Chapter 4

Heidi

The red satin one? Or no, the black velvet one. But what about that white leather one with the zipper in front?

My room looked like a volcano of a wardrobe had exploded, spewing out my clothes every which way. It’d been three hours and I still couldn’t decide what to wear.

“You okay?”

I turned to see Liza, smiling knowingly, in the doorway.

Finally letting out the groan that had been curdling in my stomach these past few fruitless hours, I heaved myself onto my bed.

“I don’t have anything to wear!”

My antique bed let out a pleasant creak as Liza flopped down beside me, her arms laden with shopping bags of her own.

“Heidi,” she said patiently, “you have about forty dresses and thirty skirts.” Seeing she was getting nowhere, she sighed. “Do you want me to help you decide?”

I grudgingly turned her way. “Please?”

Grimacing, she unloaded her arms and put her hands in her lap, nodding.

“Fine,” she said, “but first we need to whittle the choices down to ten.”

Off the bed now, I froze.

“Ten,” I said, swallowing thickly. I let the word hang in the air for a good minute so she could fully survey the clothing-crammed scene. So she could grasp that ten was a bit too severe. When her baby-blue eyes fixed on me, she swept her blond ponytail over her shoulder and repeated, “Ten.”

Exhaling, I riffled through some of the piles until I narrowed the choices down to eleven. Part of me was hoping she wouldn’t notice. After all, she had told me she’d failed tenth-grade math, so that had to count for something, right?

In any case, when I put on the first bodycon purple tube dress, her condemnation was immediate. “No.”

I rotated myself in front of the mirror, squinting to try to see what exactly she saw that was so horrendous about the dress. It was the sexiest one I had.

“Why not?”

“You look like a marker,” she said simply.

Glaring at her without saying anything, I put on the next one, which produced a reaction that was just as immediate.

“Yep. That’s it.”

I gave her a head-on glare.

“Are you just saying that to get this over with?”

She was busy picking some dirt out of her pink nails, but she lifted her chin to give me a glare of her own.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Try on the others. But we both know this one is it.”

I turned to the mirror to look at myself again. She did have a point. The teal, low-neck dress clung to my figure perfectly and set off my pale skin and dark hair even more. Nevertheless, I tried on several more mainly to annoy her.

After the third consecutive no, even I had to agree that Liza had been spot on. The teal one it was, and not with a moment to spare, either. Just as I was slipping on my black Louis Vuitton heels, my phone went off.

Your limo is here, Miss Heidi, the message from an unknown number read.

Downstairs, I could only assume the black limo was there for me. When I dipped my head through the open door, the tan, smiling driver confirmed it.

“Heidi Sommers?”

“Heidi Sommers,” I confirmed with a big smile of my own. For once, I was happy to hear someone say my name. Usually it meant someone had recognized me and I was in for a fifteen-minute spiel about how big a fan they were and could I sign their hand, dog, and T-shirt?

The whole limo ride there, I tried to rehearse how the dinner would go. Zvin—that was the restaurant’s name. Truthfully, it sounded more like a punk rock bar than an upscale restaurant. But if I’d come to know anything about London, it was that it was…unexpected. The culture here wasn’t what I had imagined it to be at all.

I’d pigeonholed this place as a posh tourist trap, and I’d ended up with a much different impression. The whole city had proven itself to be at once diverse and familiar, a real creative hub. There was graffiti alongside golden-edged tourist throngs, not to mention the museums I had told Charles about. I smiled as I said their names to myself, remembering the fascinating works they held as I did so: the Natural History Museum, the Museum of London, the Science Museum, the National Gallery.

As the limo nosed over to the curb, I wondered if this date would be a pleasant surprise too.

The driver opened the door for me. I thanked him, then made my way into the restaurant. Surrounded by oriental-themed decor, Charles was waiting for me inside the door.

“Right on time,” he said with a dashing smile.

It took me a minute to catch my breath. He was handsome as hell in his suit. A prince in a button-up shirt and noir pants was one thing, but a prince in a three-piece silver suit with a cornflower blue tie that matched his eyes perfectly? Now that was something else entirely. I scrunched my fingers together to stop my arms from shaking.

“You have the limo driver to thank for that,” I admitted. “Pretty sure I was a good five minutes late myself. I practically fell to my death running down the stairs.”

Charles looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be horrified or amused even as I chuckled reflectively.

“Don’t they have elevators in London flats?” he finally asked, frowning.

I held the back of my hand up to my forehead in the stance of a helpless damsel.

“Oh no. Only stairs is what us peasants get.”

That got a laugh out of him. Linking his arm through mine, he commented, “I hardly think famous American supermodels qualify as peasants.”

I smirked.

“Compared to the royal family, I think almost everyone qualifies as peasants.”

“Not exactly,” he said, still smiling. “Nowadays, there’s plenty of you regular folks who are considerably wealthier than us. Take J.K. Rowling or Bill Gates, for instance.”

At our table, he pulled out an ornamentally carved chair for me.

“Well, I can assure you I’m no Bill Gates,” I told him as I sat down.

“Of course not,” he said, sitting across from me. “You’re even better.”

He raised his full goblet of water toward me, and I lifted mine. Over his shoulder, I noticed the rest of the tables were empty. The room was divided by colorful partitions decorated with exquisitely rendered cherry blossoms, but still, it was clear from the tables I could see that they were all empty. A subsequent look over my shoulder confirmed that the whole beautiful restaurant was empty.

