Free Royal's Untouched Love by Sophia Lynn Page A

around the environmental graphs like you do."
    She laughed a little at his joke, but something else that he said caught her attention.
    "Everyone told you not to ask me out? Can I ask why?"
    Marten looked a little startled. "Well, because of your breakup before you came here."
    "My … breakup?"
    "Office gossip says that you broke up with a boyfriend or a fiancé right before you came here," he said. "Most of the office assumes that you're still getting over it."
    "Yes," she said after a pause. "That's … not quite right, but it's close enough. I will say that I'm glad that you took me out for dinner though. I had been feeling a little lonely for friends."
    "Friends, eh?" he said with a laugh. "I can live with that. Next Thursday, there's a trivia night at the English-styled pub close to work. You should join us."
    To her surprise, she did join them, and found herself having a good time. When the laughter was over, however, she had found her way back to her apartment, and when the door closed behind her, it was so silent.
    When it was silent, it was altogether too easy to slip into a memory of dark hair, blue eyes, and hands that brought her a kind of pleasure she could only imagine before. She could still hear his words, rushed with passion and then sweet afterward.
    "God, when am I going to forget him?" she said out loud, staring up at her tall ceiling.
    She was very afraid that the answer was going to be never.
    *
    Things continued for a month or so, and then LaMer Enterprises was thrown into turmoil. The UN had come back with a resolution to see an aggressive fifteen percent reduction in ocean pollution in the next ten years, and the yachting industry was one of the biggest ones under scrutiny.
    Heidi found herself pulled into more meetings than ever, calming down the alarmists and sometimes being quite sharp with the ones who didn't think it needed to be done at all.
    "Of course it needs to be done," she said sternly. "If you want to have a business legacy to leave to your grandchildren and not just a pile of excuses over the things you should have done when you had the time, this is exactly what needs to be done."
    She found a strange ally in Anastasia Buros, a Princess of Greece and a committed environmentalist. Where Heidi had come from the most humble of American origins, Anastasia Buros had come from the closest thing America had to royalty. Instead of spending her time looking good and swanning around the world, however, she gave her time and money to water conservation, an enterprise in which she had enlisted her husband Augustine.
    Anastasia seemed delighted by Heidi, and though at first Heidi was cautious, she found herself warming to the other woman. It was Anastasia who convinced her to come aboard her husband's own yacht, the Wild Waves, for a weekend cruise. It had been good to get away from the office, to see what she was trying to protect. Anastasia was sweet and bubbly, and though Augustine was more sardonic, Heidi was surprised to realize that she liked both of them a great deal. That was why she didn't think twice when Anastasia invited her for a light dinner of mezes followed by an evening of dancing.
    "It'll be fun!" Anastasia said brightly. "No one recognizes us at all, and Athens has an amazing nightlife that I bet you haven't even experienced yet!"
    It was true. Heidi had been feeling more than a little hermit-like lately, and if having some fun with Greek royalty didn't make the cut, she was going to be facing some pretty severe loneliness in the future.
    Before she went out, she nerved herself up and went to spend some of the money she had saved up on some clothes for the clubs. She didn't know much, but she knew that she certainly couldn't wear her work clothes out anywhere fun.
    She ended up with a sparkly green top that made her eyes look apple green and a short black skirt that showed off her long pale legs. On impulse, she let her hair fall down her back, shaking it out into loose