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tried to ignore how soft her mouth looked without the pale-peach lipstick she’d worn yesterday. He’d obviously caught her dressing. Something she hadn’t quite managed to fully accomplish. She was without makeup, which made her look temptingly touchable. She hadn’t had time to restrain her hair, which made her look even more so. She wore no necklace, no earrings—and she’d missed the top button of her jacket.
    Trying to ignore the latter, he held out the paper.
    She took it from him, looking faintly puzzled at its importance.
    When she read the headline, her flawless skin lost a hint of the natural peach that blushed her cheeks.
    Utter disbelief washed her delicate features as she looked back up. “Is this true? It can’t be,” she concluded, before he could respond. “How is this possible?”
    “The part about Prince Broderick isn’t true,” he assured her, wishing she weren’t standing so close. Standing in front of her as he was, towering over her, he could see a small strip of her champagne-colored bra. The scalloped lace lay taut against the firm swell of her breast. A small bow centered with what looked like a tiny pearl rested at the base of her cleavage. “He isn’t in power. The queen is. As for the rest of it, it’s quite accurate.”
    Incredulity and concern turned her voice to nearly a whisper. “The king is in a coma? From what? And why wasn’t Her Majesty notified last night?”
    He could practically see the wheels spinning in her mind. But whatever else she was about to say seemed to vanish like woodsmoke in a coastal wind, when he reached over and slipped his fingers beneath the lapel of her jacket to fasten the button himself.
    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 stepback, 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