Not Fit for a King?

She looked at him for an endless moment. “Goodbye.” Then she slipped into her room and closed the door.

CHAPTER THREE

ENTERING her suite Hannah gently closed and locked the door, heart racing, body shaking.

For a long moment she leaned against the locked door, a hand pressed to her mouth.

She’d kissed him. Kissed him madly, passionately, kissed him as if she were drowning, dying, and maybe she was.

How could she go tomorrow? How could she leave and never see him again?

But there was no way she could stay. He didn’t want her, Hannah, he wanted Emmeline.

And even that hurt. How could he want Emmeline when the princess didn’t care for him, would never care, while Hannah already cared too much …?

That was the part that confused her, infuriated her, most. How could she care already? She’d only met Zale today. She’d spent what—five hours with him? Six? Barely enough time to be infatuated. So why did she feel sick? Panicked?

Desperate?

Why did she think when she left here she’d never forget him?

Hannah choked back a frustrated cry and pressed her hand harder to her mouth to stifle the sound.

Her eyes burned and her throat ached and she hated herself for wanting something—someone—she couldn’t have.

She wasn’t the type of woman to set herself up for failure.

“Your Highness,” Celine, Hannah’s maid, said breathlessly, emerging from the dressing room, with Hannah’s nightgown and robe. “I didn’t hear you return. Have I kept you waiting?”

Hannah blinked back tears and pushed away from the door. “I just returned,” she said, mustering a watery smile. “But I’d love your help getting out of this gown.”

Leaving Emmeline, Zale forced himself to put her from his mind and focus now on other things—like Tinny.

He headed toward his own wing of the palace but first stopped at his younger brother’s room. He never went to bed without a last check on Tinny.

Opening the door to Tinny’s sitting room he saw that all the lights were out except for the small lamp on the top of the bookshelf on the far wall.

Tinny’s night-light. He couldn’t sleep without it.

Zale felt a rush of affection for his twenty-eight-year-old special-needs brother, a brother who’d needed him even more after their parents’ death.

Constantine—or Tinny, as he’d always been called within the family—was to have been on the plane with his parents on that ill-fated flight, but at the last minute he’d begged his parents to let him fly to St. Philippe, their private Caribbean island, with Zale the next day instead.

Even five years later, Zale gave daily thanks that Tinny hadn’t been onboard. Tinny was everything to him, and all the family he had left, but Tinny still missed his parents dreadfully, still asked for them, hoping that maybe today his beloved mama and papa would come home.

“Your Majesty,” a voice whispered from the dark, and Mrs. Sivka, Tinny’s evening nurse, emerged from the shadows in a dressing gown. “He’s doing well. Sleeping like a lamb.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come to say good-night earlier.”

“He knew you wouldn’t be coming. When you were here at tea this afternoon you told him tonight was a very important night.” Mrs. Sivka smiled. “How did it go, Your Majesty? Is she as beautiful as they say?”

Zale felt a strange tightness in his chest. “Yes.”

“Tinny can’t wait to meet her. It’s all he talked about today.”

“He shall meet her as soon as possible.”

“Tomorrow?”

Zale pictured Emmeline and then his brother, and knew that innocent, idealistic Tinny would immediately place her on a pedestal. He’d adore her, worship her and give her the power to break his heart. “Not tomorrow, but soon, I promise.”

“He’ll be disappointed it’s not tomorrow.”

“I know, but there are a few wrinkles to still iron out.”

“I understand and Prince Constantine will meet your bride when the time is right.” Mrs. Sivka smiled. “I’m proud of you. Your parents would be proud, too. You deserve every good thing coming, you do.”

“But you have to say that, Mrs. Sivka,” he said, teasing her gently, forever grateful she’d come out of retirement to help with Tinny after his parents’ accident. “You were my nanny, too.”

“That I was. And now look at you.”

He smiled crookedly. “Good night, Mrs. Sivka.”

“Good night, Your Majesty.”

Zale left his brother’s suite of rooms and headed to his own, feeling tightness and tension return to his chest.

He felt like he’d ridden a roller coaster of emotions tonight. He didn’t like it.