Читать книгу The Prince's Fake Fiancée - Leah Ashton, Leah Ashton - Страница 11

Chapter Four

IT WAS GOING WELL, Marko thought.

For a prince pretending to be engaged and a bodyguard pretending to be in love with him.

His lips curved upwards as he settled back into his chair and absently swirled his champagne.

Actually—that was unfair. Jasmine was doing remarkably well, considering there had been no time to really tell her anything.

He observed her as she spoke to one of the ministers of the Vela Ada parliament, her head tilted as she listened intently to whatever the other woman was saying. The pair stood only a short distance away, between the as yet empty dance floor and one of the many round tables that seated a mix of the most prominent and influential citizens of Vela Ada—from politicians, to philanthropists to entrepreneurs.

Although he’d stood beside Jasmine as they’d greeted the guests with his brother and Petra, and also sat beside her at dinner—they’d barely spoken.

Petra seemed thrilled to have someone else to discuss the realities of adjusting from civilian to royal life with, and had happily taken Jasmine under her wing. And, of course, pretty much everyone wanted to know about his mysterious fiancée, and so there had been a constant stream of interested guests wishing to introduce themselves. At first, Marko had stood nearby, ready to answer or deflect any tricky questions—but there was no need. Jasmine improvised like the actress she said she wasn’t—smoothly redirecting conversation to topics other than the details of their supposed relationship, or answering with laughter and ambiguity, allowing guests to fill in the blanks however they saw fit.

With Jasmine doing so well, it had left Marko free to have his own conversations. Which he had: with a retired army general, a prominent business owner, a former Olympian. They were all nice people, and the conversations were pleasant enough—but it didn’t take long for him to be over it. In fact, he’d been over it from the moment he’d stood in that reception line, greeting hundreds of people in a blur of handshakes and a cheek-aching smile.

He’d excused himself and headed for his table—then downed his champagne in one gulp.

A waiter immediately refilled his drink—but he resisted downing that one too. Someone was always watching at these events, and the last thing he needed was another Playboy Prince non-scandal to disappoint his brother and pretty much everyone else who knew him.

He didn’t want to be here.

He really didn’t want to be here.

What he’d much rather be doing was hanging out with Lukas. To do anything with him—maybe play pool at the table his brother had in his library. Or watch a movie and drink beer. Or just have something nice to eat. Stuff they hadn’t done together in longer than he could remember.

And something he wanted to do, with the person he wanted to spend time with—and not in public, and not with the weight of expectation and obligation weighing heavily upon him.

But instead he was here, at a ball, to make other people feel better about Lukas’s illness, when he certainly wasn’t feeling any better about it. Talking to Lukas, or to the royal doctor, had done nothing to ease the spiky ball of worry, concern and fear that had lodged itself in Marko’s belly.

If he lost him...

Marko clenched his jaw.

No. He wouldn’t even consider it. He couldn’t.

His gaze travelled back to Jasmine—searching for a distraction. Maybe she sensed his gaze, as she turned towards him.

She began to smile—but then stopped. Her brow furrowed.

In concern?

He swore under his breath.

He looked away—focusing his attention on his fingers as they gripped the stem of his glass, absently spinning the glass from side to side.

He tensed as Jasmine slid into the chair beside him. He did not want to have a conversation about whatever Jasmine had thought she’d seen in his face. Not with a woman he barely knew. Not with anyone.

‘Only a few minutes before the speeches,’ she said quietly.

He turned in his seat to look at her.

She looked—totally normal. No more furrowed brow. No questions in her gaze.

He felt his shoulders relax. What was wrong with him?

He was jumping at shadows.

‘You don’t need to worry about that,’ he said, happy to talk about anything. ‘Palace staff will let us know where we need to be.’

‘It’s still my job,’ she said, with a shrug. ‘I can’t switch it off. I’m keeping an eye on my team, too, although it’s weird to not be able to talk to them. I feel naked without my earpiece at a formal event.’

