Up for Heir - Stella Starling Page 0,15

pure sunshine? Well, Leo still may not have understood why he’d just blown off an entire Saturday to play nursemaid, or why strategizing another reason to see Eddie again suddenly seemed so important, but he also wasn’t interested in questioning it.

As Crown Prince of Rosavia, Leo had a lot of privileges in his life. He wasn’t blind to that fact. But he’d never had anyone who looked at him like that.

Chapter Four

Edvin

Edvin truly loved his job, and not just because it was the means by which he’d been able to support his family and keep them all together for the last five years. The meticulous work, the interesting and varied research opportunities, the detail-oriented organization required to stay on top of things at the library… it suited him. And the majority of the time, the start of his work day was one of the things he looked forward to the most.

But today, it was the end of his shift he’d been counting down the minutes for.

“Want to walk to the tram stop together, Edvin?” Maja Svenson from the circulation desk asked, gathering up her handbag and the latest book in the small town romance series she kept trying to get him to read.

“N-N-Not today, Maja,” Edvin said as she tucked the book into her bag. He bit back the wide smile that had been trying to burst out all day. All week, if he was being honest, ducking his head. “I, um, I h-h-have a ride.”

Maja gave him a curious look, but didn’t press him for details. Probably a good thing, since Edvin couldn’t quite believe it himself and probably would have ended up with his tongue tangled into a knot if he’d tried to get the words out.

He didn’t just have “a ride”; Leo—Crown Prince Leopold Something-Or-Other van Rosavia—had asked if he could pick Edvin up to discuss an “important matter,” an important matter that he apparently needed Edvin’s help with, after Edvin’s shift ended.

Which meant… now.

Another fluttery thrill shot through Edvin’s stomach, and then the library’s main lights suddenly dimmed, plunging the vast room around him into near-darkness. Oops. He’d been busy randomly smiling again, staring off into the stacks at nothing whatsoever for who knows how long.

That kept happening to him lately.

Clearly, it was a lingering side effect of his brush with royalty.

Princes should come with warning labels.

“You are leaving, are you not, Edvin?” the head librarian asked as she caught sight of him, her heels clicking sharply on the marble floors. She peered over her rimless glasses at him, frowning. “Your shift ended at six.”

“Y-Y-Yes, ma’am,” he said, shaking off his swoon and grabbing his things, then heading toward the main entrance. “G-G-Goodnight.”

He pulled his phone out of his messenger bag, adjusting his glasses with his other hand as he opened the text thread with the prince. His feet led him out of the building on autopilot as he reread the last message.

I’ll be waiting out front when you get off, it still read, right there in crisp, clean, san serif text, proving yet again that Edvin wasn’t just imagining the whole thing.

I’m off, he sent back as he exited the imposing double doors that Leo had cut a ribbon in front of during that dedication ceremony a couple of weeks ago.

“I’m off…?” Edvin murmured to himself as soon as he hit send, shaking his head and immediately feeling a little foolish. Granted, he wasn’t the most eloquent person in verbal conversation, but surely he could manage something more worthy of corresponding with a prince when in text.

He stifled a self-deprecating groan, then jerked his eyes off his screen, his head bobbing up like a marionette, when the already familiar, deliciously deep voice of the crown prince of Rosavia called out his name.

“Eddie,” Leo said, leaning against the side of a shiny black-and-silver car that looked like it should be starring in a Bond movie.

Edvin swallowed, stopping in his tracks because… well, because he was only human, and humans liked beautiful things, and Leo was, in Edvin’s completely unbiased opinion, quite simply the pinnacle of male beauty. He was wearing one of those I-just-stepped-out-of-a-fashion-shoot outfits that he was so often photographed in—all distressed denim, cool black leather, and overwhelming sex appeal—and as Edvin looked him over, his face flooded with heat for no apparent reason.

Okay, maybe for a super, super apparent reason, actually—because hello, previously noted and entirely unfair amounts of sex appeal—but it was also the kind of reason that Edvin desperately hoped the prince