“They’re Temple tangerines,” he said. “Not oranges. There is only one place within hundreds of miles where Temples are available, and they deliver to us every other day.”
“Sorry about the mistake, Prince.”
He puffed out a sharp breath. “I’d rather you excoriate me like you were doing in the car than call me that,” he said.
“Doesn’t everyone call you that now?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Sounds different when it’s you,” he said. “So how was life in the mountainous wilderness, Henry? Did you fulfill your dreams?”
“Life in the mountains was just peachy,” I said. “My favorite part was being shipped to boarding school against my will.”
“You didn’t enjoy boarding school?”
I stared at him. “No, Sebastian, I can’t say I did. And I’m not in the mood to relive the past right now.”
“It was an all-boys school. I’m sure you made some good friends. Maybe even got your first boyfriend?”
My teeth clenched. “So that’s why you brought me up here? To ask me if I dated people in boarding school?”
“I asked you to the castle because I was bored, Henry. Don’t read too much into things,” he said, eyes cast down as he picked up another slice of tangerine.
“Yes, I was the resident gay slut of Yves Boarding School for Boys. There wasn’t any guy I didn’t sleep with in my dorm.”
He glanced up at me. “Really?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I was angry every moment of every day. Not only did I not have a boyfriend, I didn’t have a friend, period.”
His expression softened, just for a moment. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. He pulled in a slow breath, letting out in a long sigh of relief. “Well, at least I wasn’t around to screw up your life any longer.”
“At the beginning, I sure wished you had been around,” I muttered.
“Very funny.”
“Not a joke,” I said.
“You hated me,” he said, furrowing his brow.
“Are you nuts, Sebastian?” I said. The leather chair had been comfortable at first but now felt stiff as a board under me. “Just because I hate you now doesn’t mean I hated you then.”
“Not sure if I buy that,” he said, clicking his tongue.
“No, I loved you, and I was ripped away from you forever,” I said, heat rising inside me. “No chance of even talking to you. No chance of trying to sneak my way up to the castle after I was shipped off thousands of miles away to boarding school.”
“You’d always said you wanted to go to boarding school, anyway,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I’d always said I wanted to go to boarding school with you.”
Sebastian’s face was like stone. “I’m sorry to hear you didn’t enjoy it,” he said softly.
“The school was fine,” I muttered, shaking my head. “But I wasn’t. Not for a long time.”
He was quiet for a moment. A lock of his hair had fallen down over his forehead, and he didn’t bother pushing it back up. He picked up a slice of tangerine and then put it back down on the small plate in front of him.
“You don’t have to stay for dinner if you don’t want to,” he said. “It’s going to be filet mignon, truffled scalloped potatoes, asparagus with bearnaise sauce. Oh, and escarole salad before, with a chocoflan dessert after.”
“You can’t win me over with food.”
“Always used to be able to.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” I said, relenting even though I didn’t want to.
“Back then it was with fluffernutter sandwiches, though,” he said. “Can’t say we have any of those in Frostmonte Castle.”
“Really? What kind of royalty are you?”
“We’re clearly forgetting the important things,” he said. He paused before looking up at me, hesitation in his eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“Why did you…” he started to say before trailing off.
“Spit it out, Sebastian,” I said.
He cleared his throat. “Earlier, why did you say that I ‘must be lonelier than you thought?’ I’m not lonely up here in the castle.”
I puffed out a laugh. “Sure you aren’t.”
His eyes narrowed, almost imperceptibly.
“We have visitors constantly, and my staff is incredible.”
“I saw your picture in the Bugle,” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “Stupid paper.”
“I saw it in your eyes,” I said. “I don’t know what you… do, up here in the castle, but I know that you don’t have to be alone to be lonely.”
He swallowed, his gaze unreadable as he stared down at the table. Eleven years later and it still made my heart heavy as a stone to see Sebastian look so lost. I wasn’t even his friend anymore, but I could tell that he needed something.
I breathed deep. “I’ll come to the dinner if you do one thing for me,” I said. “Or… get your assistant to do it, whatever a prince does.”
“You think I don’t do anything for myself anymore, don’t you?”
“Am I wrong?”
“Depends on the day,” he said. “Can’t say I do my own laundry, but I maintain various forms of independence.”
I snorted. “Don’t have anybody jerking you off every morning, just for your princely release?”
“Christ, Henry,” he said, but he was smiling as he ate his last tangerine slice. “If that’s your way of asking if I’m dating anyone, the answer is no.”
“What about the beautiful princess?”
“Oh,” he said, his face falling. “Courting the princess isn’t… dating.”
“The newspapers say you’re set to marry.”
“The newspapers say a lot of things.”
I couldn’t stop looking at his hands, comparing them to my own. There wasn’t a callus in sight. My own hands were basically baseball mitts at this point, weathered and ugly and rough.
His skin looked impossibly milky smooth. He would probably feel like velvet. Soft, like all these years hadn’t done a thing to him.
“What is the… thing?” he asked, breaking me out of my trance.
“What?”
“Your one condition? For going to the dinner tonight?”
“Right,” I said. “Give me the contact information for the best contractors in fifty miles any direction. I’m starting renovations on my cottage immediately. I need to see about tearing down everything in the backyard, and possibly ripping out a wall inside. I don’t want to get scammed.”
He nodded once. “I can do that for you,” he said softly. “Genoveve can. She loves that kind of thing, anyway.”
“Perfect,” I said.
He cocked his head to one side, his brow furrowed. “I still can’t believe you didn’t enjoy your time at boarding school. I would have thought you had the time of your life.”
“Fuck no, I didn’t like it,” I said. “I hated every minute. I hated your mom for being the reason I ended up there, and I hated you for never contacting me.”