Royal's Untouched Love (10 page)

Somehow, they talked until the sky outside grew light, and the waitress had gone off shift to be replaced by a waiter.

Finally, Jaque leaned back in his chair, a surprised and pleased smile on his face. "We're doing something that is new to both of us, aren't we?" he asked quietly, and she could only nod her agreement.

"I hope it works," she said softly, "I hope it does whatever it needs to do."

"You know, I think it will," he said with sincerity.

His hands cupped hers, and she wasn't sure she had ever felt so happy in her life.

*

Jaque dropped Heidi off at her home, just barely resisting the urge to follow her up to her apartment. It felt too soon for that for both of them, though the wistful look on Heidi's face had nearly changed his mind.

Instead, they had kissed almost chastely, and they had made a date to see each other the next day.

There was something magical about the little American, he thought. She was like the first breath of fresh air when he had put out to sea; she was like the first ray of sunlight breaking through a bank of clouds. He had known many women, but he had never known one like her.

His good mood lasted until he returned to his penthouse and discovered that he had missed a message from his mother. Frowning, he called her, and he was even more alarmed when she decided to pick up.

"You had a good thing going for a few weeks," Greta said coldly.

"I believe I still have a good thing going," he said, his voice equally frigid. "What has happened?"

"A tabloid magazine has surfaced with an interview with a young woman who claims to have had relations with you."

"Hardly news," Jaque snapped, but Greta wasn't done.

"And other men. And other women. She paints quite a picture of what you were doing in Rome a few years ago, and it has very little to do with networking for your company, as you told the world."

Jaque could feel a dull red color creep up through his cheeks. He could feel a deep well of fury opening up inside him. "Is she implying that I had a nonstop orgy while I was in Rome? Because that's what it sounds like you are accusing me of."

"I am accusing you of nothing," Greta snapped. "What I care about is the fact that one more scandal could destroy the reputation that we have been working towards for the last few centuries. Does the legacy of your ancestors mean so little to you?"

"You know that it means a great deal to me," he said, his voice hard. "However, I will not allow the gazes of so many dead men and women to dictate how I live my life. This girl, she's no one. Someone's going to poke a hole in her story sooner or later, and this will go away."

"I'm afraid that it will not," his mother said. "At least not for you. You are on very thin ice, my son, and this time … I am not sure whether I can save you."

Despite his anger, he felt himself go cold. He sat down on the couch, because this time, he could tell that something was different.

"Mother?"

"You are not home enough to truly understand, Jaque. Parliament has very little use for a prince that sometimes seems more Greek, or English or even Swiss than he is Swedish. They hear rumors, and they realize that it has been years, sometimes, since they have seen you last. They are not interested in having a foreign king some day, and they are very blunt about telling me that."

"Be clear," Jaque said tersely.

His mother sighed, a sound that seemed strange on her. In a moment, he realized that she sounded old, something that he wouldn't have thought possible. Queen Greta of Sweden might be an Amazon or a battle-ax, both things that her detractors had claimed, but she was never old, never feeble.

"I can't protect you for much longer," she said finally. "Straighten up. Come home. Otherwise, you may find another crowned king in your place."

She ended the call, but there was a kind of gentleness to it that seemed nearly foreign.

For a long time, Jaque simply sat on the couch, looking up at the skylight overhead.

What would it mean not to be the Prince of Sweden any longer? In some ways, not much would change. He was, in many ways, a self-made man. LaMer Enterprises belonged solely to him. They couldn't take that away from him. He could live as he had always lived.

Except …

Many years ago, when he was only a boy, he had asked his mother what made a king or queen different from any other person. Why did they get to live in fine houses and speak to so many people? Why did others bow to them?

Greta had thought for a short while, and when she answered, her answer had stuck with him for a very long time.

"We are kings and queens because in many ways, we are our country. We must be the example, the sword, and the shield. They give us so much, and for that, we must give them our lives."

He wasn't sure he had understood it then, but he did now. Sweden was a part of him, even if it was one he had not returned to in far too long. He wasn't Greek, or English, or Swiss. He was Swedish born and bred, and right now, he wasn't going to let anything take that away from him.

His mother had been saying that he needed to start being respectable at some point, and that time had come. Jaque started to plot what he was going to do to get back in the media's good graces as well as those of the Swedish people, and he stopped, suddenly struck dumb by the coincidence.

Men and women were judged by the people that they arrived with, and he couldn't think of much of anyone who could make a better impression than Heidi. Runway models might know how to pose and preen, while actresses might know how to give a convincing speech, but Heidi left them both in the dust with her genuine smile and her sweet nature.

When it came right down to it, few things settled a man more than having a woman he was willing to settle down for, and Jaque realized that that was something that Heidi could do for him.

For a moment, he was struck by the idea of using Heidi like this. Then he dismissed it. He wasn't going to do anything that he didn't mean, that he didn't genuinely believe.

When he thought of Heidi, his heart warmed, making it so easy to forget the rest of the world and what it might threaten. He couldn't help it if some photographers saw them here or there, or if in an interview, he happened to mention the sweet and adorable woman he now had in his life … well, that was all to the good.

Jaque pushed his doubts about the situation away. Nothing had changed, not really. Heidi was a glowing jewel, and anyone looking at her would see it sooner rather than later.

He turned on his tablet and started making plans. She had been working for his company for a while, but he bet that she still hadn't been on board one of his yachts yet.

He wanted, suddenly and intensely, to give her all of the pleasures in the world, all of the fun and sunlight that she had missed out on. He could, and he would.

That was what was important, after all. Wasn't it?

