Cinderella's Royal Seduction / Crowned At The Desert King's Command
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About the Authors
Canadian DANI COLLINS knew in high school that she wanted to write romance for a living. Twenty-five years later, after marrying her high school sweetheart, having two kids with him, working at several generic office jobs and submitting countless manuscripts, she got The Call. Her first Mills & Boon novel won the Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best First in Series from RT Book Reviews. She now works in her own office, writing romance.
JACKIE ASHENDEN writes dark, emotional stories, with alpha heroes who’ve just got the world to their liking only to have it blown wide apart by their kick-ass heroines. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband, the inimitable Dr Jax, two kids and two rats. When she’s not torturing alpha males and their gutsy heroines she can be found drinking chocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, wasting time on social media or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband. To keep up to date with Jackie’s new releases and other news, sign up to her newsletter at jackieashenden.com.
Also by Dani Collins
Claiming His Christmas Wife
Untouched Until Her Ultra-Rich Husband
Bound to the Desert King collection
Sheikh’s Princess of Convenience
Innocents for Billionaires miniseries
A Virgin to Redeem the Billionaire
Innocent’s Nine-Month Scandal
The Montero Baby Scandals miniseries
The Consequence He Must Claim
The Maid’s Spanish Secret
Bound by Their Nine-Month Scandal
Also by Jackie Ashenden
Shocking Italian Heirs miniseries
Demanding His Hidden Heir
Claiming His One-Night Child
Mills & Boon DARE
The Knights of Ruin miniseries
Ruined
Destroyed
Kings of Sydney miniseries
King’s Price
King’s Rule
King’s Ransom
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
Cinderella’s Royal Seduction
Dani Collins
Crowned at the Desert King’s Command
Jackie Ashenden
ISBN: 978-0-008-90010-6
CINDERELLA’S ROYAL SEDUCTION & CROWNED AT THE DESERT KING’S COMMAND
Cinderella’s Royal Seduction © 2020 Dani Collins Crowned at the Desert King’s Command © 2019 Jackie Ashenden
Published in Great Britain 2020
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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Version: 2020-03-02
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Table of Contents
Cover
About the Authors
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Cinderella’s Royal Seduction
Back Cover Text
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
EPILOGUE
Crowned at the Desert King’s Command
Back Cover Text
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
About the Publisher
Cinderella’s Royal Seduction
Dani Collins
His until midnight
Will she wear his crown?
Sopi is exhausted! With Prince Rhys Charlemaine staying nearby, the luxury spa she calls home is overflowing with aspiring princesses! It’s frantic…until working all hours leads to a late-night encounter with charismatic Rhys himself…
Untouched Sopi gives herself one chance to feel like a princess in Rhys’s arms. She knows it cannot go further, until Rhys stuns her with his convenient proposal! He promises exquisite pleasure, but Sopi has seen the man behind his royal mask—dare she believe he wants her for more than desire?
My long-suffering family always deserves a dedication for cheerleading me in this career I’ve chosen, but when it comes to the nuts and bolts of actually getting a book written there are two people I absolutely cannot do without.
First and foremost, my editor. I’ve been lucky enough to work with Laurie Johnson on and off in the seven years I’ve been published. Thank you for helping me turn so many pumpkins into carriages, this book very much included.
Second and no less important, my RMT, Loretta. Thank you for keeping the carpal tunnel and shoulder gremlins at bay, for being a fan of romance, and for recommending I visit Sparkling Hills in Vernon, the spa that inspired the one in this book.
PROLOGUE
JUST ONCE, CASSIOPEIA BRODEUR wished she could be given enough time to sit and think before having to react to whatever catastrophe her stepmother, Maude, had set in motion.
She really wished that when she’d been fifteen and thinking she was welcoming her stepsisters into her family, she hadn’t told them her friends called her Sopi.
“Soapy?” Nanette and Fernanda spoke English as their fourth language, but they’d heard the pun and laughed hysterically.
Seven years later, all of Sopi’s childhood friends, including the ones who’d given her the nickname when they’d been in grade school, had moved on to university and world travel, interesting jobs and serious relationships and cities.
While Sopi was still here in Lonely Lake, scrubbing up after her spoiled stepfamily and the guests of the hotel and spa that bore her name.
Why couldn’t Maude and the girls shove off back to Europe and quit destroying what was left of her life? They certainly made no effort to hide their disdain for this “backwater village” in the remote wilderness of the Canadian Rockies.
