Page 22 of His Highness's Hidden Heir

“You’re very kind.” Lexi smoothly accepted the praise before introducing her friend, a film director, and a man in town for the high-stakes poker tournament that began tomorrow.

A lively discussion of the gamble of filmmaking ensued. As everyone bantered, Magnus waited for Lexi’s gaze to come back to his, but she stubbornly looked at anyonebuthim, all while wearing a bright, engaged smile.

“When does filming start on your project?” he asked her directly.

“Oh. It’s, um, not confirmed yet, so a year or two at least.” Her gaze barely lifted above his bow tie and her expression remained stiff before she quickly looked to her friend. “When we do get a green light, Bernadette has a lot of work ahead of her while I—” She pressed her lips together and tucked a nonexistent strand of hair behind her ear. “My agent—Mynewagent.” Her gaze finally crashed into his but veered away just as quickly. “She suggested I write a memoir before someone decides to write an unauthorized biography, so I’m on the hunt for a quiet place here in Europe to, um, do that.”

Was she self-conscious about writing about herself? For anyone else it would be a vanity project, but her story of working from the time she’d been a baby was unique enough to make for an interesting read.

Everyone chimed in with location suggestions, then the man excused himself to speak to someone else.

“We should be on our way, too. We’re staying in Nice and it’s getting late,” Lexi said, glancing at Bernadette.

They had just gotten here and it was only nine o’clock. The drive to Nice took twenty minutes, thirty if you obeyed the speed limit, but okay. After polite goodbyes, the pair of women left.

“She seems so down-to-earth. I wanted to ask her for a photo,” Annalise mused.

Good God, that really would have taken this farce to a new height.

“I didn’t think it was a good idea, seeing as you’re involved with her.”

He bristled. “What makes you say that?” It was a real question because he had been concentrating on not betraying anything and Lexi had been doing an excellent job of the same.

Annalise tucked her chin, and her mouth pinched with admonishment. “It was like being between a pair of magnets that were turned the wrong way.”

His chest hardened like concrete. At the same time, he had the darkly amusing thought that Ulmer was right. Annalise would have made him a good wife. She was observant and unwilling to put up with his BS.

“I’m not involved with her,” he assured her. “It was brief and it’s over.”

“Is it?” she asked mildly. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather leave. I don’t think this will work.”

He took her home and he was still brooding on her skeptical, “Is it?” an hour later when he received a text from Vijay.

Ms. Alexander said she saw you tonight in Monaco. She wonders if you have time for a coffee while you’re in town.

The animal in him lurched against the chain that was strangling him. He wanted to make time. He wanted to gather a fleet of a thousand ships and storm Nice, bringing Lexi Alexander back to his bed by any means necessary.

Theywereover, though. They were impossible. If he saw her to tell her that, he would turn it into something that was liable to destroy them both.

The struggle between what he wanted and what he had to do flashed him back to those painful early days of moving into the palace at Isleif. His siblings had been as confused as he was, asking with bewilderment, “Are you ever coming home?”

It had been agony to accept that everything had changed. The painful weight of the crown forced him to put Isleif first, tearing a rift between them that he had never been able to repair, one that continued to make him ache with loss to this day.

He knew what he had to do with Lexi. He knew it would feel as though he was amputating his own limb, but he did it anyway. He texted Vijay that same brutal word.

No.

He didn’t hear from her again.

CHAPTER SIX

VIJAYTEXTEDMAGNUSfive months later.

We need to chat. In person would be better.

Aside from that one text in March that he had relayed from Lexi, Vijay’s only texts since Paris had been a monthly reassurance of “no concerns.” Today should have been the seventh of those.

Not that Magnus was counting.

---