Naked was probably not the best word Jasmine could’ve chosen. Or possibly it was the best, as Marko was now extremely effectively distracted from his unwanted thoughts of Lukas, and royal duty and...

Tako lijepo.

God, she was hot in that dress—all pale skin and soft curves.

He caught Jasmine’s gaze again as his crept back up to her face. She narrowed her eyes.

Marko cleared his throat.

This is a business arrangement, he reminded himself.

‘Is that why you’re so good at talking to everyone?’ Marko asked, focusing on not—once again—ogling Jasmine, as she’d so accurately accused him of earlier that day. Could it really have only been today? ‘You’ve attended lots of events like this one?’

Jasmine nodded. ‘On the other side, of course,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in the background—or at times right on the shoulder—of all sorts of conversations. And I’ve spoken to all sorts of people too. Some VIPs are chatty in the car, or bored when they’re waiting for someone or something, and often I’m the only person available to talk to. I guess maybe I’ve picked up a few bits and pieces, although this is a bit different from a quick chat to a pop star who’s nervous before a performance, or talking to a visiting ambassador about kangaroos.’ She reached for her own champagne. ‘I’m glad you think I’m doing a good job. I just feel like I’m doing lots of smiling and rambling about not much at all.’

‘That’s all I do,’ Marko said. ‘Smile, talk about something benign, then nod at someone else’s benign conversation while trying to look interested. Welcome to a royal event.’

She nodded. ‘Everyone’s been very nice to me. And some of the people I’ve spoken to are really interesting. But it’s not,’ Jasmine said in a low voice, leaning closer as if to confide in him, ‘quite as exciting as I expected.’

Marko laughed out loud. ‘No. Being royal is a job. With really great food and wine, but just a job, nonetheless.’

A palace attendant tapped on Marko’s shoulder and murmured in his ear.

He stood, and reached for Jasmine’s hand.

‘Looks like we’re up,’ he said.

It was time for Marko to formally introduce Jasmine to Vela Ada.

* * *

Jas hadn’t thought to put her champagne glass down before following Marko to the small stage at one end of the ballroom, and so now she stood beside the King and Queen, with Marko, feeling somewhat as if she were about to give a speech at a really, really fancy wedding.

Although—thankfully—she wasn’t scheduled to actually say anything. Her role tonight was to stand beside Marko and look like the loving fiancée she supposedly was.

The loving fiancée part wasn’t all that hard. It was all too easy to stand, oh, so close to him—close enough to feel his body heat, and to smell whatever delicious fragrance he wore—something crisp and woody.

And to look up at him—to imagine she was in love with him—was easy, too. He still held her hand—and he squeezed it occasionally, sending shivers of sensation rioting throughout her body.

He did so now, and glanced downwards to hold her gaze. His gaze was reassuring, a you’ve got this message. There was nothing more—not a hint of what she’d seen before: both an unexpected rawness of emotion she’d glimpsed as he’d been watching her from a distance, but also a different type of rawness later—that heat, that wanting.

She’d tried to shut it down—she’d glared at him, channelling her affront of earlier that day. But as it had been during the briefing, she hadn’t really had her heart behind it.

In fact, her heart had been beating at a million miles an hour.

Now she squeezed his hand back. I’m fine.

But she wasn’t—not really.

Partly, she was uncomfortable simply standing here—while she’d been at many important events in her career, she’d never been the subject of such concentrated attention. Standing beside someone important on a stage, in her black suit, was not the same as wearing a ball gown with a room full of dignitaries staring at her.

She felt terribly awkward in her tight shoes and with her superfluous champagne glass, and it was a constant battle not to fidget.

But she didn’t, of course. She was a professional. She could do this.

Lukas was speaking now, in the Vela Ada dialect—and as Jas knew only very few words of the Slavic language, she could only guess at what he was saying.

His voice revealed none of his illness, although this close she could see how lean he was beneath his suit, and the hint of dark beneath his eyes.

