The Prince's Cinderella Bride. Christine Rimmer

She’d yet to tell Syd the truth. And she wanted to be Max’s lover as much as he wanted to be hers.

      However, she wanted the life she had planned for herself more. Risking all of her dreams on a love affair? She’d tried that once. It hadn’t ended well.

      He gave her a slow nod. “Lani.” A shiver went through her—just from the sound of her name in his mouth.

      “Hi, Max,” she chirped way too brightly.

      “Go on, do your work. I’m not here to distract you.”

      Liar. “Great.” She flashed him a smile as bright and fake as her tone and turned her gaze back to her laptop.

      He walked by her table on his way to the stairs that led to the upper level. She stared a hole in her laptop screen and saw him pass as a blur of movement, his footfalls hushed on the inlaid floor. He mounted the stairs, his back to her. The temptation was too great. She watched him go up.

      At the top, he disappeared from sight and she heard another door open, no doubt to one of the locked rooms, the vaults where the rarest books and documents were kept. She wasn’t allowed into any of those special rooms without the watchful company of the ancient scholar who acted as palace librarian or one of his two dedicated assistants.

      In fact, she wouldn’t be allowed into the library at all at eight o’clock at night if it wasn’t for Max.

      A year ago, he’d presented her with her own key to the ornate, book-lined, two-story main room. To her, it was a gift beyond price. Now, whenever she wanted to go there, anytime of day or night, she could let herself in and be surrounded by beautiful old books, by a stunning array of original materials for her research.

      Library hours were limited and pretty much coincided with the hours when she needed to be with Trev and Ellie. However, most days from about 5:00 p.m. on, Rule and Sydney enjoyed time alone with each other and their children—usually at their villa. They welcomed Lani as part of the family if she wanted to stay on in the evening, but they had no problem if she took most nights off to work on her latest book.

      With the key, she could spend as many evening hours as she pleased at the library. And later, at bedtime, her room in the family’s palace apartment was right there waiting. Then, early in the morning, it was only a brisk walk along landscaped garden paths down Cap Royale, the rocky hill on which the palace stood, to Fontebleu and the villa.

      Pure heaven: the laws, culture and history of Montedoro at her fingertips in the lovely, silent library with its enormous mahogany reading tables and carved, velvet-upholstered chairs. Yes, there were some language issues for her. Much of the original material was in French or Spanish. The French, she managed all right with the aid of her rusty college French and a couple of French/English dictionaries. She knew a little Spanish, but not as much as she probably should, given her Latino heritage. Max, however, spoke and read Spanish fluently and was always happy to translate for her, so the Spanish texts were completely accessible to her, too. Until New Year’s, anyway.

      It had worked out so perfectly. Lani stayed at the palace several nights a week. She took her laptop and worked for hours. No one disturbed her in the library, not in the evening.

      No one but Max—though he didn’t really disturb her. He came to the library at night to work, too. An internationally respected scholar and expert on all things Montedoran, he’d written a book about the special, centuries-long relationship between Montedoro and her “big sister,” France. He’d also penned any number of articles on various points of Montedoran law and history. And he traveled several times a year to speak at colleges, events and consortia around the world.

      Before New Year’s, when he would join her in the library, they would sit in companionable silence as she wrote and he checked his sources or typed notes for an upcoming paper or speech. He’d always shown respect for her writing time, and she appreciated his thoughtfulness.

      Sometimes, alone together in the quiet, they would put their work aside and talk. And not only in the library. Often when they met in the gardens or at some event or other, they might talk for hours. They had the same interests—writing and history and anything to do with Montedoro.

      They’d shared a special kind of friendship.

      Until New Year’s. Until she finally had to admit that she’d done it again: gotten in too deep with the wrong guy when she needed to be concentrating on the goals she’d set for herself, the goals that she never quite seemed to reach, no matter how hard she worked.

      Right now, she should get up and leave—and she would, if only she hadn’t foolishly agreed that they could go back to the way they were before.

      Right. As if that was even possible.

      But still. She’d said she would try. And the hopeless romantic idiot within her wanted at the very least to remain friendly with him, to be his friend, which she had been before New Year’s, in spite of her denials the other day.

      So she stayed in her seat, laptop open in front of her.

      A full ten minutes passed before he reappeared on the stairs—ten minutes during which she did nothing but stare at the cursor on her screen and listen for the sound of his footsteps above and call herself five thousand kinds of stupid. When he finally did come down, he was carrying a stack of folders and books.

      She waited for him to engage her in some way, her teeth hurting she was clenching them so hard. But he only took a chair across and down from her, gave her another perfectly easy, friendly nod and bent his gorgeous head over the old books and papers.

      Well, okay. Apparently, he was just there to work.

      Which was great. Fabulous. She put her hands on her keyboard and her focus on the screen.

      Nothing happened. Her mind was a sloppy soup, a hot mess of annoyance, frustration and forbidden longing. She yearned to jump up and get out of there.

      But something—her pride or her promise to him yesterday, maybe—kept her sitting there, staring blankly at her own words, which right then might have been hieroglyphics for all the sense they made to her.

      Eventually, she managed to type a sentence. And then another. The writing felt stiff and unnatural. But sometimes you had to write through a distraction. Even a really big distraction, like a certain six-foot-plus hunk of regal manliness sitting across and down from you.

      For two full hours, she sat there. So did he, tapping away on a tablet computer, poring over the materials he’d brought down from upstairs. She sat there and she wrote. It was all just garbage she’d end up deleting, but so what? They were being as they used to be, sitting in silence, working in the library.

      Except that it was nothing like it used to be. Not to her, anyway. To her, the air felt electrically charged. Her tummy was one big knot, and the words she was writing made no sense at all.

      At ten after ten, she decided she’d sat there writing meaningless drivel and pretending there was nothing wrong for long enough. She closed her laptop, gathered up her stuff and rose.

      He glanced up then. “Leaving?”

      She hit him with another big, fake smile. “Yeah.” She hooked her purse on her shoulder and picked up her laptop. “Good night.”

      “Good night, Lani.” He bent his head to his notes again.

      And somehow, she couldn’t move. She stood there like a complete fool, staring at his shining, thick hair, at his impossibly broad shoulders to which his soft white sweater clung so lovingly. She wanted to drop back into her chair and ask him about his day, to tell him the real truth—that she missed him in the deepest, most elemental part of herself. That she wished things were different, but she was not a good choice for him as a friend or a lover or anything else, and he ought to know that….

      He glanced up a second time. “What is it?” he asked. Gently. Coaxingly.

      “Nothing,” she lied yet again.

      He began closing books and stacking papers. “I need to