Their Royal Wedding Bargain. Michelle Conder

      Not that she wanted to attract Prince Rafaele. No, she only wanted his cooperation in a scheme that, in the end, would serve him as equally as it would her by restoring cordial relations between their two nations. A scheme that had seemed a lot easier to follow through on when she’d gone over it late at night in her bed than in the cold light of day.

      Trying to remain positive, Alexa slipped on her heels and smoothed her hands down her bespoke gown, ignoring how the clever creation made her feel both elegant and naked—which, according to her exuberant assistant, was the whole point of the design.

      ‘You will feel sexy and alluring,’ Nasrin had assured her when she’d first set eyes on the dress. ‘And every man in the room will look at you and want you.’

      Right now she felt as sexy and alluring as a tree. And she didn’t want every man in the room looking at her. She was nervous enough thinking about one man looking at her.

      She picked up the dossier Nasrin had put together on Prince Rafaele last week, rifling through photo after photo of him attending parties and movie premieres every other week. Vastly wealthy in his own right, he owned an empire of nightclubs and bars across Europe that, once opened, became the only place to be seen. ‘Dens of iniquity, her father had once disparaged.

      An unwanted shiver shot through her as she gazed at a shirtless photo of the Prince holding onto a sail line on the deck of a yacht. His white trousers were flattened against his muscular thighs by the breeze, his dark shoulder-length hair streaming out behind him, his broad chest deeply tanned to the colour of the teak deck. His face was turned towards the camera and the lens had lovingly captured his perfect wide smile, hawkish features and startling blue eyes as he laughed at something in the distance.

      The caption underneath read: The Rebel Prince in search of sun, fun and adventure.

      Alexa studied his image. Despite his relaxed pose there was something about the way he held himself that said Danger…beware. A jaded slant to his lips that indicated that he had seen everything there was to see in life, and was surprised by none of it. Which would be a good thing if he went along with her plan because their break-up would seem inevitable: the Playboy Prince and the shrinking violet could never have lasted. Not that she was a shrinking violet. She just chose not to make waves if she didn’t have to.

      ‘Hot, isn’t he?’ Nasrin said as she glanced at the photo before running a practised eye over Alexa. ‘You look stunning, Your Highness. The Prince won’t be able to resist you.’

      While Alexa appreciated Nasrin’s optimism, she knew from personal experience that men found her all too easy to resist. ‘More likely he’ll laugh in my face.’ She closed the file. ‘And if he’s that opposed to marriage he might not even go for a temporary engagement.’

      ‘But you have an ace up your sleeve. If he agrees, it could help settle all the bad blood between our nations. Of course he’ll go for that. And the engagement would only be temporary. Unless…’ Nasrin’s pretty eyes sparkled mischievously ‘…you fall in love with each other.’

      Alexa shook her head. Nasrin had a romantic nature that no amount of rational conversation could extinguish. And while Alexa might have once craved love and a happy-ever-after too, she’d been disappointed enough in the past not to wait around for it.

      Love wasn’t as important as dignity. Self-respect. Objectivity. And imagining the Prince of Santara falling in love with her, or her with him, was frankly hilarious.

      ‘That’s as likely to happen as the moon is to turn blue,’ she said dryly.

      ‘If you wish hard enough, Your Highness, you’ll get whatever you ask for.’

      Alexa knew that rarely happened either.

      ‘Fortunately, I don’t want the Prince’s love. Just his co-operation.’

      ‘Then go get it,’ Nasrin urged with a flourish.

      Alexa smiled. Nasrin had been like a gift when she’d come to work for her after Sol had died, organising her life and making her smile again with her chatty, easy nature. Everything else had felt so oppressive at the time, oppressive and overwhelming, during those dark days.

      Not that she begrudged her role as the future Queen of Berenia. She didn’t because she loved her country, and her countrymen, and she wanted to do the best job for them in Sol’s stead. She wanted to make her father proud. And if the Prince went along with her plan she could do that. She could help rebuild relations between Berenia and Santara, and buy herself the necessary time to make a marriage that not only pleased her father but herself as well.

      The decider would be whether or not she could implement a plan that had seemed perfectly logical at inception, but now felt desperately naive.

      But if the Prince turned her down she’d just have to find someone else. Because the alternative—marrying the man who was on top of her father’s list of eligible suitors—didn’t bear thinking about.

      Rafe gazed around the ballroom of the Santarian Summer Palace, a place he’d spent many formative years, with mixed emotions. As a general rule he tried not to return here very often, not only because it didn’t hold the best memories, but because when he’d left Santara as a disaffected teenager he’d cut all ties with his nation.

      And he wasn’t sorry that he had. He didn’t miss the life here. He didn’t miss the sun that was hot enough most of the year to blister paint, and he didn’t miss the endless round of lacklustre royal duties his father had expected him to carry out as the second son of Santara. The less important son. He didn’t miss having his ideas shot down in flames by a man who had never understood his drive and ambition to forge his own path in life.

      ‘It’s lucky you’re a prince, sibi,’ his father had often snarled. ‘You’d amount to nothing if you weren’t.’

      Hard-nosed and narrow-minded, his father had treated opposing opinions as little more than ripples on a quiet pond.

      Rafe had learned not to care, disconnecting from his father, and rubbing his nose in it any chance that he got. And despite—or perhaps because of—his father’s convictions that he wouldn’t amount to anything he’d made a success of his life.

      He’d broken free of the constraints of royal duty and lived life on his own terms. Not that his father was around to see it. His death when Rafe had been eighteen was the very thing that had set him free. Or rather his brother had set him free when he’d stepped into the role of King at nineteen and given Rafe permission to spread his wings.

      Returning from studying in the US at the time, Rafe knew that Jag could have used his insider knowledge and support, and it was only now, looking back, that he understood the sacrifice his brother had made for him, shouldering the burden of a troubled nation on his own and never asking anything of Rafe in return.

      Once sharing what he would have said was an unbreakable bond, their relationship had grown strained with distance and Rafe was never sure how to bridge the gulf without losing himself in the process. Still, he owed Jag a debt of gratitude, even if his brother didn’t think so.

      Catching the direction of his thoughts before they progressed any further, Rafe shook them off with well-practised ease. This was partly the reason he hated returning home. The memories, the choked feeling of constraint and the heaviness that came over him that wasn’t a part of the life that he lived now. A life based on unsurpassed pleasure, beauty and freedom. A life he lived predominantly in England, where he’d used a stellar investment in technology while attending Cambridge to purchase his first bar and nightclub. He had ‘the touch’ some said, an innate ability to tap into what his clientele wanted and to transform any venue he took over into the hottest place in town.

      Which often made him the hottest property in town, pursued again and again by women looking to change his mind about remaining single.