Page 33 of Once Upon a Prince

Ella

I hadn’t known what to expect on the flight to Buenos Aires but what I got from Dax wasn’t anything like I would have thought. The man had been a player. I was sure he had reinvented the mile high club and just about any other sexual activities a man could do. I knew it and yet still, I couldn’t keep the jealousy from creeping in when Hannah flirted with him. There was a look that she had, a moment that they shared that told me they had history.

Dax had a past, I knew he had slept with women. I just hadn’t expected it to be front and center so quickly. I hadn’t been prepared for it. I certainly hadn’t handled myself well. I should have been able to brush it off. He certainly had her advances. He handled it as he should or even better than any other man would have. I was the one who hadn’t been able to look at him. I was the one who hadn’t been able to contain my anger and jealousy.

I told myself I would get over it, there wasn’t anything to worry about. He wasn’t interested in Hannah and he had made it abundantly clear. Still, I hadn’t been able to get over my insecurities.

In true Dax form, he had seemed to know what I was thinking and feeling and made everything better. In just a few sentences he put my mind at ease and brought me out of my funk. He gently told me that my concerns were unfounded without making me feel like a fool. After his kind words, how he looked at me, and how he was able to make me feel, he was still shocked when I agreed to his request to get back to how things were before Hannah had shown up.

As soon as I had, it was as if nothing had happened. We sat in our chairs and talked throughout the flight. Hannah came out occasionally to check on us, give us drinks, snacks, and lunch but otherwise she didn’t make her presence known. If she was annoyed that she had been dismissed, she didn’t show it, and was a complete professional.

For a ten-hour flight, it passed quickly. Between talking to Dax, eating, doing some work, and even taking a short nap, it seemed like we landed in no time. It was dark when we arrived and I was a little upset that I wouldn’t get to truly see the area until the morning. I knew that Dax had originally planned on flying down at night, he changed the flight to accommodate me. I was grateful he did but my job was to make his life easier, not the other way around.

We arrived at a separate terminal than the commercial airlines and were able to get through customs and immigration like it was nothing. Our luggage was waiting for us when we arrived outside the terminal, as was our driver. Dax took it all in stride. I had never had things go so smoothly when I traveled and was taken aback by how quickly everything went.

As we drove into town, I pressed my face to the window trying to get a glimpse of the city but all I could see was miles of darkness.

“We are about thirty minutes from the city. It’s mainly farmland through here but soon you’ll see some apartment complexes and then when we get closer to the city, you’ll see more buildings,” Dax said.

I turned to look at him. I couldn’t see him very well in the darkness of the car but I could see his smile. “What does it look like?” I asked.

He didn’t answer me right away. “A little like New York City. A little like Paris. And yet not like either of them,” he said.

“Great. Makes perfect sense,” I said with a laugh.

“Hopefully you’ll understand when you see it. Have you been to Paris?”

“Not yet.”

“Good answer. Have you been to Europe at all?”

“Ara, my roommate, offered to take me one summer, but it didn’t work out.” I didn’t tell him that I had been all set when my stepmother got wind of it and suddenly had work that I needed to do at the factory. I wanted to believe it needed to be done and could only be done by me as she implied, but it hadn’t felt that way at the time.

“Hopefully, you two can go another time,” he said before pausing for a moment and adding, “Or I can take you.”

“That would be lovely.” I didn’t say which one I was talking about, but either option sounded wonderful to me.

“Paris looks like they used the landscape to mold the city, not the other way around,” Dax said.

“Unlike New York?” I asked.

“Well, they did to a point,” he said with a laugh.

“I can’t wait to see it.”

“Buenos Aires or Paris?”

“Both,” I admitted.

“Let’s start with Buenos Aires, then we can go from there. Look,” he said and pointed out my window.

It was hard to make out anything in the back of the car but I could see the lights of the city coming into focus. It did remind me of New York with the skyscrapers and lights that seemed to go forever, but the buildings didn’t seem as tall.

Our driver wound down streets, turning left then right then left again. It was impossible to know where he was going even if I had an idea of the layout of the city. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to where he was going.

As Dax said, about a half hour after we got in the car, we arrived at the hotel. I handled the reservations so I knew what the hotel would look like, or at least I thought I did. As we pulled into the front, my mouth dropped open when I saw it in person.

The hotel looked like something right out of Fifth Avenue in New York City. The white terracotta gleamed in the lights that shot up from the bottom of the hotel to the top floors. It was less than fifteen stories tall but it looked taller and more impressive than any other hotel I had seen. I knew that Dax liked to have nice things and wanted to stay in good hotels. I could understand where he stayed would help with his persona and his business venture. He certainly would be doing all of that with the Avante Palace.