Chapter 20
Max
I'm not going to lie: the thought of spending the night alone with Fabiana has my mind roving to all sorts of places it has no business being in. I couldn’t stop thinking about it all through dinner, and now that we’re back in our room, I can’t stop thinking about it now, either.
Sure, we're getting on better than we have ever before, and we've both admitted that we've judged one another based on scant information.
We're good. We're friends.
And therein lies my problem, because friendship with Fabiana Fontaine is rather like trying to satisfy hunger with a single olive. It may technically be sustenance, but it’s hardly filling.
Yes, I want to pull her against me, have the soft curves of her body meld against mine, show her how much I want her. How much I need her. But that's the simple part, the straightforward desire that a man might have for a woman.
What's infinitely more dangerous is this other thing, this ridiculous, unprecedented longing to get her to open like my favorite book, so I can read every page until I've memorized her completely.
I want to know what makes her laugh when she thinks no one's listening.
I want to discover what she dreams about in those quiet moments before she falls asleep.
I want to be the person she turns to when the world gets too much.
But equally, I want to open myself up completely to her, to show her who I truly am. Be vulnerable in a way I’m not with most people. Not the prince she thought I was. The man.
The man who lies awake at night wondering if he'll ever be more than his title.
The man who is forced to search for meaning outside of his role.
The man who wants her so badly it hurts, yes, but also the man who wants the connection we've already begun to build to deepen until it becomes something unbreakable.
Because there's something magnetic between us, something that’s both inevitable and impossible.
It’s bigger than anything I've felt for a woman before.
And trust me, my romantic history hasn't exactly been short. But those were simply attractions. Pleasant diversions. About as deep as Toffee’s water bowl.
This? This is like coming home to a place I never knew I was searching for.
Man, when did I become such a sentimental fool?
I already know the answer. It’s when I met her.
Which is why, when the tension coming off of her is virtually cracking around her head, it’s clear as day that she’s as affected by our proximity as I am, and my heart leaps at the possibility that it could be because she feels it too.
My instinct is to pull her into my arms and soften her tension, to smooth it away with my touch. But she pushed me away last night by the fire, and I don't want to risk spooking her again.
“Come on,” I say, as I pull the creaky door to the armoire open and grab one of the spare blankets I spotted earlier. “Help me with this.”
She eyes me. "What are you doing?"
“Building us a fort of course,” I reply as though it’s the most natural thing for two grown adults to do together. I shake the blanket out and grin at her bemused expression as Toffee bounces about excitedly. "What? You've never built a blanket fort before?"
“I—" She looks genuinely taken aback, and something about her confusion tugs on my heart strings. “Not for a long time.”
“Well then, tonight's your lucky night.”
“Max,” she says, shaking her head. “What will we do with a fort?” she asks.
“Hide. Clearly.”
She raises her brows. “From whom? The grown-ups?”
I grin at her. “Precisely.”
“You are so typically a youngest sibling. Never growing up.”
“Why grow up when there’s so much fun to have?” I waggle my brows at her and the tautness in her face relaxes a touch.
“We can’t all spend our lives having fun,” she replies, and there’s something in her tone that tells me there’s a reason behind her words. A reason I want to understand, as I want to understand so many things about this woman.
“Come on. Let’s get to work.”
She throws me an inquisitive look. “Work?”
“Building the fort, of course. Toffee’s keen.”
We both watch as Toffee turns round and round on the blanket before flopping down.
“You’re not serious, Max.”
“Try me.” I move the chair closer to the bed and drape the blanket over its back. Taking a pillow from the bed, I secure it at one end.
She seems to think about it for a moment. “Come on, Toffee. Off you hop.”
Toffee does just that and Fabiana helps me stretch the other corner to the bed.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“You’ll love it. Trust me.” I secure the blanket on the bed and hand her the last of the pillows to arrange inside our makeshift shelter. Then I hold back the door flap for her. “After you, mademoiselle.”
She hesitates, not sure whether to play along.
“Come on, Fabiana. I dare you,” I say.
“You dare me?”
“Yup.”
Without another word, she ducks under the blanket, settling cross-legged on the pillows, followed by Toffee, who thinks this fort is the best thing since the last best thing—because she’s a dog and loves any adventure.