Oh, right, they had run through all of Sopi’s father’s money and had nowhere left to turn. Yet they seemed determined to drive this place into ruin, too.
“All the reservations?” Sopi repeated with disbelief. “You canceled all of March?”
“Yes.”
“On purpose?”
“Sopi.” Maude used her most hideously patronizing tone. “We can’t have families with children running around when we’re entertaining royalty, can we? And we’ll need the rooms.”
“Royalty?” Sopi asked with a choke of hysterical laughter. “Is that a figure of speech?” The odd aging pop star turned up—emphasis on odd—but real celebrities with real money went to Banff or Whistler for their spring skiing.
“Rhys Charlemaine is the prince of Verina.”
“Never heard of him,” Sopi said flatly, even though it rang a distant bell. She barely had time to keep up with weather reports and the latest safety regulations, though. She didn’t follow gossip on fading royalty.
“Honestly, Sopi. Your lack of education.” Maude shook her coiffed silver head in despair.
Was she referring to the education that hadn’t been paid for because instead Sopi’s father’s money had been used to keep Nanette and Fernanda in boarding school in Switzerland? The girls’ absence had turned out to be a blessing, so Sopi didn’t complain much about it, but honestly.
“Why on earth would a prince come here?” Sopi asked.
“Because I’ve arranged a week of heli-skiing for him.”
With what money?
Sopi wanted to scream or maybe cry. She glanced longingly beyond the windows where February skies were an intense blue over blinding white slopes across the valley. Last season, she’d skied once on the small commercial hill on the far side of the lake. This year she hadn’t had a single opportunity—too busy trying to keep the spa afloat.
“And as for the accommodation,” Maude continued absently, “the girls will move from the penthouse so he can use it, but they’ll stay on the top floor. His entourage will take the rest of the rooms there.”
“His entourage? Please tell me this isn’t all complimentary.” Sopi knew it would be and felt sick. Sick. Maude never let her peek at the books, but Sopi wasn’t blind or stupid. She knew they were in the red and bleeding more every day.
“Of course we won’t charge him.” Maude’s scoffing tone chided her as Silly Sopi. “This is exceedingly good exposure for us. Everyone will want to come here, especially while he’s in residence. I’ve arranged a decent chef. That’s long overdue.” Her pointed look blamed Sopi for not having made that happen sooner, and Sopi couldn’t even imagine what it was going to cost. “You’ll need to hire more staff for the treatments.”
“Maude.” Sopi tried one more time, even though this argument had never made an impact. “There is no one to hire.”
The occasional adventurous cosmetician or massage therapist joined them for a season, but the isolation of Lonely Lake wasn’t for everyone. Plus, Maude and her daughters were a special kind of hell to work for. Their incessant demands and tantrums over inconveniences like having to wait for deliveries of a desired shade of nail polish impacted the spa’s ability to retain qualified employees.
“You always make things harder than they are,” Maude sighed. “People will beg to work for gratuities if you tell them who will be staying here.”
The spa’s bread-and-butter clientele were retirees soaking their arthritis in the hot mineral pools at an affordable price. Sopi couldn’t deny that a high-profile guest would fill rooms, but, “Seniors on fixed incomes aren’t known for their generous tips. If this prince and his cronies—”
“Cronies?” Maude’s head came up. “Sopi, he’s thirty. Unmarried. And it’s time he changed that.” Maude had been fingering through a collection of fabric swatches. She held up a square of cranberry silk. “Would this clash with Nanette’s hair, do you think?”
As was often the case when Sopi spoke with her stepmother, Sopi’s brain was racing to catch up. Even as she tried to formulate arguments against whatever Maude was demanding, she knew the struggle was futile. Her stepmother had gained control of the spa when Sopi’s father died and kept a firm grasp on it. Sopi didn’t have the resources to fight her for it, and Maude would no doubt clean out what was left of the spa’s available cash to repulse an attack. Sopi would be bankrupt whether she won or lost.
Sopi’s only choice was to try to keep the place solvent until she had enough in her savings account to mount a proper legal challenge. Maybe it was a fool’s dream, but it kept her going.
So she was always mentally planning how to mitigate or adapt to or accomplish whatever ridiculous thing Maude insisted had to happen while doing the math, trying to calculate when she would be able to put her foot down and hold her ground.
Today, amid that familiar scramble, Sopi’s brain crashed into Maude’s end goal. Maude wanted to marry one of her daughters to a prince. To a man who lived in a kingdom—or was it a principality? Who cared? It was far, far away.
