Page 46 of The Princess Trap
“Aye aye, Captain.” She pulled off her apron, dusting her hands on the back of her jeans. “I’ll see you later, Cherry. Duty calls.”
“Oh, okay. Later, then.”
Cherry sounded far too disappointed for Ruben’s liking. But Demi looked oddly pleased, her dark gaze scanning him with an intensity she usually reserved for official correspondence and football matches. She bumped into him slightly as she passed him in the doorway, and when he looked over his shoulder, she was sticking her tongue out at him as she walked away.
He was a fool. As if Demetria of all people would try it on with Cherry.
Clearly, jealousy was an unpredictable emotion.
Still, there was an upside. Now, he had Cherry alone. She had turned away from him again, and she was stirring the contents of that fucking bowl as if her life depended on it. But he could tell by the set of her shoulders, by her uncharacteristic silence, by the way the air shimmered between them as if the room were heated, that she was waiting.
And he’d never make a lady wait.
He crossed the room before he could second-guess himself. His hands came to rest on the swell of her hips and it felt likeeverything he’d ever needed, but that didn’t make any sense. Nothing made any sense. Until she put the damned bowl down and turned around in the circle of his arms and looked up at him with eyes that were wide and dark and endless. Then, all at once, everything was perfect.
“I still don’t like you,” she whispered, her lips pursed.
“Yes you do. If you don’t, my heart will break.”
“Boo hoo. Buy a new one.” She pressed her hands to his chest and he thought, for one world-ending moment, that she might push him away. But she just fiddled with the buttons of his shirt, slipping her fingers under his tie. Then she said, “Where did you go?”
“To a school in the city.”
“Why?”
“Same reason I was at the Academy. I put together scholarship programmes for the kids who attend my A.P.s.”
She raised her brows, and he thought that she might be impressed. “You run alternative provisions?”
“Yeah. For kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who are disengaged or have unique learning needs and so on. But some of them are really fucking smart, and I started to think about what they’d get out of attending schools like the Academy. I mean, not schools like the Academy—they’d probably suffocate.”
“True,” she murmured. Her eyes were pinned to his chest, and now she was fiddling with his tie. He looked down at the sweep of her lashes. She had some kind of dark makeup around her eyes that made her look like a cat. Well—evenmore like a cat than usual. “So why were you looking at a school in England?” she asked.
“The Trust operates across a few European countries.”
She looked up, finally, her eyes warm. “The Trust?”
“The Ambjørn Trust.”
“Ambjørn is your family name, right?”
“My mother’s.”
“Ah.” She was looking at him with an expression he didn’t recognise. Her eyes were bright, her lips slightly parted and tipped into a half-smile, as if she was seeing him for the first time.
But then a tinnydingpopped the bubble around them, and she threw up her hands, pushing him away.
“Where’s that bloody tea towel,” she muttered, marching around the kitchen. “Ah!” She snatched it off of the island and bustled over to the oven. Ruben leant against the counter and watched her bend over. Yes, he was a pig, but it was definitely worth it.
She produced a tray of little cakes, and then another, popping them onto the counter with a flourish. “There! Three and four!”
“Three and four?”
She turned around and nodded towards a cupboard. “One and two are in there.”
He pulled it open to find two plastic containers full of little cakes, decorated in lavender and pink and cream, withglitter—is glitter edible?—and pearls and tiny stars scattered across the icing.
“You’ve made a lot of cakes,” he said finally.
