Chapter Two #2
Yes, every cell in her body cried. ‘I can’t.
’ Her voice was so familiar, so cold and dismissive.
‘One dance is enough to set the gossip in motion. Two would be tantamount to a wedding proposal.’ She said it with a roll of her eyes and a flicker of her lips, but the truth sat heavily in her chest. Had it been only them, she would indeed have liked to keep dancing.
‘And here I thought you needed a husband.’
She tamped down her body’s immediate reaction to that. This man was not the kind of husband she sought. He was the exact opposite, in fact. Let me find someone I won’t care about losing. How could she make that promise to herself when she already didn’t want a dance to finish?
‘I do and you know you don’t want the job.’
‘Don’t I?’
She laughed then. ‘I’ve known you ten minutes and I can tell you’re not the kind of man who’s yearning to settle down and have a family. And you are definitely not the kind of man who’s power hungry in the sense of wanting to marry royalty.’
The song came to a close and they stopped dancing, but his hands remained where they were, around her in a way that was intimate and warm.
‘I’ve enjoyed dancing with you, too, Your Majesty.
’ He dropped his hands away and her whole body reacted.
‘I suspect it’s not the done thing to offer you unsolicited advice, but don’t marry Otto. ’
Her eyes widened.
‘He would never make you happy.’
‘My happiness is only a part of the consideration.’
He nodded slowly then said, with more intensity, ‘He would make you unhappy.’
She frowned, the distinction an important one. ‘What do you mean?’
But at that moment, Prime Minister Skarsgard appeared to her right, all red-cheeked from the mulled wine and intelligently assessing eyes, asking to be introduced to one of Norvenheim’s most successful exports.
She slipped back into the role of Ice Queen and performed the exchange of names.
Then, with a last pensive smile in Javier’s direction, she turned and left.
* * *
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Naturally, Javier had expected the confrontation with his stepmother. He’d come here in search of it. His plan had been to throw his acquisition in her face, enjoy the shock, the anger, the impotence, and then leave, aware that finally he’d righted a wrong he should never have had to live with.
‘I’m a guest of the finance minister’s.’
‘You?’
‘Perhaps you’ve read, Stepmother, that I am now worth more than most people can conceive. That buys me entry into almost any event.’
‘You are such an arrogant piece of shit.’
His lips curled in derision. He was enjoying even this.
Going toe to toe with her, knowing she no longer had any power over him.
As a boy, he’d yearned for her love. Stupidly, he’d cared about such things back then.
As a teenager, he’d wanted at least her approval, and some of the warmth she so readily fawned on Otto.
But after his father’s death, he’d wanted—needed—only financial security.
She’d withdrawn it, had cast him out completely, sending him to a Spanish boarding school even though he spoke none of the language.
She’d pulled strings to delay his inheritance so that instead of coming into the large sum his father had willed to him, Javier had been left with nothing until he’d turned twenty-five.
By then, he’d already made his own fortune and the amount had held no power to change his life, as it once might have.
‘Success, such as I have, does breed arrogance I’m told.’
Her lips parted in surprise. ‘You’ve changed.’
‘It’s been a long time.’
‘Not long enough,’ she said witheringly. ‘And you have no business dancing with Astrid—’
‘Her Majesty,’ he corrected, crossing his arms over his chest, hating the sound of the queen’s name being spoken so familiarly from his stepmother’s lips. The thought of Otto marrying her, of Astrid having Carlotta as a mother-in-law, brought a sense of suffocation to him.
‘The queen is close with Otto. You have no business—’
‘You’ve said that already.’
Her hand raised in a gesture with which he was familiar, her slap unmistakably intended for his cheek, before she remembered they were at the Starlight ball surrounded by people whose good opinion she lived for.
Unlike Javier, who’d given up, a long time ago, about caring what people thought of him. Liberation had come from that and he’d never looked back.
Her hand dropped away.
He wanted to throw his acquisition of the family’s empire in her face and leave again immediately.
To get out of this country, as far from his stepmother and brother as he could.
But at the Starlight ball, which was hosted by Queen Astrid?
Suddenly, the thought of making a scene here in front of Astrid, of creating that PR nightmare for her to manage, was all kinds of wrong.
‘Don’t worry, Stepmother. I’m only in the country for a few days. You won’t have to put up with me for long.’
Her nostrils flared. ‘And the queen?’
His eyes travelled across the room to the stage, where Astrid was once more standing alone like an ornamental figurine. His fingertips flooded with remembered warmth, recalling how it had felt to press against her back, to hold her close.
‘A lovely woman,’ was all he said, layering his words with a smile that might have hinted at something more, then left. He cut through the crowds towards the door, ignoring the way his body was begging him to stop, to turn, to take one last look at the queen.
He didn’t.
A moment later he was out on the palace steps, a flurry of soft snow wrapping around him.
* * *
It had been the early hours of the morning before Astrid had finally gone to her apartment and at least another hour before she’d been able to sleep. She told herself it was simply because the night had been such a success, but she knew the truth.
Whenever she closed her eyes and tried to drift off, she saw him.
Javier Diamandi. With his Viking proportions and those intelligent blue eyes.
After such a late night she would usually take the morning to herself, but a call came through first thing to tell her that the prime minister was in the palace and would like a meeting.
She didn’t have to go. Theoretically, she held the power to refuse him anything but Astrid was carefully following in her parents’ footsteps. They had always held that the best outcome for the country came when the royal family worked collaboratively with the parliament.
‘I’ll be there soon,’ Astrid told her private secretary, who sounded as peeved as she felt.
She dressed quickly. Here was a small way in which she had deviated from her parents, who had followed the old-fashioned tradition of having maids and servants to dress them each morning and for whatever event they had.
Astrid worked with the protocol office to ensure her outfits for state affairs were appropriate, but beyond that she was quite capable of, and far preferred, donning whatever outfit she’d selected for the day.
This morning, it was a deep red dress with long sleeves.
The jersey fabric hugged her frame. The colour was one she always liked to wear at this time of year.
With a week until Christmas, the entire country was buzzing with festive merriment.
Nowhere more so than at the palace. Never mind that the merriment didn’t exactly sit in her heart.
It was everywhere she looked. She stepped out of her apartment and into the corridor—still a private part of the building for her use—and headed down to her office.
She passed four Christmas trees as she went, small ones that smelled of pine and spruce and which had been decorated in the heirloom ornaments she’d been so fascinated by as a child.