His Royal Majesty : A Royal Wedding Romance

by Cassandra Bloom

  Travis sat dumbfounded in his office.

  No one had spoken to him like that in ages, possibly ever.

  And for that matter, he couldn’t have argued with it. He probably deserved it, because he couldn’t remember the last time he acted that aggressively in what felt like years.

  Something about Ivy Zimmerman had just compelled him to make a move, and he felt certain that she had come there to have sex with him. All of the signs pointed to that as the inevitable conclusion, anyways. She had stalked his office. She’d brought him coffee on her break. She’d worn an outfit that was about as revealing as one could get while working a job. If that hadn’t said that Ivy wanted sex, then Travis didn’t know what did.

  She was naive or presumptuous, but she didn’t seem like either of those for how boldly and aggressively she had come at Travis. She had no fear of his status which, in some ways, made Travis like her even more. The number of women who threw themselves at him on the basis of his bank account or his name had grown old. They knew of Travis Dunn. But did they know the man behind the name Travis Dunn?

  Sadly, for Travis, the answer for most of his adult life was no. There was one, but…

  He shook his head as he deflected the thought that accompanied that. He shifted his focus instead to trying to figure out why he had acted the way he had.

  He prayed, first, that Ivy didn’t go to the press and tell them what had happened. He knew with his reputation, even though it was greatly exaggerated in the headlines, that he would never get a fair pass—not that he believed he deserved one for his actions.

  Yes, he had acted too brashly and too boldly. As a result, he’d lost her.

  And yet there he stood, trying to figure out why he still wanted her.

  What did Travis want? He spent much of his post-lunch break figuring that question out. Ever since that dark day many years ago, Travis had refused to even entertain the idea of a romantic relationship with anyone. To get that close, to open himself up, would also open up scars that he’d worked so hard to sew up. He didn’t need to revisit those, not when everything else in his life was going as perfectly as it was.

  But, then again, he wanted more than sex. That much was evident by the fact that he still wanted Ivy. It wouldn’t surprise him if, by the time he left work, his receptionist in the lobby had gently steered away three or four women who claimed to have an important meeting with him. If all he wanted was sex, he could’ve easily collected their numbers, contacted them, and then taken them to his special room in his house.

  He had to admit, the thought of using that room made his skin crawl with excitement. He hadn’t used that room in years, but the potential it held made it feel like a tragic waste that it hadn’t been used in over three dozen months.

  In the end, though, he couldn’t lie to himself, no matter how much he wanted to believe otherwise. To say he just wanted sex would leave him feeling hollow in the end. Ivy just had a captivating grasp on his mind, even if it meant risking tearing open the old wounds of the past.

  Might as well try and see what happens. I can always duck out if it gets too painful. She can always say no after what happened.

  Travis knew not only could she say no, though, she was likely to say no. He had to go for the plan of all plans to impress her and win her over. He hated using his money on women, but for this one, he was more than willing to make an exception.

  His work pushed to the side, he first looked up the coffee shop address. That was easy enough. Once he had that, he went shopping online for a nice, sexy dress for Ivy to wear. He knew quite a bit about men’s fashion, and while that didn’t translate perfectly to women’s clothing, it gave him enough knowledge to not pick something ridiculous. He also had to guess her size, but he had felt her body so closely and observed her so finely that he could narrow it down to one of two sizes. He chose the smaller of the sizes, deciding Ivy would look much more attractive in a tight dress than in one that didn’t perfectly conform to her.

  When he got to check out, he paused. He had the option to write a gift note, and he knew he had to do that. But the note that he would leave would involve him admitting to the last step of his plan—a step that might make him look a tad creepy, but one that, in his position, he felt he had to execute. The risk to Travis was minimal. The money he spent, he would make in the time it took for him to shop for the clothing. He already figured he had probably lost Ivy, so what was the harm in trying something ballsy to get her back?

