Royal Maid’s Awakening - Chapter 5
‘You’re sure you don’t want a drink?’
Hannah didn’t even look at the man, who, with his friend, had been trying to get her attention for the last few minutes. She shook her head. ‘No, thank you, I’m waiting for someone.’
‘Lucky them, whoever they are,’ came the slightly leery response. Hannah took another step further down the bar and prayed they’d move on to someone else. The heavy bass of the music pounded through her body in time with her blood. The nightclub was full of scantily dressed people. Strobing coloured lights lit everyone in an otherwordly glow.
This was the opening night of Santanger’s hottest new club and Hannah had managed to get an invite through a friend at the palace. Not because she liked clubbing—she didn’t especially. But because Lukas Zárate was due to attend.
But so far, from her position at the bar, Hannah hadn’t spotted him. She was beginning to lose hope and felt very self-conscious in her yellow silk dress, borrowed from a far more sartorially adventurous friend.
Deceptively simple, it fell to just below her knee, but above her waist, two strips of silk were all that covered her chest, and they tied around her neck, leaving the ends trailing down her bare back. Her shoulders and arms were bare.
Gold high-heeled sandals completed the look and Hannah shifted in them uncomfortably, not used to the spindly delicate heels.
She told herself she’d wait five minutes and did another sweep of the area when her gaze landed on the back of someone tall, broad…with dark blond hair. Lukas. Her heart stopped, and then started again unsteadily. He was here. This was it. Her chance to try to make him see her as a woman.
She turned around to pick up her glass of champagne. It was a little ways back down the bar near to where the two men were now standing talking to each other. She took advantage of their distraction, grabbed the glass and moved towards Lukas.
***
Lukas was surrounded by a ring of people vying for his attention and he was already bored. The nightclub scene had never really been his thing. The back of his neck prickled and he turned around slowly and saw…what could only be described as a vision walking towards him holding a glass of wine in one hand.
All he had at first were impressions: slender willowy limbs, dark glossy hair piled high with tendrils falling around a heart-stoppingly beautiful face. Huge eyes. Something tried to break through the haze he was in, but he couldn’t focus. His brain was short-circuiting and his body was on fire.
She came straight to him. And stopped. Looking at him as if…she knew him. Lukas frowned. He didn’t know her. She was a complete— Recognition landed in his brain and gut at the same time, and he knew, even as it did, that he could never look at this woman in the same way again.
‘Hannah…’ he breathed.