Cinderella's Royal Seduction / Crowned At The Desert King's Command. Dani Collins

doubted he would believe the spa ought to belong to her anyway, not when she stood here all sweaty and gross. “I’m really cold. Can we—” She looked for her sandals.

      “Yes. Let’s warm up.” He skimmed off his robe, tossing it to hook on the fence before he made his way farther into the pool. Naked, of course, carefully choosing his footing on the slippery rocks.

      She looked to the sky, begging for guidance from higher powers.

      “It’s deeper than I expected,” he said with satisfaction. He sank down as he found one of the rocky ledges that had been set in place for seating. “What are you doing? You said you wanted to try this.”

       “Alone.”

      “I’ll turn my head.” His tone rang with prude.

      She was wearing a bra and underwear, basically a bikini. She knew that was a rationalization to stay here and swim with a man who intrigued her, but she also liked the idea of proving she could interest a prince, even if she was the only one who would ever know it.

      Could she?

      With an internal tsk, she decided to—for once—do something for herself. She stepped out of the water long enough to drop her drawstring pants and throw off her top.

      She gingerly made her way into the pool, one eye on his profile to ensure he wasn’t witnessing her clumsy entry. She winced at sharp edges pressing into her soles, bent to steady herself with a hand on a submerged boulder and let out a sigh as she sank to her shoulders and heat penetrated to her bones.

      The pool was about four feet deep and maybe six feet wide. The prince had found one of the best perches facing the lake. She bumped her foot into his and he looked at her.

      “Cheater,” he accused as he noticed her bra strap.

      She ducked under, unable to resist the lure of baptizing herself even though her hair would freeze into its tangled bun. Her long, strenuous day began to rinse away as she did it again. She came up with another sigh of sheer luxury.

      “I didn’t bring a towel. This is literally the dumbest idea I’ve ever had, but I don’t regret it one bit.”

      “I would be a gentleman and offer you my robe, but then I’d have to streak like a bald yeti across the snow to get back inside.”

      “I’m pretty sure I saw one of those this morning.”

      His teeth flashed white. “Have you always lived here? You’re Canadian?”

      “I am. My mother was Swedish, I think. I don’t have much information on her. She was an only child, and my father was funny about her family. Didn’t like to talk about them. I don’t think my grandparents approved of him.”

      “Why not?”

      “Snobs, maybe? He sold two-way pagers and the early mobile phones into the European markets. Not very sexy at the time, but it was lucrative. That’s how he paid for this.” She nodded toward the hotel hidden by the spiky trees. “Then Silicon Valley crashed the party. His heart trouble started when my mother passed, and financial worries made it worse.”

      Sopi didn’t know what kind of means Maude had pretended she had, but based on what Sopi had learned since, she believed Maude had misrepresented herself and worked on her father’s desire for Sopi to have a mother with the goal of taking over his bank account and assets.

      “It’s a strange purchase for someone in that industry, especially since you don’t have cell service beyond the hotel.”

      “My mother was struggling as a new mom in a new country. Dad traveled a lot, and she didn’t have anyone to rely on. She wasn’t working and felt very isolated. She loved her spa visits, though. She came here on one of them, talked to the owner who was thinking of selling. My father bought it for her.”

      “Romantic.”

      “Not really. It was worse for wear, and she had a lot of challenges with its remote location. She knew what she wanted, though, and made it happen. It was quite successful until she passed a few years later.”

      “What happened?”

      “A bad flu that turned into pneumonia. Can we not talk about that? I was quite young, but it still makes me sad.”

      “I understand,” he said gravely.

      She recalled a bleak line in the history of Verina stating his parents had been killed in an uprising, forcing him and his brother to live in neighboring countries for fifteen years. For the first time, she wondered if the platitude he’d just used was actually true. Maybe he really did understand the hollow ache inside her.

      He had braced his elbows on nearby rocks above the surface and tipped his head back to look up at the clear sky.

      She took stock of where she was, soaking with a prince in the wilderness, the only sound a distant hum and a closer trickle of water seeping from the seams in the rocks and off a worn ledge into their bath.

      “There you are.” He tilted his head. “The trees were in the way. Cassiopeia.”

      Hardly anyone used her whole name, not when they addressed her. She’d begun to think Cassiopeia only applied to things that weren’t really hers.

      “A queen, if memory serves.” It was hard to read his expression with the shadows and his beard.

      She almost mentioned the silly rumor about her mother being descended from royalty but thought he might think she was trying to elevate herself to his stratosphere.

      “A vain one who gets tied to a chair for eternity,” she said instead. “Maybe I am vain.” She didn’t look for the W in the sky, having searched it out nearly every starry night since childhood. “My tiny mind was blown when I learned on the first day of school that not everyone had their own constellation.”

      He snorted. “I don’t.”

      “Because you’re a star on earth.”

      “Don’t,” he said flatly. The steam seemed to gust off the water so there was no mist between them, only clear, dry air that stung her cheeks and nose. “Don’t put distance between us.”

      She swallowed her surprise, but a lump lodged in her chest, one that her voice had to strain to speak around. “There is a continent and an ocean between us.” Among other things. His mountain of society and stature, her vast desert of education and life experience.

      “Rhys,” he said, laying down a gauntlet. “If you’re going to reject me, use my name so I’m clear that you mean me.” It was such an outrageously arrogant statement she wanted to laugh, yet he drew her in as his equal by offering the familiarity. Such an enigmatic man.

      “I thought I was pointing out the obvious,” she said quietly.

      “You’re the least obvious person I’ve ever met. Any other woman would be naked and straddled across me by now, whether I wanted her here or not. You wouldn’t even come to dinner with me. Why not?”

       Cowardice.

      “I didn’t think you were serious,” she repeated. “Where would this even go? That’s not opportunism talking. I don’t have affairs with rich, powerful men. You tell me what happens. How long does it last? What happens when it’s over?”

      His eyes were obsidian, his jaw gleaming like wet iron. With a muttered curse in what sounded like German, he turned his glower toward the frozen lake below.

      He didn’t tell her she was wrong.

      Sopi felt for another of the worn rocks that provided a rough seat and settled onto it. “Do you want the truth?”

      “Always,” he bit out.

      “Maude wants you to marry Nanette. I thought if I facilitated that, I could get rid of all three of them and finally have my home to myself.”

      A