His Princess - Stacy Gail Page 0,19

you. If anyone is going to stumble across that rare unicorn of falling in love at first sight, it’d be you. The question is, is Gus Bloch the type of man to feel the same way?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured, shaking her head in a dazed kind of way. It wasn’t every day she realized she was on the precipice of falling in love, after all. “I can’t allow myself to think about that, because I can’t control what he feels. I can barely control what I’m feeling. which I’m going to label as lust for now,” she added, putting a hand to her somersaulting heart. “Going off the deep end and dreaming about happily ever after with a man I just met is too much even for me to handle.”

Alice’s response was interrupted by the sedate bonging of the front doorbell.

Gus.

“I swear, if that man has decided to just show up out of the blue and not give me the chance to get my damn makeup on, I will literally throttle him.” Nevertheless, Joelle hopped to her feet and practically ran to the door, while anticipation made her almost giddy with a wild urge to laugh. That urge fizzled out when she looked through the peephole and saw a delivery man already walking away. “Damn it.”

“What is it?” Alice hovered around the mouth of the foyer, as if not knowing whether or not she needed to give Joelle some privacy.

“It’s just a delivery. I forgot I ordered a couple makeup kits for a Halloween segment I’m planning, so that’s all this is.” It wasn’t Gus. He hadn’t troubled himself to drop in on her even though Gilded Swan was no more than an eight-minute car ride from there. It didn’t matter that she could have made that car ride herself; what mattered was that he hadn’t shown enough interest in her over the past four days to inspire her to make that car ride.

Then again, maybe he felt the same way.

Maybe he wanted her to pursue him.

Or maybe she really was just like all the others he’d dated. Maybe she really was just a one-and-done princess in his eyes.

“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath as she hauled open the door.

And came to a jaw-dropping halt.

“Geez, how much makeup did you order?” Alice was beside her, staring at the large rectangular box propped up against the wall. “You can have too much of a good thing, you know.”

“I don’t think that’s my order.” Frowning, Joelle bent to read the label, only to hear her own breath squeak to a halt. “It’s from a florist. These are flowers. I didn’t send myself flowers.”

“Good, because that’d be weird.” Alice backed out of the way as Joelle snatched up the surprisingly hefty box and all but dashed to the living room to drop it on the coffee table. A few moments later she had the box open, and a lushly exotic perfume spilled into the room as she stared at a profusion of purple flowers.

“Wow,” Joelle said softly, staring at the gorgeous bouquet. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many purple flowers in my life.”

“Same here.” Alice also peered into the box. “I was expecting roses.”

“Any man can give roses. Gus Bloch isn’t just any man.” Then she gasped out loud and dived into all that heaven-scented purple. “Unless these aren’t from Gus.”

“Who else would they be from?”

“I don’t know. Someone. Aha.” With a sound of triumph, she surfaced with a card. “Here we go.”

“Let me guess,” Alice drawled, heading back to the couch to fold up the pencil skirt before tucking it back in the bag. “It’s Gus.”

“He says these are princess flowers, and that they’re only found in one place on earth. Rare and beautiful, like me.” Okay, maybe she wouldn’t kill him, after all.

“Not to mention princessy,” Alice snorted. “Don’t forget princessy.”

“He wants me to clear my decks so I can give him my undivided attention.” That brought her brows together like nothing else, as did the next line. “According to this, I’m supposed to pack a bag and be free of all work obligations by three this afternoon.”

“Why?”

“Apparently he’s picking me up for a long weekend.”

“That sounds kind of authoritative but potentially fun,” Alice said after a moment. “At least now you know he didn’t forget about you. That should make you feel better.”

“Who does he think he is, ordering me to clear my decks like that? The nerve.” Slamming the lid back onto the admittedly gorgeous