Royals Untamed!. Annie West

her body. Every part of her still wanted to be with him. But she was more confident around him.

      She didn’t feel the need to look like a supermodel. She didn’t feel outclassed by visiting royalty. Alex wanted her. She knew it. He knew it.

      Getting there was a slow process. But she could live with that.

      Every day she learned something new about Euronia. About its history—the subterfuge, the pirates and the Kings. The history was chequered with colourful characters. Alex’s father was probably the quietest ruler of them all.

      He was still in Switzerland. Once Alex had flown there, when his father had suffered another bout of pneumonia and had to be ventilated. She’d offered to go but he’d asked her to stay with Annabelle. They both knew the little girl needed stability and she’d been happy to oblige.

      The long summer came to a close around the end of September, when Ruby finally had to pull her cardigans out of her cupboard to cover her arms.

      And before the leaves on the trees started to change colour Alex started to appear around her again.

      At first it was simple. Coffee. Cake. Days sitting in the late summer sunshine in the café in the square. Their visits became so frequent that the café owner stopped asking her what she wanted. After she fawned over a new apricot sponge the café owner started to bake it for her every other day.

      Then there was the lunches, and their time spent together that included Annabelle. Sometimes it was in the palace grounds. Sometimes it was in and around Euronia. Once he even took them to Monaco for the day.

      This time it felt as if she was the one with the barriers in place and it was Alex who was chipping away at her walls. But it felt right. The momentum was building at a pace that felt comfortable for both of them, for Annabelle, and for the people around them.

      Clothes kept mysteriously appearing in her wardrobe—all of them beautiful, all of them fitting perfectly. The palace staff had stopped being prickly around her. Her devotion to Annabelle was clear, but Alex’s respect for her was even clearer. Even Rufus had started to come round, and had given her a key to the palace library so she could work undisturbed.

      ‘Ruby?’

      Her head shot up. It was late at night and she was sitting on one of the ancient chaise longues, with her feet tucked up underneath her, reading on her electronic tablet.

      There were no fancy clothes tonight. Tonight she was wearing a sloppy white top, grey jogging trousers, and her hair was tied in a knot on top of her head.

      ‘Is something wrong with Annabelle?’

      It was the first thought that came into her head.

      Alex crossed into the room, holding up his hand as he walked. ‘No. She’s fine. I was looking for you. I should have known I’d find you in here.’

      There was a warmth in his eyes as he said the words, a flicker of a memory, and she remembered he’d told her this had been his mother’s favourite room.

      He pointed at the tablet. ‘Isn’t it sacrilege to read that in here?’

      She shrugged. ‘I couldn’t work the ancient light switches. Every time I pressed one it seemed to light up the wrong part of the library. Plus, I like being in the dark.’

      She pointed to the gardens outside, where some light from the fountain and its walls was spilling up to meet them.

      ‘There’s something nice about looking out over the world.’

      She turned to face him.

      ‘What have you got?’

      He was holding something wrapped in brown paper in his hand, along with two large cups. The smell of something wonderful was winding its way through the air towards her.

      ‘Midnight snacks.’ He grinned as he sat down next to her. ‘I was starving and went for a rummage around the kitchen to see what I could find.’

      She lifted her eyebrows. ‘I’m surprised Rufus’s inbuilt internal alarm didn’t go off at you stepping into the palace kitchens unattended.’

      He shrugged. ‘I was too. Here,’ he handed one of the cups to her and she lifted it to her nose, inhaling.

      ‘Soup?’ She glanced at her watch. ‘At one in the morning?’

      He smiled. That goofy smile he sometimes gave when it was just the two of them. ‘I’m hungry. Leena’s soup is the best there is.’ He held up the brown paper package. ‘I even managed to find some freshly baked rolls.’

      She opened it up and looked in. Fresh crusty bread in the middle of the night did have a certain appeal.

      ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s no fun eating on your own.’

      There was a twinkle in his eye. It was the most relaxed she’d seen him for a while. Spending time with his daughter was doing him the world of good. This wasn’t the uptight guy who’d visited her months ago in her hospital department. This wasn’t the guy who’d looked as if a permanent grey cloud was resting on his shoulders.

      She moved over to the table and he joined her, breaking open his bread roll and dipping it into the soup.

      ‘I’ve got something else to show you.’

      He pushed a file across the table towards her. It was pale beige and looked official.

      She flipped it open and gasped. A picture of her and Alex from ten years ago in Paris.

      He shrugged. ‘It always bothered me that you never got my message. I trust my Head of Security. If he said he sent it I know he did. I had to work out what went wrong.’

      ‘After all this time?’

      It had always bothered her too. She’d assumed an absent-minded clerk just hadn’t bothered passing the message on.

      She looked at the file again. Read the notes. All of them were about her. It was more than a little unnerving. Then she let out a gasp. ‘Oh, no!’

      His hands closed over hers. ‘What is it?’

      She smiled at him. ‘Hotel du Chat. That’s not where I was staying. It says in the notes that your Head of Security left a message at Reception there.’

      Alex’s brow furrowed. ‘He did. But that’s what you told me.’

      She squeezed his hand. ‘Hotel du Champ, Alex. Not Hotel du Chat.’ She shook her head. ‘After all these years I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.’

      Alex put his head in his hands. ‘I was so sure. So sure you said Hotel du Chat.’

      ‘It was noisy, Alex. It was New Year’s. You’d just had an urgent message about your father.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Mistakes happen.’

      His finger reached up and touched her cheek. ‘I hate mistakes,’ he whispered.

      ‘So do I.’

      They sat in silence for a few seconds. Both of them letting the revelation wash over them. For Ruby, it felt like a relief. It didn’t matter that Alex had assured her he’d tried to contact her. There had always been a tiny sliver of doubt.

      But he had. And, strangely, it made her feel good. Maybe life would have been different. Who could possibly know? What she did know was that they couldn’t change the past.

      ‘What did the message say?’ She couldn’t help but ask. It had always played on her mind.

      He gave a little nod and held her gaze. ‘It was simple.’ He shrugged. ‘We’d just met and barely had a chance to get to know each other. It said that I was sorry I couldn’t meet you, that I really wanted to see you again but had been called away to a family emergency—something I really wanted to explain to you. I left my number and asked you to call as soon as you got my note.’

      She gave