What else should we know?”
“Actually, Your Majesty, since you’ve already decided the answer to our problem is to marry, and I’m the one who hasn’t made up her mind, I think I should be the one asking questions.”
Alex burst out laughing. “I like her.”
The king growled again.
Dominic shot her a look of reprimand.
So she smiled and rephrased the question. “It’s an honor to have been asked to join your family. But in America we have a saying about not buying a car unless you kick the tires.”
Alex laughed again. “Now we’re tires.”
Not sure if she liked Dominic’s brother or not, Ginny shrugged and said, “Or you’re the used car. Be glad I didn’t use the don’t-buy-a-horse-without-checking-its-teeth analogy.”
Alex laughed. Dominic groaned. But the king quietly said, “Fair enough. What would you like to know?”
“I don’t really have to dress like this for the entire time Dominic and I stay married, do I?”
“You need to look respectable.” King Ronaldo inspected her blue dress and grimaced. Even he thought it was ugly. “If we let you choose your own wardrobe, can you do that?”
“Of course, I can do that!”
“You also need to behave with the utmost of decorum in public.”
“I can do that, too. Though I might need some help with protocols.” She answered honestly, but she hadn’t missed the way the king had turned the tables on her again, and she retook control of the conversation. “So what was Dominic like as a child?”
The king said, “Headstrong.”
Alex said, “A bully.”
Dominic said, “All older brothers bully their baby brothers. It’s like a rule.”
And for the first time, Ginny felt as if she was actually talking to people. A family.
Alex shook his head. “Do you know he agreed to marry the princess of Grennady when he was only twelve?”
She faced Dom. “Really?”
Their eyes met and memories of holding him close, whispering in his ear, being held and touched and loved by him rolled through her, and she understood why Dominic had been avoiding eye contact in the elevator. Looking into someone’s eyes was intimate. In those few seconds, he wasn’t just a name or a problem or a memory, he was a real person. The guy she’d made love with. Father of her child.
“My mother had just died. Our kingdom was in a state of mourning from which we couldn’t seem to emerge. It was appropriate to do something that didn’t just ensure peace—it also brought up morale.”
She continued to hold his gaze as he spoke, and something warm and soft floated through her. At twelve, he had been mature enough to do his duty. Hell, he was mature enough to know his duty. It was remarkable, amazing.
Alex sighed. “Now I’m stuck marrying her.”
She faced Dom’s younger brother with a wince. “Really? You have to marry the princess Dom was supposed to marry?”
The king said, “You can’t just back out of a twenty-year-old treaty. We promised a marriage. We will deliver a marriage.”
Alex batted a hand. “Doesn’t matter. The princess and I will have a marriage of convenience.” He shrugged. “I’ll run around on her. She’ll run around on me. Nobody will really know who our babies belong to and we won’t allow blood tests. It’ll be fine.”
The king scowled. “Once again, Alex, I won’t have you talk like that at the table.”
Silence fell over the foursome. Dominic didn’t defend his younger brother, who seemed oddly cowed by the reprimand. Hoping to restart the conversation and shift everybody’s attention, Ginny tried to think of a question to ask, but couldn’t come up with one to save her soul. She wanted to. She wanted to lift the gloom of talking about a dead queen, mourning subjects and a younger brother resigned to a loveless marriage—his life made tolerable by affairs. But nothing came to mind, except an empty, hollow feeling that this was the family she was marrying into.
But even as she thought that, she realized there was a human side to this story. A man had lost his wife and raised two boys alone. One son had become a slave to duty. The other rebellious.
Was the pain of losing a wife and mom any less because they were royal?
In some ways she thought it might have been worse.
Dominic started a conversation about the country’s budget and a quiet discussion ensued. When the dinner was over, the king took her hand, bent and kissed it. An apology, she supposed, for the long, difficult dinner. Or maybe an acknowledgment that the next few years of her life would be like this, if she chose to marry Dominic.
They walked back to Dominic’s apartment in silence, her blue dress swishing against her calves, mocking her, reminding her just how out of her element she was and just how much she wished she were back at her condo, sitting by the pool, sipping something fruity.
When they entered Dom’s apartment, he said, “We’ll meet the minister of protocol tomorrow morning.”
“Okay.” She headed for the double doors of her bedroom suite. “Great.”
“Don’t let my family scare you.”
She stopped, turned to face him. “I’m not afraid of you.” She almost said, “I feel sorry for you.” For as difficult as the beginning of her life had been, she’d redeemed it. She’d built a world of friends and meaning. Dominic, his brother and the grouchy king were stuck.
