Free Royal Bachelor by Trudi Torres Page B

apartment with the intent of racing back to pay for the taxi but Jules was there, holding the phone.
    “Your lady mother, my lord.”
    Luke sat down on the sofa and sighed. He’d catch up with Alice later. Jules gave him the phone. “Hello, Mother.”
    “Lucian, how are you, darling? I got Jules on my side and he had the house opened with a small staff. Why aren’t you at the house yet? I was getting worried.” That was probably why Jules flew over immediately.
    “I thought the point of this was for you to not worry,” Luke stated.
    “A mother can’t help it. Go and pretend to be a pauper, but I’d really feel better if you slept somewhere safe. I can’t believe you’ve been sleeping where any common criminal or electrical fire could kill you!”
    “Mother, please. I don’t want to go to the house anymore.”
    “Why ever not?”
    “It’s a long story.”
    “Well, start it.”
    “Jules and Alfred had switched names, how’s that for a start?”
    His mother laughed. “Interesting. Tell me all.”

Chapter Ten - Alice
     
     
    Right. Chores. Chores are good. Even when you don’t really have to restock groceries. They’re good excuses, something to grasp like a lifeline when you feel dangerously close to sinking in foolish, insensible love with a man you met a week ago and have seen only thrice since.
    Thrice! Had it only been three times that she’d seen and talked to and touched Luke?
    Good thing she got away then.
    Chores give you distance from romance and plonk you back in reality. Because Alice was most certainly living inside fantasy. Had she just let some stranger kiss her? In a church of all places? Had she spent a perfect, domesticated morning with this man, feeling natural with him as though they had been together forever? As though she knew him. But Alice didn’t know anything about Luke except that he would eventually leave her. And that he was perfect.
    Alice buried her nose in a towel while something squealed like a school girl inside her brain.
    Oh, she hadn’t done that inside her brain at all. Two sales staff had hurried over to see what she was squealing about. Face burning, she put the towel and another into her shopping cart and walked on. That was undignified.
    But she had to get it all out somehow. She felt better now. Her hands were no longer shaking. And when she went home and faced Rebecca, she wouldn’t blab like a thirteen-year-old, she’d be a picture of poise and detachment, as if she went to church with men like Luke every day. Because Alice was too terrified to admit to anyone, even her best friend that she just might be falling in love. So fast and so foolishly. Not in the way that Luke was a hopeless case, but their relationship would be. He had ties in Elmera. Ties as tenacious and important—if not more—than her roots here and in Italy.
    She could still feel his arms around her after that silly debacle with the gigantic spider. Best case scenario: Luke was the one , but then he would leave for his tiny little island, an island that didn’t have The Strand or the city or any of her friends. She couldn’t possibly go with him and so she’d have to suffer the heartbreak of letting him go. She should break it off now, save herself the heartache in the future.
    But she couldn’t stop wondering what his mouth would feel like on her collar bone or how his bare, sleeping shoulders would look in the drowsy light of morning. She was snared.
    *
    Monday at work was quiet. Mondays were always quiet at the bookstore. Alice hid in the basement level. She’d been tempted to call Luke yesterday evening after she’d held true to her own word and ended up cleaning her brownstone from top to bottom, but Rebecca had come over and asked for all the gory and glorious details and then they had a movie marathon while folding their laundry. It was relaxing and Alice decided she would need her housekeeper less often.
    Alice’s arms and legs hurt from all the cleaning she’d done.