Petra stood beside him, looking composed and lovely. And she was lovely, and had been all evening to Jas—checking in with her, whispering little hints and words of encouragement. Earlier she’d even given her a crash course in curtseying—although with the only other royals in attendance being the late King Josip’s brother and his wife, as Lukas and Marko’s mother had retired from public life following her husband’s death, she’d only had to worry about it briefly—and in the end it hadn’t been that hard at all.

But it was Petra that she was feeling most uncomfortable about—more so than feeling awkward in front of hundreds of guests. Here was a woman dealing bravely with her husband’s cancer diagnosis, and Jas was—lying to her.

Marko leant down to murmur in her ear, his breath a tickle against her skin. ‘Here we go.’

Lukas gestured for Marko to step forward, and Jas stepped up right beside him.

‘And now,’ Lukas said, in English now, ‘I’d like to introduce the woman who will be accompanying Prince Marko as he takes on my royal commitments over the next three months—and who I am looking forward to welcoming into the Pavlovic family: his fiancée, Jasmine Gallagher.’

The ballroom filled with polite applause, and Jasmine just smiled and tried not to look awkward.

Marko then began to speak—again, in Slavic, and as he spoke—and he spoke well—Jasmine took the opportunity to simply watch him.

He stood tall, and powerfully—his shoulders back, his stance firm—and there was definitely no fidgeting involved. He looked fantastic in his suit, but it did nothing to hide the strength of the man, the solid contour of his biceps and the width of his shoulders evident beneath the expensive fabric. His buzz-cut hair only further enhanced the impression of a man constructed of hard edges—there was no softness to this prince.

She’d noted before that he wore his suit less comfortably than his brother, and she still thought that true. There was a tension to Marko’s posture, as if he was out of his native habitat. He’d said earlier that a royal title was just another job, and although she didn’t think it was that simple—there were some big perks to being a royal!—she understood his sentiment. And so—knowing he was a highly ranked military officer—she supposed it was army fatigues rather than a tuxedo that was his uniform of choice?

And yet, despite his incongruity in a tuxedo, and despite the tension she sensed in him—and also whatever it was she’d glimpsed in his gaze earlier—he now commanded the ballroom. His ability to do so wasn’t unexpected—since she’d met Marko it had been impossible to ignore his magnetism—but before she’d met him, she wouldn’t have expected it.

She had thought her company had been hired to protect a playboy prince—and the Playboy Prince she had expected was nothing like Marko at all.

Of course she’d seen the photos of Marko in women’s magazines. And of course she’d looked him up on the Internet again when she’d first been approached to work for him. And the photos and articles were all the same: about a man who had eschewed a royal life to flit across Europe—and who had seemingly never been photographed with the same woman twice. There he’d been, on the list of World’s Most Eligible Bachelors or the World’s Hottest Royals or whatever.

None of this had mattered to her, as it had no impact on the job she’d been hired to do.

But she’d been curious.

Even the whole fake fiancée ruse hadn’t really given her pause—she and her team had just signed the water-tight confidentiality agreement and been done with it. It wasn’t her job to judge the decisions of the rich and famous—no matter how odd or misguided they appeared to her.

Of course, it had given her pause when Marko had asked her to take Felicity’s place.

Suddenly Marko’s lie would be affecting her. And now Marko’s lie was her lie. She was no longer a bystander—she was part of this.

Ever since her impulsive decision to be Marko’s fake fiancée, the weight of that lie had only grown heavier the more real it had become.

And standing here right now, in front of hundreds of people as a man you barely knew announced you to his country as something you weren’t...well, lies didn’t get much bigger than that.

What have I done?

Were the pleas of a man who made her blood run hot enough of a reason to do something so far outside her moral compass?

His reasons at the time had seemed so compelling, the lie so harmless...

But now...

Jas’s gaze flicked from Marko back to Lukas.

As she watched he stepped back from where he’d stood beside Marko.