Chapter Two
THOUGH SHE HAD danced with his brother a scant half hour earlier, Astrid was aware now, in a sense she hadn’t been then, of the way the entire room seemed to grow silent and watch.
Of how faces were turned, eyes widened, speculation tangibly igniting.
Otto Diamandi was her friend and he was known to these people.
Whereas his brother Javier was…an enigma. His name was rarely spoken.
She knew only that he’d left the country a long time ago and, of course, she also knew that he’d built a successful business empire in the intervening years.
Her eyes lifted, scanned his face, and her breath caught in her throat as feelings she had come here tonight totally unprepared to experience washed through her.
A rare and unfamiliar heat. A nervousness that felt a lot like butterflies in her belly.
She hadn’t known either feeling her whole life.
Her brow furrowed briefly because, in fact, she couldn’t say that was entirely true.
There were two distinct chapters to her life: before her family’s deaths and after.
Before, she’d been a different person. A girl on the brink of womanhood.
Able to laugh and be silly. To joke and tease.
To feel. Afterwards, she’d had to learn to hide all her feelings away and eventually not to experience them.
Feeling, now, was as unexpected as it was unwelcome.
Heat built under her collar and nerves seemed to spark inside of her.
Suddenly, she couldn’t wait for the dance to be over so she could go back to smiling serenely and casting about for a suitable potential husband.
Someone who wouldn’t set her pulse alight with a single glance.
She swallowed quickly, knowing she needed to pretend to be unaffected by him, even as her body felt as though it had been overtaken by physical responses alone.
Her hands curved over his shoulders in a way that was perfectly appropriate—how she might have danced with the prime minister—and yet her fingertips were tingling with an awareness of his strength and warmth.
They were itching to move lower, to press against his broadly muscled chest.
‘You know,’ her voice emerged light and calm, just like always. Phew. ‘The norm is to speak while dancing,’ she observed, forcing her gaze to hold his, seeing the way his expression flickered with something like cynicism.
‘What would you like to speak about?’ His own tone gave nothing of that away though. It was convivial enough, his words raspy and deep.
‘Tell me about yourself.’
Again, his expression flickered. His eyes going from a clear blue to stormy grey in a nano-second, then back again, so quickly she almost wondered if she’d imagined it. Music swirled around them and she was no longer conscious of the way people were staring.
‘My name is Javier, I’m thirty-two years old. I live in Spain. My favourite food is Pincho Moruno.’
Her brows lifted. She knew he was intentionally provoking her by giving such a ‘biography by rote’ and yet the last line caught her interest regardless. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Then you’re missing out.’
‘What is it?’
His lips quirked. ‘Very flavoursome, spiced pork skewers. They are for sale on every street corner, where I live. They are cheap and delicious, and very filling.’
She nodded thoughtfully, easing onto safer conversational ground. ‘Why did you leave Norvenheim?’
His hand on her back moved ever so slightly lower, his fingers splayed wide over her spine, so she trembled with a sudden rush of heat. The kind of heat that might succeed in melting the ice she’d carefully cultivated and she couldn’t let that happen. She forced a detached smile to her face.
‘That conversation would take longer than this dance.’
‘Condense it.’
‘Is that a command, Your Majesty?’ Even the way he said her title was thrilling because it was not remotely deferential. If anything it was skeptical, but in a way that only fanned the flames that were licking her insides with heat.
‘If I say yes will it make a difference?’
‘Are we back to you threatening to throw me in prison?’
‘Treason is still on the table,’ she murmured with a sage nod.
This time, when his lips flickered, she could have sworn it was with genuine amusement and the warmth that ignited in her at that was a clarion call for distance and separation.
Only how could she put space between them?
The song was not yet half done and to leave him midway would be incredibly poor form.
Besides…she didn’t want to. Even when she knew it would be the sensible thing.
‘After my father died, I no longer felt at home here. My mother was Spanish so that country is in my blood, too.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘How old were you?’
‘Seventeen.’
Sympathy spread through her quickly. She knew the pain of losing a parent. Of losing everything. ‘I’m sorry.’
She felt him stiffen, his arms becoming like a vice. When she looked up into his eyes, it was as though something beyond explanation was connecting them. Only people who had walked in their shoes could truly understand the wrenching pain of such an experience, such a loss.
