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

“What?” When she had pushed her feet into her closed-toe kitchen clogs, Sopi had noticed that she’d lost her plain shoe decal during the massage. She had only managed to keep the bedazzled one. She removed her snow boots now but self-consciously kept her socks on.

Nanette straightened from leaning against the decommissioned stove, wiping her hands across her backside as she did. “It seems the prince met someone who interests him, but he doesn’t know her name. His assistant put the word out that this woman only has one shoe.” She flipped her hair. “Apparently, she knows who she is, and he wants her to come to his suite this evening if she would like to dine with him.”

“He—that’s silly,” Sopi said, hyperaware of the hot blush that flooded into her cheeks. It was a tremendous long shot that he could be talking about her. “Fernanda, he’s going to know right away whether you’re the woman he is trying to meet. If you don’t already have a decal, you’re not her.”

“Well, his bodyguard doesn’t know that, does he? If I can get in to see him, the prince can decide if I’m the right woman or not.”

Sopi opened her mouth but couldn’t find words. Fernanda wasn’t the brightest candle on the cake and tended to be very self-involved. She came across as selfish, but she wasn’t mean, just firmly stuck between thoughtless and clueless.

“I tried to tell her.” Nanette grew more alert, like a jackal that scented something on the air. She was definitely the brains in the family, calculating and sharp.

“Yet here you are. Wanting the same thing ,” Fernanda hissed at her sister. “So it’s not such a stupid idea, is it?”

“Wait.” Sopi held up a hand. “Did you say there’s some sort of run on at the salon?”

“Yes! Everyone is trying to get one. The girls tried to tell me to come back later, but there’s no time. Can you just…” Fernanda unzipped her knee-high spiked-heel boot and dragged off her sock. “Hurry.” She wiggled her toes. “I need to dress.”

“Fernanda—” Sopi looked to Nanette for backup, but Nanette was also removing her ankle-high snakeskin boot. “I don’t even have polish—oh.”

Fernanda had absconded with a handful of bottles from the salon. Nanette had brought a tiny tube of fast acting superadhesive. She handed that over with a pointed look. She wouldn’t lose her decal, come hell or high water.

“You’re going to parade to his suite with everyone else, all wearing one shoe so he can see you have a decal on your toe?” Sopi asked with bemusement.

“I’ll wear proper open-toed evening shoes, won’t I? Honestly, Sopi.” Fernanda rolled her eyes.

Right. Sopi was the one being ridiculous.

Since it was the fastest way to get these two women to leave her private space, Sopi sat on the stairs to her loft. She motioned for Fernanda to set her foot beside her thigh.

“I put a pair of these on earlier,” Sopi mused as she very carefully placed the shoe on Fernanda’s toe. “I guess I should dress up and come with you. Maybe it’s me he’s looking for.” It was a deliberate effort to provoke a reaction, so she shouldn’t have been stung by Fernanda’s dismissive snort.

“Oh, right. Have you even spoken to him for one second?”

“I have, actually.” Sopi was always annoyed when these two put on that tone that disparaged her as a backwoods hick who lacked their refinement.

“What did you talk about?” Nanette asked, gaze narrowed.

“Nothing much.” She shook the bottle of polish. “He didn’t even ask my name.” It was another dig.

She swiped the brush across the decal, varnishing the shoe into place. When she looked up, Fernanda was scowling with suspicion.

“Have you given any thought to how you’ll walk back with wet polish on your toe?” Sopi asked.

“That’s why I brought the glue,” Nanette said, nudging her sister aside and eyeing Sopi shrewdly. “What would you wear?” she asked.

“Hmm?” Sopi glanced up from trying to break the seal on the glue nozzle.

“To dine with the prince.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t given one iota of thought to actually doing it, but she’d come this far into needling them. She let bravado take her a few more steps. “I have some things of my mother’s. There’s a vintage Chanel I’ve always wanted an excuse to wear.”

“How am I only hearing about this now? Show me.” Nanette sounded genuinely impressed, but maybe Sopi was that desperate to finally take her by surprise.

She finished gluing the shoe to Nanette’s toe, then trotted up the stairs to her loft.

In the chest beneath the window, she kept a handful of keepsakes—her parents’ wedding album, the Christmas ornaments that hadn’t broken over the years and her audition tape to a televised singing contest that might have been her big break if her father hadn’t passed away the week she was supposed to appear.

Moving all of that aside, she drew out a zipped fabric box that also stored her summer wear. She dumped her clothes onto the floor and drew out the tissue-wrapped dress.

Sopi bit her lip as she noticed the moths had been into it. Voraciously.

Nanette arrived at the top of the stairs and said, “Oh my God . I thought I lived in a hovel.”

“Don’t you dare ,” Sopi said, voice sharpened by the strike of painful knowledge that she had lost a prized possession. This rag only proved she was nowhere near the prince’s league. “You live here for free . Who do you think pays for that?”

“You just said it. It’s free. No one is making you live like this. You’re the one who plays the martyr all the time. ‘Oh, woe. If you don’t play hostess, I have to.’”

“‘Oh, woe,’” Sopi shot back. “‘I can’t put a sticker on my own toe.’”

“Exactly,” Nanette said with a hair flip and a complete absence of apology. “Set standards for yourself and refuse to compromise them.” Her scathing glance dismissed Sopi’s handful of possessions and the dress that was definitely not living up to her claims.

Such a cow. If Sopi was the cretin they thought, she would push Nanette down the stairs, taking out Fernanda, who had come up behind her to make a face of amused disgust as she looked around. God, she hated both of them.

“Oh, Sopi, no,” Fernanda said when she saw the dress. Her tone held the depth of sympathy one saved for muddy dogs found starving in ditches. “You have to store vintage pieces properly. Otherwise they fall apart when you wear them. Everyone knows that. What a shame.”

“Clearly your standards aren’t being met here,” Sopi said through her teeth. “Kindly leave my hovel and never come back.”

“Does this mean you won’t do my hair?”

“Seriously, Fernanda?” Sopi glared.

“You don’t have to be so sensitive! I don’t understand why she treats us like this,” Fernanda complained as the two women went down the stairs.

They left, and Sopi hurried to lock the door so they couldn’t return. Then she went into the shower and wept over old dresses and lost parents and foolish fantasies about unattainable men.

When she turned off the water, she stared at the bedazzled shoe on her one toe. Stupid. She picked it off so her nail was an ugly, chipped mess, and she left it that way as a reminder to stay grounded.

Then she wished even harder that the prince would marry one of her stepsisters and get them all out of her life for good.

“Say that again,” Rhys growled at his assistant.

Gerard shifted uncomfortably. “I did as you asked. I put the word out that you were trying to locate the woman with the little shoe on her toe.”