Forbidden Desire (Maid for the Billionaire Prince #2)(7)
Author: Artemis Hunt

“Ah, there you are, your highness. I’ve been searching everywhere for you.” Jasper’s tone is smooth, dulcet, and totally unapologetic. “Your mother, the Queen, has returned from the hospital and requested your presence for dinner. The two of you,” he adds significantly.

Dinner? With the Queen? What time is it?

With a start, I notice that the sky outside has darkened considerably.

Oh my God, I’m going to have dinner with the Queen, and I have nothing to wear. I have nothing to say to her. I’m totally unprepared!

“We’ll be down in an hour, Jasper,” Alex says.

“Thirty minutes is preferable, your highness.” Jasper vanishes. The door shuts with a snap.

Prick.

“Shit,” Alex says, getting up.

“What do I do?” I say, panicking.

He sizes me up and down. “We get you something to wear.”

*

Getting me something to wear within a half hour is goddamned difficult because most of my clothes are completely unsuitable for meeting royalty – that is, proper royalty with all its pomp and splendor, not the beach hut affairs I’m more used to with Alex. I have only one gown – the one that Alex gave me – which is presentable, but I’d left it back home in my sublet apartment in Chicago.

“Don’t worry,” Alex says, “I’ll get you my sister’s clothes.”

“Is your mother really particular about dressing up?”

He hesitates, not wanting to scare me. “A little. But it’s not as if you have to wear a ball gown or anything. This is a private family dinner.”

“What do you wear during your private family dinners?” My heart sinks. Alex’s family is anything but normal.

“Something a little more formal than jeans and a T-shirt, but not to the extent of a dinner jacket.”

That’s helpful.

“What do the women wear?”

He’s getting into his jeans and T-shirt. “Um . . . I’ll have to ask Hannah.”

“Who’s Hannah?”

“My mother’s PA. But she doesn’t live here and we don’t have much time. Tell you what? Follow me and we’ll raid my sister’s closet.”

Dressing hurriedly in a clean halter top and shorts, I pad after Alex. He leads me down a maze of richly decorated corridors with more antiques and bric-bracs than I have ever seen in my entire life. We head out of the East Wing and into another adjacent wing where the royals live.

We arrive at a pair of closed double oak doors. Without knocking, Alex pushes them open.

“Would she mind?” I say worriedly.

“What she won’t know won’t kill her. This is my younger sister Marie’s room, and she’s got more clothes than a Chinese departmental store.”

Marie is the sister who is in Yale. Somehow, I don’t think the analogy is apt. Marie Vassar’s clothes are more likely to be haute couture from the best French designers money can buy. Even her room is humungous, consisting of a living room with tasteful ornate furniture and an open door leading to a bedroom. I catch a glimpse of the canopied bed with gold tassels within.

“Wait till you see her closet,” Alex says, striding into the bedroom and flinging open a door that leads to a huge walk-in closet. “And don’t worry. She was here this morning but she had to take a flight back to America for her exams. So she won’t be walking in on us anytime soon.”

That’s right. She has exams. As do I, if I hadn’t run out on college to be with Alex.

I walk into the walk-in closet . . . and stop.

I’m speechless. Rows and rows of cedar wood closets line the walls. Alex opens one, and everything is color coordinated inside – yellows next to oranges. Marie has dozens and dozens of dresses, gowns, suits, everything . . . and those are in that one closet alone!

“It gets better.” He grins as he opens the closet beside it. The reds jump out in stark contrast. “She follows the rainbow spectrum and everything in between. My sister is a hoarder of the worst kind.”

I whirl around, unable to take it all in. How many pieces of clothes are in here? Hundreds? Thousands? How can one woman have so many clothes?

Alex presses a button, and a motorized sound is emitted. The closets in front slide left and the one beside it takes its place. Everything else seems to rotate like a conveyer belt of closets, revealing the ones which were previously behind. I see shoes, hatboxes, winter coats and furs, stacks and stacks of other boxes which may or may not contain lingerie and belts.

I’m still too dazzled to say anything.

He takes pity on me.

“OK, if you can’t choose and seeing as we are in a rush, I’ll choose one for you.”

He picks out an outfit from the yellow rack and hands it to me. My hands are trembling slightly as I take it. The material is cotton of the softest handspun variety.

He says, “This looks like something she would wear for dinner. I’ll let you dress. I’ll be back soon, I just have to throw on something more decent.”

I find my tongue. “Are you going to leave me alone here?”

The prospect frightens me. Somehow, I feel like a thief in someone else’s room. What if Jasper finds me here? Or the Queen? Would they call palace security?

“My room is just down the corner,” Alex assures me. “I’ll back in a jiffy.”

He throws me a kiss and rushes off.

I get it. We are on a deadline here.

I dress hurriedly. It’s a long-sleeved yellow dress with a boat-shaped neckline. Its variegated hem – of intertwining leaves and flowers – falls modestly to my knees, and there’s a little embellished yellow flower on one side of it, just below the neckline.

Alex has forgotten to select matching shoes for me, and so I reach for a yellow pair of pumps.

Everything surprisingly fits me to a tee. I’m fully aware I’m wearing a princess’s clothes. I pick up an enameled brush with the portrait of a beautiful woman’s face on its back, and comb my hair in the standing mirror at one corner. I have no makeup on, but I see a tube of lipstick on the vanity table and I quickly apply it.

Great. Not only am I wearing Alex’s sister’s clothes, but I’m borrowing her brush and makeup as well. If she ever does find out, some seriously royal shit is going to hit the fan.

Alex comes in again. His long unruly hair is tidied up somewhat, and he has put on a white dinner jacket over a clean shirt.

So much for not requiring dinner jackets.

“Come on,” he says, “I’m starving.”