  He wrote the note and made it concise and to the point. Within the first couple of lines, he’d already established what he planned to do with her. If this didn’t work, then Travis knew that he had done all that he could. Yes, he could try more roundabout methods of reaching her, but if there was one thing he’d learned repeatedly in the Marines, it was that the shortest path between two points was a straight line. He could try some flanking, but that wasn’t his style anyways. Better to use the direct option.

  When he finished, he clicked to have it delivered next day air. He checked out, not even knowing what the actual price was, and leaned back when he got the email confirmation.

  From there, Travis had but one task to do. He went through a public database, got the information he needed, and called his limo driver.

  “I have a job for you tomorrow night at 9 p.m.,” he said.

  The driver agreed and Travis put the phone down. The rest of the day went by like a blur, because Travis had now done all that he needed to do and could do in his office. If it didn’t work out, he had gone down swinging.

  As the day came to a close, though, he decided to make one last appearance at the coffee shop. He didn’t have any intentions on having a long, drawn out conversation. In fact, he didn’t really plan on speaking to Ivy at all. He just wanted to see her, smile, and walk away. Let him remind her of his presence.

  When he got to the outside of the coffee shop, he tried to peer inside. He saw one girl with blond streaks in her hair wiping down tables, but he couldn’t say for sure if it was Ivy. The girl looked up and stared at him, but it didn’t look like the kind of stare that Ivy would have given. She looked at something else, Travis shrugged, and he went on with his way.

  He’d done what he needed to do. If that was indeed Ivy, then she would have her mind run wild with questions about if she’d actually seen him. If it wasn’t Ivy, well, he had a rep at that coffee house now. Word would get around.

  And now, as Travis headed home, he had but one last task to do.

  He had to plan the date to end all dates, the greatest date anyone had ever had.

  When Ivy got back to work, she saw that she had made it with literally seconds to spare. And, truth be told, she probably would be late anyways since work required her to be in uniform and ready to take orders as soon as she got back.

  Fortunately, the manager was nowhere to be seen at that particular moment, and when Ivy punched back in for work, her boss would be none the wiser that she spent the first few minutes gathering herself.

  And boy, did she need that time. After what had happened with Travis, Ivy had hoped that a walk home would relieve some of the disgust and confusion that she felt, but it only seemed to heighten it. Distance and time blurred her memory of what had happened, painting it with a coat of hopefulness she knew it didn’t deserve.

  Her pondering of the instance drew the attention of Shelly, who noticed that she wasn’t herself.

  “Lunch with Mom must’ve been rough, huh?”

  Ivy didn’t understand what the hell Shelly was talking about, so at first, she just gawked at her. She had a bit of nastiness to her that she tried not to display, but it was as inevitable as having to deal with rude customers on a daily basis.

  “Oh, right,” Ivy said. “Yeah, not great.”

  Shelly gave her a look that suggested she didn’t believe what Ivy had said, and why should she? Ivy knew she had lied, and Shelly probably knew that Ivy had lied. If Shelly called her out on it, well, it wouldn’t even be the wors
t thing that had happened that hour.

  “How so?” Shelly asked, switching from inquisitive to polite.

  But Ivy wanted nothing of it. She just wanted to stew, finish her shift, and get the hell home.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  She brushed past Shelly and moved to the cashier. A woman approached.

  “Coffee, all black, please,” she said in a screechy voice.

  The voice annoyed Ivy, who didn’t bother to add her fake smile. She knew that she was in no place to take customer orders, and fortunately for her, there was not a line behind the woman. She rung up the woman, saying “thank you” in the most insincere manner when she’d finished, and approached Shelly.

  “Switch spots?” Ivy asked.

  She did so in a way that didn’t leave much room to argue. And in some ways, Ivy figured she was doing Shelly a favor. Shelly could now get tips, something Ivy wouldn’t do as the actual coffee maker.

  “Sure,” Shelly said, surprised and also a bit off-put by the request. “Seriously, Ivy, are you OK?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Ivy said, her voice dragging out a bit.

