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The Prince's Nine-Month Scandal
CAITLIN CREWS
A shocking royal pregnancy!Personal Assistant Natalie Monette’s life transforms when she meets her secret identical twin. Except Valentina is a sophisticated Princess, unhappily engaged to the supremely arrogant Crown Prince Rodolfo. Impulsively, Natalie agrees to swap identities for six weeks. Her plan is put Rodolfo in his place…until she’s enticed by the heat between them!Prince Rodolfo can’t understand why, having never felt any desire for his betrothed, he now can’t keep his hands off this captivating woman. But scandal abounds when he discovers who he’s taken to his bed…and that she’s carrying his heir!
A shocking royal pregnancy!
Personal assistant Natalie Monette’s life transforms when she meets her secret identical twin. Except Valentina is a sophisticated princess, unhappily engaged to the supremely arrogant Crown Prince Rodolfo. Impulsively, Natalie agrees to swap identities for six weeks. Her plan is to put Rodolfo in his place...until she’s enticed by the heat between them!
Prince Rodolfo can’t understand why, having never felt any desire for his betrothed, he now can’t keep his hands off this captivating woman. But scandal abounds when he discovers who he’s taken to his bed...and that she’s carrying his heir!
“You can ask me anything, Princess,” Rodolfo heard himself say, in a lazy, smoky sort of tone he’d never used in her presence before.
But this was the princess he was going to marry—not one of the enterprising women who flung themselves at him everywhere he went, looking for a taste of Europe’s favorite Daredevil Prince.
There was no denying it. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he wanted his future wife.
Desperately.
As if she could tell—as if she’d somehow become the sort of woman who could read a man’s desire and use it against him when he’d have sworn she was anything but—Valentina deepened her smile.
She tilted her head to one side. “It’s about your shocking double standards,” she said sweetly. “If you can cat your way through all of Europe, why can’t I?”
Something black and wild and wholly unfamiliar surged in him then, making Rodolfo’s hands curl into fists and his entire body go tense, taut.
Then he really shocked the hell out of himself.
“Because,” he all but snarled—and there was no pretending that wasn’t exactly what he was doing, no matter how unlikely, “like it or not, Princess, you are mine.”
Introducing a new, sinfully scandalous duet from Caitlin Crews…
Scandalous Royal Brides (#u827fdee0-d59c-5b72-a135-f64b795acaa0)
Married for passion, made for scandal!
When personal assistant Natalie and Princess Valentina meet they can’t believe their eyes…they’re the very image of one another. They’re so similar it’s impossible that they’re anything but identical twins.
Dissatisfied with their lives, they impulsively agree to swap places—for six weeks only…
But will they want to return to their old lives when the alpha heroes closest to them are intent on making these scandalous women their brides?
Read Natalie and Prince Rodolfo’s story in
The Prince’s Nine-Month Scandal
Available now
And discover Princess Valentina and Achilles Casilieris’s story in
The Billionaire’s Secret Princess Available July 2017
The Prince’s Nine-Month Scandal
Caitlin Crews
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–nominated author CAITLIN CREWS loves writing romance. She teaches her favourite romance novels in creative writing classes at places like the UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, where she finally gets to utilise the MA and PhD in English Literature she received from the University of York in England. She currently lives in California, with her very own hero and too many pets. Visit her at caitlincrews.com (http://caitlincrews.com/).
Books by Caitlin Crews
Mills & Boon Modern Romance
Castelli’s Virgin Widow
At the Count’s Bidding
Wedlocked!
Bride by Royal Decree
Expecting a Royal Scandal
One Night With Consequences
The Guardian’s Virgin Ward
The Billionaire’s Legacy
The Return of the Di Sione Wife
Secret Heirs of Billionaires
Unwrapping the Castelli Secret
Scandalous Sheikh Brides
Protecting the Desert Heir
Traded to the Desert Sheikh
The Chatsfield
Greek’s Last Redemption
Vows of Convenience
His for a Price
His for Revenge
Visit the Author Profile page at
millsandboon.co.uk (http://millsandboon.co.uk) for more titles.
Contents
Cover (#u9f4e7259-3022-5924-8252-7792cc8158cf)
Back Cover Text (#u0a60d19a-2efa-5d56-886c-78ffe427ad2c)
Introduction (#uaa5e3478-0c07-5e41-aac8-e428f5867128)
Scandalous Royal Brides (#u8ef331b6-f995-5991-929b-cc145c14360e)
Title Page (#uc5b78c4d-1574-5459-b777-9534c0649de4)
About the Author (#u5ab3bbb1-ccb7-55f5-b62a-fc4509764db2)
CHAPTER ONE (#u9b4acc16-a3b0-5390-bb6b-6b6b2b0560a3)
CHAPTER TWO (#u1496dd23-bd22-5f58-b92d-dc15b345a5c2)
CHAPTER THREE (#u18baf54d-18fa-545a-b183-6764ef5a9760)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u50a747f6-63ef-5927-8373-c3dd2125a196)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u827fdee0-d59c-5b72-a135-f64b795acaa0)
NATALIE MONETTE HAD never done a rash thing in her entire twenty-seven years, something she’d always viewed as a great personal strength. After a childhood spent flitting about with her free-spirited, impetuous mother, never belonging anywhere and without a shred of anything resembling permanence including an address, Natalie had made her entire adulthood—especially her career—a monument to all things dependable and predictable.
But she’d finally had enough.
Her employer—never an easy man at the best of times—wasn’t likely to accept her notice after five long years with anything like grace. Natalie shook her head at the very notion of grace and her cranky billionaire boss. He preferred a bull-in-china-shop approach to most things, especially his executive assistant. And this latest time, as he’d dressed her down for an imagined mistake in front of an entire corporate office in London, a little voice inside her had whispered: enough.
Enough already. Or she thought she might die. Internally, anyway.
She had to quit her job. She had to figure out what her life was like when not at the beck and call of a tyrant—because there had to be better things out there. There had to be. She had to do something before she just...disappeared.
And she was thinking that a rash move—like quitting here and now and who cared if her boss threw a tantrum?—might just do the trick.
Natalie was washing her hands in the marbled sink in the fancy women’s bathroom that was a part of the moneyed elegance evident everywhere in the high-class lounge area at her boss’s preferred private airfield outside London. She was trying to slow her panicked breathing and get herself back under control. She prided herself on being unflappable under normal circumstances, but nothing about the messy things swirling around inside of her today felt normal. She hardly paid any attention when one of the heavy stall doors behind her opened and a woman stepped up to the sink beside hers. She had the vague impression of the sort of marked glamour that was usually on display in these places she only visited thanks to her job, but then went back to wondering how on earth she was going to walk out of this bathroom and announce that she was done with her job.
She couldn’t imagine how her boss would react. Or she could, that was the trouble. But Natalie knew she had to do it. She had to do it. Now, while there was still this feverish thing inside her that kept pushing at her. Because if she waited, she knew she wouldn’t. She’d settle back in and it would be another five years in an instant, and then what would she do?
“I beg your pardon, but you seem to look a great deal like someone I know.”
The woman’s voice was cultured. Elegant. And it made Natalie feel...funny. As if she’d heard it before when she knew that was impossible. Of course she hadn’t. She never knew anyone in these ultra high-class places her job took her. Then she looked up and the world seemed to tilt off its axis. She was shocked she didn’t crumple to the ground where she stood.
