Page 17

Ava

I was doing my very best to pay attention but all I could think about was Luc between my thighs.

“I swear, Princess! Are you even paying attention?”

“My God ,” Giselle said. “She is on another planete .”

She wasn’t entirely wrong. Last night, I’d had the sex dream to end all sex dreams. It’d been Luc and me back in my bed, the man using his fingers and tongue and cock to pleasure me in every way imaginable.

It was so strange. As much as I considered myself the independent type, a woman who didn’t answer to anyone, my fantasies with Luc all centered around one thing. Well, one thing aside from sex— surrender . There was something about Luc that made me want to give myself over to him, to let him take control. At least in the bedroom.

He’d felt the same way, I was certain of it. Why else would he have been so damn bossy?

All the same, I had to focus on what was happening right in front of me. I was seated at the big table in the royal dining room, the same place where I’d had that awkward first meal with my father. The place setting was done up in front of me, nearly twenty pieces of flatware altogether. The silver was so shiny that it was almost blinding to look at.

“OK, I’m going to be real here,” I said. “What’s the point of all the silverware? When I’m in the crab truck grabbing lunch, I barely need a fork. Most of the time, I use my hands.”

The color drained out of Oscar’s face at the mere mention of me using my hands to eat. He looked like he was about to faint on the spot.

“You can use your hands,” he said slowly, as if explaining the concept to a toddler. “That is, if you want to give half the royal court a heart attack!”

“You might think this is all silly,” Giselle went on. “One big joke. But knowing the difference between a fish fork and a salad fork is what separates royalty from the, as you Americans say, riffraff .”

“Hey, before you knock it, have either of you even tried being riffraff? Sure, you don’t get to live in a palace, but it’s got its high points. Like, for example, being able to eat an entire mushroom Swiss from Shake Shack in the privacy of your own home in front of the TV.”

“Shake Shack?” Oscar asked, scrunching his face in confusion. “What is that ?”

Giselle sighed. “I have no idea. I simply refuse to learn. Something tells me the less I know about it, the better.”

“Regardless, Princess,” Oscar said. “You’re not a common person, whether you like it or not. Being royalty is in your blood. Your mother, despite her… regrettable decisions, embodied the position of queen with grace and dignity. Even with your present difficulty, I have no reason to think that you won’t, with a little work, be able to perform in the same way.”

I wanted to throw a little more sass their way but reminded myself that these two were only doing their jobs. I didn’t want to be too much of a royal pain in the ass.

So, I sat and listened to them explain to me such fascinating topics as the proper placement of a cake fork, and in what order the different glasses went in a place setting. As they did, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I’d gone from the down and dirty world of food trucks to a place where using the butter knife in place of the fish knife would cause a scandal.

About twenty more minutes into it, I felt a buzz on my hip, it was my phone.

“OK, as thrilling as this all is, mind if we take a break?”

Oscar and Giselle regarded one another with the same expression of uncertainty. Giselle reached forward, placing a finger with an immaculate French tip on one of the forks.

“Tell me what this is and you may have your break.”

“Sure. Easy. Not a problem in the slightest.”

I kept my eyes on the fork, racking my brain as I tried to figure it out.

OK. The big one is the salad fork because that’s the first one you use. Then there’s the fish fork, which is super small. It’s the…

“Dinner fork?” I asked.

Giselle and Oscar let out the same sigh of relief at the same time.

“ Mon Dieu ,” Giselle said. “For a moment there I was worried.

“So, she can learn after all,” Oscar said. “Thank heaven for small miracles.”

“Can I take my break now?” I asked.

“Ten minutes,” Giselle said. “Then you’re coming back and parking that royal bottom right here until you have all of this committed to memory.”

“Deal.”

With that, I sprang out of my seat and hurried out of the dining room, rushing to the nearest restroom. I stepped into the space, taking a moment to appreciate the gold and marble and how even a place to pee in the palace managed to be something to take my breath away.

Once I’d collected myself, I took my phone out of my pocket. I was expecting to hear from Hailey, but the text that had come through was from Luc.

Hope you’re enjoying the lesson. Come to the kitchen when you’re done. I have a surprise for you.

