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

“You said I had met her already? That I knew who I was looking for?”

“Perhaps I wasn’t clear on that?” His assistant’s shoulders hunched up to his ears. “It seemed self-explanatory, but…” He trailed off, miserable.

“And now there’s…how many women in the hall?”

“Fifty? Sixty?”

“All with one shoe on her toe.”

“I’m afraid so, sir.” Gerard swallowed.

“What am I supposed to do? Walk the line as though inspecting the troops, looking for her among them?” He’d been trying to be discreet. Rather than make it clear he was looking for someone on staff, he had thought he would get word to her through the grapevine. She could then quietly appear in his room if she was interested.

“How did they even get up here in the elevator?”

“The one shoe, sir. The bodyguards—”

Rhys pinched the bridge of his nose. “Suggestions on how to get rid of them?”

“Perhaps if you simply ate in the dining room? Mingled? Gave them a chance to say hello?”

Rhys had no appetite. “That never works. It only encourages them to approach me later.” But he had to find himself a wife, and what was he going to do? Put a staff member in the unnerving position of having to walk a gauntlet to reach him for a single date that would go nowhere?

If she was out there and wanted to see him, she would already have knocked on his door. No, she was either too self-conscious or wasn’t interested.

What a galling thought. Deep down, however, he knew it was for the best.

It still infuriated him.

“Fine,” he growled. “Tell them I’ll dine downstairs after all.”

When the news came that the prince would in fact need a table, Sopi experienced a rush of panic. She definitely, positively didn’t want to see him. After brooding for a solid hour, she had decided that what he must have meant when he cut short her massage was that he thought she was turning it into something it wasn’t.

Unsurprisingly, her stepsisters both appeared within minutes of the announcement, eager to marshal rivals to terrible tables and have an excuse to brush past the prince’s table while he ate. He would sit with the handful of upper-crust bachelors who had accompanied him onto the slopes and were providing further red meat for the marriage-minded women hungry for a good match.

Sopi gladly relinquished the reservation desk and slipped into the laundry room to help fold sheets and towels.

With nearly every guest now rubbing elbows in the dining room, the rest of the building was quiet. She stuck with her friends in housekeeping, joking and exchanging light gossip about the guests as they restocked the linen cupboards and performed the turn-down service in the top-floor rooms.

She did the prince’s room herself and, as she plumped the pillow, noticed the tiny black shoe on the night table. It sat atop one of the burgundy portfolios Maude liked to use for special event meetings. She would make a note from a bride or other VIP guest, then snap it shut and hand it off to Sopi with instructions to make things happen.

Sopi’s pulse tripped at the sight of the tiny shoe, but a bodyguard stood by observing her, so she closed the drapes, set wrapped chocolates on the pillow and left.

Eventually, the guests retired from the dining room to hit the hot pools. Most of them were drunk and she resigned herself to a lot of cleanup later but helped the kitchen recover first.

While she was there, Maude pulled her aside with another list of to-dos. By the time they were done, it was time to close the pool and saunas. As Sopi marshaled the stragglers out, fully eight people tried to bribe her into calling them if the prince showed up after hours.

She bundled the last naked nymph into a robe and onto an elevator, then switched everything to service. That locked off the treatment level to all but the staff cards. She sighed in relief, facing miles to go before she slept, but the closing chores were ones she almost enjoyed. She could do them at her own pace and no one ever interrupted her.

Humming, she wheeled the mop from the closet and got started.

Midnight and Rhys was wide-awake, standing at the window, wired.

Wondering.

Swearing at himself. At his brother. At life.

For two hours, he’d been surrounded by beautiful, eligible, well-bred women, none of whom had been the one he wanted to see. It wasn’t like him to be so fixated. He didn’t like it. He’d seen the dark side of humans who became obsessed.

The darkest night of his life replayed uninvited. His well-practiced ability to block it didn’t work this time, and his head filled with the shouts and crashing and what he’d thought had been fireworks inside the palace.

He’d been ten, old enough to take in the full horror of being invaded by soldiers in military garb and the gravity of their holding his parents at gunpoint below. He’d been too young to make a difference, though. In fact, he’d made things worse. He had screamed and rushed to the top of the stairs, where Henrik was being held off by a soldier.

If he had halted beside Henrik, his parents might still be alive. He had gone for the soldier’s gun, though, and the soldier had crashed him in the face with the butt of his rifle, splitting his cheek and knocking him onto his ass.

Rhys had heard his mother scream. She had started to race up the stairs to him. A soldier below grabbed her arm and yanked her back. His father intervened, and the tension below erupted into four shots that left his parents crumpled on the floor.

Rhys could still feel the unnatural strength in Henrik as he’d gripped the shoulders of Rhys’s pajamas and dragged him backward, behind the half wall of the upper gallery. Rhys had been limp with shock, gaze held by the cold stare of the soldier who had shot his parents so remorselessly.

He would never forget the ugly lack of humanity in that pair of eyes. He would forever carry the weight of guilt that if he hadn’t given in to his own impulses, his parents might be alive today.

Distantly, he’d been aware of Henrik stammering out pleas. Promises they would never come back if they were allowed to leave. He’d somehow got Rhys onto his feet and pulled him down the service stairs and out of the palace.

Shock had set in and Rhys didn’t recall much of the days after that, but guilt remained a heavy cloak on him. Guilt and loss and failure. He was grateful to Henrik for getting them out, but a day never went by where he didn’t feel sick for escaping. For surviving when his parents had died because of his rash actions.

A day never went by when he didn’t feel their loss as though pieces had been carved out of his heart. His chest throbbed even more acutely with apprehension over Henrik’s diagnosis.

Why Henrik? It should be him staring into the muzzle of a life-threatening diagnosis, not his brother. If he lost Henrik—

He couldn’t let himself think it.

This was why he hadn’t wanted to marry and have children. This agonizing fear and inability to control the future were intolerable.

He swore under his breath.

If grim introspection was the only mood he could conjure, he needed a serious distraction. He walked across to the folio Maude had given him, the one he had said he wanted to review when he had made his abrupt exit from the dining room earlier this evening.

Maude’s eldest daughter, a lithe beauty, had fallen into step alongside him as he departed, offering an excuse about fetching something from her room. Her purpose had been obvious, though. She had deliberately created the impression she was the one he’d been seeking as his dinner companion. In the elevator, she had set her pretty silver shoe next to his, not quite nudging, but definitely inviting him to notice her toe.