The Scandalous Collection. Кейт Хьюит

he could. Comprehension came like a thunderclap. ‘You rang them? You tipped them off?’

      ‘I might have done.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘I want the whole world to know how I feel about you, Natalia. That I love you.’

      She let out a choked laugh, hardly able to believe this was real. ‘And if I didn’t want any reporters?’ she couldn’t help but ask, and he looked a little abashed.

      ‘I’m afraid, in this one instance, you have no choice. But in future I’ll guard our privacy with extreme care, I promise.’

      In future. The words caused a bubble of happiness to rise inside of her, shiny and translucent. ‘So just what are you going to tell these reporters?’

      ‘First things first.’ He reached for her and, surprised, Natalia came to him. His arms enfolded her and his lips found hers. Outside, the reporters were shouting in agitation and excitement, desperate to get a decent snap. Natalia pulled away.

      ‘We are going to be on the front page of every paper from here to New York.’

      ‘I don’t mind.’

      She stared at him. ‘Really?’

      ‘Really.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘In this one instance anyway. I want to show you I mean what I say. I love you and I’m happy for the whole world to know it.’

      ‘I love you too,’ Natalia said softly.

      ‘And then there’s this.’ Ben fished in his pocket and produced a small box of black velvet. ‘Natalia Santina, princess of my heart, will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?’

      Natalia blinked back tears as she gazed at the antique diamond surrounded by a circle of luminescent pearls. ‘Yes. Yes, I will.’

      He slid the gorgeous ring on her finger and then nodded towards the still-shouting paparazzi outside. ‘Then perhaps we should go and make an announcement before I whisk you away again. I can’t wait to tell the world about my wife-to-be.’

      Smiling, tears of joy still sparkling in her eyes, Natalia took his hand as she followed him out of the plane.

       EPILOGUE

      NATALIA was amazed at how easy everything became, with Ben at her side. Her parents were surprisingly and touchingly accepting of her engagement to Ben; her father King Eduardo said he could see how much Ben loved her. Even the Sheikh of Qadriah took the refusal of his offer with grace, laughingly saying he could hardly compete with a man who proposed with such style—and so publicly.

      They were married six weeks later, on a secluded beach on Santina, with no photographers or reporters in attendance. A single photograph of her and Ben was sold to a respectable newspaper for a six-figure sum that was donated to a charity for helping those with learning disabilities. After years of shameful silence, Natalia went public with her own dyslexia and was now on the board of the charity and receiving tutoring herself to help her with reading and writing skills.

      Their future felt as bright and newly minted as the sun that rose in the pearly pink dawn sky the morning after their wedding. Natalia stood in front of the sliding glass door in Ben’s beach house, watching the sun rise higher and higher in the sky, growing in heat and radiance, spreading its healing rays across the earth.

      Ben came up behind her, slipping his arms around her waist, and kissed her neck before resting his chin on her head.

      ‘I’m just thinking about that bet of ours,’ she said, and she heard him chuckle.

      ‘And?’

      ‘I won.’

      ‘So you did.’

      ‘You’re mine to command for the day,’ she reminded him.

      ‘For the day,’ Ben agreed, ‘and for ever.’

      Natalia smiled, happiness buoying her soul. ‘Then let’s begin,’ she said, and turned to kiss him.

       The Man Behind the Scars

      Caitlin Crews

      To Josh Moon, who explained construction to me in very detailed terms that he will be sure I didn’t use at all in this book. But I did!

       CHAPTER ONE

      IT WAS one thing to boldly decide that you were going to capture a rich husband to save you from your life, and more to the point from the desperate financial situation you’d discovered you were in through no fault of your own, Angel Tilson thought a bit wildly as she stared around the glittering ballroom, but quite another thing to do it.

      She didn’t know what her problem was. She was standing knee-deep in a sea of wealthy, titled people. Everywhere she looked she saw money, nobility and actual royalty, filling the sparkling ballroom of the Palazzo Santina and threatening to outshine the massive chandeliers that hung dramatically overhead. She could feel the wealth saturating the very air, like an exclusive scent.

      The whole island seemed to be bursting at the seams with this prince, that sheikh and any number of flash European nobles, their ancient titles and inherited ranks hanging from their elegant limbs like the kind of fine accessories Angel herself could never afford. It was the first time in Angel’s twenty-eight years that she’d ever found herself in a room—a palace ballroom, to be sure, but it was still, technically, a room—with a selection of princes. As in, princes plural.

      She should have been overjoyed. She told herself she was. She’d come all the way from her questionable neighborhood in London to beautiful Santina, this little jewel of an island kingdom in the Mediterranean, in order to personally celebrate her favorite stepsister’s surprising engagement to a real, live prince. And she was happy for Allegra and her lovely Prince Alessandro—of course she was. Thrilled, in fact. But if sweet, sensible Allegra could bag herself the Crown Prince of Santina, Angel didn’t see why she couldn’t find herself a wealthy husband of her own here in this prosperous, red-roofed little island paradise, where rich men seemed to be as thick on the ground as Mediterranean weeds.

      He didn’t even have to be royal, she thought generously, eyeing the assorted male plumage before her from her position near one of the grand pillars that lined the great room—all Angel needed was a nice, big, healthy bank account.

      She wanted to pretend it was all a game—but it wasn’t. Not to put too fine a point on it, but she was desperate.

      She felt herself frown then, and made a conscious effort to smooth her expression away into something more enticing. Or at least something vaguely pleasant. Scowling was hardly likely to appeal to anyone, much less inspire sudden marriage proposals from the sort of men who could buy all the smiles they liked, the way common folk like Angel bought milk and eggs.

      “You can just as easily smile as frown, love,” her mother had always said in that low, purring way of hers, usually punctuated with one of Chantelle’s trademark sexy smirks or bawdy laughs. That and “why not marry a rich one if you must marry one at all” constituted the bulk of the maternal advice Chantelle—never Mum, always Chantelle, no age ever mentioned in public, thank you—had offered. But thinking about her conniving, thoughtless mother did not help. Not now, while she was standing knee-deep in another one of Chantelle’s messes.

      Hurt and fury and incomprehension boiled inside of her all over again as she thought of the fifty thousand quid her mother had run up on a credit card she’d “accidentally” taken out in Angel’s name. Angel had discovered the horrifying