LITMIR.BIZ

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thing I need right now is someone coming in to change everything at the last minute.’

      Madeleine lounged back in her seat and elegantly crossed one leg over the other as she inspected her newly painted toenails. ‘I think it will be good for you to have someone to share the workload with.’ She looked up with an I-know-better-than-you look that always grated on Lottie’s nerves like a rasp on a raw wound. ‘Someone young and hip and a little more in touch with the party scene.’

      Lottie narrowed her gaze as the back of her neck began to prickle. ‘Who are they sending?’

      ‘One of the twin brothers.’

      She knew her sister thought her a little out of touch with the modern world but did she have to make it so obvious by recruiting someone who did nothing but party? The Chatsfield twins, Lucca and Orsino, were notorious bad boys who were in and out of the press almost weekly with their wild exploits.

      Hells bells … please let it not be … ‘Which one?’

      ‘Lucca.’

      Lottie blinked. Twice. Three times. ‘Did you say …?’

      Madeleine nodded. ‘Yup.’

      Lottie gulped. ‘The one whose photograph has been splashed all over the internet? The one in that hotel room wearing nothing but a studded leather—whatever it’s called?’

      ‘Codpiece.’

      She clapped a hand over her forehead. ‘Oh, dear God.’

      ‘I’m sure he’ll behave himself impeccably while he’s here,’ Madeleine assured her. At least even the scandalous Lucca Chatsfield had drawn a line at posting a selfie of that picture on Twitter, Lottie thought.

      ‘Word has it his allowance from the Chatsfield Family Trust will be cut off if he doesn’t.’

      Lottie dropped her hand and scowled at her sister. ‘So I’m to be some sort of behaviour modification coach or something? Who on earth thought of this ridiculous scheme? Are you sure it’s not a joke? Tell me it’s a joke.’

      ‘It’s not a joke,’ Madeleine said. ‘In fact, I think it’s going to be good for us in the long run. You know how everyone is always saying how backward and irrelevant we royals in Preitalle are. We don’t have quite the same standing as other European royals. But if we show how embracing we are of modernity it could make our future in this region so much more secure. Lucca Chatsfield has been at every high-profile party in England, Europe and America. He moves in circles most people can only dream about. Rock stars, celebrities, actors and film directors—you name it. Having him involved in the organising of my reception will heighten my popularity—I’m absolutely sure of it.’

      Lottie rolled her eyes. ‘How, for pity’s sake, is a notorious hard-partying playboy going to help me organise a royal wedding?’

      ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ Madeleine gave another one of her smug older and wiser sister smiles. ‘Hear that helicopter landing outside? He’s just arrived.’

      Lucca had it all planned. He would pop into the palace, meet the party-plan princess and then hotfoot it out of there and leave her to fuss over the flower arrangements and the wedding fripperies while he laid back on a sun lounger on the nearest beach with a cocktail and a bikini-clad waitress by his side. Or three.

      He’d done a little research on the trip over. The older sister and heir to the throne, Princess Madeleine, was known as the pampered princess. Not an out-and-out diva as such, but a young woman who knew her destiny from an early age and wholly embraced it. For years she had been squired by men from all over Europe but had recently become engaged to a studious-looking Englishman called Edward Trowbridge. Apparently Madeleine wanted a wedding reception extravaganza at the Chatsfield Hotel and had appointed her baby sister, Charlotte, as chief wedding planner.

      He’d seen plenty of photographs of Madeleine De Chavelier in the press. She was a gorgeous, rather buxom twenty-six-year-old blonde with blue eyes and an extroverted personality that would stand her in good stead once it came time for her to take over the throne from her parents, Guillaume and Evaline. Clearly a favourite with the paparazzi, there wasn’t a single photograph of Madeleine that could even loosely be described as unflattering. Fashion designers courted her, knowing she had only to appear in public once in one of their outfits and the item would sell out and a new trend would be set.

      However, the same could not be said of Princess Charlotte. There were scores of unflattering comments about her lack of fashion sense, and some rather nasty and unfair, he thought, comparisons made between her and her sister. As if to back up their criticisms the press had sourced several candid shots that made Charlotte look severe and much older than her years. There was nothing about her private life other than one small snippet about a fling with a diplomat’s son while she was at finishing school in Switzerland when she was eighteen. But if she had an active social life since it certainly wasn’t wild enough to attract the paparazzi’s attention, which, quite frankly, was a little intriguing.

      There was nothing he liked better than to ride a dark horse.

      ‘This way, Mr Chatsfield.’ A palace official bowed as he opened a door leading into a morning room. ‘Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte will receive you now.’

      The first thing Lucca noticed when he stepped into the room was a pair of startlingly green eyes glaring at him from behind a pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. The princess was standing with her back ramrod straight, reminding him of a small tin soldier facing an imaginary battle. Nary a muscle on her slim framed body moved. It was as if she had been snap frozen … all except for a betraying little movement of her left index finger against her thumbnail, an agitated flicking movement that he suspected might have been an unconscious habit, like picking at a hangnail.

      However, he could see why the press made such sport of her clothes. If what she was currently wearing was any indication, she either didn’t have a clue what suited her or deliberately dressed in the most unflattering way possible. The below-the-knee plaid skirt teamed with a brown cotton blouse and covered by a cardigan that swamped her small frame made her look like a bag lady rather than a princess second in line to the throne. Her hair was neither blonde nor brown, but a tawny shade, and tied back severely from her face, giving her a prim, schoolmarmish look.

      ‘Welcome to the royal palace of Preitalle, Mr Chatsfield.’ She spoke in a coolly polite tone that had a hint of a French accent to it. She held out her right hand to him but he sensed it was out of a grim commitment to duty rather than any desire to make physical contact.

      He took her hand and watched as her rainforest-green eyes widened fractionally as his fingers wrapped firmly around hers, almost swallowing her tiny hand whole. Her skin was rose-petal soft and cool like silk. She tilted her head right back to keep eye contact with him, making him feel every millimetre of his six-foot-two height.

      Her hand fluttered like a little bird inside the cage of his, sending a shock wave of heat through his pelvis like the backdraft of a fire. He released her hand and had to physically stop himself from wriggling his fingers to rid himself of the electric tingling her touch had evoked.

      ‘Thank you, Your Royal Highness,’ he said with exaggerated politeness. He might be an irascible rake but he knew how to behave when the occasion called for it, even if he privately thought it was all complete and utter nonsense. In his opinion people were people. Rich or poor. Royal or common.

      She pressed her lips together so tightly as if she were trying to hold an invisible piece of paper between them steady. He wasn’t sure if it was out of annoyance or a gesture of nervousness or shyness, but it drew his gaze like starving eyes to a feast. She had a bee-stung mouth, full lipped and rosy pink without the adornment of lipstick or even a layer of clear lip gloss. It was a mouth that looked capable of intense passion but it seemed somewhat at odds with the rest of her downplayed and rather starchily set features.

      A feather of intrigue tickled Lucca’s interest. Did she have a wild side behind those frumpy clothes and that frosty facade?

      Maybe

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