  She quickly switched, made the woman her black coffee, and put it on the counter, announcing the drink as dryly as she could. She just was grateful that Martin was nowhere to be seen—she didn’t need lectures on top of disappointment for the day.

  A lull hit after the woman got her black coffee, and Ivy stewed. She sat on a stool in the back instead of cleaning the back counter, as management expected her to do during periods of inactivity. Shelly picked up a towel, but Ivy didn’t do anything.

  Finally, Shelly approached.

  “I just want to make sure—”

  “Shelly, really, it’s OK,” Ivy said. “It’s not great, but I don’t want to talk about it. If you do, save it until tomorrow, OK?”

  Shelly looked hurt, and Ivy regretted coming across so strongly. She tried to make a sympathetic face and said sorry. Shelly nodded in appreciation, but Ivy could see she had accomplished her goal in an unfortunate fashion—she’d gotten her coworker off her back, but only in a way that put a strain on their relationship.

  Shelly went back to cleaning as Ivy joined in, but neither girl said a word. Ivy, instead, spent the next few minutes wondering if she’d met the real Travis Dunn just within the last hour.

  Of course, she knew that the man who had gone up to his office with her was Travis Dunn, CEO of Dunn Inc and US Marine and all that sexy jazz. She knew that the man she had seen was handsome because he was hot, not because of some weird props or clothing or whatever.

  But she still couldn’t help but wonder if she’d seen the full Travis Dunn. It seemed impossible for how short of a visit she had, but that didn’t mean that Travis had more protective layers of sorts than anyone would for a meeting like that. He was unusually distant, cold, and removed from the scene. He spoke without passion or enthusiasm, although he did speak with certainty and clarity that was rather attractive.

  But still, some spark that most men had was missing. She wondered if something had happened during war time that had gotten to Travis. Maybe that explained his aggression?

  Ivy tried to consider some other possibilities. Perhaps a woman had burned him in the past. Perhaps his mother had treated him poorly, or maybe his father. Maybe he was just so driven and so confident as a man that he couldn’t help but carry that cool edge around him. Perhaps he just had women throwing themselves at him with such ease that it was only natural for him to act as he did.

  Nothing, though, made complete sense. Some of it had a logical trail of evidence, but nothing felt conclusive. There was something to him that went beyond the sexual aggressiveness and the charisma—Ivy just wished she knew what.

  Of course, with the way her encounter at the office had gone, she probably never would find out. Her best chances of seeing Travis ever again were on the streets at night, and given her utter lack of social life, that seemed less likely than if she just went to his offices and demanded to see him until he came down.

  “Ivy Zimmerman.”

  Ivy’s veins froze as she heard a male’s voice call to her. Except it wasn’t a voice of a man she wanted to see.

  It was Martin, her manager, coming.

  Martin was a plump man with a thick beard that probably hadn’t gotten shaved in years. He apparently had once served as a bouncer at a nightclub, which explained his lack of fear in breaking up fights, but his size at least prevented Ivy from ever fantasizing about him as she did about Travis Dunn. While Martin wasn’t a terrible manager, these encounters happened with enough frequency that they never left a good taste in Ivy’s mouth.

  “Can I speak to you for a moment?”

  Ivy nodded, but fear began to run through her. Had Shelly said something? Did he actually see her clocking back in and then not working immediately? What had transpired to prevent her from just having a normal rest of her shift?

  She approached Martin, who gestured for her to sit at a nearby table. She did so and plopped down, waiting for Martin to clear his throat. Martin folded his hands, sighed, and shrugged.

  “You look like you’ve had the worst lunch break of your life,” he said.

  Ivy shrugged back, trying not to roll her eyes.

  “It wasn’t great,” she said.

