Page 5 of Royally Drawn

“I gotta… go,” I murmured.

“How do you figure?”

I thought he was holding me there as he placed one hand on the counter behind me, blocking my exit from the small bar.

“Excuse me?”

Keir handed me a bottle opener. “Unless you want to ruin your pretty teeth, I don’t know how you’d open that. Just looking out for you.”

I flushed red hot.Fuck!

He took the beer from my hand as I stood there, mouth gaping. Adeptly popping the cap, he smiled and handed it back.

“Now you can go and do… whatever you need doing?”

“Uh… sure…merci.”

“De rien,” he said back in masterful French.

I shouldn’t have swooned, but I did. Something about his gaze made me flutter. I was sure he was toying with me, but what if he wasn’t?”

I ended up back down near the diving platform on the back of the ship. We could see nothing but other yachts and boats bobbing for miles. I loved sitting on a lounger under the shade of the deck below. The Swedes, also there on arentedyacht, swam over from their ship. Even with all the space on this yacht, there wasn’t enough room for everyone. We needed multiple vessels.

“It’s lovely,” one called out.

“Lovely for who?” Leah, Cici’s cousin, called back. “Lovely by Scandinavian standards?”

They beckoned her to jump. Cici, Betty, and Isak were already in the water.

Leah looked over at me. “If she goes, I’ll go. She’s a neutral party.”

“What? She’s not Switzerland,” Duncan said. He was the wild but sexy mountain of a man. I suspected he was havingtoomuch fun.

“Did they not teach you history at Cranwell? Neandia remained neutral in the Second World War,” Leah said.

“After Belgium drug us through hell in the First World War and there was an invasion of enemy forces,” I explained, “we decided to sit that one out.”

“But didn’t itimproveyour fortunes?”

I looked over and spotted Keir.

“Well, we did become an independent nation, yes,” I agreed. “After the Great War, as you’d call it. But it wasn’t as if it waseasy.”

“A banker’s paradise,” Keir said. “I hear it is nice, however—charming, even.”

“Who did you hearthatfrom?” Duncan scoffed.

I glared at him. “At least our weather isn’t shit, we have decent coffee, and the men are generally attractive.”

“Oooooh!”

Laughter rang out from the crowd watching. I’d gotten him good. And, in a way, I’d hoped to nail it to Keir, too. I sensed he believed himself superior in that his mere interest turned my brain to mush.

Duncan, either cross or thinking I was flirting—I wasn’t—seized the moment. He tossed me over his shoulders like a potato sack and spun me around.

“I take that as a great offence to my country, Princess!” Duncan declared. “And for that, you must walk the plank.”

Thatwas how I ended up unceremoniously tossed into the Caribbean, cursing the asshole that was the Prince of Wales.

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