Life slows down in the palace on weekends. Since this is their last weekend before the arrival of Max’s relatives and the madness of the wedding, Phoenix and Max take off for the castle upriver at Waldburg, to visit with Claus and Rebekah, and ride their bikes in the countryside. They deserve time alone after the hectic few weeks they’ve had, but I wish I was going with them. Anything would be better than dance lessons with a man who should come with a health warning: liable to cause heart flutters and irrational thinking.
Nevertheless, I ask the maid who brings me breakfast to show me to the ballroom, where Adam is ready and waiting. On the plus side, we’re left completely alone, so no one is around to witness how often I get breathless when I’m in his arms. Or how often I step on his feet, or move in the wrong direction.
“I clearly don’t know what I’m doing,” I moan. I must have inherited my dance ability from my father rather than my mother, whose first job in Vegas was as a showgirl, before she fell pregnant with Calvin.
“You need to trust me!” Adam throws up his hands in exasperation. “Stop trying to plan the steps ahead of time and let me lead.”
“Let me dance barefoot, at least,” I beg.
He shakes his head. “You can’t take off your shoes at every ball you attend.”
“It’s only one ball. Are you sure I have to do this?”
He pulls a sheet of paper from his pocket and I see it’s another of the palace’s typed schedules, but this time it’s a list of dances. Geez, even the wedding reception is scheduled down to the last minute.
After Phoenix and Max have their first dance, they’re supposed to dance with their parents. Since both of Phoenix’s parents are dead, she’ll dance with his grandfather, and he’ll dance with his mother. That’s when Adam and I are supposed to join them. Then I’m supposed to dance with Max’s grandfather, while Adam partners Max’s mother. I scrunch up my nose. We’re going to be on that dance floor for at least ten minutes with only two other couples and an audience of over three hundred invited guests. Please remind me why I agreed to be Phoenix’s bridesmaid?
Adam holds out his hand to me again, and when I place mine in it he pulls me up against him. He settles one hand on my lower back and holds my other hand.
“Just keep looking at me,” he says. “Not at your feet.”
He starts up his MP3 player again, and we start to move. I do what he says, keeping my eyes on his, and surprisingly it works. I get so lost in his gaze that I lose the ability to control my feet. His hand is firm on my lower back, guiding me as we sweep around the ballroom. When the song ends, he stops moving. I feel dizzy, and I don’t think it’s from dancing.
“See,” he says triumphantly. “When you stop trying to direct everything and go with the flow, you dance really well.”
I’m exhausted by the time we break for lunch. Not that it’s much of a break. We eat alone in the breakfast room, with only a maid serving us rather than the terrifying butler, but Adam insists we observe all the correct table manners for a formal dinner. There’s so much to remember – the correct distance to sit from the table (two hands’ width), the correct place to lay a napkin or a fork to send a message to the servers, the correct way to use cutlery so they don’t clink against the plates or cups.
“I can’t do this!” I moan, sinking my head down onto the empty placemat after the sorbet course has been removed – which I’ve now learned is a palate cleanser rather than dessert. “Please let this week be over.”
Adam takes pity on me and gives me the afternoon off. I curl up on my bed, determined to finish the Faye Kellerman mystery I’m reading. My eyes grow heavier, until I’m suddenly startled awake by a loud knocking on the door. The room is dark, illuminated only by a shaft of pale blue moonlight. I fumble my way to the door. It’s Adam. Of course.
And he’s dressed in jeans and a plain black shirt. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in jeans.
I rub my eyes. “Am I late for dinner?”
“Nope. I gave the staff the night off. I’m taking you out on the town tonight.”
“Just promise me no bars.”
He arches an eyebrow, and I groan. But I give in. I’d rather be in a crowded place, with loud music and lots of other people, than alone in this very big, very empty palace with Adam.
***
Neustadt is as magical by night as it is by day. There are bars and restaurants everywhere, with lights and music and laughter. The shops stay open late, there are food and craft beer stalls on the street corners and the sidewalk cafés are full. We wander along the river, stopping at a food truck for a dinner of döner kebabs and local weissbier which we eat sitting on the stone balustrade of a bridge as the tour boats pass beneath us, lit up with multi-colored lights.
The bar Adam takes me to is the Landmark Café. It looks very different at night, with electric-blue light reflecting off the brushed-steel bar. There’s live music, and people are dancing out on the terrace overlooking the river. We find an empty sofa in a corner of the bar, and Adam orders us the Landmark’s signature blue cocktail. It’s not as sweet as it looks, and I drink it down rather quicker than I should.
