Royal Surrender - chapter thirteen

Noe left the Diamond Club early one morning. It was coming up on the dead center of August, and this most remarkable summer felt both eternal and precarious all around her, even this close to dawn.

She hurried toward the nearest Tube stop, checking her watch to make sure that she had enough time to get home, get changed into something more business appropriate, and then head over to the embassy that had booked her services today.

But it was hard to think about the intricacies of her career when Cajetan had been so…intense all night.

So deliciously, thoroughly intense.

It had been a very long, wildly possessive kind of a night, and every part of her was still quivering at the memories.

Noe was starting to imagine that she always would, even after these stolen nights were gone.

When she got to her flat, she turned the water to cold as she bathed. And then she spent all day worried that instead of the calm, collected professional that had been hired to translate, everyone could easily see that where it counted, she was entirely wanton.

Because she was.

Cajetan had told her that he would be busy for the next little while, and she had accepted that with as much grace as she could muster. Because she didn’t share her real feelings about the secrecy of their relationship and her access to him with him. She could hardly let herself think about it—because if she did, it hurt.

Sometimes she thought he felt the same way, but it all amounted to the same thing. Their stolen moments together were all they had, and they were lucky to have them. And no amount of summer sunshine could change how it felt on their days apart.

She told herself that was the price, and that it was worth paying.

A few days later, Noe came back home after a long day at work, tired but not unhappy. She liked losing herself in the complex architecture of translation. It made it impossible to think of other things.

She fixed herself a happy little dinner of olives and cheese and a bit of bread, then settled down with the telly.

Flipping through the channels, she found some scandalous, trashy gossip show and paused, because a pop star she quite liked was on the screen.

But she didn’t catch that story. It shifted almost at once, and then everything inside Noe went dead.

Because it was Cajetan.

Dressed in an exquisite dark suit and exiting a vehicle into a shower of flashbulbs. Then turning back to help a woman out of the car.

A woman who was exactly who a man like Cajetan should be with. A literal princess, dripping in jewels, sophistication, and breeding—as effortless as breathing.

The commentators were speculating madly that this was as good as an engagement announcement from the prince. And she was very much afraid that it was.

And then wondered how she was supposed to live when she was crushed into pieces.