Page 4 of Gotta Have Mistletoe
It had to happen at some point.
Sven moves, and I expect to no longer feel crushed. Instead, he’s wriggling up my body, then he burrows his torso over my head.
It’s...
Well, sadly it’s more action than I’ve had since Sissel passed.
All his body is currently pressed against mine, and I somehow wish the palace had not approved every new piece of exercise equipment and kilo of protein powder.
Anders is also pinned to the ground. Another bodyguard has helpfully tackled him. Other guards are at the fresh hole in the glass wall. I hope they can prevent anyone from recording this incident.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought we’d wandered onto an American football field.
“We should never have left Solberg,” Olav mutters, uninjured and unimpressed.
Shards glitter across the floor, surrounding the cowboy.
Dark eyes framed by long dark lashes widen in horror, and I hope it’s out of sympathy for my current undignified position and not some visceral recoil of my facial features.
Most of the men I see are my employees or my subjects or ministers from foreign lands with some heavily ornamented woman clutching their arm. I think my facial features are fine. The paparazzi who surround my palace seem enthusiastic about them, and I haven’t yet had a royal portrait artist complain or suddenly decide that an abstract rendering would better suit my castle’s painting gallery.
Some of my weak-chinned, balding second cousins in charge of other countries have gone through that experience and have pretended they intended their artists to convey them as various colored blobs even while their faces are flushed, and their eyes downcast, all the better to hide their newly appeared red-rims.
This man is handsome, and my heart does a wild beating thing that’s entirely inappropriate. He’s wearing a cowboy hat, which I suppose is a thing people do in Nevada. It’s appealing. Like a crown, but bigger, and more masculine.
Stubble lines his face, making each chiseled cheekbone stand out, as if there was any doubt that this man is utterly, devastatingly attractive.
My nerves do some sort of zinging thing, and the world is suddenly too hot, as if we’ve landed in Maui instead of Mistletoe Springs. Olav’s eyes narrow.
I hate it. I hate that I told Olav once that I was bisexual. I hate that he knows and that he thinks I should be doing unkingly things like sowing oats or whatever it is people do in agriculture-themed sexual promiscuity.
The man’s cheekbones are rosier than before. Crashing through a glass wall must be a suboptimal career move.
Or worse.
Is he hurt? I scramble up, my gaze fixed on those umber eyes, that dark, tousled hair, those lips that...
I wrench my head away.
I’m not gazing at his lips. Obviously. I’m not.
I don’t get randomly attracted to strangers in faraway lands. The whole reason I’m here is because I don’t want to date again.
But my cells prickle all the same, and I feel discombobulated, as if they think I should go to him.
“On behalf of Mistletoe Springs Airport, Your Majesty,” a female voice says somewhere above me. “I apologize. I assure you that...”
“Trees don’t generally crash through glass walls?” I tilt my gaze at Sonja, our airport guide.
Her face grimaces. “Yes, that.”
“This man is one of our contractors,” Sonja says. “Not a security threat.”
“I hope I didn’t squash you, Your Majesty,” Sven says from above me.
“I’m fine,” I say valiantly, even though my body aches. Not that I’ll admit it, in case the cowboy is listening. Not that I wouldcare if the cowboy is listening. In fact, for his hearing ability purposes, I hope he can hear me. I wouldn’t want to wish sudden hearing loss on someone.
“I’m so sorry,” the cowboy says in a deep baritone with a twang that is distinctly non-Solbergian. “I was hanging mistletoe and reckon someone crashed into my ladder...”
