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

to provoke a reaction, so she shouldn’t have been stung by Fernanda’s dismissive snort.

      “Oh, right. Have you even spoken to him for one second?”

      “I have, actually.” Sopi was always annoyed when these two put on that tone that disparaged her as a backwoods hick who lacked their refinement.

      “What did you talk about?” Nanette asked, gaze narrowed.

      “Nothing much.” She shook the bottle of polish. “He didn’t even ask my name.” It was another dig.

      She swiped the brush across the decal, varnishing the shoe into place. When she looked up, Fernanda was scowling with suspicion.

      “Have you given any thought to how you’ll walk back with wet polish on your toe?” Sopi asked.

      “That’s why I brought the glue,” Nanette said, nudging her sister aside and eyeing Sopi shrewdly. “What would you wear?” she asked.

      “Hmm?” Sopi glanced up from trying to break the seal on the glue nozzle.

      “To dine with the prince.”

      “Oh.” She hadn’t given one iota of thought to actually doing it, but she’d come this far into needling them. She let bravado take her a few more steps. “I have some things of my mother’s. There’s a vintage Chanel I’ve always wanted an excuse to wear.”

      “How am I only hearing about this now? Show me.” Nanette sounded genuinely impressed, but maybe Sopi was that desperate to finally take her by surprise.

      She finished gluing the shoe to Nanette’s toe, then trotted up the stairs to her loft.

      In the chest beneath the window, she kept a handful of keepsakes—her parents’ wedding album, the Christmas ornaments that hadn’t broken over the years and her audition tape to a televised singing contest that might have been her big break if her father hadn’t passed away the week she was supposed to appear.

      Moving all of that aside, she drew out a zipped fabric box that also stored her summer wear. She dumped her clothes onto the floor and drew out the tissue-wrapped dress.

      Sopi bit her lip as she noticed the moths had been into it. Voraciously.

      Nanette arrived at the top of the stairs and said, “Oh my God. I thought I lived in a hovel.”

      “Don’t you dare,” Sopi said, voice sharpened by the strike of painful knowledge that she had lost a prized possession. This rag only proved she was nowhere near the prince’s league. “You live here for free. Who do you think pays for that?”

      “You just said it. It’s free. No one is making you live like this. You’re the one who plays the martyr all the time. ‘Oh, woe. If you don’t play hostess, I have to.’”

      “‘Oh, woe,’” Sopi shot back. “‘I can’t put a sticker on my own toe.’”

      “Exactly,” Nanette said with a hair flip and a complete absence of apology. “Set standards for yourself and refuse to compromise them.” Her scathing glance dismissed Sopi’s handful of possessions and the dress that was definitely not living up to her claims.

      Such a cow. If Sopi was the cretin they thought, she would push Nanette down the stairs, taking out Fernanda, who had come up behind her to make a face of amused disgust as she looked around. God, she hated both of them.

      “Oh, Sopi, no,” Fernanda said when she saw the dress. Her tone held the depth of sympathy one saved for muddy dogs found starving in ditches. “You have to store vintage pieces properly. Otherwise they fall apart when you wear them. Everyone knows that. What a shame.”

      “Clearly your standards aren’t being met here,” Sopi said through her teeth. “Kindly leave my hovel and never come back.”

      “Does this mean you won’t do my hair?”

      “Seriously, Fernanda?” Sopi glared.

      “You don’t have to be so sensitive! I don’t understand why she treats us like this,” Fernanda complained as the two women went down the stairs.

      They left, and Sopi hurried to lock the door so they couldn’t return. Then she went into the shower and wept over old dresses and lost parents and foolish fantasies about unattainable men.

      When she turned off the water, she stared at the bedazzled shoe on her one toe. Stupid. She picked it off so her nail was an ugly, chipped mess, and she left it that way as a reminder to stay grounded.

      Then she wished even harder that the prince would marry one of her stepsisters and get them all out of her life for good.

      “Say that again,” Rhys growled at his assistant.

      Gerard shifted uncomfortably. “I did as you asked. I put the word out that you were trying to locate the woman with the little shoe on her toe.”

      “You said I had met her already? That I knew who I was looking for?”

      “Perhaps I wasn’t clear on that?” His assistant’s shoulders hunched up to his ears. “It seemed self-explanatory, but…” He trailed off, miserable.

      “And now there’s…how many women in the hall?”

      “Fifty? Sixty?”

      “All with one shoe on her toe.”

      “I’m afraid so, sir.” Gerard swallowed.

      “What am I supposed to do? Walk the line as though inspecting the troops, looking for her among them?” He’d been trying to be discreet. Rather than make it clear he was looking for someone on staff, he had thought he would get word to her through the grapevine. She could then quietly appear in his room if she was interested.

      “How did they even get up here in the elevator?”

      “The one shoe, sir. The bodyguards—”

      Rhys pinched the bridge of his nose. “Suggestions on how to get rid of them?”

      “Perhaps if you simply ate in the dining room? Mingled? Gave them a chance to say hello?”

      Rhys had no appetite. “That never works. It only encourages them to approach me later.” But he had to find himself a wife, and what was he going to do? Put a staff member in the unnerving position of having to walk a gauntlet to reach him for a single date that would go nowhere?

      If she was out there and wanted to see him, she would already have knocked on his door. No, she was either too self-conscious or wasn’t interested.

      What a galling thought. Deep down, however, he knew it was for the best.

      It still infuriated him.

      “Fine,” he growled. “Tell them I’ll dine downstairs after all.”

      When the news came that the prince would in fact need a table, Sopi experienced a rush of panic. She definitely, positively didn’t want to see him. After brooding for a solid hour, she had decided that what he must have meant when he cut short her massage was that he thought she was turning it into something it wasn’t.

      Unsurprisingly, her stepsisters both appeared within minutes of the announcement, eager to marshal rivals to terrible tables and have an excuse to brush past the prince’s table while he ate. He would sit with the handful of upper-crust bachelors who had accompanied him onto the slopes and were providing further red meat for the marriage-minded women hungry for a good match.

      Sopi gladly relinquished the reservation desk and slipped into the laundry room to help fold sheets and towels.

      With nearly every guest now rubbing elbows