Dani Collins - Cinderella's Royal Seduction / Crowned At The Desert King's Command

“Ah. I’ve inspired you to break rules.” His mouth barely twitched, but he sounded pleased. “Live dangerously.”

“Not really. I happen to know it’s tested regularly and is always found to be potable.” The fence kept wildlife out, so risk of contamination was next to zero.

“That takes some of the thrill out of it, doesn’t it?”

His words made her think of her stepsisters’ disparagement of her. Their contempt had gone far deeper than a scoff over a moth-eaten dress. They knew she wasn’t any match for a man in his position. Sopi knew it. She was standing here prickly with self-consciousness, aware that she was still covered in sweat from laboring in the spa. Definitely not anywhere near his exalted level.

The water beckoned, but she murmured, “It was a dumb impulse. We should go back.”

He dragged his gaze from the frozen lake, eyes glittering in the moonlight, but his expression was inscrutable. “I wanted you to join me.”

“Here?” She shook her head. Part of her was tempted. Where was the harm in a nude swim with a stranger? And where had such a reckless thought come from, she wondered with a suppressed choke of laughter. But he was the first man to make her consider such rash behavior. Everything about this was a rarity for her.

“For dinner,” he clarified. “Did you…get that memo?”

The air that came into her lungs seemed to crystallize to powdered ice. “I didn’t imagine for a minute you were looking for me. Besides, every woman here got a decal—”

“I know that,” he cut in, sounding aggravated. “Now.”

She bit back a smile. “You could have sent me a proper message.”

“I didn’t know your name. My assistant asked the booking clerk, but Karl was listed as my masseur. Who are you?”

She hesitated. Tell him everything? Would he care?

“I know this is inappropriate,” he growled into the silence that she let stretch out with her indecision. “That’s why I didn’t want to make overt inquiries.”

Inappropriate? It hadn’t been, not really, until he used that word. Now she reeled, astonished that he was making this private conversation into more than she would have let herself believe it to be.

“If I’m out of line, say so. We’ll go back right now.”

“I don’t know what this is,” she admitted, hugging herself against the cold, because the hot water on her feet wasn’t enough to keep her warm when she was outside at midnight before spring had properly taken hold. “My father bought this hotel for my mother. She named it after me. Cassiopeia. My friends call me Sopi.”

“Cassiopeia.” He seemed to taste the syllables, which made her shiver in a different way. “Maude is your mother?” He sounded surprised. Skeptical.

“Stepmother. She took control of the spa after my father died. I wasn’t old enough to do it myself and… Well, I’d like to challenge her now, but lawyers cost money and… It’s a long, boring story.” She doubted he would believe the spa ought to belong to her anyway, not when she stood here all sweaty and gross. “I’m really cold. Can we—” She looked for her sandals.

“Yes. Let’s warm up.” He skimmed off his robe, tossing it to hook on the fence before he made his way farther into the pool. Naked, of course, carefully choosing his footing on the slippery rocks.

She looked to the sky, begging for guidance from higher powers.

“It’s deeper than I expected,” he said with satisfaction. He sank down as he found one of the rocky ledges that had been set in place for seating. “What are you doing? You said you wanted to try this.”

“Alone.”

“I’ll turn my head.” His tone rang with prude .

She was wearing a bra and underwear, basically a bikini. She knew that was a rationalization to stay here and swim with a man who intrigued her, but she also liked the idea of proving she could interest a prince, even if she was the only one who would ever know it.

Could she?

With an internal tsk, she decided to—for once—do something for herself. She stepped out of the water long enough to drop her drawstring pants and throw off her top.

She gingerly made her way into the pool, one eye on his profile to ensure he wasn’t witnessing her clumsy entry. She winced at sharp edges pressing into her soles, bent to steady herself with a hand on a submerged boulder and let out a sigh as she sank to her shoulders and heat penetrated to her bones.

The pool was about four feet deep and maybe six feet wide. The prince had found one of the best perches facing the lake. She bumped her foot into his and he looked at her.

“Cheater,” he accused as he noticed her bra strap.

She ducked under, unable to resist the lure of baptizing herself even though her hair would freeze into its tangled bun. Her long, strenuous day began to rinse away as she did it again. She came up with another sigh of sheer luxury.

“I didn’t bring a towel. This is literally the dumbest idea I’ve ever had, but I don’t regret it one bit.”

“I would be a gentleman and offer you my robe, but then I’d have to streak like a bald yeti across the snow to get back inside.”

“I’m pretty sure I saw one of those this morning.”

His teeth flashed white. “Have you always lived here? You’re Canadian?”

“I am. My mother was Swedish, I think. I don’t have much information on her. She was an only child, and my father was funny about her family. Didn’t like to talk about them. I don’t think my grandparents approved of him.”

“Why not?”

“Snobs, maybe? He sold two-way pagers and the early mobile phones into the European markets. Not very sexy at the time, but it was lucrative. That’s how he paid for this.” She nodded toward the hotel hidden by the spiky trees. “Then Silicon Valley crashed the party. His heart trouble started when my mother passed, and financial worries made it worse.”

Sopi didn’t know what kind of means Maude had pretended she had, but based on what Sopi had learned since, she believed Maude had misrepresented herself and worked on her father’s desire for Sopi to have a mother with the goal of taking over his bank account and assets.

“It’s a strange purchase for someone in that industry, especially since you don’t have cell service beyond the hotel.”

“My mother was struggling as a new mom in a new country. Dad traveled a lot, and she didn’t have anyone to rely on. She wasn’t working and felt very isolated. She loved her spa visits, though. She came here on one of them, talked to the owner who was thinking of selling. My father bought it for her.”

“Romantic.”

“Not really. It was worse for wear, and she had a lot of challenges with its remote location. She knew what she wanted, though, and made it happen. It was quite successful until she passed a few years later.”

“What happened?”

“A bad flu that turned into pneumonia. Can we not talk about that? I was quite young, but it still makes me sad.”

“I understand,” he said gravely.

She recalled a bleak line in the history of Verina stating his parents had been killed in an uprising, forcing him and his brother to live in neighboring countries for fifteen years. For the first time, she wondered if the platitude he’d just used was actually true. Maybe he really did understand the hollow ache inside her.

He had braced his elbows on nearby rocks above the surface and tipped his head back to look up at the clear sky.

She took stock of where she was, soaking with a prince in the wilderness, the only sound a distant hum and a closer trickle of water seeping from the seams in the rocks and off a worn ledge into their bath.

“There you are.” He tilted his head. “The trees were in the way. Cassiopeia.”