"Did you have a chance to eat?" he asked.Where's your sister?
She began to shrug but halted the movement, and her eyes flicked around the room. "Elizabeth had a salad sent over."
There was something behind what should've been a simple statement. Was she used to heartier food? Coming from a ranch, did she eat steak every day? Hamburgers?
"Your highness."
She glanced to where a gentleman Luc's father's age was approaching them.
She hesitated. It was slight but unmistakable.
"Mr. Hemry." Luc intercepted the man with an outstretched hand.
Hemry gave only a cursory shake, but it was long enough for Luc to note the quick look of appreciation Tirith’s sister shot him.
Hemry wanted to update her on the status of the dog rescue they'd spoken about weeks ago. She was all smiles as she listened. Mr. Hemry had no clue that this wasn't Tirith.
He still didn't know why Margaret and Tirith had traded places, but it seemed the princesses wanted to keep it a secret. That he could do, at least until he discovered what was going on.
It was the work of a few minutes for Luc to guide her around the room, using the names of people Tirith had known for two years in natural conversation. He should've gotten an award for it. He wasn't even sureshenoticed.
And then Mrs. Teague called the meeting to order, and he slipped into the seat next to Princess Margaret. They'd rounded the long, oval table and ended up on the curve, which meant his knee bumped hers beneath the smooth wooden surface.
The board meeting always kicked off with a discussion of old and new business. Luc's proposal was a line-item on the agenda and would be discussed later.
A delay which gave him too much time to wonder.
His curiosity had been piqued. He always did his research, and the twin princesses were no exception. He'd scoured both the internet and the Glorvaird public library archives before he'd officially met Tirith.
Everyone knew Tirith and Margaret were twins.
But no one knew what had happened when the girls had been twelve.
The two periods of their lives might have been drawn on a white board and bisected with a thick black line. Before twelve and after twelve.
Before twelve, the twins had both lived in the castle. They'd been in the news regularly, along with their younger sister Beatrix. Alessandra and Gideon had lived happily—or so it seemed—at the castle. When photographed, the twins were all smiles, often had their arms around each other, and appeared confident and carefree.
After the girls had turned twelve, Margaret disappeared from the media reports entirely. There was only a small clipping—a paragraph, literally—that mentioned Gideon relocating back to Texas with Margaret. There were no photos of Margaret after that. It was as if she'd disappeared.
And yet, here she was. Sitting next to Luc, so close that his knee was pressed to hers.
There was no mention whatsoever of what had happened when the girls were twelve, but it was obvious something had changed for the royal family.
There should've been rampant speculation in the media, but that was absent too. Had the royal family quashed it? Why? Why was all the secrecy necessary?
And the more important question: was Margaret's return going to interfere with his carefully-laid plans?
On the table before each chair was a blank notepad and pen. A few of the board members had laptops open in front of them.
No one paid Luc any mind as he slid the half-size notepad onto his thigh and wrote on it.
He slipped it on to Margaret's lap, and she jumped. She was nothing like Tirith, who was so cool he'd often wanted to check her pulse.
He couldn't even imagine kissing Tirith. They'd been friends for too long, probably. And when he imagined finding the future Mrs. Moreno—eventually—he had no interest in an ice queen. He'd had enough deep freeze from his father before the man's death two years ago.
So why hadn't he been able to stop thinking about Margaret? Even now, watching her slender fingers pick up her pen from the table made him wonder if those fingers would feel cool against the back of his neck. Or warm, like the woman had felt in his arms.
Margaret was no ice queen.
