Page 2 of Prince She Shouldn’t Crave (Royal House of Halrovia #2)

A faint wash of colour drifted across her cheeks.

Did something show on his face? The strange desire that hit like a kick in the gut again?

He needed to rein it in. Time he’d been spending trying to quell the negative press had meant a case of all work and no play.

Though for Gabe, since his early twenties, any amount of ‘play’ had always been intensely discreet.

He’d been taught a painful lesson of what might occur if you let the wrong person get too close.

The ideas that fertile imaginations could conjure.

Now, he had a firm rule. Don’t subject a woman to the glare of the spotlight unnecessarily if she was never going to be his wife.

‘Put the footwear away, Ms Rosetti. I demand punctuality of my employees, and of myself.’

‘It’s why I was late. I—I twisted my ankle on the cobblestones on the way and had to find alternative shoes.

’ She looked down at her feet and his gaze followed.

She seemed to wiggle her toes in her uninspiringly practical flat shoes, but his attention locked on her elegant slender ankles.

Ones that his hands might encircle easily.

This wouldn’t do. What he needed was to contact one of the few friends with benefits he kept.

Women who enjoyed pleasure for the evening and would go on their way.

No expectations from either of them. He knew there was a certain cache in the aristocracy with being his lover, even if it would never come to anything.

All he needed to do was make a call. Engage in an evening of mutual, adult pleasure.

He had no idea why, right now, that thought held no interest. Yet the recesses of his errant brain finally registered her words. Had she hurt herself? What was he thinking? Nothing sensible at all, clearly.

‘Do you require medical attention?’

She shook her head. ‘No, thank you, sir.’

He strangely liked the way she called him sir, even though all his staff used the term. What would it be like to hear her say his name? Gabriel… Gabe.

Impossible.

This was meant to be an interview. An audition of sorts, but not one for a lover.

‘Come into my office. Take a seat.’

He turned and led the way. Trying to ignore the prickle at the back of his neck indicating she was close.

He lowered himself into his own chair. Blue tie be damned.

He clasped his hands in front of him. Fixed her with a glare.

The one he usually reserved for more recalcitrant advisors of state, which people might describe as overtly intimidating.

She was to be in charge of his image . One that was very personal to him.

Further, anyone who worked so closely with him might come to know secrets. Some he’d prefer weren’t exposed.

‘One hint. I value punctuality…’

‘But—’

He held up his hand. She stopped speaking. ‘…and preparedness.’

‘So do I,’ she shot straight back, then seemed to pull into herself. Adjusted her shapely jacket, which remained buttoned closed.

‘I’m a reasonable employer. However, I have high expectations.’

She nodded. Short, sharp and businesslike. ‘I understand.’

‘Excellent. Then let’s begin. I have questions.’ So many questions. Whilst she came highly recommended, she seemed underqualified for the role. ‘You’ve read the brief?’

To improve his relatability. One day he’d rule the country. Need to make hard and sometimes impossible decisions. To do that required inner strength…steel. None of it would be helped by him effectively being a ‘nice guy’ about it.

‘Of course. I have a question of my own, if I may?’

His eyebrows rose. She liked to think she could take charge here? Something about the challenge of it all set his pulse rate thumping like he’d just taken a run.

‘Be my guest,’ he said, injecting a warning note of dryness into his voice.

She seemed to ignore his tone as she rummaged about her bag and pulled out a tablet. Flicked through a few screens and drew up some photographs, then slid it across the desktop to him.

‘I think this is who you need to show the world. My question for you is, where is this person?’

Gabe looked at the pictures on the screen.

The rapid hum of his heart stilled. Photographs of him a long time ago, from his late teens and into twenty.

An ache bloomed deep inside his chest. Holding the world championship cup aloft, yellow and blue confetti in colours of Halrovia’s flag fluttering down over him and his team as they celebrated their win.

Shots of him out somewhere, leaving some function.

Smiling for the cameras in a way that seemed totally unfamiliar. A young woman on his arm.

That woman… The press speculation had been intense but she’d wanted so much more from him than he could ever have given.

A daughter of an aristocrat who clearly had expectations of a royal future, her family too, when all he’d wanted was…

Gabe hadn’t been sure. To be seen as something more?

His difficulty reading had crippled him at school.

For so long Gabe had been thought of as lazy, he’d begun to believe he would never make a decent king when it was his time.

Never achieving what his parents or teachers had expected of him.

Then came the diagnosis, yet the only result from the King and Queen was steely silence.

His dyslexia barely talked about, efficiently swept under the ancient rugs of the royal palace.

And so he talked, not to his family, but to the person he thought of as his girlfriend, even if he hadn’t contemplated any real future with her.

Then, when that youthful relationship came to its inevitable end, after her tears, the threats started.

That she’d tell everyone he’d be a useless king because he couldn’t read.

Had she and her family believed she might be Queen one day and been trying to blackmail him into reversing the break-up?

He couldn’t be sure. All he knew was his parents and the royal machine surrounding them took her threats seriously.

He didn’t want to think about the consequences of that time because he and his family were still living them.

The steps his parents took to quell the rumours.

The prices paid. Some by his family, mostly by him.

Forgoing the life he’d wanted for one of duty, so nobody could question his commitment to the crown.

Especially if he spent all his time learning from his father how to be King.

In that time, the Proper Prince was born.

Still, these weren’t conversations he would deign to have with a person he hadn’t yet decided to employ.

‘He grew up,’ Gabriel said, pushing the tablet back towards her, dismissing the unwanted memories. ‘Now for my questions.’

Time to bring this interview back under his tight control. Ms Rosetti didn’t seem to be put off. She straightened herself, tugged at her jacket and her jaw firmed, as if preparing for some kind of battle.

He couldn’t help but admire her resolve.

‘You have no university qualifications in marketing, PR or social media. Yet you’re asking me to trust you with what some see as the future of my family in the eyes of its people.

’ Lena Rosetti sat perfectly still. The only giveaway?

The slender line of her neck convulsed in a swallow.

‘What makes you believe you can provide me with value that’s superior, when I have other candidates who are formally qualified? ’

Lena’s heart punched into her ribs. She swallowed, damp palms clutching at the leather of her handbag still sitting on her lap.

Questioning some of her life choices. Why had she decided to be forward and show him those photographs of himself?

Why had she shown him her shoe ? In her defence she was a little overwhelmed because, in the flesh, Prince Gabriel looked too good to be entirely human.

Sure, she’d seen plenty of photos of him during her research.

But no picture could do him real justice .

He was almost supernaturally handsome, in a way that turned her normally quite functional brain to custard.

If gods walked the earth, she reckoned they’d look just like Prince Gabriel.

Which was her reminder, he wasn’t a god but a man.

Who’d apparently ‘grown up’ and ‘valued punctuality’ .

He wouldn’t care about her broken heel. It was obvious by the way he’d looked at her when she’d pulled it out of her handbag, as if that would have helped when trying to explain why she was late.

The sheer intensity of his gaze had made her go all hot and cold and every temperature in between. That look in his eyes speaking of what?

Disdain. She was sure.

Lena was used to that look, back in her home country of Isolobello.

Had fought against it for most of her twenty-three years.

It was how so many people at her exclusive private school had looked at her for the temerity of being fatherless.

Oh, she’d had a father. An absent one. A high-profile one.

A man never named, publicly at least. That had been the arrangement.

He’d kept her mother in a lifestyle she’d become accustomed to for all the years of their long-term affair.

He’d kept his second family, the illegitimate family, in the shadows. Secret from everybody.