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“Are you always so forward?”
“Are you always so coy?”
I can’t help but laugh at that. “Coy?”
But he doesn’t laugh along with me. So he thinks I’m playing games.
Aren’t you?
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I say. “There’s nothing coy about that. We both know we shouldn’t be having this lunch.”
I sip my wine, enjoying the verbal sparring, trying not to think about the fact that I’m teetering on the very edge of propriety.
“So why did you come?”
I’ve dealt with plenty of men like Hayden before. Forthright. Cocky. But this isn’t just a power play to bend my will. Which makes it,him, so much more dangerous.
“Because I’m the queen of bad judgment, apparently.”
This appears to amuse him.
“The queen? Really?”
He’s still sitting back in his chair, casual as you please, but his eyes tell me he’s not as relaxed as he appears. Good. I’d hate to be the only one off-kilter here.
“Yes, really.”
“I don’t know, until this very moment you’ve been pretty hell-bent on following the rules. I’d say you are, if anything, a princess. But no queen.”
My eyes widen.
“Of bad judgment, that is.”
If only he knew.
“What about you? Are you a king? Or just a prince?”
Hayden laughs. “I am an emperor.”
I take a sip of wine. “Tell me something you’ve done that you shouldn’t have.”
He looks to the sky as if hoping divine intervention will save him from answering. “I mean, where do I start?”
“At the beginning?”
Hayden leans forward, evidently warming to the topic. “My third year in boarding school at St. Moritz I feigned migraines so bad that my mother eventually bought a house in the area because of how often they were forced to come check on me.”
I’m not even sure what to say. “There’s a lot to unpack there. Boarding school? Where is St. Moritz? And why did you pretend to have migraines?”
“Yes, boarding school. I was sent at the start of seventh grade. St. Moritz is in Switzerland. And I pretended to have migraines because in two years I’d only seen my parents twice. So I forced them to come to me.”
Holy shit.
“Twice in two years? Are you serious?”
Looks like Qasim was onto something. It’s baffling for me that people could go that long without seeing their kid. If I go two days without calling my parents, they threaten to send the National Guard.
“Very,” he says as if he’s talking about the weather and not his traumatic childhood. “I went to school with kids who spent more time with their nannies than their mothers, but even they went home more than once a year.” He shrugs. “My first Christmas away, my parents planned a trip to Bondi Beach in Australia.”
