Page 6 of Prince She Shouldn't Crave
‘It’d be a perfect opportunity to introduceyou, sir.Whilst I don’t know the itinerary, I’m sure there’ll be opportunities to show your life a little less scripted.’
Prince Gabriel narrowed his eyes. ‘Let me be frank. I spend my life doing what I’m able for my country. That’s the role I was born into. My consistent hard work for Halrovia should speak for itself…’
Lena’s stomach dropped. He was going to let her go. What would she do now? Was a marriage of convenience to a rich man who saw her as a trophy whilst she mouldered in some grand home, dying inside every day, all that was left to her? Or perhaps a life like her mother’s, mistress to a man who looked after her but didn’t love her enough tobewith her? Only catching snippets of the person you loved, yet not having all of him because that was the deal you’d struck with the devil. Her hands twisted restlessly in her lap. She tried to hold them still. Her prospective employer’s face told her nothing.
‘Yet it appears that my hard work and dedication doesn’t mean anything at all. That I need more.’
He shuffled through some papers on his desk, straightened them. Clasped his hands on the desktop. He needed more?
‘He needs you…’That’s what Cilla had said.
‘I’ll give you a chance, Ms Rosetti,onlybecause you come highly recommended by Princess Priscilla. Come on my tour to Lauritania. See what you can do. You’re on probation for two months.’ He fixed her with a stern, frigid gaze. ‘Impress me.’
CHAPTER TWO
If Gabriel hadthought that having someone managing his image would be harmless at best and an irritation at worst, he was wrong. It had only been a week and Lena Rosetti was driving him to distraction. Even worse, he was certain his parents wanted to exile her to the dungeons and order her execution, even though those kinds of punishments hadn’t been utilised in Halrovia for centuries.
‘Perhaps we could try the photograph with your jacket removed, Your Highness?’
Gabe wanted to pinch his nose against an impending headache. ‘Why?’
‘It’ll make the picture feel slightly less formal. Younger audience? It’d be even better if you could roll up the sleeves of your shirt. Maybe remove your tie?’
She’d have him totally undressed soon. Would she blush if he removed more clothes? He enjoyed it when tinges of pink flushed her cheeks. Though Gabe didn’t know why those thoughts entered his mind or why they seemed so enticing. He shook his head.
‘You can have my jacket. The cuffs and the tie stay put.’
He stood. Shrugged out of his suit jacket under her watchful gaze. Was he mistaken, or did her eyes widen a fraction as he did? Lena came towards him with her hand held out and he passed her the jacket. As he did, their fingers brushed. It waslike grabbing a live wire, the shock of sensation. Did she notice the same thing? He flexed his fingers, yet she seemed unaffected, taking the jacket and hanging it in a cupboard on the opposite wall.
‘I am not removingmycoat,’ his father said.
‘N-no, Your Majesty. I—I wasn’t planning to make that request.’
‘And why am I holding this compendium?’ his father asked.
They’d been in Gabe’s office for only fifteen minutes, trying to get the perfect shot as the photograph for the first social media post under his own name. For something supposed to be unscripted, this seemed to take a lot of directing.
Lena had initially asked Gabriel, his mother and father to simply talk whilst taking photographs on her phone. No photographers, she’d said. She wanted candid. That had been a disaster. Now, she was trying something else. Flitting about the office in her dark suit and distractingly bright golden yellow blouse, she looked like an overly industrious, somewhat harried, bee.
‘Your Majesty, my idea is that I’ll photograph you handing it to His Highness whilst Her Majesty watches on. The folder of what could be important papers signifies you “passing the baton”, so to speak, to His Highness.’
Gabe’s father narrowed his eyes. ‘I amnotpassing the baton. The baton will pass when I do. Or should I decide to abdicate, neither of which events are in our near future.’
Lena didn’t hesitate, which was a marvel in itself because his father’s icy tone would have sent Halrovian courtiers scurrying. She appeared blissfully impervious or dangerously ignorant to her impending doom. The King treated the crown with deadly seriousness. In the past he’d expressed determination to be the longest-sitting monarch in Europe, if not the world. Not evenGabe would have suggested a photograph with Lena’s intended implication.
‘It’s figurative, Your Majesty. Designed to show trust in His Highness.’
The King gripped the dark, official folder a little harder, cast a piercing glance at Gabe. The problem was, his parents had tried to keep everything under such tight control, kept so much hidden, that he wasn’t sure that they did trust him. They’d never encouraged him to attend university. He’d suspected the reason was they hadn’t believed he’d be successful in his studies, given his dyslexia. Wanting to avoid the inevitable questions should he fail, even though their formal excuse was that he could more easily learn how to be a good king from his father. He tried to ignore the sense that, in some ways, he was an impostor to the role of Crown Prince. But what were his years of training at his father’s side, ifnotfor the moment he’d finally take the throne?
Then there’d been an argument about him having an individual social media account as Crown Prince, as Lena had suggested. Managed by someone else other than the King and Queen’s press secretary, not under the royal family’s exclusive banner. In response, he’d fought hard for control of his own image. It had never mattered before. Gabe hadn’t cared much at all, but the more control the royal machine tried to impose on him, the more he pushed back. He’d won, as he was always going to. Yet his parents weren’t happy about it.
‘Symbolism is important to a royal family, Miss Rosetti,’ his mother said. Dressed in ice blue, her voice as frigid as the colour she wore.
Lena smiled as if impervious to the chill descending on the room. ‘Which is why I would never ask His Majesty to hand over the sovereign’s sceptre or the crown itself.’
Gabe knew what she wasn’t saying. A folder made a statement, without really saying anything at all. It was all smoke and mirrors.
His father dropped said folder to the desk with a thud, displacing some of the supposedimportant papers. ‘I don’t like it.’