CHAPTER SIX

The first time Heidi spotted a man with a camera, she was frightened and appalled. She suddenly felt every inch the Midwestern hick, as if she had straw on her shoes and no idea what was going on. She barely managed to avoid hiding her face, but Jaque only looked at her curiously.

"Are you all right, my darling?"

She felt terrible for interrupting their good time. Jaque had taken her to lovely open-air rooftop restaurant, one that was famed for its Bolivian cuisine. The flavors were excitingly bold and spicy, and Heidi had been enjoying herself immensely until she had looked up.

The man on the terrace above them had snapped a few more shots before disappearing back inside the restaurant, but when she had pointed this out to Jaque, he had only shrugged, making a slight face.

"I'm afraid that that's part of being with me," he said apologetically. "Most of the time, I get to wander around as a simple businessman, but sometimes, the news cycle is slow and they remember that there is a Prince of Sweden living and working in Greece."

"It doesn't bother you?" she asked in surprise. Jaque had always struck her as a private man, not one who would countenance people taking pictures of him whenever they wished.

His grin was narrow and a little savage. "Well, some of the paparazzi got a little too close when I was twenty, and after I broke enough equipment, they have learned to keep their distance. Does it bother me now? That's a difficult question. If they get too close, if they try to harass people who are close to me, then yes. Otherwise it doesn't matter much."

Heidi supposed that she hadn't looked convinced, because Jaque had reached across the table to touch her hand gently.

"I am sorry, but this is a part of my life. As long as you are with me, it will be a part of yours as well. That does not mean that I am going to let you go about unprotected though. If you want a security team or some kind of system set up for your home …"

"Oh, no, not at all," Heidi said, appalled that it had gotten to things like bodyguards and security details already. Suddenly, she had gone from a woman having a lunch with a man who was becoming increasingly important to her to some kind of political thriller.

Jaque nodded as if this was a perfectly reasonable conversation to have. "It is your choice, and if you ever do feel the least bit threatened, I want you to have all of the protection that you need. Just keep my offer in mind, you can accept it at any point."

She did keep it in mind, but now that she was aware of the paparazzi, she was seeing them everywhere. Sometimes it was as obvious as the man who stopped dead on a street to take a picture of them. Sometimes it was as obscure as the woman who skillfully captured a picture of them from under the cover of an empty baby blanket. The only reason she had figured that out
was that the light had come down to hit on the lens, causing a flare.

Heidi did her best to put the paparazzi out of her mind the way that Jaque had. It worked, sort of. After all, she was in a relationship with one of the most remarkable men she had ever known. She had never known what she should look for in a man, but now she knew that she had been looking for Jaque all of her life so far.

One thing that had always appalled her was how lazy some men were. From her classmates to even her professors, she had known men who were sloppy and uncoordinated, who had instead relied on the people around them to pick up the slack. Somehow, they got by while other people suffered. Jaque, however, worked as hard as she did. When she arrived in the mornings, he was often there already. When she appeared at his door for a promised date, he would just be finishing up. There was something magnetic about his ambition and the way he shaped the world to look like what he wanted it to look like.

However, as hard as Jaque worked, he also knew how to play. This was something that Heidi was just learning herself, and Jaque was happy to be her teacher. When the day was over, it was over, and whenever she tried to bring up something from the company, he would mock-frown at her, placing a gentle finger over her lips.

"We can surely speak of that tomorrow, can we not, little American?" he asked. "You will make me feel boring if you can think of nothing to speak of but work …"

Of course there was always more to speak of than work, and as they did more together, there was always more to speak about. Sometimes they went out and did what all the tourists did, seeing the gorgeous sites of Athens and the surrounding Greek countryside. Sometimes, he took her out on his private yacht, showing her what the world looked like when there was nothing but blue all around them and above them.

However, the incident that stayed with her the longest was the one that had occurred all unexpectedly one early evening when she was waiting for him to finish up with a meeting in town.

Heidi had come out to meet him after her day was done, and due to the crush of people outside, she had found her way into a small international bookstore. It was a charming place, the lights low, and the shiny new books arranged so attractively. A little calico cat had twined around her ankles, and a tall woman with fantastically long earrings had waved at her from the counter, telling her in beautifully accented English to call for help if she needed it.

Bookstores were bittersweet things in some cases. She could remember all too clearly being a small shy girl who had wanted to take all the beautiful books home, but being shooed out for spending too long among the tall shelves. Even now, she had to straighten her shoulders, reminding herself that she was not that little girl anymore.

She was a grown woman with a job, and if she wanted to buy a book, she would. While Heidi waited for Jaque to show up, she browsed, knowing she was going to get something. Finally, she had it narrowed down to a book about the history of Athens and another about the maritime culture of the ancient city. She bit her lip, trying to make a choice, when Jaque had appeared at her shoulder, as if by magic.

"What do you have there?"

"Oh!" she yelped, spinning around. For some reason, she felt the urge to hide the books behind her back. "There you are. You walk around like a cat."

"The point has been made before," he said with a grin, but to her dismay, he wasn't deterred. "What are you looking at?"

She handed him the books, wondering if he would help her make a choice, but Jaque was nodding decisively.

"These are both good," he said. "The sailing book especially, but if you are going to read that, you should pick up this as well, which came before it, and the history of Athens is much better reading when you can compare and contrast it to Sparta and some of the other city states of the day."

She watched, mute and appalled, as he pulled more books from the shelves to set them on the table beside her. In her head, she could see the numbers go up, up, and up even further. Finally, he paused with a tall stack of books on the table, and a slightly abashed look on his face.

"I mean, you may not want all of those books," he said with a slight grin. "Just because I think they're good …"

"That's not it," she said, her voice small. "I just don't think I could buy so many …"