Because the woman standing beside her, staring back at her through the mirror, had her face. The exact same face. Her coppery hair was styled differently and she wasn’t wearing Natalie’s dark-rimmed glasses over her own green eyes, but there was no denying that every other aspect was exactly the same. The fine nose. The faintly pointed chin. The same raised eyebrows, the same high forehead.
The other woman was taller, Natalie realized in a rush of something more complicated than simple relief. But then she looked down to see that her impossible, improbable twin was wearing the sort of sky-high stilettos only women who didn’t have to walk very often or very far enjoyed, easily making her a few inches taller than Natalie in the far more serviceable wedges she wore that allowed her to keep up with her irascible employer’s long, impatient stride.
“Oh.” The other woman breathed the syllable out, like a sigh, though her eyes gleamed. “I thought there was an amusing resemblance that we should discuss, but this...”
Natalie had the bizarre experience of watching her own mouth move on another woman’s face. Then drop open slightly. It was unnerving. It was like the mirror coming alive right in front of her. It was impossible.
It was a great deal more than an “amusing resemblance.”
“What is this?” she asked, her voice as shaky as she felt. “How...?”
“I have no idea,” the other woman said quietly. “But it’s fascinating, isn’t it?” She turned to look at Natalie directly, letting her gaze move up and down her body as if measuring her. Cataloging her. Natalie could hardly blame her. If she wasn’t so frozen, she’d do the same. “I’m Valentina.”
“Natalie.”
Why was her throat so dry? But she knew why. They said everyone on earth had a double, but that was usually a discussion about mannerisms and a vague resemblance. Not this. Because Natalie knew beyond the shadow of any possible doubt that there was no way this person standing in front of her, with the same eyes and the same mouth and even the same freckle centered on her left cheekbone wasn’t related to her. No possible way. And that was a Pandora’s box full of problems, wasn’t it? Starting with her own childhood and the mother who had always rather sternly claimed she didn’t know who Natalie’s father was. She tried to shake all that off—but then Valentina’s name penetrated her brain.
She remembered where she was. And the other party that had been expected at the same airfield today. She’d openly scoffed at the notification, because there wasn’t much on this earth she found more useless than royalty. Her mother had gotten that ball rolling while Natalie was young. While other girls had dressed up like princesses and dreamed about Prince Charming, Natalie had been taught that both were lies.
There’s no such thing as happily-ever-after, her mother had told her. There’s only telling a silly story about painful things to make yourself feel better. No daughter of mine is going to imagine herself anything but a realist, Natalie.
And so Natalie hadn’t. Ever.
Here in this bathroom, face-to-face with an impossibility, Natalie blinked. “Wait. You’re that princess.”
“I am indeed, for my sins.” Valentina’s mouth curved in a serene sort of half smile that Natalie would have said she, personally, could never pull off. Except if someone with an absolutely identical face could do it, that meant she could, too, didn’t it? That realization was...unnerving. “But I suspect you might be, too.”
Natalie couldn’t process that. Her eyes were telling her a truth, but her mind couldn’t accept it. She played devil’s advocate instead. “We can’t possibly be related. I’m a glorified secretary who never really had a home. You’re a royal princess. Presumably your lineage—and the family home, for that matter, which I’m pretty sure is a giant castle because all princesses have a few of those by virtue of the title alone—dates back to the Roman Conquest.”
“Give or take a few centuries.” Valentina inclined her head, another supremely elegant and vaguely noble gesture that Natalie would have said could only look silly on her. Yet it didn’t look anything like silly on Valentina. “Depending which branch of the family you mean, of course.”
“I was under the impression that people with lineages that could lead to thrones and crown jewels tended to keep better track of their members.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” The princess shifted back on her soaring heels and regarded Natalie more closely. “Conspiracy theorists claim my mother was killed and the death hushed up. Senior palace officials assured me that no, she merely left to preserve her mental health, and is rumored to be in residence in a hospital devoted to such things somewhere. All I know is that I haven’t seen her since shortly after I was born. According to my father, she preferred anonymity to the joys of motherhood.”
Natalie wanted to run out of this bathroom, lose herself in her work and her boss’s demands the way she usually did, and pretend this mad situation had never happened. This encounter felt rash enough for her as it was. No need to blow her life up on top of it. So she had no idea why instead, she opened up her mouth and shared her deepest, secret shame with this woman.
“I’ve never met my father,” she told this total stranger who looked like an upscale mirror image of herself. There was no reason she should feel as if she could trust a random woman she met in a bathroom, no matter whose face she wore. It was absurd to feel as if she’d known this other person all her life when of course she hadn’t. And yet she kept talking. “My mother’s always told me she has no idea who he was. That Prince Charming was a fantasy sold to impressionable young girls to make them silly, and the reality was that men are simply men and untrustworthy to the core. And she bounces from one affair to the next pretty quickly, so I came to terms with the fact it was possible she really, truly didn’t know.”
Valentina laughed. It was a low, smoky sound, and Natalie recognized it, because it was hers. A shock of recognition went through her. Though she didn’t feel like laughing. At all.
“My father is many things,” the princess said, laughter and something more serious beneath it. “Including His Royal Majesty, King Geoffrey of Murin. What he is not now, nor has ever been, I imagine, is forgettable.”
Natalie shook her head. “You underestimate my mother’s commitment to amnesia. She’s made it a life choice instead of a malady. On some level I admire it.”
Once again, she had no idea why she was telling this stranger things she hardly dared admit to herself.
“My mother was the noblewoman Frederica de Burgh, from a very old Murinese family.” Valentina watched Natalie closely as she spoke. “Promised to my father at birth, raised by nuns and kept deliberately sheltered, and then widely held to be unequal to the task of becoming queen. Mentally. But that’s the story they would tell, isn’t it, to explain why she disappeared? What’s your mother’s name?”
Her hands felt numb, so Natalie shifted her bag from her shoulder to the marble countertop beside her. “She calls herself Erica.”
For a moment neither one of them spoke. Neither one of them mentioned that Erica sounded very much like a shortened form of Frederica, but then, there was no need. Natalie was aware of too many things. The far-off sounds of planes outside the building. The television in the lounge on the other side of the door, cued to a twenty-four-hour news channel. She was vaguely surprised her boss hadn’t already texted her fifteen furious times, wondering where she’d gone off to when it was possible he might have need of her.
“I saw everyone’s favorite billionaire, Achilles Casilieris, out there in the lounge,” Valentina said after a moment, as if reading Natalie’s mind. “He looks even more fearsome in person than advertised. You can almost see all that brash command and dizzying wealth ooze from his pores, can’t you?”
“He’s my boss.” Natalie ran her tongue over her teeth, that reckless thing inside of her lurching to life all over again. “If he was really oozing anything, anywhere, it would be my job to provide first aid until actual medical personnel could come handle it. At which point he would bite my head off for wasting his precious time by not curing him instantly.”
She had worked for Achilles Casilieris—and by extension the shockingly hardy, internationally envied and recession-proof Casilieris Company—for five very long years. That was the first marginally negative thing she’d said about her job, ever. Out loud, anyway. And she felt instantly disloyal, despite the fact she’d been psyching herself up to quit only moments ago. Much as she had when she’d opened her mouth about her mother.
How could a stranger who happened to look like her make Natalie question who she was?
