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“He wouldn’t have.” I wasn’t sure what Erhall had planned to do before Rhys showed up, but he was too savvy to lose his cool in public. “Please, drop it. I just want to sleep. It’s been a long night.”
I didn’t want to waste more energy on Erhall. He wasn’t worth it.
Rhys complied, though he didn’t look happy about it. Then again, he rarely looked happy.
He escorted me to my room, and when we arrived at my door, he pulled something out of his suit pocket.
“Your birthday present,” he said gruffly, handing me a rolled-up sheet of paper tied with a ribbon. “Nothing fancy, but I had it and thought you might like it.”
My breath caught. “You didn’t have to get me anything.”
We never bought each other birthday presents. The most we did was buy each other a meal, and even then, we pretended it was for something other than the other’s birthday.
“It’s not a big deal.” Rhys watched, shoulders tense, while I carefully untied the ribbon and unrolled the paper.
Once I saw what was on it, I gasped.
It was me.
A drawing of me, to be exact, in a pool surrounded by hills with the ocean in the distance. Head tipped back, smile on my face, looking freer and happier than I ever remembered feeling. The curve of my lips, the sparkle in my eyes, even the tiny mole beneath my ear…
He’d captured it all in exquisite, painstaking detail, and looking at me through his eyes, I believed I was the most beautiful woman in the world.
“It’s not jewelry or anything like that,” Rhys said. “Keep it if you want or toss it. I don’t care.”
“Toss it?” I clutched the drawing to my chest. “Are you kidding? Rhys, this is beautiful.”
My words hung in the air, and we realized at the same time I’d called him by his name again. My first time doing so since Costa Rica.
But it felt right because, at that moment, he wasn’t Mr. Larsen. He was Rhys.
And Rhys had given me the best gift I’d ever received. He was right—it wasn’t a fancy purse or diamond jewelry, but I would much rather have one sketch from him than a hundred Tiffany diamonds.
Anyone could buy a diamond. No one except him could’ve drawn me the way he did, and it didn’t escape my notice this was the first time he’d ever shared his art with me.
“It’s all right.” He shrugged.
“It’s not all right, it’s beautiful,” I repeated. “Seriously, thank you. I’ll treasure this forever.”
I never thought I’d see the day, but Rhys blushed. Actually blushed.
I watched in fascination as the red spread across his neck and cheeks, and the desire to trace its path with my tongue gripped me.
But of course, I couldn’t do that.
I could tell he wanted to say something else, but whatever it was, he thought better of it. “It’s no security alarm, but I can save that for Christmas,” he said with a lopsided smile.
I grinned, giddy from the combination of his gift and his joke. There was nothing I loved better than seeing the normally serious Rhys joke around. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“Good night, princess.”
“Good night, Mr. Larsen.”
That night, I lay in bed and stared at Rhys’s drawing in the moonlight filtering through the curtains. I wished I was that girl again. Not yet crown princess, soaking up the sun in a remote town where no one could find me. But I wasn’t.
Perhaps I loved Rhys’s drawing so much not only because he was the artist, but because it immortalized a version of myself I could never be again.
I gently rolled the sketch up and tucked it into a safe corner of my bedside drawer.
Part-Time Princess.
Being the monarch of Eldorra requires more than a pretty face.
Let me be clear, Mr. Speaker. I have no intention of abdicating, stepping aside, or handing my responsibilities to anyone else.
Until now, I’d been a passive participant in my own life, letting others make my decisions, the press run roughshod over me, and the likes of Erhall condescend to me.
Not anymore. It was time to take matters into my own hands.
The game of Eldorran politics was a battlefield, and this was war.