“That’s the most pressing question you have for me?” I ask.
He folds his arms across his chest, causing the fabric to tighten in all the right places, and rewards my laughter with a smile.
“I will add a more serious one after you answer the banoffee one. I told you I was intrigued by it. That wasn’t a lie.”
Now I’m trying to see him behind the brilliant smile. He was known as a flirt and a philanderer with a devil-may-care attitude when he was on leave from the army. Yet my gut says that is not in play right now. Not this man with the serious living room. Not the one who, for some reason, wants to talk to me.
Which brings another question to my mind.
“Okay, I’ll answer the banoffee question with mind-numbing detail, and you may ask me a secondary question. But I will only answer if I get to ask one of my own.”
The smile deepens. “You like to one-up the rules, don’t you?”
“I wasn’t aware there were rules here, since you threw out the protocol of me addressing you as Your Royal Highness and dipping into a curtsy.”
“Well, I had to do that. Self-preservation, you know. I can’t have you farting in my house.”
I burst out laughing, and he joins me, and the hallway echoes with the rich sound of our laughter mingling as one musical sound.
“You know I did not do that,” I insist after I regain my composure.
“I don’t know. I smelt something.”
“Okay, would you stop? Enough. You have evaded my question long enough, sir,” I say, giving him an arched brow. “Now. My question. What kind of man do you want to be?”
Xander’s light-hearted expression turns back to serious. I feel like Benedict Cumberbatch in those old Sherlock reruns—where he stares at someone and different words pop into his head as he tries to sort the person out.
Except with Xander, my deduction skills aren’t working.
What I assumed I knew about him, I realise, might not be true.
Or at least not true anymore.
“I want to be a good man like my father,” he says slowly, his molten voice cutting through my thoughts. “I want to be a good king when my time comes. I want to serve the United Kingdom in the way he has. Yet, I want to figure out a way to make it my own. I can never be Arthur, no matter how hard I try. And that weighs on me. Quite a bit.”
I feel my lips part. I never expected him to answer in such a raw, honest way.
“I should have this sorted, you know,” Xander continues, his mouth curving into a wry smile. “I’ve known I would be a king since I was in nursery school.”
“Knowing you are going to be king growing up is one thing,” I say. “But getting to a point in your life where you have to prepare to take that role and perform the duty in a way that is unique to your beliefs and values, and those of the United Kingdom, is another.”
That studying expression appears on his face again.
And once again, I feel like I’m the puzzle he’s trying to figure out.
“Yes,” he says, his eyes searching mine.
I feel myself grow hot under his penetrating blue eyes. “I appreciate your honest answer to that question. You don’t know me, and you trusted me with something very personal.”
“You have a contract with my brother. I trust you won’t leak it to the tabloids. Besides, if you did, I’d know it. I haven’t told that to anyone else.”
I blink. “You haven’t?”
“No.”
I swear, I’m going to pass out. My head is spinning. I don’t understand why Xander is standing here having this conversation with me. Confiding in me. It’s crazy.
But perhaps his gut is leading him like mine is leading me.
To be here, in this moment, together.
“Listen, I have a proposition for you,” he says slowly.
“Another one?” I ask, teasing him.
He grins. “Yes, another one. You have promised me a mind-numbing, detailed account of the metamorphosis from banoffee pie into a chocolate chip cookie.”
“I did,” I say.
“However, that might take time. I’m already famished as it is. I was thinking about ordering a curry, and perhaps you could tell me that story over dinner.”
“What?” I ask, stunned. I couldn’t have heard him right. My heart is hammering in my ears. I feel lightheaded. No, there’s no way he just uttered that invitation to me. Not this man.