A Prince on Paper (Reluctant Royals #3)(36)

She moved to walk toward him, but the heel of her shoe had found a comfy resting place in a knothole in the gazebo’s wood floor. Nya went sprawling forward, arms windmilling as she searched for something to hold on to before face planting.

Her fingertips brushed something metal and smooth as her hand slapped against Johan’s chest. She grasped his shirt and he caught her beneath her armpits and righted her.

“There we go. Now we’re even,” he said, looking at her with amusement. “You caught me, and now I’ve caught you.”

He didn’t let her go, and his gaze didn’t leave her face. She watched as his eyes seemed to darken a shade, as his tongue darted out to run over his lips.

“Nya.” He shifted his hold on her and there was a distinct metallic clink on the wood. She looked down and saw his silver chain in a puddle at his feet between them.

“Scheisse, no!” Johan usually spoke with some level of smooth refinement, but there was ragged panic in his tone before he released her and lunged toward something rolling away from them across the floor of the gazebo. Whatever it was threw off light as it bounced along the planks, like he was chasing one of Ingoka’s sprites, and then his palm closed over it, flattening it to the ground.

He dropped his head in relief where he kneeled.

Nya clenched her fists, frustrated that her clumsiness was the reason Johan had completely lost his cool.

“I’m sorry!” She tried to go to him, but her heel was still firmly stuck and she was strapped into the shoe.

He was quiet for a moment, and when he turned around his expression was somber, as it had been in the photo she’d accidentally snapped of him on the plane. He moved toward her, still on his knees as if he wasn’t thinking of his expensive slacks at all.

“It’s all right. And I didn’t mean to curse—it was an accident.” He reached her and held up his hand, a ring pinched between thumb and forefinger. It had a thin band of silver, and a small blue garnet in the center with even smaller diamonds nestled on either side. “This was my mother’s. I never take it off, and I was just a bit shocked to see it making a run for it.”

She could only imagine the fear that must have surged through him as he watched it roll away. She’d been allowed to touch very few of her mother’s things as a child, as her father had wanted to keep them in their original state. She remembered how it had felt to lose access to even the few things she’d cherished.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, reaching toward it.

A voice sounded from outside the gazebo. “Here they are, Elder Jerami!”

Nya swiveled to find Annie walking toward them, shaking her head and wearing an expression so foreboding that Nya had never seen it, even when her grandmother had dealt with hecklers at town meetings in Lek Hemane.

“Ah, so here you are, Granddaughter.” Something in Annie’s tone made Nya’s jaw clench.

“Is something wrong, Grandmother?”

Annie looked past her to glare at Johan. “You said you wouldn’t debauch her. You lied.”

“That’s technically true,” Johan responded casually, dusting his knees as he stood. “I don’t see how it’s any business of yours.”

“Eh! Speak respectfully to your elders, Phoko!” Nya chided, her upbringing warring with her confusion at her grandmother’s behavior.

“I apologize for my rudeness,” he said to her and not her grandmother.

Annie shook her head. “I do not want the apologies of a jackal who would seduce a helpless woman on a plane, like Lineo’s sister Mariha witnessed. Then throw himself on her in the sauna, like Lineo herself witnessed. Then take her virginity and discard her, like Lineo’s cousin Indira discovered when she gathered the laundry this morning and overheard Nya being comforted. You could not wash away the evidence of her maidenhead!”

The words resonated through the gazebo.

“Oh my goddess! Seriously? Please just kill me now,” Nya blurted out. This was too much—this would be the humiliation that broke the camel’s back. “Lineo, bring that scimitar over here.”

“Hmm.” Johan calmly brushed back the hair that had fallen over his eyes. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“Like a zebra misunderstands that a hippo is more dangerous than a lion?” Annie asked.

“I—I’m not familiar with that phrase,” Johan said, still calm.

Nya’s humiliation was pushed away by anger—she was not calm.

“Nkhono, I love you very much, but you dishonor me right now with this talk of debauchery and maidenheads,” she said, angry tears stinging her eyes. Her grandparents and Ledi were all she had left of her family, and now her grandmother was just another person who thought she had no sense. “This is completely inappropriate.”

“Dishonor? You should have thought about dishonor before letting this man seduce you. Do you read the papers, my child? He has no morals and no taste, on the arm of a different man or woman every night.”

Johan cleared his throat and raised his hand. “That’s a bit harsh, and an exaggeration. I have exquisite taste. That said—”

Nya cut her hand through the air, waving his jokes away. This wasn’t the time.

“And what if he did seduce me? Ingoka does not believe that desire is a sin,” Nya reminded her grandmother. “Did you chastise Naledi for being with Thabiso? Or is everyone else allowed to find happiness except me?”