A Prince At Last!. Cathie Linz

      “I said to initiate a conversation, not to interrogate me.”

      He arched one dark brow at her. “There’s a difference?”

      “Yes, there’s a difference.”

      “You’re talking to a man who spent eight years in Interpol before coming here to be Head of Security. I’m much better at interrogations than I am at conversations.”

      “You don’t seem to have that trouble with me,” Juliet pointed out. “You and I have had some wonderful conversations.”

      “You’re different.”

      She wanted to ask him how she was different, but he answered before she could do so.

      “You’re a friend,” Luc said.

      As she’d suspected. She knew he only saw her as a friend and nothing more than that. Get used to it and get over it.

      “How would you speak to a stranger?” she said.

      “The way I just told you.”

      Juliet sighed. Changing his many years of Interpol training was clearly not going to happen overnight. “All right, we’ll come back to conversation later. For now, let’s concentrate on royal protocol. As our monarch, you and the highest-ranking foreign dignitary will walk into the dining room together. Your respective spouses will walk behind you.”

      “So which role are you playing?”

      “Excuse me?”

      “Are you the foreign dignitary or my spouse?”

      While the thought of being Luc’s spouse made her insides melt, the thought of being the king’s spouse made her stomach clench. “I’m a foreign dignitary.”

      “Fine. That means you walk into the room beside me, right?”

      She nodded.

      “Should I offer you my arm?” Luc asked.

      “That’s not necessary, no.” She didn’t want him touching her any more than was absolutely required. Which should be no touching at all.

      “It’s a little dark in here, isn’t it?” Luc noted as they entered farther into the large room.

      Juliet reached over to turn on the switch controlling the porcelain hand-painted chandelier. While nowhere near as grand as any of the ones in the Crystal Ballroom, this exquisite one-of-a-kind piece had been a gift from Queen Victoria. But the main focus in the room, aside from the series of Rembrandts hanging on the wall, was the huge table that seated forty easily.

      She gestured for him to sit at the table before taking the seat beside him. “Normally the footmen would take care of our chairs, pulling them out and pushing them back in. As you can see, earlier this afternoon I laid out two place settings as if this were a formal dinner.”

      “There’s enough silverware here to choke a horse.”

      “As the king, you shouldn’t say anything about choking a horse,” she chastised him. “It could be taken out of context and spread around the tabloids. Next thing you know, you’re being portrayed as someone who is cruel to animals. You can ride, can’t you?”

      “Excuse me?”

      “A horse. You can ride a horse, can’t you?”

      “Yes, although I haven’t ridden a lot in the past year or so.”

      “Then we should stop by the stable for a brush-up lesson. But back to the dinner. You probably attended some formal functions while you were at Cambridge.”

      “Not really, no. As a university student, I drank a lot of Guinness and ate a lot of curry, the hotter the better.”

      “Really? Why?”

      He shrugged a little self-consciously. “It’s a macho thing.”

      The idea of Luc trying to prove his machismo brought to mind more forbidden images of decidedly sensual ways in which he could demonstrate his manhood. Images filled her mind of wickedly tempting options that had him plying her with kisses hotter than any curry. That made her nervous, and, as she did whenever she was nervous, she started talking. “Usually royals stay away from spicy things.” She almost tripped over her own tongue as another chapter of images flashed into her mind—Luc and spicy things. Luc as a spicy thing. “Um, I heard that garlic, spaghetti, tomato sauce and shellfish have been banned from the menu when the Queen of England pays an official visit to Italy. And the media has an unwritten rule never to photograph or film her while she’s eating. The press has a similar rule here. Blackberries and summer raspberries are also off most royal menus, since having tiny seeds stuck in one’s teeth would disfigure a royal smile. Fish and meat are served without bones to avoid a possible choking hazard, as once befell our dowager queen in her younger days. A similar incident occurred with the Queen Mum, Queen Elizabeth’s mother, I believe.”