His message was enough to ignite my curiosity, not to mention get me all kinds of turned-on. Between the dream and what had happened last night, just the thought of talking to Luc was enough to get me hot.

I hurried back to the lesson, hiding my excitement as best I could. Focusing on the minutia of the place settings was nice, actually. It gave me something to focus on besides watching the clock until the lesson was over.

When the lunch hour finally arrived, I was so excited that I thought I might explode.

“I do not want to get too ahead of myself,” Giselle said. “But you made some progress.”

“Keep it up,” Oscar added. “We might just make a princess out of you yet.”

“Thanks!” The word shot out of my mouth as I bounded from my chair and hurried out of the dining room.

I slowed my pace once I reached the hall, not wanting to fly through the palace like a kid hopped up on sugar. Before too long, I was at the door to the palace kitchen. I heard the sounds of slow, measured movement inside, bowls and cups being set here and there.

The kitchen was amazing, of course. The ceilings were tall, with a massive island in the center of the room, the floor covered in tile. Copper cookware hung on the walls, and a quick scan of the space revealed that, while the palace was ancient, the appliances in the kitchen were anything but. Three big, arched windows looked out onto the gardens, a perfect backdrop for cooking.

My attention, however, was on the man standing with his back to me. He was dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt that clung to the wide spread of his muscular upper back and shoulders.

“Welcome,” he said as he set out ingredients from a big bag close at hand. “How was the lesson?”

“Good. Learned about forks.”

He chuckled. It was still odd to hear him laugh. My first impression of Luc had been a man as serious as they came. While he most definitely was still that, he seemed to be loosening up with me as the days went on. Was I bringing something out of him?

“Forks are important. You use them to bring food to your face.”

“Very true. I reminded Oscar and Giselle that hands worked just as well.”

He chuckled again. “I’m sure that went over well.”

“Surprisingly, they weren’t crazy about the idea.”

I stopped a dozen feet from Luc, taking a look at the spread of ingredients. As my eyes jumped from one item to another, I realized how familiar they all were.

“Wait a second,” I said. “This stuff…” I hurried over to the counter, picking up one thing and then another. “Jumbo lump crab meat from Seattle, Dijon mustard, parsley… shit, you’ve even got saltine crackers instead of breadcrumbs! This is—”

“Everything you need to make your crab cakes.” He turned toward me with a shy smile on his face. He had on a clean, white apron over his shirt. I could still see the big, toned muscles of his arms, the square outline of his pecs. “I’m not normally one for surprises, but in this case, I couldn’t resist.”

I was still stunned by what I was seeing. “OK, hold on… how ? I mean, you don’t just have some of the right ingredients; you have all of them!” I put my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes in skepticism. “You didn’t, like, hack into my phone or something, did you?”

“Didn’t need to. Did you know you walk in your sleep? You came right into my room last night, mumbling the list of ingredients.”

“Funny. But seriously, how did you find out?”

“Got in touch with your sister Hailey. She was reluctant at first to reveal the ingredients, but when I told her my reasoning for wanting to know the secret recipe, she changed her tune.”

“And… what was your reasoning?”

He crossed his arms, leaning against the counter. “Because you’re homesick. I don’t blame you. What’s going on right now is the culture shock to end all culture shocks. Now, I can’t un-princess you, but I can do a little bit to make you feel more at home. For example, gathering all of the ingredients that you need to make your crab cakes.”

I shook my head, having a hell of a time believing what was in front of me.

“You did all of this?” I asked. “How?”

He laughed. “Look around you, Princess. Being royalty doesn’t mean living in a gilded cage. Power comes along with life as a royal. Now, for someone like you, it’d be a mere matter of snapping your fingers and having whatever you need or want brought to you.”

“But not you.”

“Well, I do have my staff. But I’m the sort of man that likes to make sure things are done to my satisfaction. With a recipe with such… precise ingredients, I saw to it personally that everything was correct.”

“So, what, you went into town to get everything yourself?”

“That’s exactly what I did.”

With those words, what I saw before me took on another dimension. Luc had personally gone to the trouble of doing something for the sole purpose of making me feel a little less lonely.

“I don’t know what to say.”

He grinned. “Say ‘let’s get started.’ Because I’m famished . ”