By the second drink, I let him cajole me onto the dance floor. The music is fast-paced and loud, making conversation impossible. This is my kind of dancing, gyrating to a beat rather than having to think about where to place my feet. The music is new to me, with German lyrics and a beat made for dancing. It pulses through me, in time with the swirling light. The dance floor is packed and we’re pushed close together, our bodies swaying in rhythm, thighs and hips and arms touching until my hormones are drunk on the sensation.
By the third drink, I can’t remember why I didn’t want to be alone with Adam tonight. In fact, I really, really want to get him alone. Because the things I want him to do to me can’t be done in a very public bar.
He calls for a palace car to fetch us home, and I don’t argue. I want this. I want him. I really, really want him. Those fancy blue drinks clearly cause amnesia, because I can’t remember a single reason why I ever thought being just another notch on Adam Hatton’s bedpost was a bad thing.
In the back of the car, with the dark glass separating us from the driver up front, I lay my hand on Adam’s thigh. He doesn’t push it away. Instead, he lays his hand over mine, trapping my palm against his leg. His long fingers intertwine with mine, and his thumb brushes the back of my hand until my whole body is a molten mess. We sit like that for a long time, as the streets blur past, until the car slides between the massive palace gates and rounds the building towards the private entrance.
He only lets go of my hand when we climb out the car, but when I stumble, my low heel snagging in the loose gravel, he catches me, wrapping a strong arm around my waist, his fingers warm against the bare skin between the top of my jeans and the sparkly sequinned crop tank top I’m wearing.
Yes! The warmth and strength of his hand against my skin promises pure pleasure.
His hand stays there, all the way past the sleepy security officer who opens the front door to us, all the way up the stairs and to my bedroom door.
But when I open the door and hold it wide in invitation, his hand falls away and he doesn’t step across the threshold.
“Do you want to come in?” I ask, draping myself against the door like a provocative silver screen siren.
He clears his throat. “That wouldn’t be a good idea. Just friends, remember?”
Friends. Right.
“I’ll meet you in the ballroom at nine.” Then he turns and strides away down the corridor toward his own room. I shut the door and throw my purse at it. Lip gloss, tissues, and my phone rain down as the bag bursts open. I sag to the floor and sink my head into my hands. How is it possible that a man with a reputation like his didn’t take advantage when it was offered to him?
If I were thinking at all rationally right now, I’d probably hate myself for wanting him. But my body is wound so tight I don’t care. Because that feeling I had when I first laid eyes on him in the library nearly two weeks ago is now ten times stronger than it was back then. Yeah, I’d like to do him.
***
Since we only got back to the palace in the early hours, I’ve hardly slept by the time I meet Adam in the ballroom. My head hurts, and my muscles ache. I didn’t realize ballroom dancing uses so many muscles. Adam has thoughtfully supplied bottles of water which at least relieves my dehydration, even though it does nothing for the pain in my head. The headache has nothing to do with last night’s cocktails and everything to do with the fact that I spend the better part of the day in Adam’s arms, our bodies constantly touching and swaying together.
By the time Max and Phoenix return from their weekend escape late that afternoon, I’ve mastered the basics of the waltz, rumba, cha-cha, foxtrot and quickstep. I draw the line at learning to tango. I am never going to need to dance a tango.
With their return, the palace goes from silent as a grave to humming. The next morning there’s an official debrief for the bridal party and all the heads of staff in which Claus runs us through every step of the processions, ceremonies and even the speeches. This is suddenly very real. Though I’ve been working on my speech since I first received Phoenix’s call, I pray for a lightning strike or other act of God to get me out of it.
On Tuesday the palace is overrun with staff, preparing for the arrival of the first wedding guests – Max’s family.
Phoenix’s anxiety feels almost like a living thing, and I share the feeling, though for entirely different reasons. Tonight, we’ll be sitting down to dinner with a whole bunch of royalty. This will be my first real test since that disastrous dinner party. But for Phoenix, her anxiety isn’t because of the titles or the etiquette, but because they’re family. By lunchtime she’s a wreck.
“I’ve met them all before, and they’re wonderful people.” She folds her napkin over and over. “But it’s just so …”
Overwhelming. I get it. Her mother died when she was young and she was raised by a single father, just like I was raised by a single mother. Neither of us even knew our grandparents. Suddenly finding herself in a large family of in-laws and grandparents and cousins has to be pretty intimidating.
“My mother sent a long text this morning,” I say, ready to provide a distraction. “She’s dating the GP she’s working for.”
Phoenix laughs. “Oh, no! That is so not going to end well. And I thought she was really enjoying that job?”