If one left, they all would.
A tentative ray of hope gleamed like a beacon at the end of a long, dark tunnel, breaking a smile across Sopi’s face.
“You know what, Maude? You’re right. This sounds like a tremendous opportunity. I’ll start prepping for it.” Sopi’s pulse pounded so hard, her ears rang.
“Thank you,” Maude said in a beleaguered tone that echoed with, It’s about time. “Leave moving the girls out of the penthouse until the last moment. They don’t want to be inconvenienced any more than necessary.”
Sopi nearly choked on her tongue, but she bit down on it instead. If she played her cards right, and if she threw her stepsisters in front of this Prince Charlemaine or whoever the heck he was, then maybe, just maybe, she could free herself of her stepfamily forever.
It was such an exciting prospect, she hummed cheerfully as she left Maude’s office and headed upstairs to strip beds and clean toilets.
CHAPTER ONE
RHYS CHARLEMAINE WOKE before the sun was up. Before any of his staff began creeping into his suite with fresh coffee and headlines and messages that required responses.
He didn’t ring for any of them. What privacy he had was precious. Plus, he had withstood enough bustle and fussing yesterday when he and his small army of assistants, bodyguards and companions had arrived. The owner of this place, Maude Brodeur, had insisted on personally welcoming him. She had hung around for nearly two hours, dropping names and reminiscing about her first husband, whom she had cast as a contemporary equal to Rhys’s father—which he wasn’t. He had been a distant cousin to a British earl and largely unknown.
Blue blood was blue blood, however, and she had clearly been using the association to frame her pretty, well-educated daughters as suitable for a man next in line to a throne. Her daughters had perched quietly while she rattled on, but there’d been an opportunistic light in their eyes.
Rhys sighed. If he had a euro for every woman who wanted to search his pockets for a wedding ring, he would have more money than all the world’s tech billionaires combined.
Instead, he had a decent fortune built on shrewd investments, some of it in tech, but much of it in real estate development. Half of it belonged to his brother, Henrik. Rhys handled their private interests while Henrik looked after the throne’s finances. They each had their lane, but they drove them side by side, always protecting the other’s flank. Rhys might be the spare, a prince to his brother the king, but they were a solid unit.
Even so, he and Henrik didn’t always agree. This detour to a tiny off-grid village in Canada had had his brother lifting his brows with skepticism. “Sounds too good to be true,” had been Henrik’s assessment.
Rhys’s antennae were up, as well. On the surface, the property in a valley reminiscent of Verina’s surrounding Alps appeared ripe for exploitation, especially with its hot-spring aquifer. That alone made it a unique energy opportunity. The remote location would be a challenge, of course, but there was a modest ski hill across the lake. It drew locals and guests of this hotel, but could also be picked up for a song and further developed.
Maude was claiming she wanted to keep the sale of the spa quiet for “personal reasons,” pretending she didn’t need the money. Normally, Rhys would steer clear of someone attempting to pull the wool over his eyes. He had his own reason for accepting her invitation, however, and it had nothing to do with whether or not this place was a sound investment.
Rhys shifted his pensive gaze across the frozen lake, searching for answers that couldn’t be solved with money and power. He needed a miracle, something he didn’t believe in. He was a man of action who made his own destiny, but the only action available to him at the moment was a path littered with disloyalty to his brother, if not the crown.
He supposed he should be thankful the doctors had finally discovered the reason Henrik and his wife, Elise, were failing to conceive. They’d caught Henrik’s testicular cancer early enough that treatment had a reasonable chance of success. With luck, Rhys would not assume the throne. Not soon, at any rate, but Henrik would almost certainly be sterile.
That meant the task of producing future progeny to inherit the throne had fallen into Rhys’s lap.
Which meant he needed a wife.
He tried not to dwell on how treasonous that felt. Henrik had worked tirelessly to regain their rightful place in Verina. Doing so had nearly cost him the woman he loved. The royalists who had supported their return from exile had expected Henrik to marry an aristocrat, not a diplomat’s daughter. Somehow, Henrik had overcome their objections only to come up against the inability to make an heir.
Henrik and Elise deserved children. They would be excellent parents. Given everything Henrik had gone through, the throne ought to go to his child, not Rhys’s.
None of this felt right to him.
A blue glow came on below his window, dragging Rhys out of his brooding. The lights in the free-form mineral bath illuminated the mist rising off the placid water, beckoning him.