But the princess was frowning at the slim leather clutch she’d tossed on the bathroom counter. Natalie heard the buzzing sound that indicated a call as Valentina flipped open the outer flap and slid her smartphone out, then rolled her eyes and shoved it back in.
“My fiancé,” she said, meeting Natalie’s gaze again, her own more guarded. Or maybe it was something else that made the green in her eyes darker. The phone buzzed a few more times, then stopped. “Or his chief of staff, to be more precise.”
“Congratulations,” Natalie said, though the expression on Valentina’s face did not look as if she was precisely awash in joyous anticipation.
“Thank you, I’m very lucky.” Valentina’s mouth curved, though there was nothing like a smile in her eyes and her tone was arid. “Everyone says so. Prince Rodolfo is objectively attractive. Not all princes can make that claim, but the tabloids have exulted over his abs since he was a teenager. Just as they have salivated over his impressive dating history, which has involved a selection of models and actresses from at least four continents and did not cease in any noticeable way upon our engagement last fall.”
“Your Prince Charming sounds...charming,” Natalie murmured. It only confirmed her long-held suspicions about such men.
Valentina raised one shoulder, then dropped it. “His theory is that he remains free until our marriage, and then will be free once again following the necessary birth of his heir. More discreetly, I can only hope. Meanwhile, I am beside myself with joy that I must take my place at his side in two short months. Of course.”
Natalie didn’t know why she laughed at that, but she did. More out of commiseration than anything else, as if they really were the same person. And how strange that she almost felt as if they were. “It’s going to be a terrific couple of months all around, then. Mr. Casilieris is in rare form. He’s putting together a particularly dramatic deal and it’s not going his way and he...isn’t used to that. So that’s me working twenty-two-hour days instead of my usual twenty for the foreseeable future, which is even more fun when he’s cranky and snarling.”
“It can’t possibly be worse than having to smile politely while your future husband lectures you about the absurd expectation of fidelity in what is essentially an arranged marriage for hours on end. The absurdity is that he might be expected to curb his impulses for a year or so, in case you wondered. The expectations for me apparently involve quietly and chastely finding fulfillment in philanthropic works, like his sainted absentee mother who everyone knows manufactured a supposed health crisis so she could live out her days in peaceful seclusion. It’s easy to be philanthropically fulfilled while living in isolation in Bavaria.”
Natalie smiled. “Try biting your tongue while your famously short-tempered boss rages at you for no reason, for the hundredth time in an hour, because he pays you to stand there and take it without wilting or crying or selling whinging stories about him to the press.”
Valentina’s smile was a perfect match. “Or the hours and hours of grim palace-vetted pre-wedding press interviews in the company of a pack of advisors who will censor everything I say and inevitably make me sound like a bit of animated treacle, as out of touch with reality as the average overly sweet dessert.”
“Speaking of treats, I also have to deal with the board of directors Mr. Casilieris treats like irritating schoolchildren, his packs of furious ex-lovers each with her own vendetta, all his terrified employees who need to be coached through meetings with him and treated for PTSD after, and every last member of his staff in every one of his households, who like me to be the one to ask him the questions they know will set him off on one of his scorch-the-earth rages.”
They’d moved a little bit closer then, leaning toward each other like friends. Or sisters, a little voice whispered. It should have concerned Natalie like everything else about this. And like everything else, it did and it didn’t. Either way, she didn’t step back. She didn’t insist upon her personal space. She was almost tempted to imagine her body knew something about this mirror image version of her that her brain was still desperately trying to question.
Natalie thought of the way Mr. Casilieris had bitten her head off earlier, and her realization that if she didn’t escape him now she never would. And how this stranger with her face seemed, oddly enough, to understand.
“I was thinking of quitting, to be honest,” she whispered. Making it real. “Today.”
“I can’t quit, I’m afraid,” the impossibly glamorous princess said then, her green eyes alight with something a little more frank than plain mischief. “But I have a better idea. Let’s switch places. For a month, say. Six weeks at the most. Just for a little break.”
“That’s crazy,” Natalie said.
“Insane,” Valentina agreed. “But you might find royal protocol exciting! And I’ve always wanted to do the things everyone else in the world does. Like go to a real job.”
“People can’t switch places.” Natalie was frowning. “And certainly not with a princess.”
“You could think about whether or not you really want to quit,” Valentina pointed out. “It would be a lovely holiday for you. Where will Achilles Casilieris be in six weeks’ time?”
“He’s never gone from London for too long,” Natalie heard herself say, as if she was considering it.
Valentina smiled. “Then in six weeks we’ll meet in London. We’ll text in the meantime with all the necessary details about our lives, and on the appointed day we’ll just meet up and switch back and no one will ever be the wiser. Doesn’t that sound like fun?” Her gaze met Natalie’s with something like compassion. “And I hope you won’t mind my saying this, but you do look as if you could use a little fun.”
“It would never work.” Natalie realized after she spoke that she still hadn’t said no. “No one will ever believe I’m you.”
Valentina waved a hand between them. “How would anyone know the difference? I can barely tell myself.”
“People will take one look at me and know I’m not you,” Natalie insisted, as if that was the key issue here. “You look like a princess.”
If Valentina noticed the derisive spin she put on that last word out of habit, she appeared to ignore it.
“You too can look like a princess. This princess, anyway. You already do.”
“There’s a lifetime to back it up. You’re elegant. Poised. You’ve had years of training, presumably. How to be a diplomat. How to be polite in every possible situation. Which fork to use at dinner, for God’s sake.”
“Achilles Casilieris is one of the wealthiest men alive. He dines with as many kings as I do. I suspect that as his personal assistant, Natalie, you have, too. And have likely learned how to navigate the cutlery.”
“No one will believe it,” Natalie whispered, but there was no heat in it.
Because maybe she was the one who couldn’t believe it. And maybe, if she was entirely honest, there was a part of her that wanted this. The princess life and everything that went with it. The kind of ease she’d never known—and a castle besides. And only for a little while. Six short weeks. Scarcely more than a daydream.
Surely even Natalie deserved a daydream. Just this once.
Valentina’s smile widened as if she could scent capitulation in the air. She tugged off the enormous, eye-gouging ring on her left hand and placed it down on the counter between them. It made an audible clink against the marble surface.
“Try it on. I dare you. It’s an heirloom from Prince Rodolfo’s extensive treasury of such items, dating back to the dawn of time, more or less.” She inclined her head in that regal way of hers. “If it doesn’t fit we’ll never speak of switching places again.”
And Natalie felt possessed by a force she didn’t understand. She knew better. Of course she did. This was a ridiculous game and it could only make this bizarre situation worse, and she was certainly no Cinderella. She knew that much for sure.
But she slipped the ring onto her finger anyway, and it fit perfectly, gleaming on her finger like every dream she’d ever had as a little girl. Not that she could live a magical life, filled with talismans that shone the way this ring did, because that was the sort of impracticality her mother had abhorred. But that she could have a home the way everyone else did. That she could belong to a man, to a country, to the sweep of a long history, the way this ring hugged her finger. As if it was meant to be.
The ring had nothing to do with her. She knew that. But it felt like a promise, even so.
And it all seemed to snowball from there. They each kicked off their shoes and stood barefoot on the surprisingly plush carpet. Then Valentina shimmied out of her sleek, deceptively simple sheath dress with the unselfconsciousness of a woman used to being dressed by attendants. She lifted her brows with all the imperiousness of her station, and Natalie found herself retreating into the stall with the dress—since she was not, in fact, used to being tended to by packs of fawning courtiers and therefore all but naked with an audience. She climbed out of her own clothes, handing her pencil skirt, blouse and wrap sweater out to Valentina through the crack she left open in the door. Then she tugged the princess’s dress on, expecting it to snag or pull against her obviously peasant body.
