“Cronies?” Maude’s head came up. “Sopi, he’s thirty. Unmarried. And it’s time he changed that.” Maude had been fingering through a collection of fabric swatches. She held up a square of cranberry silk. “Would this clash with Nanette’s hair, do you think?”
As was often the case when Sopi spoke with her stepmother, Sopi’s brain was racing to catch up. Even as she tried to formulate arguments against whatever Maude was demanding, she knew the struggle was futile. Her stepmother had gained control of the spa when Sopi’s father died and kept a firm grasp on it. Sopi didn’t have the resources to fight her for it, and Maude would no doubt clean out what was left of the spa’s available cash to repulse an attack. Sopi would be bankrupt whether she won or lost.
Sopi’s only choice was to try to keep the place solvent until she had enough in her savings account to mount a proper legal challenge. Maybe it was a fool’s dream, but it kept her going.
So she was always mentally planning how to mitigate or adapt to or accomplish whatever ridiculous thing Maude insisted had to happen while doing the math, trying to calculate when she would be able to put her foot down and hold her ground.
Today, amid that familiar scramble, Sopi’s brain crashed into Maude’s end goal. Maude wanted to marry one of her daughters to a prince. To a man who lived in a kingdom—or was it a principality? Who cared? It was far, far away.
If one left, they all would.
A tentative ray of hope gleamed like a beacon at the end of a long, dark tunnel, breaking a smile across Sopi’s face.
“You know what, Maude? You’re right. This sounds like a tremendous opportunity. I’ll start prepping for it.” Sopi’s pulse pounded so hard, her ears rang.
“Thank you,” Maude said in beleaguered tone that echoed with It’s about time. “Leave moving the girls out of the penthouse until the last moment. They don’t want to be inconvenienced any more than necessary.”
Sopi nearly choked on her tongue, but she bit down on it instead. If she played her cards right, and if she threw her stepsisters in front of this Prince Charlemaine or whoever the heck he was, then maybe, just maybe, she could free herself of her stepfamily forever.
It was such an exciting prospect, she hummed cheerfully as she left Maude’s office and headed upstairs to strip beds and clean toilets.
CHAPTER ONE
RHYS CHARLEMAINE WOKE before the sun was up. Before any of his staff began creeping into his suite with fresh coffee and headlines and messages that required responses.
He didn’t ring for any of them. What privacy he had was precious. Plus, he had withstood enough bustle and fussing yesterday when he and his small army of assistants, bodyguards and companions had arrived. The owner of this place, Maude Brodeur, had insisted on personally welcoming him. She had hung around for nearly two hours, dropping names and reminiscing about her first husband, whom she had cast as a contemporary equal to Rhys’s father—which he wasn’t. He had been a distant cousin to a British earl and largely unknown.
Blue blood was blue blood, however, and she had clearly been using the association to frame her pretty, well-educated daughters as suitable for a man next in line to a throne. Her daughters had perched quietly while she rattled on, but there’d been an opportunistic light in their eyes.
Rhys sighed. If he had a euro for every woman who wanted to search his pockets for a wedding ring, he would have more money than all the world’s tech billionaires combined.
Instead he had a decent fortune built on shrewd investments, some of it in tech, but much of it in real estate development. Half of it belonged to his brother, Henrik. Rhys handled their private interests while Henrik looked after the throne’s finances. They each had their lane, but they drove them side by side, always protecting the other’s flank. Rhys might be the spare, a prince to his brother the king, but they were a solid unit.
Even so, he and Henrik didn’t always agree. This detour to a tiny off-grid village in Canada had had his brother lifting his brows with skepticism. “Sounds too good to be true,” had been Henrik’s assessment.
Rhys’s antennae were up as well. On the surface, the property in a valley reminiscent of Verina’s surrounding Alps appeared ripe for exploitation, especially with its hot spring aquifer. That alone made it a unique energy opportunity. The remote location would be a challenge, of course, but there was a modest ski hill across the lake. It drew locals and guests of this hotel but could also be picked up for a song and further developed.
