Christine Flynn - Royal Protocol

The glimpse of her breast was entirely too tantalizing. But the feel of that soft swell beneath his knuckles nearly made his mind go blank.

His glance jerked to hers, their eyes colliding, his fingers still brushing her skin. In the space of a heartbeat, the air turned as heavy as the atmosphere on the island when clouds rolled in from the sea with a blast of wind, thunder and jagged bolts of lightning. Electricity snapped. Her breath stalled.

“It was distracting,” he muttered, and finished what he’d started by sliding the oyster-colored disk into place.

He could swear he felt her heart slam against her breastbone. He knew his own wasn’t beating too steadily. But as he slowly pulled back and let his hand fall, his only thought was that he couldn’t believe what he’d done. He never took liberties with a woman who hadn’t made it clear that she wanted his touch. And this woman, the queen’s best friend and lady-in-waiting, had never given him reason to think anything other than how glad she would be to see him leave.

He had no idea what she was thinking at the moment, however. Or what she was about to do. She took a step back, her hair draping forward to hide the hint of heat in her cheeks as she glanced at the paper she still held.

“It says he has encephalitis,” she murmured, focusing on the one word that jumped out as her lungs began to function again. The headlines had shaken her, but she felt rattled beyond belief by his touch. It felt as if he’d branded her. The feel of his knuckles still burned her flesh. More disconcerting still had been the way that initial jolt of heat had shot straight to her toes.

Duty demanded her concentration. Latching on to it, she did her best to ignore her scrambled senses and the rather uncertain way Harrison was watching her. “I must tell Her Majesty about the king.”

“She already knows. She was told days ago,” he said, confusing her further still.

“But I saw him in the garden just yesterday.”

“We had tried to keep the king’s condition from the public,” he said, thinking the queen could explain later, “but Her Majesty needs to be informed that the public now knows. There will be a press conference within the next couple of hours.”

The queen had known? Gwen thought—only to suddenly realize why Her Majesty had seemed so ambivalent about her duties of late.

“Of course,” she murmured, wishing her friend had confided in her, wishing she knew why she hadn’t. Wishing the air in the room were easier to breathe.

She could practically feel the tension radiating from the admiral’s big body. It snaked around her, through her, as tangible as the warmth still lingering on her skin.

“If you will wake her and break the news of this to her yourself, I’ll come back to talk with her after I’ve met with the minister of foreign affairs.” He glanced at his watch, his other obligations clearly pulling at him. “There is much she and I must discuss.”

Gwen gave him a nod, took a step back. As she did, his edgy glance fell to where her hand protectively covered the vee of her jacket.

Silence echoed off the ornate walls. In the taut moments before his eyes lifted to hers, his jaw had hardened enough to shatter his back teeth.

The silence was disturbing enough. But the banked heat in his gaze was knitting her nerves into a knot when one of the double doors behind her opened.

She turned to see Queen Marissa cautiously watching them both.

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