polo shirt was spread casually wide, notching over the brown-and-orange plaid sport coat.
“Not me.” She leaned back, hands out on the wide armrests. “I never try to impress a date.”
“Come on. You can’t expect me to believe you.”
“Being on your best behavior? That’s too hard to maintain and sets false expectations. I don’t want a man willing to be with the best version of me. I want the man who wants to hang around the worst version of me.”
Holy shit. Not only was the woman whip-smart, she understood how people worked. “You’re brilliant. Why doesn’t everyone use that approach?”
“Ego. I mean, I did my hair. Put on makeup. Because I still want to be alluring. That way, should you see me at my very worst, you’ll have a memory of me on a good day to pull you through.”
“I’ve seen you white as a sheet from blood loss in a hospital gown. With your hair in two adorable braids. You were still beautiful.”
“Doubtful,” she said, crinkling her nose. “I don’t remember you visiting me in the hospital?”
Oh, the memory would never, ever leave him.
Christian leaned over the trio of glass candleholders to run a long red strand of curl through his fingers. “You vacillated between being asleep and so drugged you might as well have been asleep. But I had to see for myself that you were okay.”
“Thank you.”
The soft clatter of silver against china punctuated the silence that hung between them. Silence that was his fault. Christian had meant to give a compliment, but he’d just ended up reminding Mallory of her near-death experience.
Nothing romantic about that.
Mallory might be relaxed, but clearly he needed to focus more. It took a considerable amount of arm-twisting to convince her to date him at all. A lackluster first date would kill his chances of a second.
Putting her hand to the side of her mouth, Mallory stage-whispered, “Christian!”
“What?”
She pointed behind the shield of her hand. “That table across the aisle is staring at you.”
Nothing romantic about that, either. Christian pulled back his shoulders, lifted his chin, and turned to give them a brief smile/nod combo. Then there was a scraping of six chairs as they all pushed back, half stood, murmured Your Highness and then sat.
“Remember Elias’s warning that dating me could be a pain in the ass? Consider that exhibit one in his argument. Apologies for the interruption.”
“Shouldn’t you go say hello?”
Yes.
Maybe.
But he wouldn’t. “No. I’m not here on an official function. I’m not ‘working,’ as it were.” Christian tugged on her wrist to pull it away from her face. Then, since he had a hold of it, he rubbed the edge of his thumb along the satiny softness of her skin.
“They still made a huge deal out of you recognizing them.”
“Because they’ll go home and tell all their friends and family that they dined alongside the prince. That they spoke to me.”
“They didn’t, though, not really. They acknowledged you. There was no conversation.”
“Nobody will quibble over the details. Or ask for video playback for confirmation.”
After taking a sip of her lychee martini, Mallory slowly waved the glass toward the other table. “If you were in a movie, they would’ve gotten paid twice as much as you and gotten union credit because they spoke. You were mute. An extra in the scene. Like a fidgety kid who can’t remember lines, so they make him a tree in the background of a school play.”
That’d be a first. Even in the navy, Christian never felt like he blended into the background. It cracked him up that Mallory’s view was so different. He winced. “Did you take a vow to cut me down to size whenever possible?”
Barely looking up from beneath half-closed lids as she took another sip, Mallory said, “It’s more of a fun game than a vow.”
And then she did look up.
And slyly winked at him.
Christian howled with laughter. Because the woman got him. She didn’t just ignore the shadow of his looming crown. No, Mallory drop-kicked it away. Genevieve and Kelsey were the only other two in the world who treated him so casually.
He loved it. He chuckled all the way through the delivery of beef wrapped in leaves and a spicy, fried calamari. It finally trailed off as the waitress, garbed in a traditional silk split tunic, served both of them portions on small green lacquered plates.
“I try to balance my dings with compliments. You, sir, earned yourself some big-time points by asking if you could order for me.”
Were American men