Harlequin Presents June 2017 - Box Set 1 of 2 by Lynne Graham Cathy Williams Caitlin Crews & Jane Porter

Author:Lynne Graham, Cathy Williams, Caitlin Crews & Jane Porter
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460349182
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

CROWN PRINCE RODOLFO of the ancient and deeply, deliberately reserved principality of Tissely, tucked away in the Pyrenees between France and Spain and gifted with wealth, peace and dramatic natural borders that had kept things that way for centuries untold, was bored.

This was not his preferred state of existence, though it was not exactly surprising here on the palace grounds of Murin Castle, where he was expected to entertain the royal bride his father had finally succeeded in forcing upon him.

Not that “entertainment” was ever really on offer with the undeniably pretty, yet almost aggressively placid and unexciting Princess Valentina. His future wife. The future mother of his children. His future queen, even. Assuming he didn’t lapse into a coma before their upcoming nuptials, that was.

Rodolfo sighed and stretched out his long legs, aware he was far too big to be sitting so casually on a relic of a settee in this stuffily proper reception room that had been set aside for his use on one of his set monthly visits with his fiancée. He still felt a twinge in one thigh from the ill-advised diving trip he’d taken some months back with a group of his friends and rather too many sharks. Rodolfo rubbed at the scarred spot absently, grateful that while his father had inevitably caught wind of the feminine talent who’d graced the private yacht off the coast of Belize, the fact an overenthusiastic shark had grazed the Crown Prince of Tissely en route to a friend’s recently caught fish had escaped both the King’s spies’ and the rabid tabloids’ breathless reports.

It was these little moments of unexpected grace, he often thought with varying degrees of irony, that made his otherwise royally pointless life worth living.

“You embarrass yourself more with each passing year,” his father had told him, stiff with fury, when Rodolfo had succumbed to the usual demands for a command appearance upon his return to Europe at the end of last summer, the salacious pictures of his “Belize Booze Cruise” still fresh in every tabloid reader’s mind. And more to the point, in his father’s.

“You possess the power to render me unembarrassing forevermore,” Rodolfo had replied easily enough. He’d almost convinced himself his father no longer got beneath his skin. Almost. “Give me something to do, Father. You have an entire kingdom at your disposal. Surely you can find a single task for your only son.”

But that was the crux of the matter they never spoke of directly, of course. Rodolfo was not the son his father had wanted as heir. He was not the son his father would have chosen to succeed him, not the son his father had planned for. He was his father’s only remaining son, and not his father’s choice.

He was not Felipe. He could never be Felipe. It was a toss-up as to which one of them hated him more for that.

“There is no place in my kingdom for a sybaritic fool whose life is little more

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