Free Royal Bachelor by Trudi Torres

tell her. Just not yet. “Is this the part where you accidentally open the door to my room instead of the loo?”
    She rolled her eyes. “No. I don’t fancy peeing on beds.”
    Luke laughed. He pointed. “That’s my room to the right, and Alfred’s on the left. The door in the middle is the loo.”
    As soon as she closed the middle door, Jules opened the door on the left, thankfully no longer in full regalia, wearing a simple outfit of shirt and trousers. He staidly walked over at Luke’s frantic beckoning.
    “Call me Luke or Lucian, all right?” he whispered in fast Elmeran. “We’re in America anyway. Save your ‘my lord’ and ‘my lord prince’ for Elmera.”
    “If you say so, sir.”
    Luke glared. “Are you going to make me spell it out? No ‘sir’, no ‘your highness’, none of any of my titles of address.” When Jules raised his eyebrows, Luke continued, “And you can’t mention Lorignac either. I’m Luke Neville. And you’re Alfred Neville.”
    “And I’m Jules Alcantara and king of the Belgians,” said Alfred, popping a cucumber sandwich into his mouth and then grimacing at it.
    “By all rights, you should be Mr. Fired, you do know that?” Jules said blithely. Alfred gulped down some water. Whether from the sandwich or the chastisement, Luke couldn’t tell. Perhaps both. Jules turned to Luke. “My lord—”
    “Luke.”
    “Luke, you should move to the house. It’s ready and you will be better looked aft—”
    “For once in my life, I don’t want to be looked after. I’m staying here. You can go back to the house if you wish.”
    “Do you think Miss Martelli will appreciate this?”
    “For God’s sake, man,” Alfred said. “Loosen up. You can’t just go around revealing you’re a prince to people you want to get to know.”
    Both Luke and Jules were surprised at that. Alfred usually stayed out of it when Jules was castigating Luke.
    And then it was Jules’s turn to surprise Luke by actually inclining his head to Alfred. “You have a point. That is all I concede, however. Don’t you watch... movies?”
    Luke and Alfred were taken aback. “You do?” they said simultaneously. Luke almost said that he knew Jules liked children’s cartoons. Jules curled his lip at them.
    “In movies, concealments like this don’t turn out well. But it’s your necks. Our guest seems to have disappeared,” said Jules.
    Luke fairly ran to the loo. “Alice? Are you all right in there?”
    “Yes.” Her voice sounded tiny. “Um, just a second. I’m waiting for it to scoot.”
    “I beg your pardon? Can I come in?”
    “No! You’ll kill it.”
    “What will I be killing?”
    “A spider. Um, huge. On the door. On the door jamb. If we move, it might leap onto me or get squished.”
    Luke sighed in relief. She hadn’t screamed. She was just waiting for it to ‘scoot’. But she sounded terrified.
    “It won’t leap onto you, Alice. I’m coming in and pulling you out.”
    “ Easy for you to say! You’re not the one trapped in a tiny room with a spider!”
    She squeaked when he opened the door. And then she expelled breath in relief when the spider just scuttled away to the ceiling, which made Alice walk away from under that ceiling and out into Luke’s arms.
    “Whoa, that is really huge.” The spider was as big as his hand. Where did that come from? Fortunately, it found the window and went right out. He hoped it had another shelter away from the winter. And then there was only Alice, feeling so soft and so perfect inside the circle of his arms. He wished it had been a dragon or something a little more fearsome, and then he might at least be rewarded with a kiss. But holding her was a fine prize as well.
    “Spiders are nice bugs,” she said. “But they do intimidate me.”
    And then she seemed to notice where she was and blushed and pushed gently away.
    Luke entered the loo next and splashed cold water on his face. He really was putty in her hands, and she hadn’t even done