Page 91 of The Unlikely Heir

I glance away. When I glance back, I find his eyes lingering on my chest.

He raises his gaze, and the heat in his eyes has me almost stepping towards him before I seize control of myself.

My face must have given away something because he offers a rueful smile, rubbing the back of his neck, looking away.

Bloody hell.

It appears we are just as attracted to each other’s bodies as we are to each other’s minds and personalities. Which isn’t exactly what we need to add to the mix.

I take a step into the admittedly nippy water. Callum joins me, and his flesh becomes covered in goosebumps as he walks in up to his thighs. Fuck, now my mind is trying to suggest other ways I could make Callum’s flesh goosebump. I wrench my mind away from ogling Callum. Instead, I mull over his previous statement and realize there’s a simple question I’ve never asked him in all our conversations.

“Do you miss California?”

Callum hesitates. He worries his lower lip for a few seconds before answering.

“I miss the simplicity of my life there,” he says finally. “Not that I thought it was simple at the time, but in hindsight, it was. And I miss the weather, obviously, and my friends.” He bends down to trail his hand through the water, then looks back at me. “And I definitely miss my anonymity. I had no idea how much freedom I had. I could do whatever I wanted without any major consequences. Now, everything has consequences.”

I swallow hard. He’s right that every part of his life now has consequences. For a second, I imagine I met Californian Callum, just a guy in his mid-twenties working in an insurance call center.

I would have been attracted to him. I would have liked him. If I’d had any indication he was attracted to me in return, I would have asked him out, and we could have been together without any worries.

But I apply the brakes in my mind before I can go too far down that alternative reality.

If Callum hadn’t become the Prince of Wales, we would never have met.

I take another few steps and dive under the water. The cold slams the breath out of me and my skin instantly numbs. Callum definitely has a point about Scottish rivers not being particularly toasty.

We only last a few minutes in the water before we emerge spluttering and dripping.

“I think we should be awarded a medal of bravery for that,” Callum says as he lies on a beach of small pebbles, shivering. I try not to look at him stretched out, water droplets gleaming on his golden skin.

I gingerly lower myself next to him. The heat of the sun and the warmth radiating from the stones settles my goosebumps.

“What are those?” I turn my head to find Callum studying my dog tags on the chain around my neck.

He reaches out, and for a second, I think he’s going to touch me. My breath hitches because I don’t know if I’ll be able to withstand Callum touching me without toppling.

But his hand hovers a few centimeters from my skin before retreating. My chest tingles like he did brush my body, and I have to fight to pull my attention back to answering his question.

“They’re my great-grandfather’s dog tags from the First World War.”

Callum squints. “Why are there extra holes in them?”

I find myself fingering the smooth metal of the dog tags. The metal feels cool against my skin, like it’s absorbed some of the cold of the river. “The story goes that when my grandad was a child, he misunderstood the term dog tags and wanted to wear them as a dog collar. My great-grandfather punched an extra hole into the bottom of them so he could play with them.”

Personally, I like that story. I like how the dog tags I wear are not only a symbol of wartime bravery but of fatherly love. And while I never had a father, I had a grandad prepared to love me as ferociously as if he were my father.

Callum’s family passes down crowns and titles. My family passes down dog tags.

Callum settles back in the sun. “I watched a really interesting documentary on dog tags once.”

“Tell me about it,” I say.

So Callum tells me more about the history of dog tags, and then our conversation melts into a discussion of Balmoral and the Scottish highlands.

“Did you know there are five rivers with the name Dee in the British Isles?” he asks me.

“Really?””