The Queen's Impossible Boss - Natalie Anderson Page 0,35

office was closed, he never stopped working. And the distance meant seeing her was impossible.

But that didn’t stop him thinking about her. And in the end he couldn’t resist phoning her.

‘Alvaro? What’s wrong?’

He winced. Did there have to be something wrong for him to phone? ‘I’m checking up on your Christmas spirit. Have you been ice skating yet?’

‘You should have seen me. I nailed it.’ Her laughter was literally like bells.

Too much Christmas thinking. Too much missing...

‘You’ve probably been skating since before you could walk.’

‘I did find the rink a little small and crowded for my triple axel,’ she joked.

He couldn’t stand the thought of her ice skating on her own around that damned rink. ‘And you saw the tree?’

‘It was awesome, yes.’

‘And how many lights?’

‘Lots. Really good window displays too.’

Window displays? Wow. It all sounded ridiculously sad to him. ‘What else?’

‘Are you living vicariously through my Christmas experiences?’ she teased. ‘You don’t even like Christmas.’

‘I never said that,’ he protested. ‘I said I work Christmas.’

‘You said Christmas was distant families getting drunk and miserable.’

‘You’ve seen otherwise?’

‘I’ve seen lots of family groups in restaurants. They look happy to me.’

‘You only got a glimpse. You’ve got to see them at the end.’

‘Well, I’m hardly going to stand around for hours outside, peering through the windows and watching them like some stalker.’

He grimaced at the image. Yeah, she was isolated. She shouldn’t be doing those things alone. She should have family or friends with her to enjoy it with. But she had none. The only person who knew the truth of her life right now was him.

He returned to Manhattan two nights later. He stripped the bed. Even bought new linen—midnight blue, anything to make it different from how it had been when she’d been there with him. But he still couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop seeing her smiling and her pretty form supine and the soft stretch of her creamy skin with the dew of sweat and the stain of colour in her face as he’d aroused her. So slow, so delicious, so worth every precious moment. The slippery sweetness of her taste. Being with her had been the hottest experience of his life and the ache of desire in his body now was enough to send a man insane.

But that wasn’t what was really messing him around. It was his conscience. That sense of having done something wrong. But the mistake wasn’t having had her, but in leaving her alone since.

That had been no ordinary night. And she faced no ordinary week. And he was flooded with something so much bigger than regret.

He woke early and went to the gym, desperate to burn off his frustration. It didn’t work. That jaded, irritable feeling within only grew. He stalked to the coffee shop and got a triple shot. Waiting for it to be made, he glared out of the window, then his gaze dropped to the table beside him, and the paper spread on it. He flicked through a couple of pages, knowing what he’d find. Sure enough, there were more pictures of ‘Queen Jade’, aka Princess Juno, and King Leonardo, gallivanting around Severene, doing royal walkabouts and other feeding-the-media-frenzy things.

Jade had said there’d been some speculation about that stupid possible marriage—but these weren’t whispers, these were screaming headlines and they sparked Alvaro’s fury. Had Jade seen these pictures? What was her sister playing at? Was Jade seriously still contemplating some kind of political marriage? Was that why she’d been so keen to leave him so early the other morning? Was this all part of some crazy plan?

No. That wasn’t Jade. She was too straight. And she’d been so determined to fix her job for her sister. So determined to be good. To not offend anyone. She was dutiful to the point of damaging her own future.

She’d said she wanted a few weeks of freedom. Some space to do the iconic Christmas things... Alvaro had never had the most abundant or joyful of Christmases, but he thought he’d actually had more than she had, even when he’d worked all day.

Fairy lights and fir trees...she’d had restrained decoration but never heartfelt detail. Not the closeness and comfort of family or even friends...those fun times that he too had seen in so many Christmas movies or season specials of nostalgic TV shows.

At the end of a long Christmas Day, he and Ellen had at least had each other. She’d tried her best to give him something even small. So now he gave her all