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       Leo stroked her cheek gently with one finger. ‘You’re lovely.’

      Alyse stared at him, ensnared by the heat of his gaze, the touch of his hand. She saw something hard in his gaze, something cynical in his smile, and still she couldn’t keep from wanting him.

      ‘I wonder,’ he mused softly, his finger still stroking her cheek, ‘how do you make something that’s been false, true? What’s fake, real?’

      Her heart seemed to burst within her, as if fireworks had gone off in her soul. The very fact that he was even asking the question gave her a hope that was painful in its intensity.

      ‘I want to,’ she whispered, her heart beating so hard now that it hurt, the thuds slamming her chest. ‘I want this to be real, Leo.’

      His lips twisted again, caught between a grimace and a smile. He bent his head, his lips a whisper away from hers.

      ‘This is real enough,’ he murmured, and then he kissed her.

       THE DIOMEDI HEIRS

       Who will become the next King of Maldinia?

      To restore the reputation of the monarchy, darkly brooding Prince Leo has sacrificed everything.

      His marriage might be for show, but the feelings his new bride Alyse evokes in him are threatening his iron-clad control.

      Black sheep Prince Alessandro has returned home to claim the throne—and the woman he discarded years ago—but he meets his match in the woman Liana has now become!

      The world’s media is waiting with bated breath for the estranged brothers to be reunited and the rightful King—with his chosen Queen—to be seated upon the throne!

      The Prince She Never Knew

      Kate Hewitt

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      KATE HEWITT discovered her first Mills & Boon^® romance on a trip to England when she was thirteen, and she’s continued to read them ever since. She wrote her first story at the age of five, simply because her older brother had written one and she thought she could do it too. That story was one sentence long—fortunately they’ve become a bit more detailed as she’s grown older. She has written plays, short stories and magazine serials for many years, but writing romance remains her first love. Besides writing, she enjoys reading, travelling and learning to knit.

      After marrying the man of her dreams—her older brother’s childhood friend—she lived in England for six years, and now resides in Connecticut with her husband, her three young children and the possibility of one day getting a dog.

      Kate loves to hear from readers—you can contact her through her website: www.kate-hewitt.com

       Recent titles by the same author:

      HIS BRAND OF PASSION

       (The Bryants: Powerful & Proud) IN THE HEAT OF THE SPOTLIGHT (The Bryants: Powerful & Proud) BENEATH THE VEIL OF PARADISE (The Bryants: Powerful & Proud) THE HUSBAND SHE NEVER KNEW

       Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To Maisey, Caitlin and Jennie, who first inspired me with the idea for this story! Love, K.

      Contents

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER ONE

      TODAY WAS HER wedding day. Alyse Barras gazed at her pale, pinched face in the mirror and decided that not all brides were radiant. As it happened, she looked as if she were on the way to the gallows.

      No, she amended, not the gallows; a quick and brutal end was not to be hers, but rather a long, drawn-out life sentence: a loveless marriage to a man whom she barely knew, despite their six-year engagement. Yet even so a small kernel of hope was determined to take root in her heart, to unfurl and grow in the shallowest and poorest of soils.

      Maybe he’ll learn to love me...

      Prince Leo Diomedi of Maldinia seemed unlikely to learn anything of the sort, yet still she hoped. She had to.

      ‘Miss Barras? Are you ready?’

      Alyse turned from her reflection to face one of the wedding coordinator’s assistants who stood in the doorway of the room she’d been given in the vast royal palace in Averne, Maldinia’s capital city, nestled in the foothills of the Alps.

      ‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ she replied, trying to smile, but everything in her felt fragile, breakable, and the curve of her lips seemed as if it could crack her face. Split her apart.

      The assistant Marina came forward, looking her over in the assessing and proprietary way Alyse had got used to in the three days since she’d arrived in Maldinia—or, really, the six years since she’d agreed to this engagement. She was a commodity to be bought, shaped, presented. An object of great value, to be sure, but still an object.

      She’d learned to live with it, although on today of all days—her wedding day, the day most little girls dreamed about—she felt the falseness of her own role more, the sense that her life was simply something to be staged.

      Marina twitched Alyse’s veil this way and that, until she gave a nod of satisfaction. It billowed gauzily over her shoulders, a gossamer web edged with three-hundred-year-old lace.

      ‘And now the dress,’ Marina said, and flicked her fingers to indicate that Alyse should turn around.

      Alyse moved slowly in a circle as Marina examined the yards of white satin that billowed out behind her, the lace bodice that hugged her breasts and hips and had taken eight top-secret fittings over the last six months. The dress had been the source of intense media speculation, the subject of hundreds of articles in tabloids, gossip magazines, even respected newspapers, television and radio interviews, celebrity and gossip blogs and websites.

      What kind of dress would the world’s real-life Cinderella—not a very creative way of typecasting her, but it had stuck—wear to marry her very own prince, her one true love?

      Well, this. And Alyse had had no say in it at all. It was a beautiful dress, she allowed as she caught a glance of the billowing white satin in the full-length mirror. She could hardly complain. She might have chosen something just