“Me too.” I sigh. “Her eyes are always so full of stars, she can’t see straight.”
Which is exactly how I feel about Adam.
***
We gather in the private drawing room for pre-dinner drinks. This is a long room with French windows opening straight into the private garden. The walls are painted a soft periwinkle blue, and the ceiling is decorated with plaster molding painted in gold. The scent of roses drifts in through the open doors.
When I enter, running late because it took me an age to straighten and tame my hair, the room is already packed with people. Phoenix comes forward to welcome me, squeezing my hand in mutual support, before she introduces me to everyone.
Max’s mother was a supermodel before she married the former archduke. She’s still beautiful and effortlessly glamorous, with a tanned glow that suggests her new life in California agrees with her, but there’s a sadness in her eyes too. Phoenix once told me Max’s parents were desperately in love, and her husband’s death really knocked her.
His American grandparents are down-to-earth, and when his grandfather shakes my hand I can feel the roughened work calluses on his palm that remind me he’s still a wine farmer.
Then there’s Max’s older brother Rik, as dark as Max is fair. His hair’s a little over-long and tattoos peek out beneath his sleeves, making him look more like a marauding pirate than a dethroned prince. I cannot believe that once upon a time he was the dutiful brother, the one raised to be archduke. Rik’s new bride, Kenzie, is a ‘commoner’ like me and Phoenix, and she makes me feel less like a unicorn in this room of beautiful people. She’s petite and fragile-looking, with ginger hair, freckles, and sparkling blue eyes. She’s also heavily pregnant.
“Yes, I was an enormous bride.” She giggles as she rubs her belly. “I can’t wait for the baby to come. The sooner he or she arrives, the sooner we can go home.”
“Where’s home?”
“We live on an island in the Caribbean called Corona, but we’ll be staying with my parents in England until after the birth. Rik thinks I should have my mother close by.” She rolls her eyes. “I love my parents dearly, but they also drive me nuts.”
Trust me, I get it.
Max’s other brother, Christian, is the newcomer in the family, the late archduke’s son by the girlfriend he had before he met Max’s mother. He’s also an A-list movie star, and I’ve swooned over that face and those hypnotic blue eyes more times than I can count. What red-blooded woman on the planet hasn’t?
His wife makes me think of Grace Kelly, with her grace, poise and ice-blonde good looks. They really are an intimidatingly gorgeous couple, but Teresa takes my hand and leads me to a sofa, plying me with good-natured questions about how I’m enjoying my visit in Westerwald.
“I grew up here in Neustadt,” she says. “I really miss it, especially now as the seasons start to change. California’s year-round summer is lovely, but I do miss the autumn leaves and winter snow. You really must come back at Christmas time. The markets and the festive lights are magical.”
If only. I sigh. “Everything about this place is magical! Even the bars. Adam took me to the Landmark Café, and it’s nothing like any bar I’ve ever been to.”
She laughs, glancing toward where her husband and Adam stand in conversation beside the drinks trolley. “I know that bar.”
As if sensing her gaze, Christian turns to look at her, and his eyes light up. I don’t even bother to hide another sigh. I’ve never had a man look at me like that.
Dinner is a loud, casual affair, even though it’s served in the formal dining room. The conversation flows naturally and I find myself relaxing, not worrying about small talk or if I’m going to embarrass myself. I’m seated close to Max’s grandparents, who are exactly the kind of grandparents I used to wish for. I never met any of my father’s family, and my mother’s parents were extremely conservative and cut her off when she came to Vegas to dance. That’s another thing Phoenix and I have in common.
Adam is seated down the far end of the table, with Rik and Kenzie, and though there’s a lot of laughter and chatter between us, I notice a reserve between Adam and Kenzie.
“Please, please tell me you didn’t sleep with her?” I whisper to Adam as we make our way back to the drawing room after dinner.
“Oh God, no!” He looks genuinely horrified at the thought. “She used to date my friend Charlie a long time ago, back before she met Rik.”
There’s a look in his eyes when he mentions his friend, something more than grief, and I wonder if he even knows it’s there. He turns away quickly, smiling at the room, but his smile seems forced.
Max’s grandparents head off to bed, and his mother soon after, leaving the rest of us to keep the party going. Since the servants have packed up for the night, I station myself at the incredibly well-stocked drinks trolley and do what I do best: mixing and serving drinks until eventually the party breaks up. Max and Phoenix head to their apartment, but the rest of us are all staying in the guest wing so we walk up the stairs together, parting with hugs and warm goodnights.