‘It was a long time ago.’
His refrain was familiar to her, too.
I don’t want to talk about it.
‘I understand that.’ Her stomach swooped with a sense of being out of her usual space and time. ‘After my family’s accident I refused to talk, too. In a way, I wonder if I wasn’t fighting against the reality of what had happened. Or perhaps it was that I was given no space to talk.’
She lifted one shoulder softly. His gaze dropped to it and lingered there in a way that made her whole body cover with goosebumps.
‘You were the picture of stoicism.’
Her eyes lifted to his. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘The accident—and funeral—made international headlines. I was living in Spain by then and it was everywhere I went.’ His expression tightened, as though that somehow had personally offended him.
‘I remember looking at you—you were so young and small—and wondering how you wouldn’t break under the pressure. ’
For the first time in perhaps her entire life, Astrid had the terrifying sensation that she might cry.
In public. She felt the sting of tears behind her eyes, the thickening in her throat, the sense that her emotions were running away from her.
Because the truth was that a part of her had broken under the pressure and she’d never been given the leeway to go back and collect the pieces.
She looked away quickly, mentally focusing on the Greek alphabet she’d loathed having to learn as a child, knowing that those unfamiliar, difficult-to-wrangle shapes and sounds would focus her immediately on the woman she was supposed to be.
Only her gaze landed on Otto and Carlotta and the emotions in their faces were difficult to interpret. Anger, though, was there. She was sure of it. Towards Javier? Or the fact they were dancing together?
‘Your stepmother does not look pleased to see us dancing,’ she said, glad she could change the subject even though her voice did tremble a little.
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘Aren’t you? Why should she look as though she wants to storm over here and physically separate us?’
Another quirk of amusement. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her.’
‘But why?’
‘I imagine she has serious hopes that you’re about to fall madly in love with Otto and ride off into the royal sunset together,’ he drawled.
While she had been imagining a version of exactly that earlier this evening, hearing it from Javier’s lips brought a hint of heat to her cheeks and made her want to instantly discount even the possibility.
‘We are friends,’ was all she could say.
‘Does that mean no marriage is in the offing?’
She frowned. The part of her that was able to detach from any situation, to zoom out and analyse it academically, was fascinated by the bubble this man had created around them.
As though they existed outside of time and place.
As though she could tell him anything, with no fear of it turning up in the press or of it becoming gossip and fodder for a scandal-hungry public.
‘I do have to get married,’ she admitted after a beat. ‘And your brother is someone I’ve contemplated discussing this with.’
He laughed then. A short, derisive sound.
‘You find that funny?’ Despite herself, she smiled too.
‘I find it…flat. A very businesslike way to describe marriage. Then again, that is probably a lot closer to the type of marriage I’d be interested in myself. So, I get it.’
‘You shouldn’t mention this to him, though. I haven’t yet made up my mind…’
His eyes narrowed. ‘There are other contenders?’
‘It’s not as though it’s a game show,’ she said with another lift of her shoulder.
His eyes once more dropped and lingered there, then shifted sideways to the gentle swell of her breasts. Her body went from flickering with flames to exploding as though a bomb had been detonated. She looked away quickly on a rushed exhalation of air.
He replied, ‘You need not worry. Otto and I haven’t spoken in years. This will not be the thing that draws us together.’
That had her lifting her eyes to his face once more. ‘Why on earth? I knew you weren’t close, but not that you were estranged completely.’
‘That’s one way to put it.’
‘How would you put it?’
‘In words not remotely suited to this beautiful room and this beautiful woman.’
Her heart turned over in her chest. She recognised the familiar strains of the song and knew it would shortly end.
Every part of her decried that fact, even though moments earlier she’d acknowledged that the sooner she walked away from this man, the better.
For her emotional safety and for the sake of what was right for the kingdom.
‘I’ve enjoyed dancing with you, Javier.’
‘Have you, Your Majesty?’
‘Tsk, tsk. Your job is to repay the compliment.’
His hand moved subtly higher and pressed subtly harder so she had no choice but to move closer towards him, leaving only an inch or so of air between them.
‘Would you like to dance with me again?’