The Princess Trap

by Talia Hibbert

  At least, he thought he was undetected. He hadn’t even noticed that Demi was in the room too, not until she said, “Hi, Ruben.” Her tone was slightly mocking, slightly smug, and when he finally placed her, standing over by the fridge, her smile was sly. Who needed little sisters when they had uppity personal assistants?

  “Hi, Demi,” he sighed, just as Cherry turned around.

  God, she was so fucking beautiful. She flashed him her perfect smile, the beauty pageant one, with just enough teeth and the hint of a dimple. If he’d wondered how she’d react after last night, he now had his answer: she was nervous.

  Good. He was nervous too.

  “Hi,” she said, sounded slightly breathless. Which, he told himself, could have nothing to do with his arrival. There was a huge mixing bowl clutched to her chest, and she was stirring its contents with rather alarming vigour. So maybe she’d been standing there, stirring and laughing and talking to Demi and now she was out of breath.

  Or maybe she was remembering the way it felt to touch him in the dark.

  “What are you doing?” He asked, trying to sound casual. He thought he managed it. So why did she look down at her bowl instead of meeting his eyes? Was that good or bad?

  “Baking,” she said.

  “Baking…?”

  “Nothing exciting. Fairy cakes, you know.”

  “Cupcakes,” Demi supplied.

  “They’re not cupcakes!” Cherry smiled at Demetria, really smiled. Her cheeks plumped up and her dimples flashed and everything about her relaxed. “Fairy cakes are smaller. And less sweet. And just… better.”

  “How can less sweet and better come up in the same sentence?” Demi sounded outraged.

  “Subtlety is everything,” Cherry said pertly. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  “I will put icing in your hair, you know. I’ll do it.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  Ruben watched them banter with an unfamiliar feeling in his gut. It took him a good few seconds to identify that feeling as jealousy.

  He was losing his fucking grip. He gritted his teeth and told himself firmly not to be ridiculous. But now the little voice in his head was whispering, She’s not really yours, and Demi knows that. You have no claim on her whatsoever…

  “Demi,” he said sharply. “The meeting went well.”

  She put down a jug and the bottle of milk she’d been pouring into it, her grin fading as she looked up at him. “That’s… good.”

  “I want them involved.”

  She stared at him for a moment, her face blank. But then her lips curved into a slight smile and she said, “Want me to start on the paperwork?”

  The paperwork she’d done twelve times before and could prepare in her sleep? “Yes, please.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.” She pulled off her apron, dusting her hands on the back of her jeans. “I’ll see you later, Cherry. Duty calls.”

  “Oh, okay. Later, then.”

  Cherry sounded far too disappointed for Ruben’s liking. But Demi looked oddly pleased, her dark gaze scanning him with an intensity she usually reserved for official correspondence and football matches. She bumped into him slightly as she passed him in the doorway, and when he looked over his shoulder, she was sticking her tongue out at him as she walked away.

  He was a fool. As if Demetria of all people would try it on with Cherry.

  Clearly, jealousy was an unpredictable emotion.

  Still, there was an upside. Now, he had Cherry alone. She had turned away from him again, and she was stirring the contents of that fucking bowl as if her life depended on it. But he could tell by the set of her shoulders, by her uncharacteristic silence, by the way the air shimmered between them as if the room were heated, that she was waiting.

  And he’d never make a lady wait.

  He crossed the room before he could second-guess himself. His hands came to rest on the swell of her hips and it felt like everything he’d ever needed, but that didn’t make any sense. Nothing made any sense. Until she put the damned bowl down and turned around in the circle of his arms and looked up at him with eyes that were wide and dark and endless. Then, all at once, everything was perfect.

  “I still don’t like you,” she whispered, her lips pursed.

  “Yes you do. If you don’t, my heart will break.”

  “Boo hoo. Buy a new one.” She pressed her hands to his chest and he thought, for one world-ending moment, that she might push him away. But she just fiddled with the buttons of his shirt, slipping her fingers under his tie. Then she said, “Where did you go?”

  “To a school in the city.”

  “Why?”

  “Same reason I was at the Academy. I put together scholarship programmes for the kids who attend my A.P.s.”

  She raised her brows, and he thought that she might be impressed. “You run alternative provisions?”

  “Yeah. For kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who are disengaged or have unique learning needs and so on. But some of them are really fucking smart, and I started to think about what they’d get out of attending schools like the Academy. I mean, not schools like the Academy—they’d probably suffocate.”

  “True,” she murmured. Her eyes were pinned to his chest, and now she was fiddling with his tie. He looked down at the sweep of her lashes. She had some kind of dark makeup around her eyes that made her look like a cat. Well—even more like a cat than usual. “So why were you looking at a school in England?” She asked.

  “The Trust operates across a few European countries.”

  She looked up, finally, her eyes warm. “The Trust?”

  “The Abmjørn Trust.”

  “Ambjørn is your family name, right?”

  “My mother’s.”

  “Ah.” She was looking at him with an expression he didn’t recognise. Her eyes were bright, her lips slightly parted and tipped into a half-smile, as if she was seeing him for the first time.