Maude was claiming she wanted to keep the sale of the spa quiet for “personal reasons,” pretending she didn’t need the money. Normally, Rhys would steer clear of someone attempting to pull the wool over his eyes. He had his own reason for accepting her invitation, however, and it had nothing to do with whether or not this place was a sound investment.
Rhys shifted his pensive gaze across the frozen lake, searching for answers that couldn’t be solved with money and power. He needed a miracle, something he didn’t believe in. He was a man of action who made his own destiny, but the only action available to him at the moment was a path littered with disloyalty to his brother, if not the crown.
He supposed he should be thankful the doctors had finally discovered the reason Henrik and his wife, Elise, were failing to conceive. They’d caught Henrik’s testicular cancer early enough that treatment had a reasonable chance of success. With luck, Rhys would not assume the throne. Not soon, at any rate, but Henrik would almost certainly be sterile.
That meant the task of producing future progeny to inherit the throne had fallen into Rhys’s lap.
Which meant he needed a wife.
He tried not to dwell on how treasonous that felt. Henrik had worked tirelessly to regain their rightful place in Verina. Doing so had nearly cost him the woman he loved. The royalists who had supported their return from exile had expected Henrik to marry an aristocrat, not a philosopher’s daughter. Somehow, Henrik had overcome their objections only to come up against the inability to make an heir.
Henrik and Elise deserved children. They would be excellent parents. Given everything Henrik had gone through, the throne ought to go to his child, not Rhys’s.
None of this felt right to him.
A blue glow came on below his window, dragging Rhys out of his brooding. The lights in the free-form mineral bath illuminated the mist rising off the placid water, beckoning him.
His security detail had reported that the guest register was swollen with female names, many of them bearing titles or related to one. He wasn’t surprised his intention to ski here had been leaked to the press, drawing the usual suspects. He had counted on Maude being canny enough to see the value in a full house. It made the place look successful and ensured she would still have a nice influx of cash even if he turned down her offer to purchase. She might even have thought a bevy of beautiful naked women would sway him to buy.
It wouldn’t, but he appreciated the expediency of having a curated selection of eligible women brought to one place for his consideration.
He had no choice but to marry and was down to his last moments of bachelorhood. He decided to make the most of them. He dropped the pajama pants he’d slipped on when he rose and left them on the floor, mostly to reassure his staff that he hadn’t been kidnapped. He’d learned to pick up after himself during his years in exile with his brother. He was a passable cook and could trim his own beard, not that he did those things for himself anymore.
He was a prince again, one who had believed his primary function was to ensure his family’s economic viability while his brother ruled their country and provided heirs. His responsibilities were expanding, though, and the one duty he would happily perform—taking his brother’s place while he battled his illness—was not open to him.
Heart heavy, he shrugged on his monogrammed robe, stepped into his custom-sewn slippers, searched out the all-access card Maude had given him then took the elevator to the treatment level.
* * *
Sopi was so tired
, she thought she was hallucinating when the man appeared across the mist rising off the pool. The spa area wasn’t yet open, and the locks were on a timer. The only means of entry was the use of a staff card, and she was the employee on shift. The man’s robe wasn’t hotel issue, either, but that wasn’t too unusual. Frequent guests often brought their own robes so it was easier to track where they’d left them. Even so, she’d never seen anyone show up in anything like that gorgeous crimson with gold trim and embroidered initials.
As she squinted her tired eyes at the man’s stern profile and closely trimmed beard, she recognized—
Oh God. He was completely naked under that robe!
She should have looked away but didn’t. Couldn’t.
Through the steam rising off the pool, she watched him unbelt and open his robe, drop it off his shoulders to catch on his bent arms. The muscled globes of his bare butt appeared as he turned and slid free of the robe, draping it over the glass half wall that formed the rail around the pool. He was sculpted like an Olympic swimmer with broad shoulders, narrow hips and muscular thighs.
