It seems Prince Harry has a type! Before meeting his fiancée, Meghan Markle, the redheaded royal became smitten with Rebeccah Gannon during his infamous 2012 Las Vegas weekend, and didn’t want her to leave his side at MGM’s Wet Republic.

Prince Harry “kicked people out of the cabana so we could be alone,” the then-director of guest services tells In Touch, adding that “there was a spark. After we spent some time together, he seemed to be flirting a little. I couldn’t believe it. He liked me and kept saying, ‘You stay here.'”

rebeccah gannon with prince harry 2012 (in book)

(Photo Credit: Courtesy of Rebeccah Gannon)

So she did. But even as Harry, 33, offered her vodka shots and turned on the charm, opening up to her about his late mother, Princess Diana, and telling the Belize native, “You have a lovely, glowing smile,” Rebeccah turned down his advances. “He wanted to kiss me, but I said no,” she says. “I just couldn’t — I was working.” Now that Harry’s engaged to marry Meghan, 36, however, Rebeccah, 35, is kicking herself. “Everyone tells me I lost my chance because [Meghan and I] look a little bit like each other.”

Harry certainly seemed interested. “After we spent much of the day together, he gave me his bracelet and told me to keep it forever,” Rebeccah says of the prince (who shared a bracelet with Meghan, too). “Eventually he asked for my phone number.”

Someone from his entourage contacted her that night, but she couldn’t join him, again because of work. He didn’t give up. “He came back into town about four months later and tried to see me,” she says, but she turned him down because “we came from such different backgrounds” and she didn’t see potential for a real relationship with the so-called party prince. As Meghan would learn five years later, there was. “I had a chance,” she says, “of becoming a real-life princess.”