Spare Me

Chapter 4

A s Alex turned to face Madeleine Cartwright, he tried to suppress the delighted smile that threatened to overtake his face at the shock written across hers. He’d been practically giddy when Eric told him that the enchanting woman he’d doused with gin was the same person organizing the Armistice Day concert for the American delegation. He hadn’t had much time to process her appearance when he saw her up close at the engagement party, but now that he was standing in front of her, shaking her hand, he had a chance to really absorb her. He’d caught a glimpse of her chocolatey brown eyes before she’d lowered them deferentially and bobbed a curtsey. She had mahogany hair tied back in a low bun at the nape of her neck. Out of nowhere, he found himself imagining what it would feel like to slide his hands through her hair. It looked thick and luscious. He wondered what it would look like fanned out across his pillow.

“Your Royal Highness?” Delia Stewart’s southern accent burst into his daydreaming, which was a good thing, seeing as it had been headed in a decidedly not-safe-for-work direction. He coughed, mentally shaking himself and refocusing on the meeting. Luckily he was quickly able to ascertain that the ambassador’s wife had been offering him a plate of appetizing baked goods and helped himself to a fudgy-looking brownie with a word of thanks. He’d been trained to eat little, if anything, in situations like this. Accepting a cup of tea or coffee was fine, but food in a meeting situation could lead to too many awkward or impolite situations that the royals didn’t want to find themselves in. But the brownie looked too enticing to pass up.

He broke off a corner and resisted the urge to make an obscene noise as he slipped it into his mouth, forcing his face to look engaged in what Sloane was saying as moist, fudgy goodness exploded across his tongue. As he reached down to break off another bite, he caught Madeleine Cartwright looking at him. She seemed to be trying to hide a small smile, as if she could see his inner battle between professional behavior and giving in to his reaction to the decadent pastry. He realized that she, too, was breaking off the corner of a brownie, and she cocked an eyebrow in his direction, almost as if she was toasting him, before popping her own bite in her mouth and returning her attention to the meeting.

Alex tried valiantly not to focus on her mouth as he tried to tune in to what Mrs. Stewart was saying about American service members and their families—an important and meaningful cause, to be sure—and he might have succeeded, if he hadn’t noticed, out of the corner of his eye, Madeleine surreptitiously licking a crumb of brownie off the tip of her finger. His thoughts immediately slammed back to X-rated territory, imagining what he could do with that mouth, her pink lips…

Get a grip, man , he chided himself. This was not at all like him. He kept his sex life in the bedroom—and very casual. He needed to get laid. Surely, if one brief, disastrous meeting at a party and watching the same woman take two bites of a brownie were sending his mind straight to the gutter, he needed to do something.

After the biological imperative to breathe forced Maddy past her momentary shock ( Breathe, Cartwright , she’d heard that familiar voice in her head say), she’d made an awkward curtsey while shaking his hand and trying to keep a neutral face. She was decidedly ambivalent about the need to show deference to this man who, solely by dint of his genetic material, had apparently earned a higher station in life than everyone else, but in that moment she’d been very glad that the occasion didn’t call for eye contact. She’d tried to keep her eyes firmly glued to the top button on his blazer – below his face, above his crotch, obviously – but at the last second before their hands separated, she had glanced up.

He had kept a completely neutral expression except for his eyes. If one didn’t look closely, they would have had no idea that the two had ever interacted before, but Maddy saw the merest glimmer of a twinkle in his eye as he released her hand and said, “A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Cartwright.”

“Your Royal Highness,” she murmured, quickly looking down again and scurrying to the seat Mrs. Stewart indicated at the large table.

As Mrs. Stewart opened the meeting with a borderline obsequious welcome to their royal guests, Maddy had tried to get a hold of herself. She shouldn’t have been so unnerved by seeing Mr. Martini—that is, the prince—again. If anyone should have felt awkward, it was the person who had summarily dumped ice-cold gin and olives down her dress. Yet somehow the suddenness of seeing him so unexpectedly, combined with the twinkle in his eye that told her he remembered her had been unsettling. He hadn’t seemed surprised to see her at all. Then again, Maddy reflected one of the many times she’d replayed the scene in her head, he wouldn’t have been. He had figured out exactly who she was and, by extension, would have been expecting to see her, whereas she had barely given a second thought to encountering the second in line to the British throne, let alone imagined that he wouldn’t be a total stranger.

As the meeting proceeded, Maddy gradually found her footing again. As Prince Alexander’s staffer Sloane discussed the seating arrangements in the Royal Albert Hall and went over what would be needed in the musicians’ green rooms, Maddy found herself sneaking glances at the prince. She’d barely processed what he looked like at the party, too busy trying to alleviate the awkwardness of the moment and liberate her dress from the Union Jack-topped party pick of olives stuck in her cleavage. In the meeting, however, she had time to really take him in. His close-cropped hair was brown with some red tones that the light caught when he turned his head. His eyes were gray-blue, fringed with annoyingly lush lashes. His high, chiseled cheekbones would have made his face almost too sculptural, except the slightest hint of a dimple graced one cheek and a cleft of his chin, which softened his visage.

She hadn’t known what to expect from him at this meeting. The fact that he’d come in person rather than just sending staff told her that it was at least of passing interest to him, but it became quickly apparent once the meeting began that he was clearly invested in the success of the event. Whether out of his own interest or because his family told him he needed to be interested, Maddy wasn’t sure, but it was clear he’d read the materials he’d been given, and he didn’t hesitate to express his opinions.

The meeting wrapped up after about an hour, and they all stood to begin the obligatory round of farewells. Somehow Maddy had found herself leaving the room last, just behind Prince Alexander. “Ms. Cartwright,” he said, extending his hand. When he held her hand a fraction of a second longer than was customary, her eyes had shot up to find him grinning down into hers. “A pleasure,” he said, before releasing her hand and sweeping back to his car with his staff.