those sincere pools of deep blue, seeing the emotion there, it makes more than perfect sense to be with him.
It’s right.
“Thank you,” I say, picking up the card and moving to the till. I charge him the same amount I would any other customer in the shop. I wait for the till to spit out the receipt, and once it’s finished, I tear it off and hand it to him. “Thank you for your business, Your Royal Highness. We’ll have that cake delivered tomorrow.”
He shoots me a look when his title passes my lips. I smile cheekily at him in return.
“Thank you for your assistance. You’ve been tremendously helpful in meeting my needs this morning. Have a lovely day,” he says.
Then he turns, seemingly oblivious to the people taking pictures of him, and with what his plain-clothed personal protection officers, exits the shop.
I turn around to find my coworkers staring at me. I know they are dying to ask what he ordered and what he was like, but they won’t do it in front of the morning rush, or Charlotte would have their heads.
I move past them, pushing open the door and re-entering the workroom. I’m about to wash my hands when my phone buzzes in my apron pocket. I retrieve it, and my heart skips a beat when I see a Connectivity message from Xander:
I’m sorry. You’ll be all over social media today because of me. Luckily, they won’t have your name and won’t care—you’ll be shop clerk or baker—and I know you prefer that. It’s good publicity for the bakery ahead of what Christian and Clementine will give you. It was selfish of me to come see you, I know that, but I had to. I wanted to. No. I needed to see you.
A dreamy sigh escapes my lips. He needed to see me—how romantic is that?
Before I can even reply, he sends me another message:
And I KNEW you’d charge me for the cake and not give it to me. Now that, my Sunshine, is sexy as HELL. I’ll show you my gratitude for that when I see you tomorrow night. In more ways than merely telling you.
My skin grows hot as I read his message. My veins are pulsating with happiness. We might not make sense in the world, but being with Xander makes sense in my heart.
And for now, that’s all that matters.
Chapter Thirteen
Start At The Top
Just when I think I have already had the weirdest day ever in my life—when I dropped the biscuits and was rescued by a prince who then took an interest in this hot mess biscuit artist—I raise the bar another notch.
I think about this as I sink down onto the sofa. I’ve changed into my pyjamas, put my hair in a top knot, and washed my face. I’ve applied a charcoal face mask to purify my skin—that’s the claim on the Connectivity Story Share ad that suckered me into this purchase in the first place—and now I exhale. I need this moment from the crazy. I’m ignoring my phone, which has been going off non-stop since pictures of me waiting on Xander surfaced all over the media.
I swear, within an hour of pics appearing on Instagram and Connectivity feeds, even my mum and dad knew I had waited on Xander. Which meant every relative and family friend knew, and everyone went crazy after they saw I served Prince Alexander. Isla sent me a barrage of texts, my brother Leo asked if he was a complete snob, and so far, I have not returned the double-digit phone calls from my sister Eva, who demanded a full blow-by-blow account of every moment spent with that “sensual beast of a man.”
I can’t help but grin. Imagine if she knew I’ve had two dates with that “sensual beast of a man.”
But that revelation is a long way off, as who knows where this will go and if we will ever make it to the “go public” stage.
Which would be both wonderful, as that would mean I’m in a happy, successful relationship, yet terrible, as I would be thrown into a spotlight I can’t imagine living in. It’s one thing to have fans on YouTube because they like my biscuit tutorials.
It’s a whole other thing to be dating the future king and the absolute shit show that would come along with that.
I laugh out loud. Lord, how strange is this, that something so wonderful could be tied with something so awful, something that would be