He pivoted back to face her across the pool, utterly, completely, gloriously naked. A shadow of hair accented the intriguing contours that sectioned his chest and abdomen streaking out to dark nipples and arrowing down his eight-pack abs to—
He dived into the water, shallow and knife sharp, barely making a ripple.
She pushed her face into the stack of towels she held, no longer breathing as she tried to suppress her shock and abject mortification. She fought to push back a rising blush of hot embarrassment and something she didn’t even recognize.
Because she had not only seen their special guest, the prince of Verina, in a private moment. She’d seen the crown jewels.
And of course she was standing on the far side of the pool where the spare caddy of clean towels was tucked beneath an overhang, next to the bar that operated in the summer months.
To escape, she would have to circle the deck, walk over the little bridge that separated the main pool from the portion that jutted out from the cliff and move past the robe he’d thrown over the rail near the glass doors into the building.
There was a small splash of water breaking as he surfaced near her feet.
“Good morning.” His voice was surprised and carried the gravel of early morning.
Oh God. She made herself lift her face and briefly—very briefly—glanced his way.
Okay. Only his head and shoulders were visible. That ought to have made breathing possible, but dear Lord, he was good-looking. His cheekbones were carved marble above his sleek beard. Was he deliberately using the short, dark stubble to accentuate how beautiful his mouth was? Because it framed lips that managed to be both well defined and masculine, swirling wicked thoughts into her middle just looking at them. His hair was slicked back, his eyes laser blue and lazily curious.
“En français?” he tried.
“What? I mean, pardon? I mean, no. I speak English. Good morning,” she managed very belatedly and clumsily.
At least he didn’t know who she was. She had put on her one decent dress last night, planning to form part of the greeting party with Maude and her stepsisters. A last-minute mix-up with a delivery had had her changing into jeans and boots to drive two hours each way so she could fetch high-grade coffee beans and other groceries that Maude had ordered specifically for the prince’s menu.
“I’m restocking towels.” Not staring or tongue-tied or anything. She hurried to shove the stack into the caddy, snatching one back. “I’ll leave this one with your robe. Our…um…European hour is actually…um…ten o’clock. At night.”
“Euro—? Oh.” The corner of his mouth dug in on one side. “Am I supposed to wear a swimsuit?”
“Most of our guests do.” All of them. “Aside from the few who prefer to sauna au naturel. At night,” she repeated.
“The sun hasn’t come up. Technically it’s still night.” He lifted a dark winged brow at the gleam of bright steel along the seam where pearly peaks met charcoal sky.
“Point taken.” She drummed her fingers against her thigh, debated a moment then decided to tease him right back. “But technically the pool isn’t open yet. You’re breaking our rules either way.”
“What’s the penalty? Because I don’t expect anyone here packed a bikini top. Only a few will bother with bottoms. We don’t wear them at the health spas at home. I expect that’s where your ‘European hour’ label came from.”
Pressed against the wall of the pool, he looked exactly like every other guest who might fold his arms against the edge and gaze at the view or strike up a friendly conversation with passing staff.
Except she knew he was naked, and his banter was flipping her heart and fanning the nervous excitement in her stomach. She hugged the single towel to her middle, trying to still those butterflies.
“At least I understand why Maude didn’t want children running around this week. Apparently, we’re hosting a nudist convention.”
He smiled, the light in his eyes so warm she curled her toes in her sandals, unable to stem the shy smile that pulled at her own lips.
“You Americans are so adorably prudish.”
Oh no, he didn’t. She narrowed her eyes. “And you French are so—Oh, I’m sorry. Are you not French?” She batted her lashes as his good humor blanked to affront.
Since Maude’s announcement that he was coming here, she’d taken the time to learn that Verina was a small kingdom in the Alps between Switzerland, Germany and France. Verinians spoke all of those languages and, having overcome an uprising twenty years ago that had had their neighbors sniffing and circling, trying to extend their borders to encompass Verina for the next fifteen years, were fiercely patriotic to the flag they still flew.
