Page 14 of Royally Knocked Up (Princes of Passion #1)

HAILEY

“ T here’s a letter for you at the reception desk,” Isla said.

“Hmm?” Hailey asked idly as she straightened a tablecloth.

“A letter,” Isla repeated. “At the reception desk. Honestly, Hailey, you’ve been a million miles away for the past few weeks. Are you ill? What’s the matter with you?”

Hailey wasn’t ill. She knew exactly what was the matter with her, and it wasn’t something she could speak to Isla about. It wasn’t something she could speak to anybody about.

That night with Enzo in his room had not been the last, as she had thought it might be. Instead, the two of them had spent almost every night together since then.

They had continued to keep their relationship secretive.

Enzo had insisted that if it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d been sent here by his father, he would have been happy to go public.

“But if he finds out about you, he’ll find some way of ruining it,” he’d said.

“He’ll insist that there’s something inappropriate about what we’re doing, and he’ll move me, or he’ll fire you, and it just won’t be good for either one of us. ”

Hailey had nodded. “I understand,” she’d said, and he had smiled at her with such warm gratitude that it had set the old guilt squirming in the pit of her stomach.

She wasn’t going along with his desire not to be open about their — whatever they had, was it a relationship?

— because she was sympathetic to the fact that he didn’t want to let his father know what was going on.

She was going along with it because she didn’t want to let his father know what was going on.

Because he was absolutely right that she would be fired over it — but not from the job he thought.

Every night, when she climbed into his bed, she was able to forget about those worries for a few hours.

She was able to focus on the pleasure of everything that was going on between the two of them.

But during the day, she could only give half her attention to the enjoyment of daydreaming about him.

The other half was taken up with worries about what would happen when his father found out — a thing that sometimes seemed as if it might be inevitable.

“Who is the letter from?” she asked Isla.

“I don’t know,” Isla said. “I don’t go through my employees’ mail.” She raised her eyebrows. “Go and see for yourself. I can handle the tablecloths.”

So Hailey abandoned what she had been doing and made her way up to the reception desk.

The receptionist was waiting for her. She was on the phone, but she made brief eye contact with Hailey and pointed to an envelope on the desk.

Hailey picked it up and took it over to one of the armchairs in the lobby to read it.

She knew at once that this was something serious. The envelope was heavy and cream-colored, and when she turned it over, she saw that it had been affixed with a wax seal. The image was one she had seen in the throne room at the palace when she was there.

Her heart pounded madly. The king. He knows .

She didn’t know how he could know. She and Enzo had been careful.

There had been no public displays of affection.

They tried not to even flirt in places where other people might see them.

They hadn’t done much more than make eye contact with one another, grinning at each other across their daily work.

Apart from that one day in Vista Grande, she wasn’t sure when they could have been seen together.

And yet… here was a letter that she was sure must have come from the palace.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she opened it, and she shook her head vigorously. What was she so afraid of?

I’m afraid he’s going to take me off the job and I won’t be able to see Enzo anymore .

If she was pulled from the job, there would be nothing to stop her from being with Enzo.

There would be no reason she couldn’t just dedicate herself fully to time spent with him.

For a moment, she allowed herself to dream about that — going to him, telling him that they didn’t need to worry about keeping things secret anymore…

Except that he had never been keeping things secret because of her assignment. He had never known about her assignment. And when he found out, she was sure that he would push her away.

She sighed and opened the letter. No sense in putting this off.

Ms. Jones , the letter began, with no attempt at friendliness.

The time for the king’s coronation is fast approaching, and he has determined that his son ought to be brought home now to take part in coronation events.

Of course, you will still be needed to continue in your capacity as his supervisor once he returns to Luria.

Hailey frowned. She hadn’t realized that she would be expected to return to Luria with Enzo.

Still, the idea of going back to the capital with him was far preferable to the idea of having to say their farewells here and now, even though she didn’t know when she might be able to spend any time with him once they got back.

She read on —

King Edoardo will be reaching out to his son to let him know that it’s time to return home, and you are expected to come along with him.

How you arrange this is up to you, of course, since His Highness cannot be made aware that you have been shadowing him, and the king will not be informing him of that.

Do what you need to do to ensure that you are able to travel with His Highness in three days’ time when he returns to Luria.

Accommodations will be arranged for you in the city.

His Highness looks forward to seeing you again.

Best regards,

Hailey wasn’t able to make out the name that had been signed at the bottom of the letter.

She turned it over, hoping that perhaps there might be more — something to help explain how she was meant to achieve this task. But there was nothing. She was going to have to figure it out for herself.

