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

filled with mostly women, because if he caught any man, even one of his lethally trained bodyguards, checking her out, he would duel to the death.

      He gritted his teeth, trying to suppress this unwelcome surge of possessiveness. Where was it coming from? It was more than his innate preference to act on his decisions the minute he made them. It was positively primeval. It was an aspect of that wildness he knew lurked in any human, and he didn’t like it. He only hoped it would ease up once he knew she was his. It had to. Otherwise they were doomed.

      He was given the position at the head of the table, Maude on his right, Nanette on his left. Sopi sat on Maude’s right and glared at Fernanda, who shrugged across at her in a silent, Don’t blame me.

      “I want to thank you for your hospitality,” Rhys said as their champagne arrived and was poured. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

      “You won’t stay the week?” Maude murmured, but she was drowned out by Fernanda’s, “Us, too, in a few days. Finally!” Fernanda raised her glass.

      Sopi choked strongly enough they all lowered their glasses. Her eyes glimmered as she shot hard looks at each of them.

      “You suck. You all suck,” she croaked.

      There was a collective gasp from tables nearby. Maude said a sharp, “Sopi! Consider who you’re speaking to.”

      Rhys said nothing, pleased to see she possessed a spine after all. She would need one.

      “All of you.” She rose and glared directly at him with betrayed hurt sharp as the edge of a knife.

      Her hand jerked, but before she could fling the contents of her wine at him, Rhys’s bodyguard caught her wrist.

      “Stand down,” Rhys barked at him, also rising.

      Sopi shrugged away from the bodyguard’s hold and stepped away from the table. She threw her glass to the floor in a shattering statement.

      “Go to hell. Every single one of you.” She stalked out.

      “Someone doesn’t know which side her bread is buttered on,” Nanette said into her champagne.

      “True,” Rhys bit out, sending Nanette a dark glower that made her blanch. He set his hands on the table to lean over the three women. “Those who betray others to get what they want should expect the same treatment. Skip the meal and start packing. Be gone by midnight.”

      “What—”

      He ignored the women’s cries of shock as he straightened and sent a curt nod to Gerard. His assistant would ensure the staff were notified that Maude and her daughters no longer gave the orders and, in fact, were no longer residents of the hotel.

      As the buzz of gossip and speculation spread like wildfire through the room, Rhys jerked his head at his bodyguard to lead the way to Sopi’s cabin.

      How stupid could she get? She had genuinely thought her worst humiliation was allowing a man with more experience to talk her out of her clothes and take a few liberties with her person. She had thought letting down her physical guard where his sexual intentions were concerned had been the careless act, but no. Last night’s dalliance had been some kind of misdirection so she would be blindly ignorant of what Maude was really doing.

      What he was doing. Of course he wasn’t interested in her. He had toyed with her the way some executives spun fidget spinners while brokering a deal.

      The pressure in her chest threatened to crack her breastbone, but Sopi refused to scream or cry or release any of the aching sobs branding her throat.

      Fine, she’d been thinking for the last twenty minutes, after Fernanda had spilled the beans that Maude had definitely meant to be delivered a few days from now, no doubt after ordering Sopi to load their damned luggage for them. Maude had hissed in warning and Nanette had said, “For God’s sake, Fernie. Mummy told you it’s confidential.”

      “What?” Fernanda had had the gall to cast it as a good thing. “She’ll be happy. Mummy sold it all to the prince. We’ll all be out of your hair by next weekend. You should be happy, Sopi.”

      Sopi had been utterly speechless, standing there in shock as the prince arrived and everyone stared. She had moved on autopilot, only feeling reality hit her as they reached the table. Instead of holding a chair for their guest the way she would as a hostess, the prince’s assistant, Gerard, had moved behind her and held her chair.

      It had been so unexpected, it had knocked her out of her stasis and into a plummeting realization that everything had changed. The one dream she had clung to was gone. The only home she had ever known would never be hers.

      The nascent fantasy she had had that a prince—a damned royal prince—might see something in her beyond a penniless chambermaid had burst like a bubble, leaving her coated in a residue of disillusion and humiliation.

      Slamming into her cabin, she kicked off her shoes. Hard. So that one dented a cardboard box and the other went flying toward the bathroom door.

      She wrenched at the dress she’d bought with him in mind. It was meant to be pulled on gently to retain the shape and prevent snags in the delicate knit. She dragged roughly at it. Tried to tear it because she hated it. She yanked it off and dropped it where she stood and wiped her feet on it. She was panting and shaking, still trying to catch her breath after her sprint through the snow-laden trees, filled with an endless supply of hate.

      With a final twist of her foot, she flicked it to the side and shoved at a stack of boxes, freshly delivered this afternoon and left for her to move to a more convenient location. Everything was always left to her to do, and she was sick of it. She shoved the stack even harder, so it fell with a tumble.

      The crash wasn’t nearly as satisfying as she had hoped, especially when it was followed by a loud stomp of a heavy foot leaping onto her stoop. The door flung open to let in a burst of cold air that swirled like a demon around her nearly naked body.

      Him. The instrument of her ruin.

      “Bastard,” she muttered and turned away to take her narrow stairs two at a time.

      Below her, she heard the door click closed. She glanced down from the loft and gripped the rail with humiliated rage as she watched him take in the clutter and the mess of boxes. He picked up her dress and gave it a light shake.

      “Come right in,” she said scathingly. “Act like you own the place.”

      He lifted his gaze, and she instantly felt naked. Not just physically, which she mostly was, but as though she was utterly transparent. As if he could see through her sarcasm to those puerile fantasies she’d spun in her head. It was so agonizing to be seen this way, she had to hold back a sob and turn away. She yanked out a drawer in her dresser, digging for jeans and a pullover. The stairs creaked as she stuck her legs into her jeans.

      He appeared in the loft and flicked his gaze in harsh judgment of her used furniture and what she had always thought of as a cozy living space. As her turtleneck nearly choked her, and she yanked at her hair enough that it had some slack outside her collar, she saw the loft through his eyes and was mortified to realize it wasn’t humble. It was shabby.

      Angry that he was seeing it and forcing her to see it, she said, “I was being facetious. What I really meant was get lost.”

      What she really meant were two words she had never said to anyone, no matter how badly Nanette had ever baited her, but she was feeling them this evening. She really was.

      He draped her dress over the footboard of her bed. “We’ll continue this discussion in my room.”

      “Gosh, I would love to accommodate you, Your Highness, but I have to pack and find a place to live. Because if you think I’m going to work for you, you need to see a psychiatrist about your loose grasp on reality.”

      “My