I follow, the space around us cozy but somehow less charged than the open room. Maybe because it’s like we're kids playing pretend.
“See? Isn’t it like the rest of the world doesn't exist?” I ask, settling beside her, careful to leave some space between us.
Some of the tension has left her shoulders. “Actually, you’re right. This is fun. In a totally man-child kind of way.”
“Hey! I thought you’d given up the name calling.”
“Max, you’re a twenty-seven-year-old man who’s currently sitting inside a blanket fort.”
“You are, too.”
The edges of her mouth quirk, and I’m satisfied I’ve got her to relax a notch.
I pull out my phone from my back pocket and open an app. I place the phone between us.
“You have a candle app on your phone?” she asks as she looks at the flickering candle on my screen.
“You never know when you’ll need it.”
“Like when? Other than when hiding from non-existent grown-ups in forts, that is.”
“Concerts, or when you forget candles for a birthday cake.”
She throws me a look. “Are you telling me you can blow the candle out?”
“Watch.” I blow on my phone, and the candle blows out.
“That’s amazing! What other apps do you have?”
“I’ve got one called the polite procrastinator,” I say as I swipe my screen. “Every time you try to open TikTok, it gently asks if you really want to procrastinate in that way. Listen.” I open the app and a sexy American woman’s voice purrs, “Do you really want to do that, sweetie?”
“Face it, you just like her voice.”
“It has a certain appeal.” I waggle my brows at her, making her grin as Toffee curls up at my side, leaning against me.
Fabiana laughs, shaking her head, and any last remnants of tension seem to have disappeared. “Does it actually stop you from using TikTok?” she asks.
“Not in the least.”
She snort-laughs.
“I’ve got to see what certain journalists are saying about me.”
“The life of a member of the Ledonian royal family, huh? Spare time to burn.”
I turn on the candle app once more and place it between us. “It’s light relief.”
She leans back against the bed, her legs crossed. In the dim, filtered light, she looks younger somehow. More vulnerable. Definitely more beautiful.
I’m finding it hard to look away.
“Relief from all the garden parties, super yachts, and martinis?” she teases.
“You think that’s what my life is all about? Attending functions and getting tipsy?”
“Over our time together, you’ve shown me it’s not, but it’s certainly part of it.”
I chew on my lip. In this oddly intimate space with her, I want to tell her what life as Prince Max is actually like, to open up to her in a way I never have with anyone.
Not even my closest friends are aware of my innermost struggles.
Sure, they get that I’m so much more than journalists like Fabiana have portrayed me over the years.
But they don’t get how I struggle with it.
They don’t get how exhausting it can be to have to live up to everyone's expectations of who I’m meant to be.
They don’t understand the pressure I have in representing centuries of tradition while trying to find ways to make my role relevant.
And the truth is, as the fourth born with no clear role, no clear point to my life, I’m not sure how relevant my role really is.
“It's lonely at times to be constantly watched, constantly judged, constantly seen as never quite good enough.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, and there's something in her voice that spurs me on.
“I can't make the choices other people can make; I can't live my life the way I might want to. I've got to be Prince Maximilien, son of King Frederic and Queen Astrid, the much-loved monarchs. I've never been able to choose what I do.”
“Didn't you choose to go to Cambridge?”
“Where my brother and sisters went and my father before them and his father before him?”
“The Air Force?” she questions. “I suppose you didn't choose that, either?”
I shake my head. “It’s tradition. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it. I made friends for life there, like Rocco and Dante, and I learned a lot of useful things about myself and other people.”
“And how to fly a helicopter,” she adds with a smile.
“And how to fly a helicopter.”
“What would you have done if you hadn't been born into the royal family?”
“I don't know. Become a vet? Joined the circus? Picked apples in New Zealand like Marco did?”
“But you never got the choice.”
“Nope.”
“You do get to do some pretty amazing things though. Take your youth program, for instance.”
“You're right. I wouldn't be able to help the way I do if I wasn't a prince.” I think of Adella. “That's the first time Adella has made it over that wall on the assault course.”
“You're a proud papa.”
“It might sound silly, but I am.”
“It's not silly. It's—” she breaks off, and I lift my gaze to hers.
“It's what?”
“It's changed my mind about you. That and a few other things.”
I arch my brows at her. “So, I'm now a man-child who runs a youth program?”