When Viktor murmured to me that His Highness required a word and nodded to the spiral staircase going up to Manning’s room—rooms, really—I wasn’t actually convinced it would be Manning coming to see me.
Both he and Elin were downstairs still, and considering they’d been together—and both of them nearly naked at that—when they descended to the party, I half expected Elin herself to be issuing orders to the guards and for me to find myself in the middle of a mud-wrestling match with Manning’s fiancée.
Minus the mud.
Plus, Elin strikes me more as the sucker-punch kind of person.
Which is why I’m treading carefully through the foyer as I shut the door behind me.
Seriously.
Manning’s bedroom has a foyer. And a sitting room.
I promise the opulence will stop getting to me one of these days.
The foyer, sitting room, office, bedroom, and bathroom are all empty. Yes, I checked out his bathroom. I had to pee, okay? And yes, the warm toilet seat still freaked me out, and yes, I am going to bribe Viktor and Kristofer with cookies until they agree to let me sneak in here for a bath, because Manning’s tub has jets in it, which must be amazing.
But not tonight, because tonight, I’m apparently supposed to sit and wait.
I hate waiting, so I snoop instead.
Manning’s king-size four-poster bed is neatly made up with a deep gray comforter over crisp white sheets, and I wonder if he made it himself. I haven’t noticed regular maids, so he probably did it himself.
I briefly wonder if he and Elin messed the sheets beforehand, but then I shake my head. Of course not. They can’t stand each other.
But would that make the sex better?
My teeth are starting to clench. I tell myself to cut it out and concentrate instead on the décor. The columns rising from each of the bed corners are square, not ornately carved like pictures I’ve seen of other fancy beds of the rich and famous, or that bed in Southern Living last month that had pineapples carved in the top, which of course is exotic and luxurious, because when I was little we could never even afford canned pineapple, and old habits die hard, which means I never buy pineapple for myself now either.
Even though I can afford canned pineapple at home.
I tear my gaze from Manning’s bed to the matching dresser and chest of drawers, which speak for themselves. They’re broad and stately and unadorned, with no pictures or evidence of being touched by human hands. They probably magically repel dust too. No keys in a homemade clay pot, no family portraits stuck to the mirror, no mismatched socks lounging about and hoping their mates will be found in the next load of laundry.
His clothes hang in neat rows in his closet, which is no kidding bigger than my entire bedroom. And his wardrobe is huge. Like huge huge. There’s a rack for uniforms that I assume are royal or military. Another beneath it for business suits. The wall across from it is lined with another rack with casual clothes—button-up shirts, jeans and khakis that look as though they were pressed before they were hung. Even his T-shirts and hockey jerseys are stiff and proper.
The man has three times as many shoes as I do—excluding skates—on a floor-to-ceiling rack on the far wall, and I happen to have an impressive shoe collection myself. This closet is so big, there’s also another dresser in here, as well as two sitting chairs on either side of a round end table.
Even his closet has a tray ceiling.
I leave the closet and head to the office, because it’s the smallest of the rooms. It’s still big—everything here is big—but it’s also the least rich.
Also, if I stay in Manning’s bedroom much longer, I won’t be able to look at his bed without imagining him between the sheets. And as soon as my mind goes to sheets, I immediately picture him naked—totally naked—his skin warm with sleep, his eyelids half-mast, his strong lips parted, and suddenly the fantasy goes to full-on sexytimes with the two of us completely destroying the prim and proper fit of the sheets, his mouth on me, his arms holding me tight, his thick manhood thrusting deep into—
I clear my throat, fan myself, and walk through the tall door to the room I found him in earlier.
I’m not here because I’m chasing a man, no matter how attractive I might find him.
I’m here to save him from Elin and to give my child the opportunity to know her daddy.
I can’t stand in his bedroom here in my own country without feeling intimidated by the wealth and prestige and the very fact that he’s a prince. Even if I didn’t say fuck and dabble in dirty cookies, I’d still never fit in at a palace.
I sit in the high-backed leather chair in his office where he was earlier and pretend I can still feel his body heat. I spin it from side to side. It swivels smoothly without even a squeak.
There’s nothing on his desk, but I do spot a picture on the wall, so I rise to look closer, and I feel a soft smile form on my lips.
It’s a wedding picture.
His father’s wedding, I presume. Of course he can marry for love.
Not that I have any illusions about Manning ever loving me or anything. Or that there’s a bitter taste rising in my mouth at the thought. We can be friends, friends who find each other attractive enough to have sex even, but that doesn’t mean we’ll ever fall in love.
I scan the picture, take in the king’s smiling face, Manning’s identical smile, the broody smile of his darker-haired brother, the regal smile of the one who also shares his nose and who’s holding an adorable toddler boy.
The bride is lovely—she’s on the taller side, with round dimpled cheeks and bright eyes. She’s not plump, but she’s not waif thin either, and she hasn’t covered the gray streaking through her dark locks beneath her wedding tiara and veil. The woman beside her—Manning’s stepsister, I imagine—is nearly her twin, but twenty or so years younger and far more on the slender side.
A happy royal family.
My baby’s relatives.
It’s just me and Joey left of our family. Not that Joey won’t go way overboard and compensate for being the only aunt my children will ever have, and Zeus will undoubtedly help and offer his family as surrogate aunts and uncles as well—we’re already invited to his parents’ house in Minnesota for both Thanksgiving and Christmas—and Peach will happily act as aunt as well, but there’s something special about a blood bond.
I wonder if the king is the type to bounce a baby on his knee.
His bride certainly looks like she would.
I pinch my lips together as the familiar vise clenches hard and fast around my heart. It’s been just over two years since we lost Daddy, and I swear I miss him more today than I did just after he passed.
He would’ve adored being a grandpa. I nearly picked up the phone to call him again yesterday, because even two years later, it’s still habit.
I swipe at my eyes and turn from the family photo, and an odd angle in the corner of the wall catches my attention.
It’s like the wall isn’t lined up even.
I trail my fingers over the embossed ivory wallpaper as I step closer to the corner.
And what I find makes me as giddy as a kid with a new set of sidewalk chalk.
Manning has a secret room.
A secret room.
I can’t count the number of times growing up that I would stare at my bedroom wall in the middle of the night and wish there was a secret lever I could push to take a secret staircase down to my own special private hideaway. Somewhere Joey couldn’t find me, where I could color all over the walls, with a secret stash of Barbies and baby dolls in a pretend orphanage where I’d play nun and nurse and teacher all in one. And I would’ve also had a Nintendo game system of my very own so I didn’t have to go ask Shelly Morgan if I could play with hers, because Shelly could sometimes be a real snothead.
And here I am, in a fancy-schmancy apartment with a secret room.
I push at the wall, and it easily slides back and into the wall behind it, revealing the seam in the wallpaper masking it.
And if I think having a secret room is cool, what I find inside tops it all.
