Page 26 of His Forever Princess

That didn't matter. She needed to see Gideon. But when she retired to her apartments within the castle, he was nowhere to be found.

ChapterSeven

Thirty-six hours after arriving in Glorvaird, Gideon was sequestered in a hotel room in a neighboring country.

The room was Alessandra’s suite, and he passed through the living room into the bedroom. He pulled back the curtain just a bit. The window was ten stories high and had a view of the parking area, staffed by a valet, below.

It was a high-end hotel. The very hotel, in fact, where Alessandra and Ambassador Cain would meet to sign their finalized proposal in front of a bunch of television cameras.

Gideon didn't like the way this felt.

Maybe he should've gone home. Back to Texas.

"Dad? Did we get disconnected?"

Maggie's voice came from the cell phone he had pressed to his ear.

"I'm here, Mags. I heard you. Scarlette wants to sell off some of the cattle."

His niece—Carrie's daughter—and her husband co-ran the daily operations of the ranch now. They handled things when Maggie was called away to Glorvaird.

He let the curtain twitch back into place.

"Scarlette's got a good head on her shoulders."

Better than him. He felt foolish, being here.

He wasn't at this hotel in any official capacity. Not a part of the security team. And Alessandra sure as shootin' didn't know he was here.

He understood that Eloise had demanded her attention when they'd first arrived. But it'd been radio silence since.

No text, no phone call. She hadn't asked him to stay.

His wife couldn't have made it any clearer that she didn’t want to see him.

So what was he doing here?

Nursing a broken heart, that's what.

"Dad? You okay?"

Had he made a noise? Maybe he'd sighed, like the sap he was. "I'm fine."

He strode back into the suite's sitting room. He’d notified the security team about his presence, but Alessandra didn’t know he planned to meet her here.

There was no window in this room and the lack of a visual to the outside bothered him. There was no balcony. No secondary escape route,. Which of the crown's security dunces had booked this room?

When he opened the door to the public hallway, he got the stink-eye from one of the two security guys outside. The hotel had claimed they'd blocked off access to this floor, but that was easy enough to overcome.

Gideon shut the door again, brain working.

"Why don't you just tell Mom you love her?"

Maggie's words through the phone line shocked him into stillness in the middle of a horrible hotel rug.

"What?"

Impatience blasted him through her sigh. "That's why you took off with her. Trying to protect her. Why you're in Glorvaird now."

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