Royal Ruse - Emma Lea Page 0,38

what it would be like to live in Kalopsia full time and actually be part of the royal court.

Which was why I was trying to research the king and his wife and the other members of the court. The flight from Boston to Thessaloniki was just over ten hours and then there was a one hour helicopter flight from Thessaloniki to Kalopsia. Plenty of time to research the people I would spend the immediate future with, except…

Frankie shifted beside me, and a wave of her chocolate chip cookie scent tickled my nose.

Right. That was the reason I couldn’t concentrate on the computer on my lap. Frankie had curled up next to me and fallen asleep, laying her head on my shoulder and sneaking her arm through mine. I hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything else since.

The feel of her warm body next to mine brought back in vivid detail what it had been like to kiss her, and I mean kiss her properly. That first weird kiss I’d laid on her at the bar when I proposed didn’t count. The kiss in front of all the beautiful people of Boston was a completely different thing, though. It had gone on more than was polite, but by the end, no one could dispute that Frankie and I were an actual couple…not that anyone had questioned our relationship.

When I broke the kiss and she looked up at me with dazed eyes, I’d wanted nothing more than to kiss her again and keep kissing her for the rest of our lives but the applause from the crowd had finally broken through the fugue we’d stumbled into and I stepped back, breaking my hold on her and tearing my gaze from her kiss-swollen lips and the heat in her eyes. It would have been so very easy to forget that our engagement was fake. And I couldn’t afford to do that.

I’d kept my distance the rest of the night. I’d been so thrown by my reaction to the kiss, I didn’t know how to even look at Frankie without feeling it all over again. I’d hoped spending the night apart would have given me the perspective that I needed, but as soon as I’d picked her up from her house this morning, it all came rushing back.

Then she sat next to me on the plane.

We were flying on a private charter plane and there were plenty of seats and heaps of room for her to stretch out wherever she wanted to, but no, she’d chosen to sit next to me. It was torture, but more so when she fell asleep and used me as a convenient pillow. I could have called the flight attendant to get her a pillow if she’d asked, but she didn’t.

Part of me thought she was doing it on purpose…and I didn’t hate the idea.

Part of me thought that the kiss had affected her just as much as it had affected me. But I couldn’t let myself go there. That way only led to pain and disappointment. The only thing that had affected Frankie that night was the champagne and the crowd. She got caught up in the atmosphere and the romance of it all and that’s what she reacted to. It had nothing to do with the kiss. It had nothing to do with me.

I closed the lid of my laptop with a sigh and pushed it across the table away from me. There was no way I could concentrate as long as she was curled up beside me. I may as well try to get some sleep too. I had slept little since the party. I’d relived that kiss over and over again and analyzed every single look and glance Frankie gave me afterward, regardless of how inconsequential it was. It was overthinking at its finest and it had given me insomnia in the worst way.

I slid down in my seat and shifted until I got comfortable. Frankie mumbled in her sleep and frowned until I stopped moving and I couldn’t help but smile down at her. She was cute when she was asleep. Who was I kidding? She was cute all the time, but when she was asleep, all her rough edges smoothed out. Don’t get me wrong, I liked her rough edges, which was why I’d been so mad at my mother for trying to change Frankie. I liked her exactly the way she was, ripped jeans and two-tone hair and all. She’d been the