Sarah Morgan - Defying the Prince

‘I wouldn’t have thought a woman who chose to wear a strapless dress made from nothing but sequins cared too much about fitting in.’

‘Well, that shows you know nothing about women.’

‘Funnily enough I thought I knew a great deal about women. Apparently I was wrong.’ His voice was a lazy masculine drawl and her spine tingled.

‘If the women there tonight are the sort you’ve been mixing with it’s no wonder you’re ignorant. They weren’t really women. They didn’t smile or laugh, except when they were laughing at me,’ she muttered, ‘and frankly I’m fed up with being the butt of everyone’s humour. That’s why I’d rather you dropped me off here. Let’s face it, we have nothing in common. I’ll just mess up your precious palazzo and although I’m pretty robust all this frowning disapproval is starting to get to me. I don’t want to leave the island with confidence issues.’

He shot her a look. ‘I cannot imagine you suffering from confidence issues.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Izzy said darkly. ‘Sometimes I feel as though the whole world is frowning at me. Like now, for instance. You keep looking at my dress as if you can’t quite believe your eyes. You’re obviously deeply prejudiced towards sequins.’

‘They’re not exactly subtle.’

‘So? I love this dress.’ She refused to apologise for it. ‘And it’s hypocritical of you to be superior given all the bling you royals own.’

He shifted gears, that strong male hand alarmingly close to her knee. ‘I own “bling”?’

‘Did you see that sparkly tiara thing your mother was wearing this evening?’

‘That “tiara thing” was a gift from a sixteenth century British monarch.’

‘Well, it was sparklier than anything I own so it’s a bit hypocritical of everyone to turn their noses up at my love of shiny things just because some of us can’t afford the real thing. A party needs sparkle and yours didn’t have anywhere near enough. Talking of which, you do realise that I don’t have any luggage, don’t you? So unless you happen to own something that might fit me I’m going to be wearing this not-exactly-subtle dress every day I’m in captivity.’

‘You are not in captivity.’

‘So I can leave whenever I like?’

There was a brief pause. ‘No. The focus needs to be on my brother and your sister. Not you.’

‘So I am in captivity.’

‘Consider it a holiday. You were planning to stay in the hotel for a week. We’ve merely altered the destination and I can assure you that the coastline around my palazzo is stunning. My staff are currently in the process of transferring your luggage—please tell me you own something that doesn’t sparkle.’ His gaze flickered to hers and she felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked from the air because there was something in that look that made her stomach flip.

Even without a smile on his face he was indecently, impossibly sexy.

‘Do pyjamas count?’ It was a good job she could never fall for a man without a sense of humour, Izzy thought shakily, otherwise she’d be in deep trouble. And she’d thought she’d been too badly hurt to even look at a man again. It was the champagne. Surely it was the champagne.

‘Your pyjamas are the only clothes you own that don’t sparkle?’ His gaze skidded to hers and she turned scarlet, wishing she’d never mentioned pyjamas.

Tension throbbed between them and Izzy bit back a wild laugh because even she recognised that the attraction between them was beyond inconvenient. And she didn’t welcome it any more than he did. Her last relationship had been an utter disaster, the fallout from it played out across the world’s media. She had no intention of providing more relationship fodder for public entertainment.

What might have happened next she had no idea because a pair of enormous gates manned by armed security guards swung open and the car sped through the gates without slowing down. Impressed in spite of herself, Izzy sat tensely as they sped down a tree-lined avenue that eventually opened out into a magnificent courtyard dominated by an illuminated fountain.

Ahead of them, floodlit against the star-studded Mediterranean sky, stood the palazzo, centuries old and a vision of warm honey-coloured stone.

Izzy thought of her room in her parents’ mock Tudor house in England and gulped. ‘ This is your home?’

‘Yes. Why?’

Because it was enormous. ‘It’s just a bit small and pokey, that’s all. I was expecting something a lot more magnificent. If you’re trying to impress the girls then you probably need to think about trading up.’ She could have sworn that his mouth finally flickered at the corners but maybe it was just wishful thinking because there was no humour in his response.

‘Endeavour to behave yourself in front of my staff.’

‘I thought you lived alone.’

‘I do, but I have a permanent staff of fifty.’

‘I hate to tell you this but a permanent staff of fifty doesn’t constitute “alone.” You seriously need fifty staff?’ She digested that fact in amazement. ‘I guessed you’d be hard work but not that

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