But like the ring, the dress fit as if it had been tailored to her body. As if it was hers.
She walked out slowly, blinking when she saw...herself waiting for her. The very same view she’d seen in the mirror this morning when she’d dressed in the room Mr. Casilieris kept for her in the basement of his London town house because her own small flat was too far away to be to-ing and fro-ing at odd hours, according to him, and it was easier to acquiesce than fight. Not that it had kept him from firing away at her. But she shoved that aside because Valentina was laughing at the sight of Natalie in obvious astonishment, as if she was having the same literal out-of-body experience.
Natalie walked back to the counter and climbed into the princess’s absurd shoes, very carefully. Her knees protested beneath her as she tried to stand tall in them and she had to reach out to grip the marble counter.
“Put your weight on your heels,” Valentina advised. She was already wearing Natalie’s wedges, because apparently even their feet were the same, and of course she had no trouble standing in them as if she’d picked them out herself. “Everyone always wants to lean forward and tiptoe in heels like that, and nothing looks worse. Lean back and you own the shoe, not the other way around.” She eyed Natalie. “Will your glasses give me a headache, do you suppose?”
Natalie pulled them from her face and handed them over. “They’re clear glass. I was getting a little too much attention from some of the men Mr. Casilieris works with, and it annoyed him. I didn’t want to lose my job, so I started wearing my hair up and these glasses. It worked like a charm.”
“I refuse to believe men are so idiotic.”
Natalie grinned as Valentina took the glasses and slid them onto her nose. “The men we’re talking about weren’t exactly paying me attention because they found me enthralling. It was a diversionary tactic during negotiations and yes, you’d be surprised how many men fail to see a woman who looks smart.”
She tugged her hair tie from her ponytail and shook out her hair, then handed the elastic to Valentina. The princess swept her hair back and into the same ponytail Natalie had been sporting only seconds before.
And it was like magic.
Ordinary Natalie Monette, renowned for her fierce work ethic, attention to detail and her total lack of anything resembling a personal life—which was how she’d become the executive assistant to one of the world’s most ferocious and feared billionaires straight out of college and now had absolutely no life to call her own—became Her Royal Highness, Princess Valentina of Murin in an instant. And vice versa. Just like that.
“This is crazy,” Natalie whispered.
The real Princess Valentina only smiled, looking every inch the smooth, super competent right hand of a man as feared as he was respected. Looking the way Natalie had always hoped she looked, if she was honest. Serenely capable. Did this mean...she always had?
More than that, they looked like twins. They had to be twins. There was no possibility that they could be anything but.
Natalie didn’t want to think about the number of lies her mother had to have told her if that was true. She didn’t want to think about all the implications. She couldn’t.
“We have to switch places now,” Valentina said softly, though there was a catch in her voice. It was the catch that made Natalie focus on her rather than the mystery that was her mother. “I’ve always wanted to be...someone else. Someone normal. Just for a little while.”
Their gazes caught at that, both the exact same shade of green, just as their hair was that unusual shade of copper many tried to replicate in the salon, yet couldn’t. The only difference was that Valentina’s was highlighted with streaks of blond that Natalia suspected came from long, lazy days on the decks of yachts or taking in the sunshine from the comfort of her very own island kingdom.
If you’re really twins—if you’re sisters—it’s your island, too, a little voice inside whispered. But Natalie couldn’t handle that. Not here. Not now. Not while she was all dressed up in princess clothes.
“Is that what princesses dream of?” Natalie asked. She wanted to smile, but the moment felt too precarious. Ripe and swollen with emotions she couldn’t have named, though she understood them as they moved through her. “Because I think most other little girls imagine they’re you.”
Not her, of course. Never her.
Something shone a little too brightly in Valentina’s gaze then, and it made Natalie’s chest ache.
But she would never know what her mirror image might have said next, because her name was called in a familiar growl from directly outside the door to the women’s room. Natalie didn’t think. She was dressed as someone else and she couldn’t let anyone see that—so she threw herself back into the stall where she’d changed her clothes as the door was slapped open.
“Exactly what are you doing in here?” growled a voice that Natalie knew better than her own. She’d worked for Achilles Casilieris for five years. She knew him much, much better than she knew herself. She knew, for example, that the particular tone he was using right now meant his usual grouchy mood was being rapidly taken over by his typical impatience. He’d likely had to actually take a moment and look for her, rather than her magically being at his side before he finished his thought. He hated that. And he wasn’t shy at all about expressing his feelings. “Can we leave for New York now, do you think, or do you need to fix your makeup for another hour?”
Natalie stood straighter out of habit, only to realize that her boss’s typical scowl wasn’t directed at her. She was hidden behind the cracked open door of the bathroom stall. Her boss was aiming that famous glare straight at Valentina, and he didn’t appear to notice that she wasn’t Natalie. That if she was Natalie, that would mean she’d lightened her hair in the past fifteen minutes. But she could tell that all her boss saw was his assistant. Nothing more, nothing less.
“I apologize,” Valentina murmured.
“I don’t need you to be sorry, I need you on the plane,” Achilles retorted, then turned back around to head out.
Natalie’s head spun. She had worked for this man, night and day, for half a decade. He was Achilles Casilieris, renowned for his keen insight and killer instincts in all things, and Natalie had absolutely no doubt that he had no idea that he hadn’t been speaking to her.
Maybe that was why, when Valentina reached over and took Natalie’s handbag instead of her own, Natalie didn’t push back out of the stall to stop her. She said nothing. She stood where she was. She did absolutely nothing to keep the switch from happening.
“I’ll call you,” Valentina mouthed into the mirror as she hurried to the door, and the last Natalie saw of Her Royal Highness Valentina of Murin was the suppressed excitement in her bright green eyes as she followed Achilles Casilieris out the door.
Natalie stepped out of the stall again in the sudden silence. She looked at herself in the mirror, smoothed her hair down with palms that shook only the slightest little bit, blinked at the wild sparkle of the absurd ring on her finger as she did it.
And just like that, became a fairy princess—and stepped right into a daydream.
CHAPTER TWO (#u827fdee0-d59c-5b72-a135-f64b795acaa0)
CROWN PRINCE RODOLFO of the ancient and deeply, deliberately reserved principality of Tissely, tucked away in the Pyrenees between France and Spain and gifted with wealth, peace and dramatic natural borders that had kept things that way for centuries untold, was bored.
This was not his preferred state of existence, though it was not exactly surprising here on the palace grounds of Murin Castle, where he was expected to entertain the royal bride his father had finally succeeded in forcing upon him.
Not that “entertainment” was ever really on offer with the undeniably pretty, yet almost aggressively placid and unexciting Princess Valentina. His future wife. The future mother of his children. His future queen, even. Assuming he didn’t lapse into a coma before their upcoming nuptials, that was.
