Her senior assistant, stylist, and security team were the only ones outside of her family she could be herself around, but even they saw a partially obscured person. She was, after all, still the queen.
Would Jacob be any different now that he knew who she was?
She would have to take any friendship with him slowly. It wouldn't do to lose her heart to him only to have it broken one more time - even if it wasn't a romantic relationship.
If the way her breath caught in her throat was any indication, she certainly found him attractive. That wasn't enough to build a relationship on, but definitely something needed.
All of that flashed through her mind in a matter of seconds. Could she take the chance on him?
Something told her she needed to. "Very well. We can spend some time getting to know each other. Perhaps you could join my family for dinner a couple of times a week. Afterward, we can continue spending time with them or perhaps play a game or something of that nature."
"It would be an honor to get to know your family better." Once again, hesounded sincere.
Mumeleine liked his family. Maybe that meant she could trust Jacob.
"Very well. I will have someone reach out to you with what dates would be appropriate."
"No."
That made her turn. Except for her parents, people rarely told her no. "Excuse me?"
He took a step closer to her. Not close, not like he had been briefly while looking at the book, but close enough she could see the serious look in his eyes.
"If you want to spend time with me, even if it's just dinner with your family, you need to reach out to me yourself." His expression softened slightly. "I want to get to know Kinsey and whether she properly punctuates and capitalizes her grammatically and spellingly correct text messages or how she signs her personal emails. I don't want to know how her assistant speaks during a phone call."
Catherine searched his eyes, his face, to find any hint of insincerity.
But there was none.
"Very well. I will contact you in the next couple of days." She heard someone typing the code in for the outer door. "However, I do have a few things I need to do..." Like shower, find pyjamas and a pint of ice cream, then retire to her room for the night. "...so someone will escort you to your vehicle."
"Thank you, Kinsey," he said softly, taking one more step toward her then leaning down to kiss her cheek. "I'm very glad I ran into you today."
The note of humor in his voice made her smile. She watched as he exited the door, but he didn't turn back before he was out of sight.
Once she couldn't see him any longer, Catherine made certain the Hall was locked behind her then went to the family quarters upstairs.
She hoped, prayed even, that she'd found someone who wouldn't take advantage of her and her status.
The shower lasted longer than she'd planned, but the ice cream still waited in the freezer in her dressing room for just such occasions. Curling up in her favorite chair, she looked out over the city below as she ate spoonful after spoonful of creamy goodness.
Forcing herself to stop, she put it away with just over half left.
A few minutes later, she was in bed and prayed that, when she woke, she would know it hadn't all been a dream.
This time.
Jake didn’t thinkhe’d managed to screw everything up. Not completely.
It had taken a lot more bravado than he really felt to tell the queen he needed her to contact him herself rather than have an assistant do it.
He found himself wishing she wasn’t the queen. Not because he was overly intimidated, but because he knew it would make getting to know each other that much more difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.
Once back at his grandparents’ home, he looked her up online to find out more about her public persona. He knew he wouldn't find anything about her private persona, or not much anyway. She’d be taking over as queen full-time in a few weeks, after her twenty-fifth birthday. Her father had been her regent. Public opinion seemed to be that the Dowager Prince Consort, as he was called, had done an excellent job both as regent and in making certain Queen Catherine would be prepared to take over whenthe time came.
General consensus aboutherseemed to be that she was beautiful and elegant, just like her mother. She was kind and caring, just like her mother. She was certain to be an excellent queen, just like her mother.
Queen Catherine's longevity would certainly be significantly longer than her mother's reign, but she'd become queen at age ten so she already had been queen more than twice the length of time, even if she wasn't fully at the helm just yet.
