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“Me too.” Maisy bit her lip again, then flashed Xander a cautious smile. “It’ll be like when we were kids. Do you remember?”
Xander chuckled. “I assume you’re talking about when we first met in our teens. We weren’t exactly kids.”
“We might as well have been. Do you remember? Our families went to that trade conference in Chicago together. Our parents introduced all of us.”
“Lily must have been, what, nine?”
“Give or take. I was fifteen and you were… seventeen.”
“Right. And we all sat together at that table in the back of the conference and made up a secret language so that we could make fun of the guests without them knowing.”
Xander grinned. “That was a fun trip. I can’t believe it’s been so many years since then. More than a decade.”
“Me neither. It was always really different after that.”
There was a knock and Maisy got to her feet. “That must be Safa here to take us to dinner.” It was. As they drove towards the restaurant, Safa gave a long speech on protocol, so Maisy and Xander didn’t have a chance to talk. It was probably for the best.
The restaurant where they were eating was on a cliffside. As Xander followed the waiter to their table, he felt his heart sink. It was all unbelievably romantic. There were candles and flowers on every table, a small band played live music, and the ceiling was strung with fairy lights. Their table was right beside the railing that looked out over the cliff and the inky-black water far below. Xander pulled out Maisy’s chair for her and she sat, tucking her skirt beneath her legs as she did so. She was biting her lip again.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Xander said, hoping to keep things normal and casual between them. The romantic atmosphere had him just as much on edge as Maisy seemed to be.
“Yes.” Maisy took the light-blue cloth napkin from her plate and began to weave it through her fingers.
“Pretty romantic, too.”
“Yes.” She gave the napkin a twist. Xander felt frustrated with himself for not being able to make better conversation. They’d been on good terms throughout the honeymoon activities until now. Their dance and the moment they’d shared on the island had thrown everything off, and dinner felt strange, too.
Then Xander remembered what they’d been talking about before they left the villa. Surely, a few more reminiscing stories would bring them back onto sure footing.
“Do you remember the second time we met?” he asked. “After the conference in Chicago?”
“Yes.” Maisy grinned at the memory. “My family came to visit yours in the palace. It was maybe… three years later? I remember that I was eighteen. I’d just started college.”
“Our parents were discussing import taxes or something,” Xander recalled. “Niko was called to join them, and I remember him complaining all morning about how boring it was going to be. That was before he became so invested in doing his duty all the time.”
“Right. I remember that he was gone most of the day. It was my fall break from college, and my friends were all aflutter about how I was going to meet royalty. They asked me to try to take pictures of you guys and the palace and send them.”
“Now, that I don’t remember.”
“I didn’t tell you. And I didn’t take many pictures in the end, either — only of my room and a few events. I mostly remember sitting by the pool with you and Lily, daring each other to jump in with all our clothes on. And then you actually did it.”
“I did.” Xander grinned. “It made you laugh so hard that when I reached up and asked you to help me up, you actually gave me your hand and I pulled you in, too.”
“Lily loves that story. She’s the only one who made it out without getting soaked.”
“I remember how smug she was about it.”
“That trip was the last time we really hung out, though,” Maisy said. “We spent so much time together on that trip — meals and excursions and everything. After that, I saw you less and less.”
“Yeah. The next time we saw each other, it was when my family came to the United States. By then you were almost twenty, and our parents had started to talk about a marriage between you and Niko. That was my cue to back off.”
“Right. Bros before… arranged fiancées.”
“Something like that.” Xander hesitated. The real reason he’d spent less and less time with Maisy was that it had been too painful to be around her when he knew she was promised to his brother. When they were young, Xander had liked Maisy. He’d found her fun to be around and had enjoyed her unique way of looking at the world. Plus, she’d always been beautiful.
When his parents had started talking about a wedding between Maisy and Niko, Xander had been annoyed. He’d been in his early twenties at the time and had still been trying to work his way out of the rivalry he and Niko had been pushed into by virtue of being such high-profile twins. Niko seemed to get everything: more goals in soccer, better grades in university, more love from the public — and even the girl Xander liked and whom Niko had never shown any interest in. It hadn’t seemed fair. That had been the beginning of Xander’s mission to branch out and develop his own strengths without competing with Niko.
But saying any of that would mean coming dangerously close to admitting that he had liked Maisy all those years ago — and that he still liked her now. He’d spent years burying his feelings for her. The time they were spending together now was slowly unearthing those feelings and breathing new life into them. That moment on the island had been proof of that.