  “We all have those,” Martin said, which Ivy nodded to. Silently, though, she vehemently disagreed. She couldn’t imagine Martin meeting a girl on his lunch break, getting seduced into nearly having sex, and then being ostracized as a result. “Listen, I don’t need to know what happened. If it’s an emergency, you can go. But if it’s not, I would ask you to please stay focused on your work. You haven’t been cleaning or organizing the store at all, and it’s bothering me. I don’t like to see unproductive employees.”

  “I know,” Ivy said. She had turned into the stock employee giving stock answers. “I’m sorry, sir. I will remain a focused employee and do things the right way.”

  “Good,” Martin said. “Then get back at it.”

  Ivy nodded and quickly rose. As far as meetings went with management, it was about as merciful and relaxed as she could get.

  Still, she knew that Shelly had seen it. She knew that customers had seen it. And while she didn’t particularly care that they had, it did reinforce to her that she was working a job she was way overqualified for. She had to get those jobs in marketing. She had to find something that better fit her talents.

  And she had to find it ASAP, or else her sanity would just break entirely.

  She headed behind the counter, grabbed a wet towel, and started wiping down some of the counter tops. Thanks to the slow hour, she didn’t have any customers come in, and when the evening came, with just about twenty minutes left on her shift, she set about to wipe down the customer tables.

  With just two tables left, she stole a glance at the clock. She only had about twelve minutes left. At most, that meant maybe four customers if the store somehow experienced a shocking rush. She looked to the door.

  And there, though she couldn’t say for sure, she swore she saw Travis Dunn standing.

  The blur of the door and the various icons left it just vague enough that she couldn’t say with certainty. But the hands in the pockets, the suit, the chiseled frame—it all suggested that the man of the day stood before her, eying her from afar, studying her body like a prize that he had lost.

  She found herself disgusted and put her head down to keep wiping the table down.

  But curiosity was telling her to go and talk to him. Even if Ivy found his actions deplorable, she knew there lay a good man on the other side. She couldn’t resist entirely. She had to go and see why he had done what he’d done, now that they weren’t in the office environment.

  She looked back to see if Martin was anywhere around. She remembered he had left fifteen minutes before and chuckled to herself. She looked at Shelly. Work was so slow she had opened a book.

  She had nothing holding her
back.

  Ivy looked back out the door.

  And he was gone.

  She rubbed her eyes, convinced that she had imagined Travis. She moved closer to the door and looked out, but she didn’t see Travis anywhere.

  She took a step outside under the pretenses of cleaning the outside tables. She looked right. She saw nothing. She looked left.

  She saw a tall, slender figure with a buzzcut walking away, about thirty feet. She felt his name catch in his throat. All she had to do was shout his name, and he’d come back to her.

  But then he turned and disappeared into a rush of people. Ivy sighed, cleaned the tables outside, and headed back inside, kicking herself for the missed opportunity.

  She went home and swore to herself that she had to put Travis Dunn out of her mind. He’d acted without permission in his office, and no one deserved that.

  Except… she remembered, when she said stop, he had. He hadn’t violated her. He had taken what she’d given him, and nothing more.

  Travis Dunn, she thought. You are going to be the bane of my existence. You’re either going to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

  Or I’m seriously going to regret ever meeting you.

  The next day, Ivy headed into her shift feeling glum and tired. Her morning half of her shift had no obnoxious customers, quite possibly because everyone was saving themselves for their Friday, which was just as well. Ivy didn’t imagine that she would have the patience to deal with stupidity or drama from any customers, no matter how handsome or funny they were.

  When she took her lunch break, she walked outside and saw that stupid, ornate building and scoffed under her breath. How had she ever thought to go there and not have Travis think she wanted to have sex with him, she couldn’t say. She felt silly and stupid.

  And yet, for as much as the sight of the building left her feeling uneasy, for as much as it made her wish she had some intelligence in courtship… it wasn’t like she never wanted to see Travis again. Maybe, just maybe, she thought, if she could indeed get him in a normal setting, he would show his normal side. His non-transactional side.