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“I would,” said Katie, putting a hand on Armin’s arm.
“A royal wedding with the right touches could put us in the public’s good graces,” commented Zia. “It would need to be rather restrained.”
“I disagree,” said Armin. “The people might think we’re out of touch, but they love a good spectacle. We wouldn’t want to let them down on that.”
The conversation shifted to royal weddings, but Amy was still watching Artur. Without another word, he got up from the table and slipped away. No one seemed to notice him leaving.
5
It was afternoon before Artur had sufficiently arranged his thoughts about the meeting, at least to the point where he could speak to others without yelling. At first, he took a walk in the gardens, moving so briskly through the trails that he could hear his security detail hustling to keep up. Perhaps he should have chosen the gym. Come to think of it—yes. He should have chosen the gym. He
ran a hand through his hair, changed directions, and headed back in.
After an hour in the palace’s private gym, his muscles burned and his workout gear was soaked through, but his head was clear. This plan of Amy’s—to parade him around with various women of Stolvenia—was never going to happen. But he had another idea.
He showered, dressed, and styled his hair in his signature look, then headed down the hall to Amy’s suite. He’d made sure she got one of the larger apartments in the wing. He knocked at the door. It opened immediately to reveal one of the maids.
“Prince Artur.” She stepped back to let him in, dipping her head.
“Thanks much. What’s your name?”
She looked up at him with a little smile. “Sasha, Your Highness.”
“Sasha. You may go—we’ll be all right for a bit.”
“All right.” She went out behind him, leaving him to Amy’s rooms.
There was a large main room, but Amy wasn’t in here, so he went left, toward the smaller sitting room.
Amy sat at a cabriole facing a table, with papers spread out in front of her and a pen in her hand. She was writing notes on a legal pad and didn’t look up at first. “Sasha, do you think we could—”
“Not quite Sasha.”
Her eyes flew up to meet his. “What are you doing here?”
Deliberately misunderstanding her, he replied. “I live here, of course. Did you not realize you’re being housed in the royal wing?”
Amy’s mouth dropped open, and a pleasantly pink color came to her cheeks. “Well. I didn’t realize I’d been given such...exclusive accommodations.”
He gestured around him. “These rooms are technically part of my apartments. I won’t bore you with the details of the passageways between the different suites. I promise you, they haven’t been used in decades and all of the doors are probably boarded up.”
Amy raised her eyebrows, and he saw a flash of the woman she had been when she came back to the hotel with him from the gala that night. “Secret passageways? So the royals of old could sneak around and get themselves into trouble behind closed doors?”
“Yes. The royals of old,” he emphasized, giving her a wink.
She laughed out loud.
“In all seriousness, the team thought it best that you be placed closer to me for the duration. Especially since you’ll be staying until the referendum.” Secretly, Artur wasn’t sure she would stay that long, but he wished that was the firm plan. Despite the train wreck of the meeting earlier, when his inner circle had blithely agreed with her ridiculous plan to turn his life into their own version of a dating show, the thought of having her nearby made him feel...at home. Yes, that was it. Though, on second thought, that didn’t make much sense.
Amy wore a thoughtful expression. “It’s a good plan. In terms of logistics, this will make planning the tour much easier. And Kostya said the anti-royalist media might harass me if I was staying at a hotel but coming and going from the palace every day.”
Artur didn’t much care what Kostya had said, and in fact, the rooms weren’t the reason he’d come here to talk to her at all. “I had an amendment to your proposal from earlier.”
Amy raised her eyebrows. “Do tell. I’m open to all input, especially from the man at the center of it all.” The smile she gave him was a genuine one. “That might have sounded a little sarcastic, but I meant it.”
He came to sit across the table from her in a chair that turned out to be more comfortable than it looked. “It came to me during my workout that there’s an easier solution than planning dates for me with half the women in the country.”
Amy leaned back, resting her hands atop the curve of her bump. She ran her fingers down over the fabric of her dress, and the movement was somehow completely casual and completely intimate at once. It almost made him want to look away, but looking away from her was harder than seeing that little gesture. And why was it so difficult?