She glanced at the open fireplace in front of her. There were several fires around the room, meant to establish ambience here in the ski lodge. She looked around furtively. No one was watching her.

She leaned forward and put the letter in the fire, watching as the flames consumed it. She couldn’t risk the possibility that Enzo might discover it. If he did, it would ruin everything.

Then she got to her feet.

She had to find him. She had three days to convince him that he should take her back to Luria with him. She had three days to make him believe that there was nothing strange or suspicious about her desire to leave behind everything that she was doing here and go along with him.

She didn’t know how she was going to accomplish that. She only knew that it had to be done.

“Your father is making you return home?” she asked Enzo that evening as she poured the wine that had become a part of their regular evening ritual.

He nodded. He was staring moodily out the window. “I wish I could just tell him no,” he said. “But this is where it begins. Even if I wanted to take the opportunity to resist my father’s mandates, he’s right. I do need to be there for the coronation. It’s the right thing to do.”

“I respect that,” Hailey said softly. “And I think you’re right to go. It makes a good impression on the rest of the country. It shows them who you are and who your family is, and they need to see that as your father assumes the throne.”

“So you’re on his side?”

“I’m on your side. I’m agreeing with you here, Enzo. Don’t get angry with me.”

“I’m not angry,” he sighed. “I just… I don’t want to leave, Hailey. I don’t want to leave La Fantasia. I never thought I would feel that way about it, but it’s true. I don’t want to leave this place, and I don’t want to leave you.”

“I don’t want you to go either,” Hailey said. “But you have to be back for the coronation. You know how important that is.”

“I know.”

Hailey took a deep breath. The way this conversation was playing out meant that this might be easier for her than she would have dared to hope. “Enzo?”

“Yeah?” He didn’t turn to face her.

“I was thinking…” she said. “Well, I always said my work here would be temporary. That eventually I would want to leave and go back to the States.”

“You’re thinking of going back to the States now?” His shoulders tightened.

She knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing she was thinking herself.

If he went back to Luria, there might still be hope for the two of them. But if she went home, that was it. They would never see each other again. It would just be over.

“I should wrap things up here pretty soon,” she said carefully, knowing that she needed to handle this conversation perfectly. She needed him to feel as if he was on the verge of losing her.

“I can’t believe you’re just going to leave. Just like that.”

“I don’t have to leave yet,” she said. “But I think I need to start thinking about it.”

He nodded slowly.

“But before I go,” she said, “I always said I wanted the chance to see a little bit more of Luria. I always said I’d want to go back to the capital and spend some time there before I left permanently.”

He turned to face her.

His expression was stony. If she hadn’t known him as well as she did, she would have believed that he was angry with her.

He wasn’t angry. He was trying to hide the fact that he was feeling hope. Her heart ached for him. She felt swamped with a surge of guilt, hating the fact that she had to play these games instead of just telling him outright what she wanted and why.

Would he really be so upset if he learned how she had come to be here? That she was doing a job?

Maybe he would be able to forgive her for it.

No. Of course he wouldn’t. What was she thinking? He was so resentful toward his father. Even when he was able to acknowledge that his father’s actions made sense, he wasn’t able to forgive them.

He would never forgive Hailey if he found out what she had been doing all this time.

She couldn’t tell the truth.

“Are you saying that you want to come back to Luria?” Enzo asked. He didn’t say with me , but Hailey thought he was probably thinking it.

It made her feel both better and worse to realize that he was thinking about things in those terms.

“That’s what I’m saying,” she told him, wishing that she could be saying it the way he was hearing it.

Wishing she could just be telling him that she wanted to spend more time with him before she went back home.

It was the truth, for God’s sake. If only she could come clean about everything, she could say that to him, and she would be able to mean it, and everything would be aboveboard.

But if she hadn’t been hired by his father, the two of them would never have met. That made it impossible for her to wish that things had happened any differently than they had. She would never have come to Monteverde at all.

“Well, of course you can come with me.” He was beaming, all of a sudden.

“I’ll come up with some way to explain it to my father.

I’ll say you’re someone I was working with here at La Fantasia, an American, and you wanted to see the capital before you went back home — I mean, that’s the truth.

We can’t tell him anything about… you know.

About what’s been going on between us. You understand that, right? ”

Hailey’s heart was breaking with the weight of everything she couldn’t tell people.

But she just nodded. “Of course I understand,” she said. “We don’t have to tell him anything.”

After all, he isn’t letting me tell you anything. Why should we be any different?