The Prince's Cinderella Bride. Christine Rimmer

wrong. We are equals in all the ways that really matter.”

      She made a humphing sound. “Thanks for that, Your Highness.”

      He wanted to grab her and shake her. But somehow he managed to remain still, to speak with calm reproach. “You know me better than that.”

      She shook her head. “Don’t you get it? We went too far. We need to back off and let it go.”

      Let it go—let her go? Never. “Listen. I’m going to say it again. This time I’m hopeful you’ll actually hear me. I would never expect you to leave Montedoro, no matter what happened. You have my sworn word on that. The last thing I would ever want is to make things difficult for you.”

      Heat flared in her eyes again. “But that’s exactly what you’ve done—what you are doing right now.”

      “Forgive me.” He said it evenly, holding her dark gaze.

      Another silence ensued. An endless one.

      And then, at last, she spoke again, her head drooping, her shining, softly curling hair swinging out to hide her flushed cheeks. “I hate this.”

      “So do I.”

      She lifted her head and stared at him, emotions chasing themselves across her sweet face: misery, exasperation, frustration, sorrow. After a moment she confessed, “All right. It’s true that I miss...having you to talk to.”

      Progress. His heart slammed against his rib cage.

      She added, “And I adore Nick and Constance.” His son, Nicholas, was eight. Connie was six. Lani was good friends with Gerta, Nick and Connie’s nanny. Rule’s children and his often played together. “I...” She peered at him so closely, her expression disbelieving. “Do you honestly think we could do that, be...friendly again?”

      “I know we could.”

      “Just that and only that.” Doubt shadowed her eyes. “Friendly. Nothing more.”

      “Only that,” he vowed, silently adding, Until you realize you want more as much as I do.

      She sighed. “I... Well, I would like to be on good terms with you.”

      Light, he reminded himself as his pulse ratcheted higher. Keep it light. “All right, then. We are...as we were.” He dared to hold out his hand to her.

      She frowned. He waited, arm outstretched, arching a brow, trying to appear hopeful and harmless. Her gaze darted from his face to his offered hand, and back to his face again. Just when he was certain he would have to drop his hand, she left the table and came and took it. His fingers closed over hers. He reveled in the thrill that shivered up his arm at her touch.

      Too soon, she eased her hand free and snatched up her book. “Now, will you let me go?”

      No. He cast about for a way to keep her there. If she wouldn’t let him kiss her or hold her or smooth her shining hair, all right. He accepted that. But couldn’t they at least talk for a while the way they used to do?

      “Max?” A slight frown creased her brow.

      He was fresh out of new tactics and had no clue how to get her to let down her guard. Plus he had a very strong feeling that he’d pushed her as far as she would go for now. This was looking to be an extended campaign. He didn’t like that, but if it was the only way to finally reach her, so be it. “I’ll be seeing you in the library—where you will no longer scuttle away every time I get near you.”

      A hint of the old humor flashed in her eyes. “I never scuttle.”

      “Scamper? Dart? Dash?”

      “Stop it.” Her mouth twitched. A good sign, he told himself.

      “Promise me you won’t run off the next time we meet.”

      The spark of humor winked out. “I just don’t like this.”

      “You’ve already said that. I’m going to show you there’s nothing to be afraid of. Do we have an understanding?”

      “Oh, Max...”

      “Say yes.”

      And finally, she gave in and said the words he needed to hear. “Yes. I’ll, um, look forward to seeing you.”

      He didn’t believe her. How could he believe her when she sounded so grim, when that mouth he wanted beneath his own was twisted with resignation? He didn’t believe her, and he almost wished he could give her what she said she wanted, let her go, say goodbye. He almost wished he could not care.

      But he’d had years of not caring—long, empty years when he’d told himself that not caring was for the best.

      And then the small, dark-haired woman in front of him changed everything.

      She turned for the door.

      He was out of ways to keep her there, and he needed to accept that. “Lani, wait...”

      She stopped, shoulders tensing, head slightly bowed. “What now?” But she didn’t turn back to him.

      “Let me.” He eased around her and pulled the door wide. She nodded, barely glancing at him, and went through, passing beneath the rough-hewn trellis into the cool winter sunlight. He lingered in the open doorway, watching her as she walked away from him.

      Chapter Two

      “What is going on in that head of yours?” Sydney O’Shea Bravo-Calabretti, formerly kick-ass corporate lawyer and currently Princess of Montedoro, demanded. “Something’s bugging you.” The women sat in kid-size chairs at the round table in the playroom of the villa Sydney and Rule had bought and remodeled shortly after their marriage two years before.

      Lani, holding Sydney’s one-year-old, Ellie, kissed the little one’s silky strawberry curls and lied without shame. “Nothing’s bugging me. Not a thing.”

      “Yes, there is. You’ve got this weird, worried, faraway look in your eye.”

      Okay, yeah. Yesterday’s confrontation with Max in the little stone house had seriously unnerved her. She’d thought about little else since then. She’d told no one what had happened on New Year’s, not even Sydney. And she never would. But she had to give Syd something, some reason she might be distracted—anything but the truth that, while Sydney and Rule and the kids were here at the family’s villa, Lani had led His Highness up to her room at the palace and done any number of un-nannylike things to his magnificent body.

      Limply, she offered, “Well, the current book is giving me fits.” That should fly. She was in the middle of writing the final book in a trilogy of historical novels set in Montedoro. Syd had been her best friend for seven years and knew that she could get pretty stressed out while struggling with the middle of a book where the story had a tendency to drag.

      Syd was so not buying. “The current book is always giving you fits. There’s something else.”

      Crap. Lani frowned and pretended to think it over for a minute. “No, really. It’s the book. That’s all. There’s nothing else.”

      “Yolanda Vasquez, you are lying through your teeth.”

      So much for the sagging-middle excuse. What to try next?

      No way was Lani busting herself. Syd had her back, always. But it was just too tacky to get into, the nanny-slash-wannabe-writer getting naked at New Year’s with the widowed heir to the throne—whom the whole world knew was still hopelessly in love with his lost wife. “Lying through your teeth,” she echoed brightly. “What does that mean, really? Some expressions are not only overused, they make no real sense. I mean, everything we say, we say through our teeth, right? I mean, unless we have no teeth.”

      Syd didn’t even crack a smile. “You think you’re distracting me from asking what’s up with you. You’re not.”

      “Nani,