His security detail had reported that the guest register was swollen with female names, many of them bearing titles or related to one. He wasn’t surprised his intention to ski here had been leaked to the press, drawing the usual suspects. He had counted on Maude being canny enough to see the value in a full house. It made the place look successful and ensured she would still have a nice influx of cash even if he turned down her offer to purchase. She might even have thought a bevy of beautiful naked women would sway him to buy.
It wouldn’t, but he appreciated the expediency of having a curated selection of eligible women brought to one place for his consideration.
He had no choice but to marry and was down to his last moments of bachelorhood. He decided to make the most of them. He dropped the pajama pants he’d slipped on when he rose and left them on the floor, mostly to reassure his staff that he hadn’t been kidnapped. He’d learned to pick up after himself during his years in exile with his brother. He was a passable cook and could trim his own beard, not that he did those things for himself anymore.
He was a prince again, one who had believed his primary function was to ensure his family’s economic viability while his brother ruled their country and provided heirs. His responsibilities were expanding, though, and the one duty he would happily perform—taking his brother’s place while he battled his illness—was not open to him.
Heart heavy, he shrugged on his monogrammed robe, stepped into his custom-sewn slippers, searched out the all-access card Maude had given him, then took the elevator to the treatment level.
Sopi was so tired, she thought she was hallucinating when the man appeared across the mist rising off the pool. The spa area wasn’t yet open, and the locks were on a timer. The only means of entry was the use of a staff card, and she was the employee on shift. The man’s robe wasn’t hotel issue, either, but that wasn’t too unusual. Frequent guests often brought their own robes so it was easier to track where they’d left them. Even so, she’d never seen anyone show up in anything like that gorgeous crimson with gold trim and embroidered initials.
As she squinted her tired eyes at the man’s stern profile and closely trimmed beard, she recognized—
Oh God. He was completely naked under that robe!
She should have looked away but didn’t. Couldn’t.
Through the steam rising off the pool, she watched him unbelt and open his robe, drop it off his shoulders to catch on his bent arms. The muscled globes of his bare butt appeared as he turned and slid free of the robe, draping it over the glass half wall that formed the rail around the pool. He was sculpted like an Olympic swimmer with broad shoulders, narrow hips and muscular thighs.
He pivoted back to face her across the pool, utterly, completely, gloriously naked. A shadow of hair accented the intriguing contours that sectioned his chest and abdomen, streaking out to dark nipples and arrowing down his eight-pack abs to—
He dived into the water, shallow and knife sharp, barely making a ripple.
She pushed her face into the stack of towels she held, no longer breathing as she tried to suppress her shock and abject mortification. She fought to push back a rising blush of hot embarrassment and something she didn’t even recognize.
Because she had not only seen their special guest, the prince of Verina, in a private moment. She’d seen the crown jewels.
And of course she was standing on the far side of the pool where the spare caddy of clean towels was tucked beneath an overhang, next to the bar that operated in the summer months.
To escape, she would have to circle the deck, walk over the little bridge that separated the main pool from the portion that jutted out from the cliff and move past the robe he’d thrown over the rail near the glass doors into the building.
There was a small splash of water breaking as he surfaced near her feet.
“Good morning.” His voice was surprised and carried the gravel of early morning.
Oh God. She made herself lift her face and briefly—very briefly—glanced his way.
Okay. Only his head and shoulders were visible. That ought to have made breathing possible, but dear Lord, he was good-looking. His cheekbones were carved marble above his sleek beard. Was he deliberately using the short, dark stubble to accentuate how beautiful his mouth was? Because it framed lips that managed to be both well defined and masculine, swirling wicked thoughts into her mind just looking at them. His hair was slicked back, his eyes laser blue and lazily curious.
“En français?” he tried.
“What? I mean, pardon? I mean, no. I speak English. Good morning,” she managed very belatedly and clumsily.
At least he didn’t know who she was. She had put on her one decent dress last night, planning to form part of the greeting party with Maude and her stepsisters. A last-minute mix-up with a delivery had had her changing into jeans and boots to drive two hours each way so she could fetch high-grade coffee beans and other groceries that Maude had ordered specifically for the prince’s menu.
“I’m restocking towels.” Not staring or tongue-tied or anything. She hurried to shove the stack into the caddy, snatching one back. “I’ll leave this one with your robe. Our…um…European hour is actually…um…ten o’clock. At night.”
