She shook her head, smiling at him. “I’m finding it hard. When I realized it was you …” She shrugged and closed her eyes as she relived those moments, and when she spoke again, her voice was shaky. “Max, I thought you were dead.”
He looked at her for a moment, then managed a crooked smile. “Which time?” he asked softly.
Her phone buzzed. She knew it was the queen. Pressing her lips together, she shook her head.
“We’ll have to talk later.” She reached for her phone but she didn’t let go of his hand. She’d learned a lesson or two over the years, and one of them was to look both ways before stepping off the curb.
“Yes, Your Majesty. We’re on our way.”
Ten minutes later they were in Pellea’s public parlor while she flitted about and generally let Max know he was on thin ice with her. Kayla watched, but hardly listened. She knew the queen was crazy about him and was just trying to convince him to behave.
At the same time, she herself was a bit impatient with all this. She felt as though every nerve ending was vibrating right now. There were so many things to take care of, so much to consider. Max was back and she had to figure out how to fit him into her life again. She had a thousand questions for him. There was so much she wanted to know, so much they’d missed. So much they needed to discuss.
For instance, had he come close to marrying anyone in the last two years? Was there someone out there? She was hoping there was, but the signs weren’t good. If he had someone serious in his life, she could move on without any lingering doubts. Couldn’t she?
The funny thing was, she couldn’t imagine him married. He didn’t have a married way about him. His beautiful eyes had a look that said he was always searching for something and not very satisfied with what he’d found. You had a sense that there was something missing in his life, but he wasn’t sure what it was and he knew he hadn’t seen it yet. Just seeing that in him scared her.
But the queen seemed to have no forbearance left for all that. She knew what she wanted from Max and she wanted it now.
“The first thing we’re going to do is get you into some decent clothes,” she said, rummaging through her closet.
“What? You don’t like my style?” He said it in a tone that might have seemed insolent if he hadn’t paired his words with a look of pure innocence that caught Pellea by surprise, making her laugh.
“Now I see what the problem is,” she told him, shaking her head. “You just don’t know any better. You need to learn a thing or two about being a prince, don’t you?”
“If you insist.” His mouth twisted but he bent forward in a sweeping bow. “Anything for you, my beautiful queen.”
Despite everything, Pellea colored slightly, then glanced Kayla’s way. “You’ve got to admit, the boy’s a charmer,” she said out of the side of her mouth. “I think he’s a diamond in the rough, too. We’ll see what we can make of him.” She smirked. “Heat and pressure. That’s how you get perfect diamonds. Are you game?”
He didn’t answer but she’d already turned away and was hunting through a closet again, muttering about sizes and ruffled shirts.
He looked at Kayla and shrugged, as though to say, “They’ve got me this time,” and she smiled at him, her heart full of affection for all he’d meant to her in the past. She wasn’t sure what the future would bring. But things were never dull when Max was around.
Her smile faded as she remembered that there was something more lasting than memories between them, something more precious than life itself. And that was when she decided it was time for her to go.
“Your Majesty, if you don’t need of me here …”
Pellea poked her head back out of the closet. “Go ahead, Kayla,” she said. “I know you’ve got work to do. I won’t keep you.”
“Thank you,” Kayla said, then she turned and gave Max a stern look. “You will be good, won’t you?”
“At what?” he teased with a lopsided smile.
She glared at him. “The guard is outside so don’t think you can get away with anything,” she murmured to him out of Pellea’s hearing.
He gave her a “Who? Me?” look. She shook her head and started for the door. “Have a lovely time at the ball,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll be the star.”
And she was out the door before he had a chance to say or do anything else.
She hurried back to the office, hoping to get some work done that she’d neglected while she was off chasing princes. It had been a hectic week. Pellea had sent her to represent the DeAngelis royal family at a financial conference in Paris. She’d hated leaving for a whole week, but the fact that the queen had that much faith in her had been wonderful. She’d worked herself to the bone trying to live up to expectations and she was exhausted.
And while she was gone, the search for the last of the lost princes of Ambria had struck gold. First Mykal Marten, whom she’d met before she left for the continent, had been confirmed as the fourth prince. And then the news had come that the fifth and last prince had been discovered. When she saw the name—Max Arragen—in a newspaper account, she hadn’t thought much of it, but then she saw a picture. It was blurry and taken from a distance, but the jaunty set of the shoulders had made her think of Max—her Max. She’d gasped and begun to wonder.
It wasn’t until she’d returned home to Ambria a day ago that she’d seen a good picture and realized that Prince Max really was the man she’d known in Trialta as Max Arragen two years before. And that sent her into a virtual tailspin.
She’d only known him for about six months, but the time they’d spent together had been crazy and intense. He was her husband’s best friend, and they’d both been working as contract pilots, flying reconnaissance missions against the tyrannical regime of the North African nation of Trialta on the Mediterranean. They’d lived like young people involved in war often do, working hard during the day, partying at night like there was no tomorrow. They were fighting for the rebels and thought they were invincible.
She couldn’t believe he was back in her life again—at least in a peripheral way. He always managed to inject excitement and surprise into everything, like no one else she’d ever known. She remembered times in Trialta where it had seemed she and Eddie were in the lead vehicle in a continuous car chase—and Max was at the wheel.
And then came the day when Eddie didn’t return from a mission. The wreckage of his plane was found, and all the parties stopped. Kayla had clung to Max at the time and they’d mourned together, hardly believing that the Eddie they both loved so much could be gone forever. No one else could have understood how deep their grief was.
But that was then. Things had changed, for both of them. Surely he’d had some life-changing experiences since she last knew him. And she’d had a beautiful, wonderful child.
What would it be like to be friends with Max now? She was a little bit afraid to find out. She wasn’t the wide-eyed innocent she’d been two years before. She had some secrets of her own. And how would she keep them from him, now that he was going to be living right here in the castle?
She buried her worries in work, staying an hour longer than normal. And then, once she’d put away her papers and shut off her computer, she gave in to temptation and made her way down to the ballroom instead of going straight to her room.
She took a back entrance and climbed the stairs to a seldom-used interior balcony that overlooked the entire floor area. The orchestra was playing a waltz and the couples swept across the