“I wouldn’t call it that.”
“What would you call it?” He looked into her sparkling eyes.
“Unpracticed,” she said, a playful smile on her lips. “Really, Rafael. I only gave you a few minutes of instruction and now you’re holding the baby like a pro.”
&
nbsp; He frowned. “She’s sleeping. I don’t know what to do when things get tough.”
Felicity waved this off. “Tantrums come and go. You didn’t recoil or get angry when she threw up on you, so I’d say you handled the diciest moment like a real professional.”
Pride and affection looped themselves together in his chest and squeezed. Felicity leaned closer, reaching to brush a lock of blonde hair from Hope’s forehead. Then she leaned down and kissed the same spot.
Rafael couldn’t help himself. He leaned down and kissed Felicity’s forehead, too.
She sat up, surprise written on her face, and they stayed like that for a quiet, magic minute. He’d never felt so close to another person—to another pair of people—as he did right now, with Hope resting comfortably in his arms and Felicity only a breath away.
“Thank you,” he said gruffly.
Her eyebrows lifted. “For what?” A tentative little grin flitted around her mouth.
“I—”
Hope stirred in his arms, letting out a tired little whimper, and the moment was over.
Felicity reached for her daughter, and he reluctantly gave her up. “It’s probably time to get her into a real bed. Though I’m not quite sure where your guest rooms are…”
He stood up, his arms too empty. “I’ll take you right there. Would you prefer a queen-sized bed or a king?”
Felicity blinked. “You have guest rooms with a king-sized bed?”
“One or two,” he said.
She looked across at Hope, who had curled onto her shoulder and was snuffling her nose into her mother’s shirt. “Whichever one’s farthest from your room,” Felicity said. “I wouldn’t want Hope to—she might be up quite a bit tonight.”
“Your wish is my command.”
Rafael gave her the closest room, but as he went into his own massive bedroom, part of him wished he’d invited her there instead.
5
“I honestly think if you invested a bit more time in the sessions with Lydia, we might have some more…success.”
Felicity sat on the sofa in the spacious living area of the suite across from Rafael’s apartments. In the background, someone from the cleaning staff was tidying the room. Rafael could see that Felicity wanted to get up and lend a hand…but she held herself back. It was, he noted, one of the things that had sunk in from Felicity’s tutoring sessions with Lydia—that it wasn’t exactly seemly for royals to go crawling around after toys on the floor. He’d hired help to keep all of their private rooms clean—well, he’d rearranged the responsibilities of existing palace staff—but Felicity still insisted on doing much of it herself. He’d have to have Lydia talk to her about that at some point, too, but that was another battle for another day. At least she wasn’t shoveling things off the floor while holding a conversation with him.
He hadn’t expected to have to hire Lydia for the new members in the royal family for a number of years yet. His brothers' wives wouldn’t be under as much public scrutiny as the future queen, and Rafael hadn’t planned on having anyone step into that role so soon. Things had not exactly gone according to plan.
She picked up a small wicker basket, surveyed the toys scattered on the sofa, and glanced up at Rafael. “I don’t know if I have time for those kinds of sessions.”
He did his best to temper a growing irritation. It was not easy to be a member of the royal family—he of all people knew that. But from the moment Hope had recovered from her illness two weeks ago, things had started to go downhill.
He’d envisioned it as being a far smoother transition than it actually had been. He knew things had been challenging for her back in America when the news first broke, but enough time had passed now for other stories to make the front page. And besides, they were on his home turf, so at least half the audience to Felicity’s entrance into Stolvenian royalty should have been forgiving.
Things just kept. Going. Wrong.
Rafael had started things slowly—appearances for photo ops, walks with Hope in a stroller—and things had been dicey even then. Felicity couldn’t seem to concentrate on how to deal with the press. Her shoulders tightened before the questions even began. He tried his best to include her in lower-stakes events, but that was a risky game, too. There were no low-stakes events with the referendum approaching. And Felicity didn’t seem to understand the rules they were playing by.
He checked his watch. “Don’t you have a session in fifteen minutes?” Lydia was a regal woman in her sixties who gave every impression of being royal without actually being a member of the ruling family. She knew all the ins and outs of the etiquette and bearing that family members needed to observe, and she’d been teaching them since Rafael was a child.