The Prince's Nine-Month Scandal by Caitlin Crews

Author:Caitlin Crews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarlequinUKLtd
Published: 2017-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

MAYBE IT WAS the music. Maybe it was the whirl of so many gleaming, glorious people.

Natalie had the suspicion that really, it was Rodolfo.

But no matter what it was, no matter why—she forgot.

That she wasn’t really a princess, or if she was, she was the discarded kind. The lost and never-meant-to-be-found sort that had only been located by accident in a bathroom outside London.

She forgot that the dress wasn’t hers, the ball inside the pretty old building wasn’t a magical spectacle put on just for her and, most of all, that the man at her side—gripping her hand as he led her into temptation—wasn’t ever going to be hers, no matter what.

He’d danced with her. It was as simple and as complicated as that.

Natalie had never thought of herself as beautiful before she’d seen herself in that mirror tonight, but it was more than that. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had treated her like a woman. Much less a desirable one. Not a pawn in whatever game the man in question might have been playing with her employer, which had only ever led to her wearing her hair in severe ponytails and then donning those clear glasses to keep the attention off her. Not an assistant. Not the person responsible for every little detail of every little thing and therefore the first one to be upbraided when something went wrong.

Rodolfo looked at her as if she was no more and no less than a beautiful woman. He didn’t see a list of all the things she could do when he gazed at her. He saw only her. A princessed-out, formally made-up version of her, sure. And she couldn’t really gloss over the fact he called her by the wrong name because he had every reason to believe she was someone else. Even so, she was the woman he couldn’t seem to stop touching, who made his eyes light up with all that too-bright need and hunger.

And it was that, Natalie found, she couldn’t resist.

She’d never done a spontaneous thing in her life before she’d switched places with Valentina in that bathroom. Left to her own devices, she thought it was likely she’d never have given her notice at all, no matter how worked up she’d been. And now it seemed she couldn’t stop with the spontaneity. Yet somehow Rodolfo’s grip on her hand, so strong and sure, made her not mind very much at all. She let this prince, who was far more charming than she wanted to admit to herself, tug her along with him, deeper into the shadows, until they were more in the dark than the light.

He turned to face her then, and he looked something like stern in the darkness. He set the two glasses of sparkling wine down on the nearby balustrade, then straightened again. Slowly. Deliberately, even. Natalie’s heart thudded hard against her ribs, but it wasn’t from fear. He pulled her hand that he’d been holding high against his chest and held it there, and Natalie couldn’t have said why she felt as caught.

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