no leaving with any of the bridesmaids,” she added. “You have to be seen as available, approachable and, oh yes, available.”
“You said that already.”
“It’s important. Obviously, we don’t want to put out a call for all eligible women in the kingdom to show up, so we need to go about this subtly.”
He frowned. “Why aren’t we putting out a call for all eligible women?”
“Look, Prince Charming, unless you want to put a glass slipper on a whole bunch of sweaty feet, you do this my way. That means you behave how I tell you to at Princess Evangelina’s wedding.”
“I wouldn’t have picked up a bridesmaid. My sister’s friends are far too young to interest me,” he said.
“Ah … so you have an age range,” she said, perking up. “That’s important.”
“Yes, no one as young as Evangelina. I’d say twenty-three at youngest. A ten-year age difference isn’t so bad. Maybe cap it at twenty-eight.”
She frowned. “Oh. All right.” She looked down at her computer, then up, then back down again, her mouth twitching, like she was chewing on something. Her words, he imagined. She looked up at him again. “Why, exactly, is anyone older than twenty-eight too old?”
“I need a wife who can have children. Preferably a few of them. Any older and …”
“Right,” she snapped, directing her focus downward again.
“If I ask you how old you are I’ll only make this worse, won’t I?” he asked dryly.
“I have no problem with my age, Prince Stavros, I’m thirty. Not that it’s your business.”
“It’s not personal.”
“I get it,” she said. “And I’m not applying anyway.”
“A pity,” he said, noticing the way color bled into her cheeks.
Jessica set her iPad on the ornately carved table to her right and put her hands in her lap, trying like crazy to stop the slight tremble in her fingers. She was saying all the wrong things. Letting her mouth run away with her. Not a huge surprise since she tended to get prickly when she got nervous.
She’d managed to make that little quirk work for her over the years. People found her bold approach refreshing. And that suited her, since it enabled her to keep all shields up and locked, fully protecting her from people getting too close. Without showing vulnerability.
And now, with Prince Stavros Drakos, was not the time to let her guard down. No, most especially not with him.
“I’ve managed to finagle three wedding invitations,” she said. “They will go to three girls that you and I will work at selecting sometime this week. At the wedding, you will speak to them for twenty minutes apiece, no more. And after that, I want you to pick one to advance to a higher tier. I’ve made a list of questions for you to consider asking.”
“I’m not even getting a full date?” he asked, dark eyebrows lifting.
She shifted in her chair. He was so sexy it was unnerving. Because his aesthetic appeal couldn’t be observed in the cool detached manner she might use to look at a nice piece of art. That was the way she’d been looking at men for the past few years. As lovely objects, nice to behold, but nothing that invoked feeling.
She’d let that part of herself go and she hadn’t missed it. Until now.
Stavros … well, he made a spark catch in her belly. One that had been entirely absent for so long now she’d thought it had gone out permanently. It was a disastrous realization.
She stood up and took a step away from him, hoping distance would bring clarity. Or at least control over her body.
“You don’t need a full date. Not at this stage. I’ve picked out a few candidates based on what we talked about over the phone. And now I’ve refined some of that, and I’ve got a number of women I’d like for you to have an initial meet with. You’ve been matched with them based heavily on compatibility. The kind we can establish from forms, anyway. Attraction,” she said, the word sticking in her throat for some reason, “is actually one of the simpler parts of this stage. But it’s not simple, not … not really.” She felt her stomach tighten. The way Stavros was looking at her was intense, his brown eyes locked with hers. He was gorgeous.
It was sort of ridiculous how hot he was. It was as if he’d splashed around in the finest end of the gene pool, only collecting the good, the bad rolling right off. Square jaw, straight, proud nose and his lips … they changed a lot. Firm and unyielding sometimes. And other times, when he smiled, they looked soft. Soft and … kissable.
She swallowed and tried not to think about how very long it had been since she’d been kissed. She tried even harder to stop thinking about kissing Stavros’s lips.
“Anyway,” she said, breathing in deeply. She knew what to say next, knew her system by heart. She could explain it in her sleep. And she could take a few more steps away from him while she did it. “We start with that base attraction. What I call ‘lightning bolt’ attraction—” like the kind she’d felt when she’d walked into Stavros’s office this morning “—or what many confuse with love at first sight. You’ll feel a stronger pull of that immediate attraction to at least one of the women at the wedding. As we go on, we’ll try and figure out which woman you feel a more lasting attraction for. But that’s a different phase of the program.”
“And you’re accusing me of lacking in romance. You have this all worked out to a cold, calculated system. I’m not complaining, but let’s be … what was the word you used? Candid. Let’s be candid, you and I.” A smile curved his lips and he rose from his desk, slowly rounding it. “You’re no more romantic than I am.”
His voice was like warm butter. It flowed over her body, so good, and so very, very bad for her. She cleared her throat. And took a step back. “All right, I’m not a romantic. Not really. I mean I was, at one time. But not so much now. What is romance? Warm fuzzies and the unrealistic ideals we project onto others when we’re first beginning a relationship. Romance is an illusion. That’s why I believe in matching people based on something concrete. From these basic principles, love can grow. And when the foundation is solid, I believe love can be real and lasting. It’s when people go with that lightning attraction only, with nothing to back it up, that’s when you have problems.”
He lifted his arm and ran his hand over his hair, the action stretching his crisp dress shirt tight over his well-defined chest. She wondered what muscles of that caliber would feel like beneath her hands. She’d never touched a chest that looked quite like that.
Oh, dear. Wandering thoughts again. And redirecting …
“So, is that what you did?” he asked. “Follow one of those flash attractions, or whatever you call them, and have it end in disaster?”
She laughed and turned, hoping to look like she was starting to pace and not like she was trying to put space between them. “Something like that.” A lot more complicated than that, but she wasn’t about to get into it. “The point is, I know what works.”
“But you aren’t married.”