Rodolfo sighed and stretched out his long legs, aware he was far too big to be sitting so casually on a relic of a settee in this stuffily proper reception room that had been set aside for his use on one of his set monthly visits with his fiancée. He still felt a twinge in one thigh from the ill-advised diving trip he’d taken some months back with a group of his friends and rather too many sharks. Rodolfo rubbed at the scarred spot absently, grateful that while his father had inevitably caught wind of the feminine talent who’d graced the private yacht off the coast of Belize, the fact an overenthusiastic shark had grazed the Crown Prince of Tissely en route to a friend’s recently caught fish had escaped both the King’s spies’ and the rabid tabloids’ breathless reports.
It was these little moments of unexpected grace, he often thought with varying degrees of irony, that made his otherwise royally pointless life worth living.
“You embarrass yourself more with each passing year,” his father had told him, stiff with fury, when Rodolfo had succumbed to the usual demands for a command appearance upon his return to Europe at the end of last summer, the salacious pictures of his “Belize Booze Cruise” still fresh in every tabloid reader’s mind. And more to the point, in his father’s.
“You possess the power to render me unembarrassing forevermore,” Rodolfo had replied easily enough. He’d almost convinced himself his father no longer got beneath his skin. Almost. “Give me something to do, Father. You have an entire kingdom at your disposal. Surely you can find a single task for your only son.”
But that was the crux of the matter they never spoke of directly, of course. Rodolfo was not the son his father had wanted as heir. He was not the son his father would have chosen to succeed him, not the son his father had planned for. He was his father’s only remaining son, and not his father’s choice.
He was not Felipe. He could never be Felipe. It was a toss-up as to which one of them hated him more for that.
“There is no place in my kingdom for a sybaritic fool whose life is little more than an extended advertisement for one of those appalling survival programs, complete with the sensationalism of the nearest gutter press,” his father had boomed from across his vast, appropriately majestic office in the palace, because it was so much easier to attack Rodolfo than address what simmered beneath it all. Not that Rodolfo helped matters with his increasingly dangerous antics, he was aware. “You stain the principality with every astonishingly bad decision you make.”
“It was a boat ride, sir.” Rodolfo had kept his voice even because he knew it irritated his father to get no reaction to his litanies and insults. “Not precisely a scandal likely to topple the whole of the kingdom’s government, as I think you are aware.”
“What I am aware of, as ever, is how precious little you know about governing anything,” his father had seethed, in all his state and consequence.
“You could change that with a wave of your hand,” Rodolfo had reminded him, as gently as possible. Which was perhaps not all that gently. “Yet you refuse.”
And around and around they went.
Rodolfo’s father, the taciturn and disapproving sovereign of Tissely, Ferdinand IV, held all the duties of the monarchy in his tight fists and showed no signs of easing his grip anytime soon. Despite the promise he’d made his only remaining son and heir that he’d give him a more than merely ceremonial place in the principality’s government following Rodolfo’s graduate work at the London School of Economics. That had been ten years back, his father had only grown more bitter and possessive of his throne, and Rodolfo had...adapted.
Life in the principality was sedate, as befitted a nation that had avoided all the wars of the last few centuries by simple dint of being too far removed to take part in them in any real way. Rodolfo’s life, by contrast, was...stimulating. Provocative by design. He liked his sport extreme and his sex excessive, and he didn’t much care if the slavering hounds of the European press corps printed every moment of each, which they’d been more than happy to do for the past decade. If his father wished him to be more circumspect, to preserve and protect the life of the hereditary heir to Tissely’s throne the way he should—the way he’d raced about trying to wrap Felipe in cotton wool, restricting him from everything only to lose him to something as ignoble and silly as an unremarkable cut in his finger and what they’d thought was the flu—he needed only to offer Rodolfo something else with which to fill his time. Such as, perhaps, something to do besides continue to exist, thus preserving the bloodline by dint of not dying.
In fairness, of course, Rodolfo had committed himself to pushing the boundaries of his continued existence as much as possible, with his group of similarly devil-may-care friends, to the dismay of most of their families.
“Congratulations,” Ferdinand had clipped out one late September morning last fall in yet another part of his vast offices in the Tisselian palace complex. “You will be married next summer.”
“I beg your pardon?”
In truth, Rodolfo had not been paying much attention to the usual lecture until that moment. He was no fan of being summoned from whatever corner of the world he happened to be inhabiting and having to race back to present himself before Ferdinand, because his lord and father preferred not to communicate with his only heir by any other means but face-to-face. But of course, Ferdinand had not solicited his opinion. Ferdinand never did.
When he’d focused on his father, sitting there behind the acres and acres of his desk, the old man had actually looked...smug.
That did not bode well.
“You’ve asked me for a role in the kingdom and here it is. The Crown Prince of Tissely has been unofficially betrothed to the Murin princess since her birth. It is high time you did your duty and ensured the line. This should not come as any great surprise. You are not exactly getting any younger, Rodolfo, as your increasingly more desperate public displays amply illustrate.”
Rodolfo had let that deliberate slap roll off his back, because there was no point reacting. It was what his father wanted.
“I met the Murin princess exactly once when I was ten and she was in diapers.” Felipe had been fourteen and a man of the world, to Rodolfo’s recollection, and the then Crown Prince of Tissely had seemed about as unenthused about his destiny as Rodolfo felt now. “That seems a rather tenuous connection upon which to base a marriage, given I’ve never seen her since.”
“Princess Valentina is renowned the world over for her commitment to her many responsibilities and her role as her father’s emissary,” his father had replied coolly. “I doubt your paths would have crossed in all these years, as she is not known to frequent the dens of iniquity you prefer.”
“Yet you believe this paragon will wish to marry me.”
“I am certain she will wish no such thing, but the princess is a dutiful creature who knows what she owes to her country. You claim that you are as well, and that your dearest wish is to serve the crown. Now is your chance to prove it.”
And that was how Rodolfo had found himself both hoist by his own petard and more worrying, tied to his very proper, very dutiful, very, very boring bride-to-be with no hope of escape. Ever.
“Princess Valentina, Your Highness,” the butler intoned from the doorway, and Rodolfo dutifully climbed to his feet, because his life might have been slipping out of his control by the second, but hell, he still had the manners that had been beaten into him since he was small.
The truth was, he’d imagined that he would do things differently than his father when he’d realized he would have to take Felipe’s place as the heir to his kingdom. He’d been certain he would not marry a woman he hardly knew, foisted upon him by duty and immaculate bloodlines, with whom he could hardly carry on a single meaningful conversation. His own mother—no more enamored of King Ferdinand than Rodolfo was—had long since repaired to her preferred residence, her ancestral home in the manicured wilds of Bavaria, and had steadfastly maintained an enduring if vague health crisis that necessitated she remain in seclusion for the past twenty years.
Rodolfo had been so sure, as an angry young man still reeling from his brother’s death, that he would do things better when he had his chance.
And instead he was standing attendance on a strange woman who, in the months of their engagement, had appeared to be made entirely of impenetrable glass. She was about that approachable.
But this time, when Valentina walked into the reception room the way she’d done many times before, so they could engage in a perfectly tedious hour of perfectly polite conversation on perfectly pointless topics as if it was the stifling sixteenth century, all to allow the waiting press corps to gush about their visits later as they caught Rodolfo leaving, everything...changed.
Rodolfo couldn’t have said how. Much less why.
But he felt her entrance. He felt it when she paused in the doorway and looked around as if she’d never laid eyes on him or the paneled ceiling or any part of the run-of-the-mill room before. His body tightened. He felt a rush of heat pool in his—
Impossible.
What the hell was happening to him?
