Cinderella's Secret Royal Fling--The royal fairytale romance you have to read! by Jessica Gilmore

Author:Jessica Gilmore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2019-05-13T14:36:24+00:00

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Laurent was an honourable man. He had to be. He’d promised on his father’s deathbed to behave with honour and put Armaria first. But he hadn’t been thinking about honour or Armaria when he kissed Emilia. He hadn’t been thinking at all. He had been all instinct and need and desire.

Technically he was still free to kiss anyone he wanted. He had said nothing to Bella Clayton that was even flirtatious, let alone a proclamation, made no promises and asked for none in return. She had no hold on him and he none on her. But he still needed her father’s company to invest in Armaria and he knew there was plenty of speculation linking their names; by agreeing to joint costumes at the ball he was making a statement of some kind of intent, subtle as that statement might be. Joint costumes and gossip didn’t tie him to Bella Clayton. But while he was still considering proposing, honour should have stopped him kissing anyone else.

True, he knew that if he proposed and Bella accepted, then she wouldn’t be doing so in any expectation of love. No, she would be marrying him for position, as men and women had married for centuries. But she would have a right to expect her husband’s respect, his fidelity, his honour. A right to know that if his heart wasn’t hers it didn’t belong anywhere else either.

He had always known that he owed his future Archduchess loyalty even if he wasn’t lucky enough to offer her love and that was why in his few past relationships he had always been careful not to let his feelings grow beyond fond. To let his body and mind do the thinking, not his emotions.

He wasn’t kidding himself that one kiss and a bit of flirting was enough to make Emilia fall in love with him. But neither could he kid himself that he wasn’t falling for her. Hard. He was a rational, sensible man; he didn’t believe in love at first sight. But the moment he had seen Emilia something in him had cracked. The way she had been lying under the tree, utterly absorbed in her work. The way she had responded to the garden he loved. The loneliness in her wary eyes. Her trust in him. The way she’d kissed him, fearlessly and sweetly. A kiss that should never be repeated. A kiss he would never forget.

For her he was probably a tryst at best and that was exactly as it should be. For him she was a glimpse of what his life could be like if he wasn’t Prince Laurent d’Armaria, Archduke, absolute ruler and all that stood between his beloved country and bankruptcy.

So he allowed Emilia to take his hand and he vowed that he would treat her—and himself—to an evening neither would ever forget. And then he would let her walk away without a single reproach and he would get on with repairing his country.

Because that was what an Archduke should do.

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