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

shoe, just like the one that had been coming off her toe. Huh.

      Pinching it between his finger and thumb, he tucked it deep into the pocket of his robe, considering.

      Flushed and confused, Sopi hurried to get as far away from the prince as possible, all the way to the other end of the building, where the service entrance to the kitchen was located. She stood on the back stoop in the cold dusk, trying to bring herself back under control.

      She had provided a lot of massages, usually to women, but many to men, and had never once felt so affected by the experience. It hadn’t been lascivious, either. It had been…elemental. She’d never become so entranced by a deep and genuine yearning to ease and soothe and heal. Yet touching him had been stimulating, too, keeping her in a state of alert readiness. Like petting a giant cat.

      Or a man in peak condition who appealed to her on a primitive level.

      She could have stroked her hands over him for hours, like a sculptor lovingly sanding her creation to a fine polish. In those last seconds before she’d asked him to roll over, she had felt a strong urge to splay herself atop him. Blanket him with her body while soaking in his essence.

      Truthfully, she’d been lost in her world at that point and had been shocked back to reality when he declined to turn faceup.

       I have to cut it short before it turns into something else.

      She’d been stunned. Embarrassed that she’d aroused him, but shaken and inflamed by the idea. All the banked sexual energy she’d been suppressing as she administered the massage had suddenly engulfed her in a rush of carnal hunger.

      If he hadn’t told her to “stay mean,” she didn’t know what she might have done, but she’d found the concrete knots at the base of his skull. Heavy is the crown, she’d thought, wondering what his life was like back in Verina.

      She would never know.

      A sudden shiver had her realizing she had cooled past comfortable. She went inside, where the kitchen staff was scrambling to prepare for the dinner rush.

      Without being asked, she slipped into the change room and put on her prep cook garb, then spent an hour peeling potatoes and scrubbing pots.

      She was at her sweaty, sticky worst when she headed back to her cabin for a shower. The sound of squabbling as she approached through the trees almost had her turning back.

      “Sopi!” Fernanda said when she spotted her. “Where have you been? I’ve been texting you.”

      “Oh?” Sopi pretended to scan her phone.

      “She blocks us, you stooge,” Nanette said pithily.

      “Only when I’m working,” Sopi said sweetly as she slid between the two towering beauties to unlock her door. “The paying guests are my priority, seeing as they support us.” Hint, hint.

      “Well, this has to do with the prince, so you ought to have been paying attention.” As she entered uninvited, Fernanda wrinkled her nose at the clutter.

      “She wants to make a fool of herself and wants you to help,” Nanette informed Sopi with an eye roll.

      “Why are you here?” Fernanda charged. “The same reason.”

      “To shower with me?” Sopi asked facetiously. “I don’t usually entertain there.”

      “Shocker,” Nanette muttered with an examination of her nails.

      Always a joy spending time with family. Sopi bit back a sigh.

      “The dining room could use you both to hostess this evening,” Sopi said, mainly to Nanette. She never lifted a finger unless Maude pressed her. “We have a full house. Tables will turn over three or four times at least.”

      “Unavailable. Sorry,” Nanette said with a saccharine smile.

      “Not even for the chance to seat the prince?”

      “He’s not eating downstairs,” Fernanda jumped in to say. “That’s why I’m here. Women are lined up out the door at the salon to get one of these.” Fernanda handed Sopi a sheet of toe decals.

      Sopi frowned. “They’re defective. I was in the salon earlier. They fall off.”

      “Yes, I know that. That’s why you have to put it on. To make sure it stays.”

      Sopi shook her head, almost thinking there was a compliment in there, but definitely a backhanded one.

      “If you’re not going to help in the dining room, I have to shower and hurry back. Stick it on yourself. It’s not rocket science.”

      “Forget the dining room,” Fernanda said with a stamp of her foot. “No one will even show up there. The prince is dining privately. With a woman who has one of these stuck to her toe.”

      “What?” When she had pushed her feet into her closed-toe kitchen clogs, Sopi had noticed that she’d lost her plain shoe decal during the massage. She had only managed to keep the bedazzled one. She removed her snow boots now but self-consciously kept her socks on.

      Nanette straightened from leaning against the decommissioned stove, wiping her hands across her backside as she did. “It seems the prince met someone who interests him, but he doesn’t know her name. His assistant put the word out that this woman only has one shoe.” She flipped her hair. “Apparently, she knows who she is, and he wants her to come to his suite this evening if she would like to dine with him.”

      “He—that’s silly,” Sopi said, hyperaware of the hot blush that flooded into her cheeks. It was a tremendous long shot that he could be talking about her. “Fernanda, he’s going to know right away whether you’re the woman he is trying to meet. If you don’t already have a decal, you’re not her.”

      “Well, his bodyguard doesn’t know that, does he? If I can get in to see him, the prince can decide if I’m the right woman or not.”

      Sopi opened her mouth but couldn’t find words. Fernanda wasn’t the brightest candle on the cake and tended to be very self-involved. She came across as selfish, but she wasn’t mean, just firmly stuck between thoughtless and clueless.

      “I tried to tell her.” Nanette grew more alert, like a jackal that scented something on the air. She was definitely the brains in the family, calculating and sharp.

      “Yet here you are. Wanting the same thing,” Fernanda hissed at her sister. “So it’s not such a stupid idea, is it?”

      “Wait.” Sopi held up a hand. “Did you say there’s some sort of run on at the salon?”

      “Yes! Everyone is trying to get one. The girls tried to tell me to come back later, but there’s no time. Can you just…” Fernanda unzipped her knee-high spiked-heel boot and dragged off her sock. “Hurry.” She wiggled her toes. “I need to dress.”

      “Fernanda—” Sopi looked to Nanette for backup, but Nanette was also removing her ankle-high snakeskin boot. “I don’t even have polish—oh.”

      Fernanda had absconded with a handful of bottles from the salon. Nanette had brought a tiny tube of fast acting superadhesive. She handed that over with a pointed look. She wouldn’t lose her decal, come hell or high water.

      “You’re going to parade to his suite with everyone else, all wearing one shoe so he can see you have a decal on your toe?” Sopi asked with bemusement.

      “I’ll wear proper open-toed evening shoes, won’t I? Honestly, Sopi.” Fernanda rolled her eyes.

      Right. Sopi was the one being ridiculous.

      Since it was the fastest way to get these two women to leave her private space, Sopi sat on the stairs to her loft. She motioned for Fernanda to set her foot beside