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

Sometimes they brought up a desire for children, and he had had good reasons for putting that off, too. Until recently.

But until very recently, Rhys hadn’t believed he’d have to marry at all. Staying single had been his greatest luxury and one of the few genuine freedoms available to him. Occasionally, he had thought a wife might be the best way to stave off the fortune hunters who constantly stalked him, but marriage and family were yet more responsibilities on top of an already heavy mantle. He had thought to indefinitely postpone both.

Besides, he didn’t deserve the sort of happily-ever-after his brother was striving for.

A shrieking giggle from a balcony above had him glancing up to see a pair of women in negligees exhibiting all the excitement of children spotting a monkey at the zoo. Their bare legs and cleavage flashed as they posed against the rail and waved.

And so it starts , he thought tiredly.

He looked for the young woman who had seemed so charmingly real, planning to ask her to lock out the masses for another thirty minutes.

He couldn’t see her, and his irritation ratcheted up several notches. It had little to do with the looming interruption of his peaceful swim. She was gone, and he was uncomfortable with how annoyed that made him. He hadn’t even asked her name.

She worked here, he reminded himself. He would see her again, but the knowledge did nothing to ease his impatience.

He shouldn’t want to see her again. He wouldn’t be able to approach her when he did. A guest coming on to an employee was a hard limit. There was an entire hotel brimming with beautiful, available, appropriate women if he wanted to get laid.

His nether regions weren’t twitching for the silk-draped knockouts hurrying to throw on robes and rush down here, though. He was recollecting a face clean of makeup and eyes like melted chocolate framed in thick lashes. She’d had a tiny beauty spot below one corner of her mouth and what had looked like a man’s wedding band on a thin chain in the hollow of her throat. Whose? A father, he imagined. She was too young to be a widow.

She could be married, though. She was very pretty, neither voluptuous nor catwalk slender, but pert with small, firm breasts, narrow shoulders and that valentine of a derriere. He had wondered how tall she would be if he stood beside her. He might get a crick in his neck when he leaned down to taste her pillowy lips—

No.

With a muttered curse, he caught his breath and dived to the bottom of the pool, using the pressure and exertion to work out his animal urges.

It didn’t work. She stayed on his mind all day.

Sopi remained emotionally wired until she heard the prince had left the building. She watched the helicopter veer across the valley, climb above the tree line and wheel to the far side of a peak.

Deflated and depleted, she slipped away to her cabin for a nap. Of the half dozen tiny A-frame guest cottages, this one was farthest from the main building. At some point, probably when the stove conked out, it had become a storage unit for spare mattresses and mini refrigerators. Sopi kept one plugged in for her own use, and the heat still worked, so it was quite livable.

The tiny loft above the storage area was hardly on a par with the rest of the accommodation at Cassiopeia’s, though. Even the employees had proper flats in the staff lodge tucked into the trees. That building was boxy and utilitarian, but they each had their own bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette. It was well tended and cozy.

Until her father had died very suddenly when she was fifteen, Sopi had lived in the manager’s suite across from the kitchen. Somehow that had been given to the manager Maude had hired to run the spa that first year. Maude had taken over the suite when she came back to run things herself, except her version of managing was to delegate everything to Sopi.

Sopi had meanwhile bounced through guest and staff units as they became available. Eventually, she had wound up on the fringe of the property while Maude’s daughters had appropriated the top suite when they returned to complain about having to live here instead of gadding about Europe.

Sopi didn’t love tramping through the snow in the dark, but she did love having her own space. She had managed to warm it up with a few cherished items of her mother’s—a blue velvet reading chair and a faded silk area rug. Her bed, purchased from the buy-and-sell ads, was a child’s bunk bed with a desk beneath. Cartoon princesses adorned it, but they inspired her to dream, so she hadn’t painted over them.

A long time ago, a guest had started the silly rumor that the owner of this hotel was descended from royalty. He had thought Sopi’s mother had been the daughter of an ousted king or something.

Sopi’s mother had already been gone by that point. Her father had only chuckled and shaken his head. It was a nice legend that might bring curiosity seekers to the spa, he’d said, but nothing more.

Sopi sighed and climbed into her bed without eating. The stacked milk crates that formed her pantry were empty. She hadn’t had time to buy a box of cereal or replenish the instant soup she kept on hand to make with the kettle that was her most reliable friend.

Her head hit the pillow, and she plunged into a sleep so deep she wouldn’t have heard a bomb go off.

Yet when the distant rat-a-tat of helicopter blades began to sound in the distance, her eyes snapped open.

Dang. She’d been dreaming something sexy about hot pool waters sliding silkily across her skin while a pair of blue eyes—

Ugh. She was so pathetic.

And wide-awake now that a mixture of self-contempt and guilt had hold of her. She glanced at her phone. It was full of text messages from staff. Some made her laugh. They all got on really well, but it was work, too. She had a quick shower, dressed and hurried back.

After putting out three proverbial fires, she was in the mani-pedi salon listening to a nail technician complain about an order of decals shaped like high-heeled shoes.

“They were supposed to be more bedazzled, but instead they’re this plain black, and when you put clear polish on them, they curl up and fall off.”

Sopi frowned and took the polish and decals to a bench at the back of the salon. All the mani-pedi chairs were full of buzzing women hoping to meet the prince later.

From the time she was twelve, Sopi had apprenticed in all the treatments under a multitude of formally trained staff. She didn’t have any certificates on the wall, but she could pinch-hit with nearly any service from foiled streaks to Swedish massage. If there’d been a chair free, she would have pitched in to help with the roster of guests begging for polish, but she had too much to do elsewhere anyway.

At least she’d taken the time last week to give her own toenails a fresh, if unremarkable, coat of pale pink polish. She stuck the decals of high-heeled shoes on each of her big toes and shellacked them in place with clear polish. She bedazzled one with a couple of glinting sequins to see if that would help hold it in place and make it look prettier.

She was curled over, blowing on her toes, distantly listening to a pair of women speculate on what time the prince would appear for dinner and whether he would invite anyone to join his table, when she picked up a call that had her frowning and hurrying barefoot down the hall to the massage therapy rooms.

Karl, their beefy Norwegian masseur, wasn’t on the schedule this week, but Sopi spotted him about to enter a closed door.

“Karl!” she whispered. They strongly discouraged any conversation above a whisper in the spa area to ensure the guests enjoyed a relaxing stay. “It’s your wife.” She offered her phone.