But he didn’t hear anything more, because his mouth sealed over hers. Relief crashed over him. She loves me. Their tongues tangled, her fingers fisting in his button-down shirt.

He kissed a path to her neck and breathed her in. Yanking on the tie behind her neck, he lowered the straps of her sundress. “I fucking missed you. You ever been at the summit, so high there’s not enough oxygen?”

She nodded, as she tugged the tail of his shirt out of his khakis.

“That’s what it felt like after you left. All week, I couldn’t take a full breath. I felt sick. Nothing felt right.”

“I know. I felt the same way.”

“But you were really going to move on without me?”

“My father…”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sure it scared the crap out of you. But I want you to hear me when I say that next time, you wait for me. Because everything from this minute on, we do together. You get a call like that again, know that I’ll drop everything if you need me to be with you.”

“I always need you to be with me.” She stood up, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Always, Brodie.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

In the formal dining room, thirty-six dignitaries enjoyed a ten-course meal hosted by His Serene Highness the Prince of St. Christophe and his wife. Their good friends, the Prince and Princess of Monaco, sat to her father’s left.

After spending the summer in jeans and sundresses, Rosalina felt constricted in her form-fitting designer gown, so she couldn’t imagine how Brodie, seated across the table and a few chairs down, felt in his tuxedo. Though, he did look strikingly handsome.

She doubted he was aware of the number of times he’d tugged on the collar of his shirt. Beside him sat Jean Luc, his royal protocol coach—not that anyone but the royal family knew the man’s identity as anything other than Lord Fortier.

The moment Brodie leaned toward the person next to him—the Prince of Andorra—to enter into a conversation, Jean Luc discreetly tapped his thigh. Brodie immediately pulled back. She didn’t have to hear them to know that Jean Luc was quietly explaining that Brodie, a commoner, could only speak when the Prince initiated conversation.

Brodie looked like he wanted to push back his chair, rip off his tie, and get the hell out of this stuffy room. And he’d only been in St. Christophe a little over a month.

Imagine him a year from now. Ten years.

This is no life for him.

She knew down to her bones he’d be miserable here.

But it’s the only life for me.