Rodolfo felt his gaze narrow as he studied his fiancée. She looked the way she always did, and yet she didn’t. She wore one of her efficiently sophisticated and chicly demure ensembles, a deceptively simple sheath dress that showed nothing and yet obliquely drew attention to the sheer feminine perfection of her form. A form he’d seen many times before, always clothed beautifully, and yet had never found himself waxing rhapsodic about before. Yet today he couldn’t look away. There was something about the way she stood, as if she was unsteady on those cheeky heels she wore, though that seemed unlikely. Her hair flowed around her shoulders and looked somehow wilder than it usually did, as if the copper of it was redder. Or perhaps brighter.
Or maybe he needed to get his head examined. Maybe he really had gotten a concussion when he’d gone on an impromptu skydiving trip last week, tumbling a little too much on his way down into the remotest peaks of the Swiss Alps.
The princess moistened her lips and then met his gaze, and Rodolfo felt it like her sultry little mouth all over the hardest part of him.
What the hell?
“Hello,” she said, and even her voice was...different, somehow. He couldn’t put his finger on it. “It’s lovely to see you.”
“Lovely to see me?” he echoed, astonished. And something far more earthy, if he was entirely honest with himself. “Are you certain? I was under the impression you would prefer a rousing spot of dental surgery to another one of these meetings. I feel certain you almost admitted as much at our last one.”
He didn’t know what had come over him. He’d managed to maintain his civility throughout all these months despite his creeping boredom—what had changed today? He braced himself, expecting the perfect princess to collapse into an offended heap on the polished floor, which he’d have a hell of a time explaining to her father, the humorless King Geoffrey of Murin.
But Valentina only smiled and a gleam he’d never seen before kindled in her eyes, which he supposed must always have been that remarkable shade of green. How had he never noticed them before?
“Well, it really depends on the kind of dental surgery, don’t you think?” she asked.
Rodolfo couldn’t have been more surprised if the quietly officious creature had tossed off her clothes and started dancing on the table—well, there was no need to exaggerate. He’d have summoned the palace doctors if the princess had done anything of the kind. After appreciating the show for a moment or two, of course, because he was a man, not a statue. But the fact she appeared to be teasing him was astounding, nonetheless.
“A root canal, at the very least,” he offered.
“With or without anesthesia?”
“If it was with anesthesia you’d sleep right through it,” Rodolfo pointed out. “Hardly any suffering at all.”
“Everyone knows there’s no point doing one’s duty unless one can brag forever about the amount of suffering required to survive the task,” the princess said, moving farther into the room. She stopped and rested her hand on the high, brocaded back of a chair that had likely cradled the posteriors of kings dating back to the ninth century, and all Rodolfo could think was that he wanted her to keep going. To keep walking toward him. To put herself within reach so he could—
Calm down, he ordered himself. Now. So sternly he sounded like his father in his own head.
“You are describing martyrdom,” he pointed out.
Valentina shot him a smile. “Is there a difference?”
Rodolfo stood still because he didn’t quite know what he might do if he moved. He watched this woman he’d written off months ago as if he’d never seen her before. There was something in the way she walked this afternoon that tugged at him. There was a new roll to her hips, perhaps. Something he’d almost call a swagger, assuming a princess of her spotless background and perfect genes was capable of anything so basic and enticing. Still, he couldn’t look away as she rounded the settee he’d abandoned and settled herself in its center with a certain delicacy that was at odds with the way she’d moved through the old, spectacularly royal room. Almost as if she was more uncertain than she looked...but that made as little sense as the rest.
“I was reading about you on the plane back from London today,” she told him, surprising him all over again.
“And here I thought we were maintaining the polite fiction that you did not sully your royal eyes with the squalid tabloids.”
“Ordinarily I would not, of course,” she replied, and then her mouth curved. Rodolfo was captivated. And somewhat horrified at that fact. But still captivated, all the same. “It is beneath me, obviously.”
He sketched a bow that would have made his grandfather proud. “Obviously.”
“I am a princess, not a desperate shopgirl who wants nothing more than to escape her dreary life, and must imagine herself into fantastical stories and half-truths presented as gospel.”
“Quite so.”
“But I must ask you a question.” And on that she smiled again, that same serene curve of her lips that had about put him to sleep before. That was not the effect it had on him today. By a long shot.
“You can ask me anything, princess,” Rodolfo heard himself say.
In a lazy, smoky sort of tone he’d never used in her presence before. Because this was the princess he was going to marry, not one of the enterprising women who flung themselves at him everywhere he went, looking for a taste of Europe’s favorite daredevil prince.
There was no denying it. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he wanted his future wife.
Desperately.
As if she could tell—as if she’d somehow become the sort of woman who could read a man’s desire and use it against him, when he’d have sworn she was anything but—Valentina’s smile deepened.
She tilted her head to one side. “It’s about your shocking double standard,” she said sweetly. “If you can cat your way through all of Europe, why can’t I?”
Something black and wild and wholly unfamiliar surged in him then, making Rodolfo’s hands curl into fists and his entire body go tense, taut.
Then he really shocked the hell out of himself.
“Because you can’t,” he all but snarled, and there was no pretending that wasn’t exactly what he was doing. Snarling. No matter how unlikely. “Like it or not, princess, you are mine.”
CHAPTER THREE (#u827fdee0-d59c-5b72-a135-f64b795acaa0)
PRINCE RODOLFO WAS not what Natalie was expecting.
No picture—and there were thousands, at a conservative estimate, every week he continued to draw breath—could adequately capture the size of Europe’s favorite royal adrenaline junkie. That was the first thing that struck her. Sure, she’d seen the detailed telephoto shots of his much-hallowed abs as he emerged from various sparkling Mediterranean waters that had dominated whole summers of international swooning. And there was that famous morning he’d spent on a Barcelona balcony one spring, stretching and taking in the sunlight in boxer briefs and nothing else, but somehow all of those revealing pictures had managed to obscure the sheer size of the man. He was well over six feet, with hard, strong shoulders that could block out a day or two. And more than that, there was a leashed, humming sort of power in the man that photographs of him concealed entirely.
Or, Natalie thought, maybe he’s the one who does the concealing.
But she couldn’t think about what this man might be hiding beneath the surface. Not when the surface itself was so mesmerizing. She still felt as dazed as she’d been when she’d walked in this room and seen him waiting for her, dwarfing the furniture with all that contained physicality as he stood before the grand old fireplace. He looked like an athlete masquerading as a prince, with thick dark hair that was not quite tamed and the sort of dark chocolate eyes that a woman could lose herself in for a lifetime or three. His lean and rangy hard male beauty was packed into black trousers and a soft-looking button-down shirt that strained to handle his biceps and his gloriously sculpted chest. His hands were large and aristocratic at once, his voice was an authoritative rumble that seemed to murmur deep within her and then sink into a bright flame between her legs, his gaze was shockingly direct—and Natalie was not at all prepared. For any of it. For him.
She’d expected this real-life Prince Charming to be as repellent as he’d always been in the stories her mother had told her as a child about men just like him. Dull and vapid. Obsessed with something obscure, like hound breeding. Vain and huffy and bland, all the way through. Not...this.
Valentina had said that her fiancé was attractive in an offhanded, uncomplimentary way. She’d failed to mention that he was, in fact, upsettingly—almost incomprehensibly—stunning. The millions of fawning, admiring pictures of Crown Prince Rodolfo did not do him any justice, it turned out, and the truth of him took all the air from the room. From Natalie’s lungs, for that matter. Her stomach felt scraped hollow as it plummeted to her feet, and then stayed there. But after a moment in the doorway where she’d seen nothing but him and the world had seemed to smudge a little bit around its luxe, literally palatial edges, Natalie had rallied.