  But then a tinny ding popped the bubble around them, and she threw up her hands, pushing him away.

  “Where’s that bloody tea towel,” she muttered, marching around the kitchen. “Ah!” She snatched it off of the island and bustled over to the oven. Ruben leant against the counter and watched her bend over. Yes, he was a pig, but it was definitely worth it.

  She produced a tray of little cakes, and then another, popping them onto the counter with a flourish. “There! Three and four!”

  “Three and four?”

  She turned around and nodded towards a cupboard. “One and two are in there.”

  He pulled it open to find two plastic containers full of little cakes, decorated in lavender and pink and cream, with glitter—is glitter edible?—and pearls and tiny stars scattered across the icing.

  “You’ve made a lot of cakes,” he said finally.

  “There’s a ton of stuff in here. Do you bake?”

  “Ah, no. I can cook, but I don’t really bake. Agathe tries, but she’s kind of terrible at it.”

  “Hm.” She had returned to her bowl, but now she was spooning its mixture out into trays full of little paper cases. “You know, you never got around to explaining how the two of you… grew apart?”

  “We were separated,” he said. Then he realised that his voice had been too sharp, too hard. “I mean… I just mean, she wouldn’t have left me.”

  “No,” Cherry said mildly. “I’m sure she wouldn’t. Separated by whom?”

  He sighed, wandering over to stand beside her. She scooped out the mixture with sure, practiced movements, not spilling a drop as she transferred it to the cake cases. Clearly, she did this a lot. “My brother,” he finally said. “My brother cut off all contact with my maternal family, after my parents died.”

  It wasn’t something he liked to tell people. It revealed a little too much about the direction his life had taken, once he’d become his brother’s property. Or responsibility, as Harald would say.

  But Cherry made no expression, didn’t say a word, did
n’t even look up. She just nodded and kept spooning out the cake batter.

  “So… so when I was older I asked Hans to find her. Of course, she was the same place she’s always been. This town.” He wet his lips. His throat felt dry, all of a sudden. “The main house was my father’s. A country getaway sort of thing. It’s where he and my mother met.”

  “I see. And this house?”

  “Oh, I built this myself. I didn’t want to live in there.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t like—” he broke off, suddenly realising that he’d said way too much. But the movement of her hands and the softness of her voice were almost hypnotic, and she still wasn’t looking at him, and the words were suddenly desperate to escape. “I don’t like big houses. Feels like a palace.”

  Finally, her dark gaze turned on him, and she might as well have pinned him to the wall. “Did you grow up in a palace?”

  He swallowed. “Yes.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. Then she said, her tone suddenly bright, “Do you want to help me decorate these cakes when they cool down?”

  He hesitated. Not because the answer was no, but because he was suddenly afraid. Afraid of the words she pulled from him without even trying, afraid of the way she looked at him as if she read the meaning behind his every breath. The last thing he needed was someone understanding him.

  Anyone who understood him would leave.

  But she raised her brows and said, “I told Demi we’d decided to spend time together. So now we have to do it, or she’ll be very disappointed.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, and in spite of his worries, he felt himself smile. “Tell me what to do.”

  After a couple of hours in the kitchen with Cherry, Ruben could see why she loved to bake.

  It was almost therapeutic, following her murmured instructions, stirring ingredients and setting timers. After he proved less than effective at the cosmetic side of things—his icing arrangements looked more like accidents—Cherry put him to work on a sponge.

  Her directions were clear and she smiled when he mucked things up. She made him wash his hands before and after cracking eggs, and swatted his arse with a wooden spoon when he didn’t get out of her way fast enough. And she laughed when he streaked icing sugar down her nose—though, to his disappointment, she didn’t retaliate and start a food fight. He’d been hoping to rub icing into her cleavage in the name of war.

  Somehow, she coached him through the recipe for chocolate puddings while she sat at the breakfast bar and messed about with marbled icing. He had no idea what that meant, but it looked damned good.

  “You should be a teacher, Cherry.”

  “Oh, no,” she scoffed. “Bugger that. I don’t do well with kids, hence why I stay in the tower as much as possible.”

  Ruben laughed. “Okay. Fair enough. A lecturer, then.”

  She arched a brow. “Really, Ruben? Doesn’t that require three or four or however many degrees?”

  “You could do that.”

  “In a thousand years, maybe. I’m hardly the brains of the administrative outfit.”

  He sighed, the exhalation punctuated by the trill of the timer. His puddings were ready.

  “You’re smarter than most people I know,” he said lightly. “You can do whatever you like.”

  She didn’t answer. He looked over to see her faffing about with a handful of blueberries, holding back a smile. Satisfied that she was at least listening, Ruben whipped his puddings out of the oven with a flourish and presented them like an offering.

  “Oh, well done,” she said, sounding rather surprised. The little sponges had all risen, unburnt, and even looked somewhat light and airy. He was pretty surprised himself.

  “Thanks,” he grinned, setting them onto the counter. “It’s all thanks to your expert guidance, of course.”

  She snorted. Then she leant over the chocolate puddings and closed her eyes, inhaling the scent of almonds and cocoa with a look of pure pleasure on her face. For the past hour, Ruben had been too busy following instructions to remember how badly he wanted the woman in front of him. Now it was back to the forefront of his mind.

