Royally Claimed - By Marie Donovan Page 0,8
my sisters do. My nieces and nephews love fishing and exploring the island.” Frank speared an egg wedge. Probably laid fresh this morning in the family henhouse.
“But you don’t stay there.”
“Once in a while.” He’d tried to vacation there a few times, but seeing Julia’s shadow in every room had made his visits short and far between. “There are a couple rooms that need to be painted, some garden work done and a thorough cleaning and airing. Oh, and I bought a beautiful new outdoor whirlpool tub that was just installed yesterday.”
She smiled. “Sounds like a wonderful place for your friend’s sister and her husband.”
“Stefania is a real sweetheart. Hard to believe she’s already twenty-four when I remember how little she was when she came to New York. Poor girl, losing both her parents at once.” Stefania had been inconsolable. Her grandmother, fearing for her granddaughter’s mental health, had sent Stefania to live with George, Jack and Frank. After hiring a housekeeper, the three nineteen-year-old guys raised Stefania through her preteen and teenage years. Frank shuddered at some of those memories.
“What was that shiver for?” Julia was eating heartily now, wiping her bowl with some bread. He was glad to see that since she looked a bit thin.
“Stefania always has been a handful. She once chained herself and her electronic bullhorn to a lamp-post outside a certain foreign consulate whose country was not particularly kind to its women and children.”
Julia burst out laughing.
“She called every media outlet in New York, drew a crowd of several hundred enthusiastic supporters and wound up on the national nightly news. When one reporter tried to take her to task for being the product of an outdated patriarchal monarchy, she told her how her own country had granted women the vote twenty years before America and how her outdated patriarchal monarchy had a female literacy rate of one hundred percent compared to that consulate’s country’s dismal rate of fourteen percent.”
“Good for Stefania. Blasted them with facts. And what does she do now?”
“She’s finishing her master’s degree in international politics and will probably stay in New York since George is running their own country very well. She’d let him know if he weren’t.”
“You have to keep politicians on their toes.”
“She also will be selling a commemorative perfume made from lavender at Jack’s French estate. Proceeds go to her women’s and children’s charity.”
“What an accomplished young woman. Give her my best wishes if you get the chance.” Julia sipped her water and pushed her bowl away. “That is so filling. I can’t believe I ate all of that.”
“Our food is comfort food. Nothing low carb or low fat about it.” Frank finished his own helping. “And now for dessert.”
“No, Frank,” she groaned. “I may pop.”
He didn’t want her to go yet, but forcefeeding her was probably not the way to spend more time with her. Maybe bribing her with food? “How about we take a couple pastries with us? We can go for a walk, pick up some coffee and then you can try one.”
She hesitated. “Okay. That way I don’t have to cook dinner for myself.”
He signaled the waiter to order before she changed her mind. The waiter brought him a box of pastries and Frank paid the tab, despite Julia’s protest that she wanted to pitch in. Frank and the waiter gave her such an incredulous glance that she subsided.
Frank hid a smile. He may have been educated in the United States, a more modern version of his ducal ancestors, but there was no way in hell a woman would pay for her own meal on a date with him.
And whether Julia realized it or not, liked it or not, it was a date.
3
JULIA FOUGHT THE BUTTERFLIES in her stomach as she walked next to Frank. Their lunch had felt suspiciously like a date—not that she and Frank had bothered to date very long the first time they’d met.
Her teenage self had wanted to blow off steam after her first stressful year in college, and sexy Frank had been more than willing to help. But it had quickly turned to more.
She sneaked a look at his profile. He’d lost his eager openness of earlier years, but what did she expect? She wasn’t exactly a fresh-faced innocent any longer, either.
Frank caught her looking at him. She thought he’d make something of that, but all he asked was how she’d decided to come to the Azores again.
She chewed her lip for a second and decided to tell