‘Yes. Well, that would make sense.’
‘Do I want to know?’
‘Absolutely not,’ he assured with one hundred percent arrogant conviction.
Henna failed to suppress the smile that pulled at her mouth. ‘Well, I did actually try to find a replacement, but apparently it’s a little harder than I’d thought.’
He narrowed his eyes and Henna couldn’t account for why that made their exchange feel more intimate, other than being the sole focus of his fierce intellect and sometimes wicked humour.
‘Who did you ask?’
‘Agnes Ullman.’
He winced. ‘Ouch. No, she’s—’
‘And Ingrid Harr.’
Henna thought she might have heard him groan. How he’d managed to keep all of this from the international press was inconceivable to her.
‘I could be persuaded to admit that I’m a little difficult,’ he offered graciously.
Henna snorted. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
He was chewing and, honestly, there really shouldn’t be anything remotely sexy about a man chewing a mouthful of food, but it was his eyes. He looked for just a second as if what he found most delicious in that moment wasn’t the mouthful of exquisite food but her teasing him.
And then she realised it was highly unlikely that anyone had teased him in a while. Certainly not since he’d become King and probably even long before then, maybe not since his late teens, after the breakup with Kristine. Because after they had split Aleksander had become a completely different person. Henna was tempted to ask him about it. After all, he’d certainly delved into her personal history, but she was reluctant to lose this moment.
‘Where did you go?’ he asked of her train of thought.
‘Nowhere important. So, you won’t tell me about the maid’s uniform, but will you explain about the significance of the honey, because—’
Aleksander cut her off with a shocking display of Svardian curse words and the look on his face was one of horror combined with a little bit of fear.
‘How on earth do you know about that?’ he demanded.
‘Secretarial cabal,’ she whispered before taking a sip of her wine.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said, leaning back in his chair and now looking at her with something a little like awe.
The waiter appeared and discreetly whisked away their plates, while another server replaced their white wine with a red in a fresh glass, filled up their water, changed their knives and disappeared with as much speed and efficiency as a racing car pit stop.
And throughout it all Aleksander held her gaze.
And throughout it all she wished he didn’t. Because this wasn’t a date. This very much wasn’therdate, that was for sure. A tingling began at her fingertips and her heart felt full and thick as it thudded in her chest, each beat sending fissures of need around her body.
Looking away, she caught the eye of one of the security detail standing at the far end of the room, and the small smile and nod of acknowledgement reminded her that she was one ofthem. Not the person who was taken for dinner by the King. Not purposely so, anyway.
It wasn’t her role to tease the King. It was—as they had agreed—her role to help him find a fiancée. And whether or not she found him attractive was neither here nor there.
‘Did you...?’ she started and had to clear her throat gently. ‘Did you have any other women in mind?’
There was only one woman he had in mind at that moment and he would never be able to touch her. Because what he needed was complete indifference. And what Henna Olin meant to him... He could categorically confirm that it was most definitelyotherthan indifference.
The waiter returned with their main course, buying Aleksander some time. ‘Aged sirloin steak with a stout jus, celeriac purée, baby vegetables poached in cumin butter and...’ Aleksander stopped listening and watched as Henna bestowed a beatific smile on the waiter. There was nothing fake about the warmth that she shone on the people around her. No matter the hurts and losses she had experienced, it hadn’t made her brittle, harsh or manipulative and for just a second he was jealous that she hadn’thadto become those things. Remembering why and how he’d melded himself into the King he’d become hardened something that had melted a little under the warmth of her attention.
She flicked a gaze to him, concern firing in her eyes like a spark, which was banked before it could be seen by the waiter, who finally left them alone.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, forcing himself to answer the question Henna had asked.