It was hard enough trying to walk in the ridiculous shoes she was wearing—with her weight back on her heels, as ordered—and not goggle in slack-jawed astonishment at the palace all around her. The actual, real live palace. Valentina had pointed out that Natalie had likely visited remarkable places before, thanks to her job, and that was certainly true. But it was one thing to be treated as a guest in a place like Murin Castle. Or more precisely, as the employee of a guest, however valued by the guest in question. It was something else entirely to be treated as if it was all...hers.
The staff had curtsied and bowed when Natalie had stepped onto the royal jet. The guards had stood at attention. A person who was clearly her personal aide had catered to her during the quick flight, quickly filling her in on the princess’s schedule and plans and then leaving her to her own devices. Natalie had spent years doing the exact same thing, so she’d learned a few things about Valentina in the way her efficient staff operated around her look-alike. That she was well liked by those who worked for her, which made Natalie feel oddly warm inside, as if that was some kind of reflection on her instead of the princess. That Valentina was not overly fussy or precious, given the way the staff served her food and acted while they did it. And that she was addicted to romance novels, if the stacks of books with bright-colored covers laid out for her perusal was any indication.
Then, soon enough, the plane had landed on the tiny little jewel of an island nestled in the Mediterranean Sea. Natalie’s impressions were scattered as they flew in. Hills stretched high toward the sun, then sloped into the sea, covered in olive groves, tidy red roofs and the soaring arches of bell towers and churches. Blue water gleamed everywhere she looked, and white sand beaches nestled up tight to colorful fishing villages and picturesque marinas. There were cheerful sails in the graceful bay and a great, iconic castle set high on a hill. A perfect postcard of an island.
A dream. Except Natalie was wide-awake, and this was really, truly happening.
“Prince Rodolfo awaits your pleasure, Your Highness,” a man she assumed was some kind of high-level butler had informed her when she’d been escorted into the palace itself, with guards saluting her arrival. She’d been too busy trying to look as if the splendor pressing in on her from all sides was so terribly common that she hardly noticed it to do more than nod, in some approximation of the princess’s elegant inclination of her head. Then she’d had to follow the same butler through the palace, trying to walk with ease and confidence in shoes she was certain were not meant to be walked in at all, much less down endless marble halls.
She’d expected Prince Rodolfo to be seedier in person than in his photos. Softer of jaw, meaner of eye. And up himself in every possible way. She had not expected to find herself so stunned at the sight of him that she’d had to reach out and hold on to the furniture to keep her knees from giving out beneath her, for the love of all that was holy.
And then he’d spoken, and Natalie had understood—with a certain, sinking feeling that only made that breathlessness worse—that she was in more than a little hot water. It had never crossed her mind that she might find this prince—or any prince—attractive. It had never even occurred to her that she might be affected in any way by a man who carried that sort of title or courted the sort of attention Prince Rodolfo did. Natalie had never liked flashy. It was always a deliberate distraction, never anything real. Working for one of the most powerful men in the world had made her more than a little jaded when it came to other male displays of supposed strength. She knew what real might look like, how it was maintained and more, how it was wielded. A petty little princeling who liked to fling himself out of airplanes could only be deeply unappealing in person, she’d imagined.
She’d never imagined...this.
It was possible her mouth had run away with her, as some kind of defense mechanism.
And then, far more surprising, Prince Rodolfo wasn’t the royal dullard she’d been expecting—all party and no substance. The sculpted mouth of his...did things to her as he revealed himself to be something a bit more intriguing than the airhead she’d expected. Especially when that look in his dark eyes took a turn toward the feral.
Stop, she ordered herself sternly. This is another woman’s fiancé, no matter what she might think of him.
Natalie had to order herself to pay attention to what was happening as the Prince’s surprisingly possessive words rang through the large room that teemed with antiques and the sort of dour portraits that usually turned out to have been painted by ancient masters, were always worth unconscionable amounts of money and made everyone in them look shriveled and dour. Or more precisely, she had to focus on their conversation, and not the madness that was going on inside her body.
You are mine didn’t sound like the kind of thing the man Valentina had described would say. Ever. It didn’t sound at all like the man the tabloids drooled over, or all those ex-lovers moaned about in exclusive interviews, mostly to complain about how quickly each and every one of them was replaced with the next.
In fact, unless she was mistaken, His Royal Highness, Prince Rodolfo, he of so many paramours in so many places that there were many internet graphs and user forums dedicated to tracking them all, looked as surprised by that outburst as she was.
“That hardly seems fair, does it?” she asked mildly, hoping he couldn’t tell how thrown she was by him. Hoping it would go away if she ignored it. “I don’t see why I have to confine myself to only you when you don’t feel compelled to limit yourself. In any way at all, according to my research.”
“Is there someone you wish to add to your stable, princess?” Rodolfo asked, in a smooth sort of way that was at complete odds with that hard, near-gold gleam in his dark eyes that set off every alarm in her body. Whether she ignored it or not. “Name the lucky gentleman.”
“A lady never shares such things,” she demurred. Then smiled the way she always had at the officious secretaries of her boss’s rivals, all of whom underestimated her. Once. “Unlike you, Your Highness.”
“I cannot help it if the press follows me everywhere I go.” She sensed more than heard the growl in his voice. He was still standing where he’d been when she arrived, arranged before the immense fireplace like some kind of royal offering, but if he’d thought it made him look idle and at his ease he’d miscalculated. All she could see when she looked at him was how big he was. Big and hard and beautiful from head to toe and, God help her, she couldn’t seem to control her reaction to him. “Just as I cannot keep them from writing any fabrication they desire. They prefer a certain narrative, of course. It sells.”
“How tragic. I had no idea you were a misunderstood monk.”
“I am a man, princess.” He didn’t quite bare his teeth. There was no reason at all Natalie should feel the cut of them against her skin. “Were you in some doubt?”
Natalie reminded herself that she, personally, had no stake in this. No matter how many stories her mother had told her about men like him and the careless way they lived their lives. No matter that Prince Rodolfo proved that her mother was right every time he swam with sharks or leaped from planes or trekked for a month in remotest Patagonia with no access to the outside world or thought to his country should he never return. And no matter the way her heart was kicking at her and her breath seemed to tangle in her throat. This wasn’t about her at all.
I’m going to sort out your fiancé as a little wedding gift to you, she’d texted Valentina when she’d recovered from her shell shock and had emerged from the fateful bathroom in London to watch Achilles Casilieris’s plane launch itself into the air without her. The beauty of the other princess having taken her bag when she’d left—with Natalie’s phone inside it—was that Natalie knew her own number and could reach the woman who was inhabiting her life. You’re welcome.
Good luck with that, Valentina had responded. He’s unsortable. Deliberately, I imagine.
As far as Natalie was concerned, that was permission to come on in, guns blazing. She had nothing to lose by saying the things Valentina wouldn’t. And there was absolutely no reason she should feel that hot, intent look he was giving her low and tight in her belly. No reason at all.
She made a show of looking around the vast room the scrupulously correct butler who had ushered her here had called a parlor in ringing tones. She’d had to work hard not to seem cowed, by the butler or the scale of the private wing he’d led her through, all dizzying chandeliers and astoundingly beautiful rooms clogged with priceless antiques and jaw-dropping art.
