LITMIR.BIZ

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She felt less princess, and more…

      ‘I’m sorry, princess. I’m sure you’re as unhappy with this situation as I am.’ He swept a hand over the suit. ‘Even in the borrowed threads, I’m nobody’s idea of a prince. Believe me, I know. I’ve had enough ex-girlfriends informing me of the fact.’

      Oh, but you could be, she almost said, but he was obviously uncomfortable in his new skin. Showing him possibilities, or ordering him around, it would be alienation to him.

      No, just alien. He can’t be expected to see life as I’ve been bred to do.

      Charlie had grown up ignorant of his heritage, in a modest four-bedroom brick home he’d occupied with his sister and friend until two days ago. Instead of years of royal training and sterling education at an international school and Oxford, or perhaps Yale or Harvard, he’d gone to a local high-school and had gone into fireman and paramedic training. He was a Marandis only in name. No, in Charlie’s mind, he was a fireman from the backblocks of Sydney. He’d had no time to adjust, saw no reason to adjust.

      Grandfather had made a tactical error in his peremptory summons and enforced extraditions of this pair. He expected Charlie to obey orders he didn’t understand, to see his expected future as an honour, and accept his position when he had no idea what that future and position entailed. He’d made a mistake in expecting Charlie to bow to the royal will without full knowledge of why he and Lia were so necessary to the continuation of the Marandis royal family.

      And, to Jazmine’s mind, wanting him to be a traditional Marandis was as impractical as it was counterproductive to the future she had planned.

      ‘Do you mind?’

      Startled out of her plans, she looked at the cause of her hope and confusion. He’d shrugged off his jacket, and was tugging at his tie.

      To her surprise, she smiled. ‘Only if I can take off these heels. You have no idea how much they hurt after a couple of hours’ standing.’

      He grinned. ‘Go for it. I won’t tell.’ He tugged at his tie and pulled it off, then undid the top three buttons on his shirt, and rolled up his sleeves. ‘Hasn’t this place got air-conditioning?’

      ‘This house is almost four hundred years old.’ Charlie’s untamed golden masculinity, exposed in the open column of his shirt, emptied her head of everything but the need to stare her fill; to cover her pounding heart she added with would-be calmness, ‘The real palace does, but we haven’t lived there in a few years. It’s still being repaired.’ She half-expected him to ask why it was taking so long, or make a caustic comment on spoiled royals wanting everything perfect.

      Instead, he said gently, ‘I’m sorry.’

      Confused again, she lifted her brows in query.

      He smiled at her. ‘Lady Eleni told us about the palace fire-attack during the war, and your father’s and brother’s deaths so soon after the war ended. It’s no wonder you agreed to this engagement. Security’s not to be sneezed at after all you’ve been through.’

      Moved yet unnerved by kindness from a stranger, she turned her face. ‘I barely knew my father or brother.’ She willed control against the vast sorrow that there wasn’t time to know Father or Angelo now. She turned back, forcing a smile. ‘I was sent to school in Geneva when I was eight, and then attended finishing school. I was at university in London when I became Princess Royal, and summoned home. Father was busy with his duties, as was Angelo. I’d only been back here a year or two when they—’ Without warning, her throat thickened. Control, control!

      ‘I see,’ he said very quietly.

      She closed her eyes, struggling to go on.

      He leaned forward and touched her hand. ‘Lia and I lost our parents when I was seventeen. We’d all lived together, all three generations, all our lives, and Yiayia and Papou were fantastic, but…’ He smiled at her. ‘It’s okay to cry sometimes, princess. I know I did my share when I felt so alone I could scream.’

      The words were beautiful and foreign to everything she’d been raised to believe. Don’t cry, Jazmine, her father had said at Mother’s funeral, when she was seven. You are a Marandis. You are strong!

      Her spine straightened. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

      The kindness and warmth vanished from his face. ‘Sorry; I crossed the royal line. There’s proof that I’m not a real prince, and I never will be.’

      ‘But you are,’ she said softly, backtracking fast, and letting the fact click into place: he doesn’t like being locked out. ‘Like it or not, you’re a Marandis, Charlie, and we need to discuss—’

      ‘Mmm. Say my name like that, and I’ll discuss whatever you want.’ A smile curved his mouth. ‘Char-r-r-lie,’ he said, as softly as she had, but with far more sensual intent. ‘I never heard the Mediterranean burr in quite that way before. Your voice is so blurry and sexy. I love listening to you, Jazmine.’

      And his eyes, lingering on her face, said, and I really like looking at you.

      He spoke her name as it had been pronounced: Zhahz-meen. One word, just a name she’d heard ten-thousand times, but he’d turned it into silk and shadows, with the summery sensuality of a lush Arabian night.

      Without warning, a new kind of wolf had leaped from his lair; the hidden lion was pouncing. He’d spoken to her not as princess, but as man to woman. And she felt the slow melt inside, feminine liquidity racing like quicksilver through her body. He’d taken her from blue-blooded princess to red-blooded woman with just a few soft words.

      She’d never met a man like him before. He was unique, an unexpected prince in a fireman’s skin, all hot-blooded male. He’d never learned to hide his emotions as she had. And, by his words, the look in his eyes and the slow burn in his touch, he wanted her to know he found her attractive. He didn’t play diplomatic games; he didn’t know how. This golden-skinned, dark-eyed man, strong and beautiful, a hero as much as any from the pages of The Odyssey, found her as attractive as she found him.

      ‘And, as regards this engagement, it’s a farce. I don’t want to be here, and the last thing you need is a man who’ll never fit into your world. Nobody can force us into this kind of thing in the twenty-first century. I swear on my life I’ll get you out of this.’

      She started out of her lovely daydream as his words sank in. And her heart sank right down with it.

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHARLIE saw the instant distress in her eyes—the intense disappointment—before something clicked back into place, and the warm woman she’d been became the ‘Mona Lisa princess’ the tabloids called her: picture-perfect and smiling, comfortable in the public eye, if remote somehow. ‘What makes you assume I want to get out of this?’

      He stared, wondering if someone as lovely as the princess could have only half her marbles. ‘It has to be obvious. Even a real-life princess must want the whole nine-yard cliché: the handsome prince, babies, a palace—and a happily-ever-after. It’s only by accident of birth I’m here. I’m a Sydney boy, a rough-mannered fireman. I don’t have class, I don’t do “for ever”—and I’m certainly not the guy who’d make your life easier. I’m not what you’d call easy-going.’

      Her smile grew, but it wasn’t one he liked. It made him feel out of control, and that was a feeling with which he was neither familiar nor comfortable. ‘It seems I have at least six of those yards, Your Highness. A palace—’ she waved her hand around ‘—and, if we married, babies would be part of the deal, I’d assume.’

      His heart darkened at the thought of it. Royal children with royal minders, who’d have to bow and scrape to His Majesty’s every whim? Not on his life. ‘Four-and-a-half yards aren’t enough for a woman like you.’

      ‘I hadn’t finished,’ she said softly. ‘In my opinion, I have

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