  The warmth of the kitchen left Cherry’s rich skin glowing, and tiny little coils of hair sprang out around her face with particular enthusiasm. When she opened her eyes again, Ruben was staring at her with what he knew was plain lust.

  She bit her lip.

  He moved closer, his voice low. “What do you want to do? Professionally, I mean.” He asked because he’d been curious for a while. She hadn’t seemed upset about quitting her job, and she wasn’t enthusiastic about education, clearly.

  Cherry blinked. That probably wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. But even when he wanted her, when desire rode him relentlessly, Ruben still wanted to know her. He wanted that more than anything else.

  She shrugged, turning away slightly. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, come on. You must.”

  She flicked a dark look his way. “Must I? I suppose I should. I’m a grown woman after all.”

  “…You really don’t know?”

  “Well,” she sighed. “I have a few ideas. When I was a kid I wanted to make wedding cakes, actually. But then I turned eighteen, and I needed a job, and… Well, I’m good at telling people what to do and charming them into doing it. So, to Rosewood I went.”

  He nodded slowly. “HR, right? You didn’t like it?”

  “I liked it fine, and I really am good at it. But I’ve been thinking… I’m rich now. You know, thanks to you.” She flashed a wry smile. “I can do whatever I want. Like… start a small business? I don’t know. I’m just playing with ideas. I have a year to think about it.”

  Ruben ignored the reminder of the time-limit on their… association, because thinking about it made him somehow uncomfortable. But everything else she’d said intrigued him. “I can see you as a businesswoman. Thinking about your wedding cake dream, are you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s not a dream. It’s just an idea.”

  “Right.” He grinned. “But even if it was a fully-fledged business plan with start-up capital, would you tell me?”

  She gave him a pert look. “I wouldn’t tell anyone. Not until I made my first million at least.”

  Ruben laughed, sliding a hand into her hair. He couldn’t help himself. “You really are something, Cherry.”

  “Yes. So I’m told.”

  Chapter 15

  He didn’t touch her in the kitchen. He didn’t touch her when they passed each other in the halls, or when they sat down to dinner with Demi and Hans and Agathe.

  But that night, when he came into her room, he lay down beside her and prayed to every god he could think of that she might touch him.

  She didn’t, of course. But the smile in her voice when she spoke felt almost as good as her hands might have. “I called my parents today.”

  “Yeah?” He laced his hands beneath his head to stop himself from reaching out. “How are they?”

  “Good. Still vaguely confused about this whole thing, but my mother is enjoying bragging to the neighbours. My dad’s still kind of stuck on the fact that you’ve never met.”

  “Mmm. I bet he is.” The easy comfort of Cherry’s company wasn’t enough to dampen the alarm that fired in Ruben’s gut. Cherry was a daddy’s girl. And her dad almost certainly hated him.

  “Everyone’s been debating you in the family group chat.”

  “You have a family group chat?”

  “Yep. Maggie started it.”

  He tried to sound casual as he said, “So what does your dad think of me?”

  “Um… He’s reserving judgement.”

  “Is he?”

  “No. He thinks you’re an evil playboy who’s going to break my heart, but he’s glad I’m getting to travel.”

  Ruben couldn’t help himself. He laughed. “I take it you get the practicality from his side of the family.”

  “Something like that. Although he’s bei
ng very uncooperative about…”

  Her voice trailed off into silence, and Ruben frowned, turning towards her. So much for keeping his hands to himself; he reached out and settled his palm against her waist, soft and perfect. “About what?”

  “Um… My sister’s tuition and… things. I mean, I told you Maggie’s in America, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. Your genius little sister.”

  “Right. Well, we all contribute to her tuition and her… Well, she has sickle cell. Do you know what that is?”

  “Ah…” He searched his mind. Came up blank. “I’ve heard of it, but not really.”

  “Right. Well, basically, it’s a genetic thing, a life-long illness, and she needs medicine and regular doctor’s appointments and things. But, you know, in America, you have to pay. A lot. And with the kind of studying she does, and her illness, we don’t want her to work. She couldn’t earn enough money to cover the bills anyway.”

  “Right. So…” He closed his eyes as the truth sank into his gut like a fist. “So that’s why you needed the money. For your sister.”

  “No,” she said seriously. “I’m spending it on my shoe collection.”

  He snorted. “Sure. So what’s up with your dad?” If he kept talking, his mounting guilt might take a little longer to suffocate him.

  You dragged her into your issues to save your delicate fucking feelings, and she’s doing it for her sick sister. You are a fucking Disney villain.

  “Well,” Cherry said, “I was going to use the money you’re giving me, but—”

  “But he doesn’t want you to.” Ruben’s voice sounded as grim as he felt. Every time he allowed himself to forget what an arse he’d been, something happened to remind him. This time, it was the realisation that he’d trapped her with the offer of money more than he had with his words to that damn reporter.

  “I’ll pay the fees directly,” he said. “You shouldn’t be spending your money on that anyway.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The money is for you. It’s what I owe you. I’ll pay your sister’s tuition and whatever else.”