“Are you really that hesitant to toast yourself?”

Charles’s joking question got me looking back at him. Smiling self-consciously, I clinked my glass against his. After I took a sip, I asked, “Did you actually book this whole place?”

He shot me an amused smile. “Would you have preferred that I booked McDonald’s?”

I pretended to think about that for a minute.

“I always did like those McFlurries.”

We both laughed.

“I’m more of a Big Mac man myself.”

That was so shocking to me, I couldn’t even laugh. “Seriously?”

He pursed his lips.

“Which do you think is crazier: a supermodel or a prince who eats McDonald’s?”

“A prince,” I said immediately.

“In any case, we’ll have to save the poll for later,” he said, wrapping his fingers around my wrist.

Slowly, he conveyed my fingers up to his lips. When he pressed them against his mouth, the sensation sent arousal trembling through me.

“What do you say we order?”

There was something sensual in the way he said it. Maybe it was in the twist of his lips. In any case, I could only nod in agreement.

What seemed like only seconds later, a thin Asian girl was beside our table.

“We’ll have the rice and chicken meal, please,” Charles said.

She glided away with a smile and a nod, and Charles turned to me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t even ask you what you wanted.”

I tried to think of a witty reply to that. He continued. “If you want, I could call in an Uber Eats McDonald’s order from here.”

This time, it was my hand clasping his.

“Okay,” I said, my eyes challenging his.

“Okay,” he said, not moving.

There was a battle of wills going on, but something told me it was for something far more intense than Uber Eats.

Finally, he peeled his gaze away and focused on one of his hands, then the other, as if he were considering two options. Finally, he met my gaze again with a smile.

“I don’t want to be abrupt, but if I don’t talk about this, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to last at this dinner with you.”

His gaze lazily dipped down my front, and I trembled as though I’d been physically stroked.

“If things go nearly as well as they have these past few times we’ve had together, I’d like to see you for the three months you’re here.”

His words bashed against the outside of my head stupidly. Without thinking, I said, “What do you mean?”

He gave a cute little smile, as if my stupidity was somehow becoming.

“You, Heidi Sommers,” he said simply. “I want you.”

Once again, my brain couldn’t make sense of the mishmash of feelings that were throttling through me. A stew of shock, awe, joy, and, brimming under the surface—the strangest feeling I had—fear.

“But what exactly does that entail?” I said slowly.

He leaned in and clasped my other hand.

“Whatever you’re comfortable with.” His brow furrowed. “I mean, I can only assume, since you accepted this date and have so far been amiable to my advances—”

“I’m insanely attracted to you,” I blurted out before I could think better of it.

He smiled widely, clearly disarmed. There was something in his smile that was different than his others, something less poised. I liked it.

“That’s a relief,” he admitted. He brought my hand up to his mouth and slipped a finger in. He then bit down before slipping it back out.

My whole body was practically shaking with nerves and arousal when he said the next part: “Because attracted seems to be too weak a word for what I feel when I’m with you.”

“The rice and chicken,” the Asian girl said as she placed a hulking portion of each between us. Her sudden appearance as miraculous. It seemed it was only five minutes ago that she’d left with our order.

Charles released my hand then, and my smile drooped. Never before had I wished food had taken longer to come out of the kitchen.

Nevertheless, our waitress was gone soon enough, leaving the two of us to stare at each other shyly over the huge portion. As Charles got to eating, I started on mine as well, although I hardly tasted the delicious beads of rice or wedges of chicken. All my senses were focused on sight alone, on watching him, Charles, to see what he would say or do next.

Finally, after he’d chewed and swallowed a good portion, he spoke again.

“As mundane as it is, I should probably go over the rules. First off”—he held out his thumb to count—“sex only. I think it’s pretty obvious to both of us that I’m in no position at present to be in a relationship. And I just wanted to check: You are on the pill, correct?”

I nodded. Part of me felt like a puppet whose strings he was holding, like I would go along with anything he said. All of it seemed like make-believe, as if I were in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. It wouldn’t have surprised me if a chocolate crown sprouted up on Charles’s head.

“Second,” he said, holding up his next finger, “we can’t be seen together under any circumstances. Queen Mary is as severe as the tabloids make her out to be, and she also happens to be my mom. I’m next in line and I can’t mess that up by sullying my image with all sorts of flings here, there, and everywhere like my brother has.”

Again, I gave my expected nod.

“Finally, you cannot tell anyone. Not friends, not family, not anyone. Even if you have a dog, don’t tell it.”

His stern look went through me, as if he had his suspicions that I was one of those capricious dog-owning people.

“I don’t have a dog,” I said quickly, “but I do have a best friend who I won’t tell about this.”

“All right, good,” he said with a nod to himself. “You don’t strike me as the type to go blabbing to the press for a quick buck or a shot at fame. You have your own career to consider. And more than that—maybe it’s stupid—but I like you.”

Considering the present circumstances, his admission still created a flurry of butterflies in my stomach.

“I like you too,” I said, feeling silly and ridiculous already.

He clasped my hand with his lithe fingers. I could feel the energy brimming there, like the stifled tornado of want that was ripping through me now.

His lower lip drooping sensuously, he said, “So, Heidi, what do you say we finish this meal and have dessert at my place?”

A smile sufficed for my answer. Clearly, we were both thinking the same thing. That dessert was going to be a lot more delicious than any chocolate cake this place could provide. As his gaze traced my outline hungrily, a furtive shiver went through me. Delicious and dark.