Page 34 of The Thing About My Prince

“Abso-fucking-lutely I do.”

“Great. Come with me.” She links her hand into the crook of my elbow and guides us back toward Glenwither.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

LEXI

Oliver opens the door to our bedroom—ourbedroom, sweet Jesus—and steps back to allow me in first.

He dips his mouth to my ear level as I pass him. “What exactly are you up to?”

His whisper tickles the side of my neck. Goose bumps, ludicrous goose bumps, erupt where it touches.

Shaking it off, I head toward the nightstand and the listening rose vase.

“I’m going to take a shower before dinner, sweetie,” I say as clearly as possible and turn around to face him, raising my eyebrows. “Fancy joining me?”

His mouth drops open, those green eyes sparkling with mischief as he approaches me. Well, I suppose it’s the vase he’s approaching, really.

“Christ, yes.” He’s right next to me now, leaning slightly toward the flower, but his eyes are on mine. “However I kept my hands off you on the plane when there was that big comfy bed on board, I’ll never know. And when we were justoutside, it was all I could do not to drag you behind the rhododendrons for a quickie.”

I slam my hand over my mouth to contain a laugh, delighted that he’s taken to my game immediately. I turn the splutter into a shocked and horrified sound. “But what if someone had seen us?”

“They’d probably say, ‘There goes Oliver, being a dick again.’”

The smile has fallen from his face, the sentiment in his voice is natural, unforced. He’s not pretending now. That sentence was all him, from his heart, nothing fake about it.

How awful to go through life thinking that’s your family’s opinion of you.

All I want to do right now is to put that smile back on his face, that glint back in his eyes. Purely, of course, because the happier he is the better our interviews will be, and I’ll have the best shot at writing him the book he needs to redress the errors in how he’s been perceived.

Then I’ll never have to succumb to professional blackmail and write a celebrity memoir ever again.

“Come with me, my provocative, pulse-raising prince.” I affect an overly seductive tone and beckon him with my finger as I back up toward the bathroom door.

“Try stopping me, you sexy little minx.” He waggles his eyebrows as if he can’t do the old-timey sexy lothario voice without it.

I turn to open the bathroom door and stop in my tracks. “Whoa.”

Oliver slams into my back. “Oops. Sorry.” He rests a hand on my waist to steady us. I wish I could say it feels weird, or wrong, or inappropriate given that we’re essentially work colleagues, but it doesn’t. Maybe our lips having already touched has lowered the physical contact barrier. Well, theyalmosttouched. I did my best to kiss him without actuallykissing him. So his hand on my waist now is hardly worse than that. But, since no one’s watching us, he can’t be leaving it there for show—it’s obviously something he’s doing naturally.

But no good can come of unnecessary touching. There’s a fucking-with-the-spies mission to accomplish here. I lengthen my stride until his hand falls from me.

“This is unreal.” I spin around, absorbing a bathroom that is both massively over the top and massively dated.

“I like to think of it as 1950s ritzy,” he says.

“So this is positively new and modern then, compared to the rest of the castle?”

“I think it was the first real bathroom to be installed in the place. And I don’t think anything’s been changed since. This is definitely the original marble.” He indicates the black stone with white and gray veins that covers the lower half of the walls, lines the shower at one end of the room and acts as a backsplash around the tub, which is boxed in under the window at the other end.

Above the marble, the walls are a faded turquoise color, and the floor is covered in small square tiles that, together, form a floral pattern.

It’s a confusing mixture of designs.

The only nice thing in the room is the white bowl sink sitting on top of an old wooden washstand with a white-framed mirror hanging over it.

“The faucets look like they’ve seen better days.” I pull the chrome handle on the shower door, and it opens with a stiff squeak.