Page 46 of American Royals
“I knew you’d come this way.”
Nina whirled around, breathless—and saw the prince off to one side, his board slung casually over his shoulder.
“Jeff! How did you …?”
“Because you always miss that turnoff. Every year.” He grinned and pulled her a few feet down, into the thick cover of the trees. Nina let out a startled yelp.
“Shh.” Jeff set his board to one side and stepped forward, trapping her against the broad trunk of a tree. He braced both gloved hands against the frozen bark to hold Nina in place. Not that she wanted to go anywhere.
She could see the cloud of his breath in the cold winter air, mingling with her own.
“Aren’t you worried about being the last one to the lift?” she managed to say. No one ever wanted to be on hot-tub-jet duty. It meant that while everyone else was warm in the water, you had to run across the patio and hit the button that turned the jets on for another thirty-minute cycle.
“I have more important things on my mind right now.”
Still pinning her there, as if he was terrified she might change her mind and snowboard away from him, Jeff reached to unsnap her helmet and pull it off her head. He began trailing a line of soft, teasing kisses along her jawline.
Nina went still, her eyes fluttering shut. Jeff’s lips were freezing, but his tongue was hot. The twin sensations of ice and fire sent shivers of longing through her body, fusing deep within her into something sharp and newly forged. She kept trying to twist her head, to catch Jeff’s mouth with her own, but he seemed determined to torture her.
When Nina couldn’t take it anymore, she reached around his waist to grab fistfuls of his jacket, yanking him closer. Her hair brushed against the tree as she tipped her head back, arcing into the kiss with reckless abandon. In the distance, they could still hear scattered laughter and the whoosh of skiers gliding past.
“I guess we should head down,” Jeff finally said, with obvious reluctance.
Nina’s blood pounded with adrenaline. “You should at least give me a head start. It’s the chivalrous thing to do.”
She gave him one last rushed kiss before setting off downhill, unable to stop smiling.
That night, Nina stood just inside her doorway, rising on tiptoe and lowering back down again. She was waiting for silence—for all the rustling and footfalls and general ambient noises of an eighteen-bedroom house to finally fall still.
At least she was here as Sam’s friend. If Jeff had invited her, Nina knew she would have been relegated to the guest cottage, the way Daphne used to be. There was a twenty-four-hour security guard stationed on the property, which would complicate things if she tried to sneak across the yard back to the main house. She wondered how Jeff and Daphne used to do it, then flinched at the thought.
There was no point in tormenting herself with questions about Jeff’s ex-girlfriend. So what if Daphne was in Telluride right now? Maybe they wouldn’t run into her at all.
When Nina judged that she’d lingered long enough, she held her breath and darted silently into the hallway, tiptoeing along the corridor until she reached Jeff’s room.
“Finally!” He pulled the door shut behind her. “I was worried you might not be coming.”
“I had to wait until the coast was clear.”
Jeff’s room was larger than Nina’s, though decorated in the same style: suede pillows, a braided rope ottoman, cozy cashmere blankets. On one wall hung a series of framed black-and-white photographs that the former king had taken in the mountains.
Nina sank gratefully onto Jeff’s bed, tugging his arm to pull him down next to her.
“Nina,” Jeff began, and the way he said her name, Nina knew he’d been thinking about this for a while. “I still don’t understand all the secrecy. Why can’t we at least tell Sam?”
She tried to play it off in a lighthearted way. “Sam can’t keep a secret. Remember how she ruined your parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary?”
“She didn’t mean to,” Jeff reminded her. The Washington siblings had tried to plan a surprise anniversary party for their parents, but the surprise was blown when the Post got wind of their plans and ran a story about it the week before. Apparently Samantha had gossiped about the party at a brunch with some friends, and another table had overheard them.
“I mean it,” Jeff insisted. “When that reporter asked today whether I was dating anyone, all I wanted was to shout about you to the whole world. How much longer do we need to keep it a secret?”
Nina ran a hand over the red-and-black tartan of his bedspread. She didn’t know how to explain the confusing geometry of her emotions: that she was falling for Jeff all over again, and far too fast. And whatever this was between them, it was still too uncertain, too eggshell fragile, for her to share it.
She took a shallow breath. “I’m just not ready to tell anyone. Once we do … it won’t be just us anymore.” Their relationship would be public property.
“Why is that such a bad thing? People are going to find out eventually.”
“Because they won’t approve! I’m different from the type of girl America wants you to be with, and it scares me, okay?”
