My jaw tightens. “Hmm.”
“I like her,” Pippa declares.
Of course she does. Pippa’s so oblivious to people’s hidden agendas, she’d happily invite Darth Vader and his entire army of stormtroopers to brunch for a nice chat.
“I've been following her for years. She’s smart and got some really good ideas. Her social media strategy is absolutely brilliant. Have you seen her hashtags?” Pippa enthuses.
“I’m rather too familiar with her hashtags,” I grind out.
But Pippa is on a roll about Fabiana. “She understands how to create authentic engagement without sacrificing journalistic integrity. Her reels and TikToks are?—"
“I’m not doing TikToks,” I warn.
“Why not?” Pippa asks.
I lift an eyebrow. “The King and Queen wouldn’t approve, as Princess Amelia will attest.”
“I say let’s hear her out,” Pippa declares, and Ronan and I share a look that sayslet’s not.
The truth is, yesterday's palace tour with Fabiana left me strangely unsettled. She’s exactly how she comes across in her articles. Sharp, sarcastic, and thoroughlyunimpressed by me. What I hadn't expected was the way her green eyes flashed when she was teasing me about “Queen Bertha”.
Or the attractive curve of her cheek when she pulled her lips into a smile.
Or the way she held herself with a quiet confidence, even when Timmy showed his distrust of her.
And then there was the time I leaned closer to her to tell her about Chef Margot, and I caught a hint of her scent. Something soft and sweet and completely disarming.
It was…inconvenient.
Of course I knew she was an attractive woman. I’m not blind. But it’s one thing to know someone is attractive; it’s quite another to feel it in their presence.
And I did feel it. I felt it in her quips, in the way she looked at me, in the way she moved.
Dang it!Developing a thing for my arch-nemesis? Terrible,terribletiming, particularly when we’re about to embark on a full month together.
Because as pretty as she is, as alluring as her scent may be, I refuse to be seduced by her womanly charms. Fabiana Fontaine is the enemy, and I must keep her at arm’s length.
The door flies open, and Fabiana steps back into the room, her signature ponytail swinging, her face flushed, rendering he even more attractive.
Get it together, Max.
“Sorry about that,” she says as she lowers herself onto the chair opposite me. “Where were we?”
“You were telling us about your brilliant social media strategy,” Pippa says eagerly.
“That’s right. I was suggesting how you could drag the monarchy into the twenty-first century,” she says.
Ronan's eyebrows climb toward his hairline. “That's one way to frame ourobjectives, Ms. Fontaine.”
“You might have noticed that in the interests of saving time, I prefer directness, Mr. Clementine.” She glances around the room, her eyes landing on mine, and utterly against my will, my belly does something that seems suspiciously like a flip.
Settle it down, Max. She’s the enemy, remember?
Pippa practically vibrates with excitement. “Directness is fantastic!”
Ronan slides a thick wad of paper across the table to Fabiana. “I suggest we put a pin in the whole TikTok idea for now. I've prepared an outline for the documentary series we believe will effectively showcase His Royal Highness in a comprehensive light. If you’d care to take a look?”
She eyes the document as though it were an incendiary device in need of expert detonation. “With all due respect, Mr. Clementine, I believe TV documentary formats have about as much relevance today as a coop of carrier pigeons. Except for David Beckham’s series, that is.”
