was a mess.
Two quick knocks at her door brought her head off the pillow. “Yes?”
“It’s me. Dominic. My father requests our presence at dinner tonight.”
Ginny turned toward the wall and whispered, “Gotta go, Mom,” into the phone before she rolled off the bed and said, “Sure. That’s fine. What time?”
“Seven.” He cleared his throat. “It’s semiformal.”
She gaped at the door, as discomfort swamped her. Not only did she not have a semiformal dress for dinner, but her suite had a private sitting room outside her bedroom. He had to be in that room to be knocking on her bedroom door. He might have knocked on the door to her suite before inviting himself in, but she wouldn’t have heard him. The darned place was so big and had such high ceilings that sound either echoed or disappeared. He wasn’t infringing on her privacy. She hoped.
“Semiformal?”
“I took the liberty of having the staff get some suitable clothes for you.”
Pride almost caused her to say, “I’m fine.” But when she looked down at her jeans and considered the contents of her suitcase, she knew this was the first step in many toward giving up her real life.
“You’re right. I have nothing acceptable to meet a king.” She walked to the door, opened it and watched as four men brought in bags and boxes and armloads of dresses, including gowns.
“Oh, my God.”
Dominic walked in behind the parade of men. “Even if you decide not to marry me, you’re here for a week.”
Her mouth fell open at the ease with which he spoke in front of staff, but the expression of not a single man even twitched. This was one well-trained staff.
She took a quick breath. “So I need to be semiformal.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Okay. Scram. I have some work to do to be presentable.”
“I can have a hairdresser sent up. Manicurist. Masseuse.”
“Why would I need a massage?”
“Maybe what I should get you is a rundown on my dad. Then you’d very clearly understand why you want to be Zen and you’d get the massage.”
“Great.”
She took advantage of the hairdresser and manicurist, and ten minutes before it was time to leave for dinner she wished she’d agreed to the masseuse.
Dressed in a lightweight blue dress that stopped midcalf, with her hair in an updo suitable for a woman of seventy and old-fashioned pumps dyed to match the dress, she stepped out of her bedroom.
Standing in the great room, Dominic smiled. Unlike her ugly blue dress, his tux appeared to have been made for him. Again he was every inch a prince. Handsome. Debonair. Regal.
While she looked like a frumpy old bat.
“You look lovely.”
“I look like the Queen of England. Get me a hat and one of those sedate purses she carries all the time and people would probably get us confused.”
He laughed. “You are meeting a king.”
“Who wants to be reminded of his grandmother?”
“You do not look like a grandmother.”
“Well, I sure as hell don’t look like a twenty-five-year-old guidance counselor in the coolest school in Texas.”
“Trust me. You will want the armor of a grandma dress when you meet my dad.” He took her elbow and led her to the door, out of the apartment and through the echoing lobby to the waiting elevator.
As they stepped inside and the door closed behind them, she said, “You have some impressive art.”
“We are royalty.”
“I guess I’d better get used to that.” That and ugly clothes.
“That’s why we’re giving you the week. To get accustomed to us.”
She released her breath in a slow sigh. She knew that, of course. She also suspected the clothes weren’t ugly as much as they were dignified.
“Who picked out these clothes anyway?”
He stared straight ahead at the closed elevator door. “I did.”
She pulled the skirt of the too-big dress away from her hips. “Because you think your dad will like me better in baggy clothes?”
“I was a bit off on your size. But it’s better to be too big than too small.”
“Couldn’t you at least have gotten something red?”
“Blue matches your eyes.”
The sweetness of that caught her off guard. For a second she’d forgotten he knew the color of her eyes. But thinking about it, she remembered that gazing into her eyes, making her feel special, had been his seduction superpower.
“Besides, red would have reminded me of that night.”
Her lips lifted into a smile. “Oh?”
“You were devastatingly beautiful.”
Her heart skipped a beat. He’d made her feel beautiful. “If you hadn’t been staring straight ahead when you said that, it would have been romantic.”
“We don’t want to be romantic, remember?”
“So that means you’re not going to look at me?”
“I’m not going to make eye contact. I’m pretty sure that’s what got us into trouble on our date.”
She laughed, but happiness bubbled inside her. He liked her. A prince liked her. At the very least, he liked her looks.
It was heady stuff.
The elevator bell rang. The doors opened. Dominic led her out. “The family dining room is this way.”
They walked across a short hall to open doors that ushered them into a formal dining room. A table that could have seated forty dominated the space. Four places were set near the head. An older man dressed in a royal uniform and a younger man in a tux like Dominic’s rose as they entered.
“Virginia Jones, this is King Ronaldo Sancho and my brother, Prince Alexandros. We call him Alex.”
Ginny froze. What was she supposed to do? Curtsy? Bow? Damn it. Why hadn’t she paid attention to etiquette—
What etiquette? Guidance counselors knew the basics but nothing else. And she certainly hadn’t expected to someday meet a prince, let alone a king. She hadn’t