“I don’t see any press here,” she said, instead of debating his masculinity. For God’s sake.
“Obviously not.” Was it her imagination or did Rodolfo sound a little less...civilized? “We are on palace grounds. Your father would have them whipped.”
“If you wanted to avoid the press, you could,” Natalie pointed out. With all the authority of a person who had spent five years keeping Achilles Casilieris out of the press’s meaty claws. “You don’t.”
Was it possible this mighty, beautiful prince looked...ill at ease? If only for a moment?
“I never promised you that I would declaw myself, Valentina,” he said, and it took Natalie a moment to remember why he was calling her Valentina. Because that’s who he thought she was, of course. Princess Valentina, who had to marry him in two months. Not mouthy, distressingly common Natalie, who was unlikely to marry anyone since she spent her entire life embroiled in and catering to the needs of a man who likely wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a lineup. “I told you I would consider it after the wedding. For a time.”
Natalie shrugged, and told herself there was no call for her to feel slapped down by his response. He wasn’t going to marry her. She certainly didn’t need to feel wounded by the way he planned to run his relationship. Critical, certainly. But not wounded.
“As will I,” she said mildly.
Rodolfo studied her for a long moment, and Natalie forced herself to hold that seething dark glare while he did it. She even smiled and settled back against the delicate little couch, as if she was utterly relaxed. When she was nothing even remotely like it.
“No,” he said after a long, long time, his voice dark and lazy and something else she felt more than heard. “I think not.”
Natalie held back the little shiver that threatened her then, because she knew, somehow, that he would see it and leap to the worst possible conclusion.
“You mistake me,” she said coolly. “I wasn’t asking your permission. I was stating a fact.”
“I would suggest that you think very carefully about acting on this little scheme of yours, princess,” Rodolfo said in that same dark, stirring tone. “You will not care for my response, I am certain.”
Natalie crossed her legs and forced herself to relax even more against the back of her little couch. Well. To look it, anyway. As if she had never been more at her ease, despite the drumming of her pulse.
She waved a hand the way Valentina had done in London, so nonchalantly. “Respond however you wish. You have my blessing.”
He laughed, then. The sound was rougher than Natalie would have imagined a royal prince’s laugh ought to have been, and silkier than she wanted to admit as it wrapped itself around her. And all of that was a far second to the way amusement danced over his sculpted, elegant face, making him look not only big and surprisingly powerful, but very nearly approachable. Magnetic, even.
Something a whole lot more than magnetic. It lodged itself inside of her, then glowed.
Good lord, Natalie thought in another sort of daze as she gazed back at him. This is the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.
“I take it this is an academic discussion,” Rodolfo said when he was finished laughing like that and using up all the light in the world, so cavalierly. “I had no idea you felt so strongly about what I did or didn’t do, much less with whom. I had no idea you cared what I did at all. In fact, princess, I wasn’t certain you heard a single word I’ve uttered in your presence in all these months.”
He moved from the grand fireplace then, and watching him in motion was not exactly an improvement. Or it was a significant improvement, depending on how she looked at it. He was sleek for such a big man, and moved far too smoothly toward the slightly more substantial chair at a diagonal to where Natalie sat. He tossed himself into the stunningly wrought antique with a carelessness that should have snapped it into kindling, but didn’t.
It occurred to her that he was far more aware of himself and his power than he appeared. That he was something of an iceberg, showing only the slightest bit of himself and containing multitudes beneath the surface. She didn’t want to believe it. She wanted him to be a vapid, repellant playboy who she could slap into place during her time as a make-believe princess. But there was that assessing gleam in his dark gaze that told her that whatever else this prince was, he wasn’t the least bit vapid.
And was rather too genuinely charming for her peace of mind, come to that.
He settled in his chair and stretched out his long, muscled legs so that they almost brushed hers, then smiled.
Natalie kept her own legs where they were, because shifting away from him would show a weakness she refused to let him see. She refused, as if her life depended on that refusal, and she didn’t much care for the hysterical notion that it really, truly did.
“I don’t care at all what you do or don’t do,” she assured him. “But it certainly appears that you can’t say the same, for some reason.”
“I am not the one who started making proclamations about my sexual intentions. I think you’ll find that was you. Here. Today.” That curve of his mouth deepened. “Entirely unprovoked.”
“My mistake. Because a man who has grown up manipulating the press in no way sends a distinct message when he spends the bulk of his very public engagement �escorting’ other women to various events.”
His gaze grew warmer, and that sculpted mouth curved. “I am a popular man.”
“What I am suggesting to you is that you are not the only popular person in this arrangement. I’m baffled at your Neanderthal-like response to a simple statement of fact, when you have otherwise been at such pains to present yourself as the very image of modernity in royal affairs.”
“We are sitting in an ancient castle on an island with a history that rivals Athens itself, discussing our upcoming marriage, which is the cold-blooded intermingling of two revered family lines for wealth and power, exactly as it might have been were we conducting this conversation in the Parthenon.” His dark brows rose. “What part of this did you find particularly modern?”
“The two of us, I thought, before I walked in this room.” She smiled brightly and let her foot dangle a bit too close to his leg. As if she didn’t care at all that he was encroaching into her personal space. As if the idea of even so innocuous a touch did nothing at all to her central nervous system. As if he were not the sort of man she’d hated all her life, on principle. And as if he were not promised to another, she snapped at herself in disgust, but still, she didn’t retreat the way she should have. In case she was wondering what kind of person she was. “Now I suspect the Social Media Prince is significantly more caveman-like than he wants his millions of adoring followers to realize.”
“I am the very soul of a Renaissance man, I assure you. I am merely aware of what the public will and will not support and I hate to break it you, princess, but the tabloids are not as forgiving of royal indiscretions as you appear to be.”
“You surprise me again, Your Highness. I felt certain that a man in your position could not possibly care what the tabloid hacks did or did not forgive, given how much material you give them to work with. Daily.”
“The two of us can sit in this room and bask in our progressive values, I am sure,” Rodolfo murmured, and the look in his dark eyes did not strike Natalie as particularly progressive. “But public sentiment, I think you will find, is distressingly traditional. People may enjoy any number of their own extramarital affairs. It doesn’t make them tolerant when a supposed fairy-tale princess strays from her charmed life. If anything, it makes the stones they cast heavier and more pointed.”
“So, to unpack that, you personally wish to carry on as if we are single and free, but are prevented from following your heart’s desire because you suddenly fear public perception?” She eyed him balefully and made no attempt to hide it. “That’s a bit hard to believe, coming from the man who told me not twenty minutes ago that he refused to be declawed.”
“You are not this naive, princess.” And the look he gave her then seemed to prickle along her skin, lighting fires Natalie was terribly afraid would never go out. “You know perfectly well that I can do as I like with only minimal repercussions. It is you who cannot. You have built an entire life on your spotless character. What would happen were you to be revealed as nothing more or less than a creature as human as the rest of us?”
CHAPTER FOUR (#u827fdee0-d59c-5b72-a135-f64b795acaa0)
RODOLFO HAD LONG ceased recognizing himself. And yet he kept talking.
“It will be difficult to maintain the fiction that you are a saint if your lovers are paraded through the tabloids of Europe every week,” he pointed out, as if he didn’t care one way or the other.
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