Page 27 of Royally Knocked Up
For the first time, it occurred to him that when this was all over and he returned to Monteverde, he would be leaving her behind.
The thought made him feel a deep, painful sense of dread. Being here with Hailey had been such an unexpected gift.
It was such a shock to realize that he didn’t want his father’s punishment to end.
He didn’t like the fact that his father had chosen to deal with him by sending him away. But in the end, when all was said and done, it had turned out to be for the best.
He got to his feet. “We’re not getting any work done tonight,” he said to Hailey. “I think we should go out.”
“Out?” she repeated. “What did you have in mind?”
“Just out for a walk around the grounds,” he said. “I’m not trying to get you to go to Vista Grande again, I promise.”
She laughed. “I really will go someday,” she told him. “I’d like to see as much of this country as I can, as long as I’m here.”
“There’s a lot I could show you,” he said. “Maybe we can even go back to Luria together sometime, once I’m allowed to do that. I’d love to show you my hometown.”
She smiled. “I would love to see it,” she said. “I’m sure there’s more than what I saw on my way here from the airport. I just hope I’ll be around long enough that we’re able to do that.”
“You still don’t know when you’re planning to go back to the States?” There was another ticking clock on their time together. Everything felt so ephemeral, and suddenly he wished he had kissed her the other day instead of letting her pull away from him.
He wondered if he would get another chance.
“If you were in Luria with me,” he said, shocked at his own candor, “I don’t think I would feel the need to go out to bars and clubs all the time. I think I would be happy just to hang around at home.”
“You find me that entertaining?” Her face lit up with something between humor and pleasure.
“I find you delightful,” he told her, winking so it wouldn’t come across as anything overly serious. The truth was that he meant it from the bottom of his heart.
She received it quietly, smiling softly to herself in a way that tugged at his heartstrings. He wanted to reach out and take her hand.
He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had made him feel an impulse like that. Had it ever happened?
But Hailey wasn’t like any woman he had ever known.
When he was with her, he could forget the fact that his father was about to be a king. He could forget that he was the prince. He could just be Enzo — just a man. He truly believed that that was what she saw when she looked at him, and it was the most powerful and precious thing he had ever experienced in his life.
He didn’t know how he was ever going to give this up.
CHAPTER 11
HAILEY
“Ican’t believe how quickly this all came together,” Hailey marveled, looking around the event space that was going to serve as a reception area. The movie would be screened in the local theater down the block from La Fantasia, which had partnered with the resort for the occasion — in fact, that was where all the guests were now. In about an hour, they would be making their way up the block in their formal gowns and tuxes and taking their places at the tables that currently sat empty around the room.
“You can’t believe it?” Enzo repeated, raising his eyebrows. “Of the two of us, you’re the one with all the experience in events planning. You must have had some idea that it was going to happen the way it did.”
“Oh,” Hailey said. “Yeah. You’re right.”
She had become so comfortable with Enzo that she found herself forgetting, from time to time, that she was supposed to be an experienced events planner. It wasn’t good. She had never allowed her cover to slip like this before in all her time as a private investigator. Hailey was usually great at stepping intothe roles that were assigned to her and making them her own. It was unlike her to forget herself while she was on the job.
That was the effect Enzo seemed to have on her. He made her forget that she was working at all. When she was with him, she felt as if she was spending time with a friend, not keeping an eye on a target. And that was a very dangerous thing. She couldn’t afford to take her eye off her mission. This might be an unusual job — it was hardly a matter of criminal activity — but even so, she had been hired by a king, and she didn’t want to think about what the consequences might be if she were to let him down in any way.
At the very least, she thought, he would be likely to tank her business. He wouldn’t bother trying to hide the fact that he’d hired her and she had failed in the job she’d been hired for. There wouldn’t be any reason for him to keep that to himself.
She cleared her throat. “It actuallyissurprising that we were able to get Mae Terrington to come do a Q&A here,” she said. “She’s incredibly hard to book. An A-lister.”
“It’ll be fun to meet her,” Enzo said. “I wish we could have gone to see the movie screening. But I saw her in that movie she was in last year — the one about the sisters who went backpacking across Europe together.”
