Up for Heir - Stella Starling Page 0,84

time, faking a cough to avoid giving away his concern for the annoyingly absent little fluff bandit. She was no doubt lurking somewhere, lying in wait, and there was no need to tip his hand. “I was looking for my phone,” he lied instead, giving Hugo a look that defied the man to call him on it… not that Hugo could, of course. True, at times it may have seemed that he had the uncanny ability to keep track of the location of Leo’s phone with an accuracy that bordered on the supernatural, but no one was that good.

Hugo’s stoic face gave the slightest twitch. “Left trouser pocket, I believe, Your Highness,” he said, proving Leo wrong about that.

He clasped his hands behind his back, giving the pocket in question a pointed look until Leo gave in and pulled his phone out, the cheeky git.

“Hm,” Leo said, pressing his thumb to the screen to open it again. For the record, still no message from Eddie. He glanced up, confirming that Hans was gloating… and by gloating, Leo meant refusing to show any facial expression or other sign of his victory. Always a dead giveaway.

Leo’s lips twitched as he looked back down at the screen and refreshed it, just in case. “So that’s where it ended up,” he murmured, unwilling to admit defeat.

Hugo discreetly cleared his throat, an ever-so-proper request for Leo’s attention that had Leo looking up again. “Has Master Edvin responded regarding the allergen question?” he asked, giving the phone in Leo’s hand another pointed look.

“Not yet,” Leo said, biting back a smile because he’d recently discovered that, if anything was going to break through Hugo’s maddening dedication to antiquated, class-based decorum, it just might be the Bloms.

Hugo had a soft spot for them. Not, of course, that Leo could blame him.

Leo had tasked Hugo with setting up the apartment for the Bloms’ stay and Hugo had, not surprisingly, been exceedingly thorough… to the point that he’d suddenly started fretting that one of the younger siblings might have an undisclosed food allergy and had made the staff strip the apartment’s kitchenette bare until he could determine that his preparations wouldn’t accidentally put one of them at risk of anaphylactic shock.

Knowing how overprotective Eddie was, Leo was reasonably sure that if there had been such a risk, Eddie would have already mentioned it, but he certainly couldn’t fault Hugo for caring. He could, however, tease him about it… or at least he could have if his own attention hadn’t already been too fractured by the antsiness Eddie’s abnormally lengthy radio silence was causing him.

Leo tucked his phone away again. “I haven’t heard from Eddie yet today,” he admitted.

Hugo’s brows pulled together in the middle, just a fraction of an inch. “That seems… uncharacteristic.”

It was, and Leo couldn’t say he was a fan, but he respected Eddie’s priorities too much to allow himself to be jealous of other claims on Eddie’s time.

“He must have forgotten to recharge his phone,” Leo said, because it was a reasonable explanation that made sense. It still failed to settle Leo’s restlessness, though. The truth was that, respect or not, he simply missed Eddie—had been missing him all week, even with all the messaging, calls, and that unexpectedly erotic FaceTime session they’d shared—and if Leo hadn’t been obligated to attend the Royal Ball, he would have planned on stealing Eddie away to his suite for an indeterminate amount of time the moment he arrived at the palace, just to make up for it all.

Hugo’s face creased for a moment with the hint of a frown. A shame Leo was too distracted by thoughts of Eddie to enjoy the break in his facade.

“But you did get in touch with Master Oliver last night, did you not, Your Highness?”

“I did,” Leo replied, wandering over to his dresser and fingering one of the feathered toys he kept there and occasionally used to pacify Treble the Terror. The little bell on it jangled, but she failed to appear. Leo grimaced, adding, “I forgot to ask about allergens though, Hugo. I’m sorry.”

Leo would have sworn that Hugo almost sighed at that, but since pigs had yet to fly, he must have been mistaken.

“What did you and Master Oliver discuss, if I may be bold, Your Highness?” Hugo asked after a beat, making Leo’s lips twitch at the subtle and not-so-refined show of impatience. Not that Leo could blame him, of course. When Eddie had repeatedly failed to respond to Leo’s messages