“I find people from North America to have very conservative views about sex and nudity,” he clarified.
She nodded her forgiveness of his faux pas and explained, “We’re not that prudish in Canada. We keep our clothes on because we’re cold.” She pointed at the lazy drift of tiny flakes hitting the steam off the pool and dissolving. Strangely, she wasn’t feeling the chill nearly as much as she usually would, standing out here in the predawn frost. Heat radiated from her middle. Her joints were melting and growing loose.
“You must be in this pool often, though. You’ve never swum naked in it?”
“Never.” She couldn’t recall when she had last had a chance to swim at all. She vacuumed and scoured and restocked and never enjoyed the luxury she provided to everyone else.
If I can just get Maude and the girls out of here was her mantra. If she could take control of the books and balance them, quit financing trips and clothing for women who brought no value to the spa, only drama, she could relax instead of burning out.
“It’s very freeing. You should try it.”
“I’m sure it is.” He had no idea the constraints she was under, though.
“No time like the present.”
As she met his gaze with a rueful smile, certain he was mocking her for her modesty, something in his gaze made her heart judder to a stop in her chest then kick into a different rhythm.
He was looking at her with consideration, as though he’d suddenly noticed something about her that had snagged one hundred percent of his attention. As though he was serious about wanting her to strip naked and jump in the pool with him.
More insistent tugs and pulls accosted her midsection. A flush of sensual heat streaked up from her tense stomach, warming her chest and throat and cheeks. Her breasts grew heavy and tight.
She never reacted to men—not like this, all receptive and intrigued. Her last date had been in high school and ended with a wet kiss that hadn’t affected her nearly as strongly as this man’s steady gaze. The dating pool in Lonely Lake was very small unless she wanted to get together with guests, and she didn’t do that because they didn’t stick around.
That’s what this is, she realized, clunking back from a brief, floa
ty fantasy of a prince taking an interest in a nobody like her. This wasn’t real flirty banter. He wasn’t genuinely interested in her. He was only inviting her to join him in the way male guests occasionally did because she was here, not because he found her particularly attractive. How could he? She looked especially hellish this morning. She was frazzled and exhausted, no makeup, clothes rumpled as though she’d slept in them. Joke was on him. She hadn’t slept.
Maybe this wasn’t even happening. Maybe she would wake after being dragged from the igloo room and defrosted from a hypothermia-induced delirium.
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of company soon enough,” she said in a strangled voice. She nodded upward at the windows lighting behind curtains as guests began to stir. “I’ll check the saunas. They’re banked at night, but I’ll make sure they’re up to temperature for you.”
As the owner, Sopi could have asked that he wear a towel around the resort, but she didn’t want to introduce herself. She was too embarrassed at thinking, even for a second, that he might genuinely be interested in her.
Besides, if he climbed out to shake her hand, buck naked, she would die.
* * *
Rhys watched her walk away with a surprising clench of dismay, even though he knew better than to flirt with the help.
He hadn’t even realized anyone had been on the pool deck until he’d surfaced after swimming the length underwater. But there she was, face buried in a stack of towels like an ostrich, her dark hair gathered into a fraying knot, her uniform mostly shapeless except where it clung lovingly to a really nice ass.
Arrogant as he innately was, he didn’t expect servants to turn their face to the wall as his father had once told him his great-grandmother had demanded of palace staff.
This young woman had obviously recognized him. Nearly every woman of any age reacted to him—which he made a habit of ignoring. His reputation as a playboy was greatly exaggerated. Affairs complicated an already complex life. When he did entangle himself, he stuck with a long-term arrangement with a sophisticated partner, one who had a busy life herself. He kept ties loose until the woman in question began to suggest marriage would improve their relationship, invariably claiming it would “give us more time together” or “draw us closer”—two assumptions he knew would prove false.
His Darling Valentine Page 9