Pain medications were humanity’s response to the alarm raised by the human body. Where pain was present, there was bound to be something wrong. Like the farmer girl’s twisted ankle, for instance. That her stubborn brain continuously insisted that she was fine even though she was not, was telling a lot about the lengths at which she would go to defy his wishes. The pain was there for a reason, and try as she might, she could not cover her limp up with gait.

While her green eyes feasted on the scenery that Luke woke up to every morning, the city viewed from a distance, her fiancé secured a glass of water. He took a mental note to review the floor plan of the suite to understand which areas within the suite would risk of going beyond their ten-meter radius. He carried the glass of water with him to the bedroom, following Rhiane as she was talking about him being a lizard and possibly taking him up on his sarcasm. He did not put it beyond her to really lie on the floor just to spite him. Their less than twenty-four-hour relationship was defined by each other’s competitive efforts to bring out the worst from the other person. Though perhaps it was not intentional.  

Two adjacent sides of Luke’s bedroom were made of glass, the other two were solid wall that divided the space of the suite and defined his sleeping quarters. The design was also minimalist, consisting of only a couple of furniture and fixtures. On the right side of the room was a raised platform where a very spacious bed that could easily fit five people was stationed. On both its sides were floating bedside tables. Near the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, on the left side of the bed, was a desk scattered with papers where Luke’s tablet computer was on stand-by, supported by its kickstand. He crossed the room ahead of her and placed the glass of water and the pain medications on the desk before waking the computer up through the finger print scanner. 

“Not just any lizard, Godzilla,” he smirked absently remembering a movie he saw as a child that made him interested in nuclear power generators. There was little chance that Rhiane have heard of the giant radioactive lizard that terrorized Japan, whose popularity traveled across the world to the United States. He would be impressed if she even had the slightest idea of what he was talking about. 

Leaning with his weight resting on his hands against the edge of the desk, his attention was caught by a follow-up for his feedback on the draft submitted by the Ministry of Agriculture. That day was his self-imposed deadline and he meant to finish it after he had dealt with Ms. Black. Without lifting his head from the monitor, he told her, “I used to have a dog. His name was Seamus. He dislikes sleeping on the floor, so he used to sleep with me on the bed, near my feet.” Luke tore his attention from the monitor long enough to show her a lopsided grin. “If you insist on the pet --”

Luke’s words were caught in his throat as she faltered on her next step. Without letting his thoughts paralyze him, the crown prince crossed the room in quick strides and caught her arm before she planted her face on the floor. If her make-up artists skipped concealers beneath her eyes, he guessed it would have shown dark circles signaling fatigue. Her eyes were tired when he pulled her up against his chest and put his arm around her to steady them. It must be the combination of the discomfort on her ankle, the fatigue that had come from the rigorous testing weeks earlier, the lack of sleep, and her refusal to eat the food he ordered, that had finally taken a toll on her. 

“Unbelievable. Your pride might be the only force keeping you on your feet right now. If you had eaten lunch, you might have had more kick in you. The pizza was decent.” He gathered her in his arms like he did at the restaurant. She was so light he didn’t have any trouble lifting her up and walking a significant distance at the restaurant. He brought her to the bed and carefully laid her down instead his original plan to just drop her above the mattress. The woman could barely keep her eyes open, but she was fighting against it. “Silly girl, just go to sleep and allow me to have some peace.” Luke was about to head back to his desk, but he seemed to remember something that made him sit on the bed beside her. “What was it that you have against the food that I ordered? Was it not something Edwin would have ordered for you?” Without thorough knowledge about either her past and her family, he assumed that the name she whispered in her sleep was a name of a former, or perhaps present, lover. It was highly likely so, seeing that she was dreaming of him.