“Where’s your shadow?” he asked, haphazardly sliding the stack of books onto the occasional table. The moment he let go, they toppled over and several landed on the floor.
“Sarah has the night off.”
More like Pippa had the night off. The first one in…ever. It hadn’t been easy, but she’d finally convinced Sarah she could manage a few hours on her own. All she’d had to do was promise not to leave the palace. Or do anything foolish.
The first one she could definitely handle. The second one? Well, what Sarah didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, right?
Henry lifted a brow but said nothing as he bent to collect the books from the floor, the perfectly round globes of his arse on full display. Damn. His trousers looked like they were made of spandex, hugging the thick muscles of his thighs and glutes.
“Like what you see, princess?” He straightened, that damnable smirk curving his lips.
Flames engulfed her face.Oh, God. She was going to die of embarrassment. Right here in Henry’s suite. The tabloids would have a field day.
No more mentoring. No more trust fund. No more foundation.
Like hell.
Right. She just had to stop letting Henry get under her skin.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Pippa declared, embracing her old friend denial. She took a seat in the Louis XV chair she’d chosen during her first visit and unlocked her tablet to take notes. “Shall we get started?”
Henry dropped the books on the settee and sat down opposite her, stretching out his long limbs with the kind of grace typically reserved for prima ballerinas. “Why don’t you start by telling me about your vision?”
“My vision?”
There was nothing in the books about vision… was there?
“For Stanley International,” he prompted, his warm brown eyes brimming with encouragement. “Tell me what you envision for the foundation, and I can better tailor my advice to your goals.”
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. How the hell did he do that? One second he was cracking suggestive jokes and the next he was all business. It was like the man had multiple personalities and she was struggling to keep up.
“Well, I want to help people. Women and girls, specifically. I learned a lot about water, sanitation, and hygiene during my time volunteering with VDRI, and I saw firsthand how WASH access affected them disproportionately. I mean, it’s outrageous to think that while we sit here in the lap of luxury,” she said, gesturing to the opulent suite, “women and children the world over are spending two-hundred million hours a day collecting water. Water that may not even be safe to drink. It’s impossible to thrive when your sole focus is survival.”
Pippa paused, a slow blush spreading over her cheeks. Henry was staring at her with a mixture of awe and something that might’ve been amusement. Bollocks. She’d totally crossed the line from impassioned speech to full-on preaching.
“I mean, I don’t need to tell you. Obviously you know all this, but I just…” She frowned, knitting her brows together as she tried to find the right words. She was pretty damn eloquent on paper, when she had time to organize her thoughts, but verbally? Not so much. “It’s like Maya Angelou said,‘Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.’I never really understood that quote until I was up to my elbows in dirt, seeing the struggle for survival firsthand.”
He nodded slowly as understanding softened his features. “Now you know better.”
Relief flooded her veins. Okay, so maybe her vision wasn’t eloquent, but Henrygother. “Exactly. Now that I know better, I want to do better.” She bit her lip. “But I don’t know where to start.” She sighed and glanced down at the blank screen on her tablet, frustration taking root. “Which I guess is obvious. I’m totally clueless.”
“Hey.” Henry leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Don’t get discouraged. This is only day one. No one expects you to have all the answers. Hell, I’ve been at this for eight years and I still don’t have all the answers, but I’ll help you as much as I can.”
He was right. She knew it in her head, but her heart? Whole different story.
It would take time to reach his level of experience, but the knowledge did little to ease her discontent. The whole point of branching out on her own was to prove that she could stand on her own two feet. She didn’t need her parents or a husband to prop her up. She wanted to show everyone who doubted her and wrote her off as the lovely, useless crown jewel that she could make a difference in the world.
“The first thing you should do is make a business plan,” Henry said, rubbing his hands together as if he were just getting warmed up, which, it turned out, he was. Suggestions poured from him like champagne from a bottle and she scrambled to keep up, recording everything on her tablet.
Two hours later, her hand was cramping and her brain was the equivalent of porridge.
She flexed her fingers and scrolled through her notes. There were pages and pages of them. How was she going to get all this done?
Panic crept up her spine, whispering words of doubt and incompetence in her ear. Henry, on the other hand, looked completely invigorated, like he’d just recharged his damn batteries. She glanced down at her tablet, glimpsing her own reflection. She looked like the before picture from one of those overpriced mattress adverts promising no more sleepless nights.
Bugger. If brainstorming was this exhausting, how would she handle the real work?
“Am I making a mistake?” she blurted out. Her breathing came fast and hard, and her pulse throbbed against her temple as she shoved her tablet aside. She was going to fail. Spectacularly. Then she’d end up married to a toff, hosting balls and state dinners for the rest of her life with a bland smile pasted on her face, while inside she was dying a little more each day. “I’m completely unqualified. What made me think I could do this?”
