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necessary time for “personal persuits”. According to rumors, it was basically the prince sowing his wild oats before his arranged marriage.
    “Are you flying out, too?” Gabriel asked.  
    “No. I’m just waiting for Silver. He’s due to arrive about twenty minutes from now. You?”
    “I am set to leave as soon as my perpetually late cousin makes it here. Would you like to join me at the jet while we both wait?”
    “Does it have ESPN?” she asked seriously.
    “Of course.”
    “Lead the way,” she said brightly.
    His royal guards materialized the moment they exited the lounge, the men clearing the way as they headed towards the hangar. “I bet you do this all the time to impress the girls,” she joked.
    He snorted. “No. Only to those whose brothers have their own jets, too.”
    She nodded in understanding. “Great way to filter gold-diggers, although it does leave you with rather few choices.”
    The prince’s jet was as fancy as she expected, but instead of bearing the royal crest of his country, it had on a Dutch company’s logo. Her eyebrow raised. “You borrowed this or something?”
    He shook his head. “De Koningh side of the family.”
    Climbing inside, she found the interior ruggedly masculine, the décor a mixture of leather and stainless steel.
    “What do you want to drink?”
    “Just water please.”
    She expected Gabriel to issue an order, but his attendants, after bowing in his presence, left immediately, prompting Lace to ask in a tone filled with wonder, “You like doing things independently, don’t you?” He was completely unlike her brother, Slade, who never did anything for himself as much as he could help it.
    Gabriel only shrugged, but since he was the one serving them drinks himself, he had already answered the question.
    “Make yourself at home, by the way.” His voice was dry, but his eyes gleamed with amusement with the way Lace was already making herself comfortable in one of the couches.
    “Oops. Sorry.” But she was grinning when she said it.
    After offering her bottled water, Gabriel took a seat across her. “So…you’re still with Silver?”
    Lace made a face. “You make it sound like that’s a miracle.”
    “It is,” Gabriel agreed. “I never pictured him to be the patient type.”
    “Umm, excuse me?”
    “You rather made a cake of yourself that night,” he said with malicious sweetness.
    She said honestly, “You’re so different from what the papers say about you.”
    He laughed.
    The sound startled her, and Lace suddenly realized it was her first time to see the prince laugh.
    “I apologize. It just struck me that I had actually let my guard down with you.” An odd smile played on his lips. “Probably because…you’re the first girl I know I’m a hundred percent sure I won’t need to play the prince for.”
    “Because—” Lace had to ask, even if she was already pretty sure she’d end up being insulted.
    “Because I don’t see you as a girl, I suppose.”
    She knew it.
    “I mean no offense,” the prince said seriously. “I only mean, that night, it was obvious to me how much you loved Silver March. Since I won’t ever find a way to tempt you into my bed, why bother keeping up the act?”
    “Err…” Lace didn’t know what to say. “Thanks for being honest with me, I guess?”
    “It’s my pleasure.”
    Pfft. The prince had actually taken her seriously.
    “So, you and Silver? Everything going smoothly?”
    She only hesitated a second before blurting out gloomily, “I’m doomed.” She leaned back against the couch, throwing a hand over her eyes. With KC and Aria, she felt she had to keep up an act, too.
    But with the prince, who felt more like her confessor than anything, Lace felt herself opening up. “I have a problem…”
    “And?”
    “But I didn’t want Silver to know, so I ended up lying.”
    “Why don’t you want to tell him?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Because it will make me weak. Duh.”
    Gabriel snorted.