“Euro…? Oh.” The corner of his mouth dug in on one side. “Am I supposed to wear a swimsuit?”
“Most of our guests do.” All of them. “Aside from the few who prefer to sauna au naturel. At night,” she repeated.
“The sun hasn’t come up. Technically, it’s still night.” He lifted a dark winged brow at the gleam of bright steel along the seam where pearly peaks met charcoal sky.
“Point taken.” She drummed her fingers against her thigh, debated a moment, then decided to tease him right back. “But technically the pool isn’t open yet. You’re breaking our rules either way.”
“What’s the penalty? Because I don’t expect anyone here packed a bikini top. Only a few will bother with bottoms. We don’t wear them at the health spas at home. I expect that’s where your ‘European hour’ label came from.”
Pressed against the wall of the pool, he looked exactly like every other guest who might fold his arms against the edge and gaze at the view or strike up a friendly conversation with passing staff.
Except she knew he was naked, and his banter was flipping her heart and fanning the nervous excitement in her stomach. She hugged the single towel to her middle, trying to still those butterflies.
“At least I understand why Maude didn’t want children running around this week. Apparently, we’re hosting a nudist convention.”
He smiled, the light in his eyes so warm she curled her toes in her sandals, unable to stem the shy smile that pulled at her own lips.
“You Americans are so adorably prudish.”
Oh no, he didn’t. She narrowed her eyes. “And you French are so—oh, I’m sorry. Are you not French?” She batted her lashes as his good humor blanked to affront.
Since Maude’s announcement that he was coming here, she’d taken the time to learn that Verina was a small kingdom in the Alps between Switzerland, Germany and France. Verinians spoke all of those countries’ languages and, having overcome an uprising twenty years ago that had had their neighbors sniffing and circling, trying to extend their borders to encompass Verina for the next fifteen years, were fiercely patriotic to the flag they still flew.
“I find people from North America to have very conservative views about sex and nudity,” he clarified.
She nodded her forgiveness of his faux pas and explained, “We’re not that prudish in Canada. We keep our clothes on because we’re cold.” She pointed at the lazy drift of tiny flakes hitting the steam off the pool and dissolving. Strangely, she wasn’t feeling the chill nearly as much as she usually would, standing out here in the predawn frost. Heat radiated from her middle. Her joints were melting and growing loose.
“You must be in this pool often, though. You’ve never swum naked in it?”
“Never.” She couldn’t recall when she had last had a chance to swim at all. She vacuumed and scoured and restocked and never enjoyed the luxury she provided to everyone else.
If I can just get Maude and the girls out of here was her mantra. If she could take control of the books and balance them, quit financing trips and clothing for women who brought no value to the spa, only drama, she could relax instead of burning out.
“It’s very freeing. You should try it.”
“I’m sure it is.” He had no idea of the constraints she was under, though.
“No time like the present.”
As she met his gaze with a rueful smile, certain he was mocking her for her modesty, something in his gaze made her heart judder to a stop in her chest then kick into a different rhythm.
He was looking at her with consideration, as though he’d suddenly noticed something about her that had snagged one hundred percent of his attention. As though he was serious about wanting her to strip naked and jump in the pool with him.
More insistent tugs and pulls accosted her midsection. A flush of sensual heat streaked up from her tense stomach, warming her chest and throat and cheeks. Her breasts grew heavy and tight.
She never reacted to men—not like this, all receptive and intrigued. Her last date had been in high school and ended with a wet kiss that hadn’t affected her nearly as strongly as this man’s steady gaze. The dating pool in Lonely Lake was very small unless she wanted to get together with guests, and she didn’t do that because they didn’t stick around.
That’s what this is, she realized, clunking back from a brief, floaty fantasy of a prince taking an interest in a nobody like her. This wasn’t real flirty banter. He wasn’t genuinely interested in her. He was only inviting her to join him in the way male guests occasionally did because she was here, not because he found her particularly attractive. How could he? She looked especially hellish this morning. She was frazzled and exhausted, no makeup, clothes rumpled as though she’d slept in them. Joke was on him. She hadn’t slept.
Maybe this wasn’t even happening. Maybe she would wake after being dragged from the igloo room and defrosted from a hypothermia-induced delirium.
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of company soon enough,” she said in a strangled voice. She nodded upward at the windows lighting behind curtains as guests began to stir. “I’ll check the saunas. They’re banked at night, but I’ll make sure they’re up to temperature for you.”
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