The Royal Collection. Rebecca Winters

or he simply buried it deeper beneath the surface.

      She imagined it was the latter, but she wasn’t sure even he knew that.

      In response to that thought, she let her hands drift over his forearm, and she felt him tense beneath her touch. Still, his expression remained the same.

      “Are you ready to give your speech?”

      “Yes,” he said. There was no uncertainty in him. It went a long way in calming her riotous nerves.

      “Good.”

      “What would you have done if I had said I wasn’t ready?” he asked, and if she didn’t know better, she would be certain there was a note of amusement in his voice.

      “I would have rushed the front of the room and created a diversion so you could escape,” she said.

      “Would you have made the speech for me?”

      “If not that, perhaps I would’ve done an interpretive dance.”

      The ghost of a smile toyed with the edges of his lips. “I cannot imagine that.”

      “Liar. If you weren’t imagining it, you wouldn’t be smiling.”

      “Did I smile?”

      “Yes,” she said. Warmth bloomed in her chest, spreading down to her stomach.

      She had been so excited to have the room filled with people only moments ago, and now she wished they would all go away. All the better to focus on Tarek.

      The ache she felt, the intense desire to know him, had only grown over the past week. And unfortunately she had found very little to satisfy it.

      “I do not know any of these people,” he said, looking around.

      “I recognize a few of them,” she said.

      She hadn’t made it public that she would be in attendance. In fact, she had called Anton and requested that he keep any connection between herself and Tarek secret. Things hadn’t been certain, and she didn’t want rumors preceding certainty.

      Though tonight he would make the announcement. Tonight there would be certainty. She would have a place again.

      “Who?” he asked.

      “Well,” she said, “Miranda Holt is a reporter. She covers a lot of society things in the States. I’ve known her for years. She used to attend gatherings my family would throw.” By gatherings she meant grand galas. But details weren’t important. “And over there is the ambassador of Alansund and her husband. Others I know from their attendance at various functions there.”

      “Do you suppose they think it odd you’re here with me?”

      “I’m sure they are curious.”

      “Are you afraid they’ll think you are betraying your husband’s memory?”

      His words burned for some reason. “It’s been two years.”

      “But people think of you with him. Not with me.”

      “That will change.”

      “And what about you?” he asked. “Do you still think of yourself as being with him?”

      It was a strange question. Tarek never seemed possessive of her. He seemed indifferent to her when he wasn’t working directly with her on a project, so why he would ask something like that of her now she couldn’t fathom.

      It was personal, and his interest in her was nothing like personal.

      She had to linger over the question. As she did, a strange sensation washed over her. “I don’t,” she said, the words soft. “Marcus and I lived very separate lives. We were...a team in many ways. But I can’t claim a link with him that transcends the grave.”

      “You smile when you think of him,” Tarek said, and if she didn’t know better she might imagine that he was jealous.

      “He gave me a lot of things to smile about.”

      That much was true. But suddenly, standing there, she had to acknowledge the gulf that had stood between herself and her husband. Had to acknowledge it because she felt it so keenly now. They had been two people walking side by side, toward a common goal. But their lives had not been intertwined. Losing him had left her cold, grieving. She had lost a cherished companion. But she had not lost a part of herself.

      “A testament to the man,” Tarek said. “I imagine you did not have to teach him how to smile.”

      Her heart twisted. “No. Marcus smiled easily. He was smiling when I walked into his life, and I daresay he was smiling when he went out of his own. He enjoyed the things of this world.” He had taught her to enjoy them, as well. Had made her feel not half so lonely. The thought of him would always make her heart warm. “He also prized his independence, and as I very much prize mine, I had no trouble giving it to him.” And if there were questions about what he did in his spare time, and whose bed he might be in when he wasn’t in hers, she had never asked them.

      She felt disloyal thinking about it now. Because she had never made an issue of it when he was alive, so she had no call to let those suspicions fester in his death. Even if he hadn’t been faithful, she had never demanded him to be. And he had never made her unhappy.

      She had not given him all of herself, so she could hardly expect him to give all of himself.

      This was the wrong time to be having this realization. The wrong time to do any serious postmortem on her first marriage. Really, there was no right time. There was nothing left to fix. And she had been happy in her life, so thinking about fixing something that she had never thought broken was foolish indeed.

      She’d never wanted to examine the cracks. Never wanted to pause for a state of the union for fear that, just as her parents had done, Marcus would do nothing but look at her with blank eyes and say, “There isn’t anything more I can give.”

      “Marcus sounds a much easier man than I am. It isn’t too late for you to turn back.”

      “Still so eager to get rid of me?”

      “No,” he said. “But I fear you have walked into this without fully understanding all you have to contend with.”

      “Maybe. But I’m not weak. And yes, you’re different than he was. But...I am not looking to replace him. Not in the way you might think. I’m not looking to re-create our life together. I’m looking for something new.”

      “I quite like the idea that I am different,” he said, and his words sent a little shiver of pleasure through her.

      She wasn’t sure why. Why she quite liked the idea of him being jealous. Of him wanting something from her. Or maybe she did, and she simply didn’t want to examine it.

      “I like the idea that you are not wholly at ease with everything happening. Oftentimes you seem far too confident, as though you are walking a trail you have blazed before. While the landscape remains entirely unfamiliar to me.”

      “Rest assured, Tarek, knowing royalty, knowing men, does not make you less of a mystery to me.”

      “I find this perversely pleasing.” Something about the way he said the words lit her up inside, thousands of stars glimmering in the darkness that hadn’t been there before.

      “Since you find very little pleasing, perverse or not, I’m going to mark that in the win column.”

      “Do you have a win column?”

      She nodded slowly. “I’m thinking of making one.”

      He looked her over slowly, his dark eyes assessing. “Put that dress in it.”

      And with that, he stepped away from her, cutting a swath through the crowd as he made his way toward the front of the room. And she was left standing there, barely able to breathe. What was it about that curt, barely a compliment that sent a wave