Off-Limits to the Crown Prince

by Kali Anthony

  ‘I love you even more.’

  He took her hand, running his thumb over her wedding ring and her engagement ring. The ring, which he’d had made especially for her. Their love was so bright and new he wanted gems to reflect that truth. Reflect her. A large emerald the colour of her eyes, flanked by two rubies, the colour of his endless love.

  ‘Never doubt my feelings.’

  ‘I never do.’

  He smiled again, slipped his hands into the warm silk of her hair. Alessio relished the lifetime of these moments ahead of them. A future which held her in it was one to anticipate and cherish. Then he dropped his mouth to hers. Kissed her welcoming lips. And spent the afternoon in this pavilion, once built to love, proving their words to be true.

  * * *

  If you were blown away by Off-Limits to the Crown Prince make sure to check out these other stories by Kali Anthony!

  Revelations of His Runaway Bride

  Bound as His Business-Deal Bride

  Available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Married for One Reason Only by Dani Collins.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  ORIEL CUVIER OPENED her hotel room door anticipating birthday roses and confronted a cleaning gent with a mop.

  Mon Dieu, even the maintenance men were exceedingly attractive in Italy. Her startled gaze had gone straight to the yellow bucket, but as she dragged her attention upward, she arrived at eyes that were so dark they were nearly black. Much like the cup of espresso had awakened her senses an hour ago, she felt as though she was yanked from dull, mundane thoughts to a readiness to experience everything her day had to offer.

  “Mi scusi. I heard you were out.” His Italian was stilted, his smile a tense, flat stretch of his lips that apologized for his butchering of the language. “I was told to clean a wet.” His voice was as deeply seductive as Italians were purported to be while his accent and dark coloring suggested he was South Asian.

  Oriel had always felt an inexplicable kinship with people from that corner of the world, even though her parentage was supposedly a mixed couple from Eastern Europe.

  “En Français?” she suggested. “Or English?”

  “English. Thank you.” His speech became as crisp and flawless as a graduate from a British boarding school. “I was told you were out for the day and I should clean a spill.”

  Honestly, he could be employed in her line of work with those sharp cheekbones, sensual mouth, mussed high-top haircut and devil-may-care stubble. He was substantially taller than her five-eleven, and his broad shoulders strained the seams on his blue boiler suit.

  “I didn’t request anyone,” she said in bemusement.

  “Who is it?” Her agent, Payton, spoke in her ear.

  “Oh, one minute.” She had forgotten her call and pointed at her wireless earbud so the hotel worker would know she wasn’t speaking to him. “There’s a man at the door, but there seems to be a mistake. I didn’t call anyone.”

  “The maid texted me.” The cleaner brought his phone from his deep pocket.

  “The maids haven’t been in yet,” she said.

  How was this godlike, educated man pushing a string mop? With that build, he could be laying bricks or bouncing clubs at the very least—which would also be a complete waste of a startlingly magnificent presence. The camera would love him.

  She loved him. Oriel saw beautiful men all day every day, but none had ever emanated this sort of powerful energy that almost had her taking a step back in awe while wanting to bask in his presence at the same time. It was like an electric current that made her nerve endings tingle.

  And even though handsome men rarely affected her, she had a nearly unbearable urge to twirl her hair and cock her head and wait breathlessly for him to speak.

  “Send him away,” Payton said in her ear.

  She probably should have. Her career was her entire focus these days, providing the sense of achievement that otherwise eluded her. She would never admit to anyone the profound sense of inadequacy that stalked her, or that she had a hole inside her that craved approval and attention. It didn’t even make sense. She had everything anyone could want—health, wealth, intelligence, and independence along with looks that ticked all the boxes for modern ideals of beauty.

  She would be mocked to death if she revealed her feeling of being “less than,” so she pushed her angst into climbing toward the very top of her field, allowing nothing to distract her, including men.

  Suddenly she had nothing but time for watching how this stranger swiped his thumb across a screen, though. He studied it with an air of concentration. The strength of her fascination was embarrassing, but she couldn’t help it.

  He flicked his gaze up to meet hers, catching her giving him moon eyes like a love-struck adolescent. It caused a swoop in her stomach as though she’d crested a wave.

  “My mistake. Wrong floor. And my colleague has dealt with the issue.” He pocketed the phone while his penetrating stare kept hold of hers.

  Her skin tightened and her bones grew soft. She knew when a man was interested in her. She rarely reciprocated such things, but here she stood. Involuntarily reciprocating with every fiber of her being.

  It was disconcerting to be so overcome. To feel so helpless to do anything but stand there while he took in her snug, high-waisted corduroy trousers with matching suspenders over a low-cut floral top.

  His mouth relaxed, and the angle of his shoulders eased. It wasn’t all sexual interest, though. There was something else in his study. Not calculation, precisely. Investigation? He liked what he saw, but he was delving into her eyes as though looking for answers to unasked questions.

  She wasn’t sure what that cooler side of his appraisal was about, but it was far more unsettling than if he’d worn a wolfish grin and said something suggestive. She could have handled that with flirt or frost. Whatever this was made her neck prickle with premonition. This man was going to change her life.

  How silly, she scolded herself, trying to pretend she wasn’t flushing with her reaction. But she was filled with anticipation and something else—her own curiosity. A far-reaching sense of possibility. Excitement.

  “Was there anything else I could do for you while I’m here?” he asked in a bland tone.

  The tension left the air with a withering dissipation.

  She was reading him wrong, she realized with chagrin. He was an employee of the hotel waiting for her to dismiss him. That’s all the lengthy, charged silence had been about. Could he tell she was drooling over him, wanting him to feel the same way she did? How mortifying.

  “Yes, actually.” As a hot, self-conscious blush stung her cheeks, she latched on to the first excuse she could think of to cover why she had kept him lingering. “The ceiling fan in my bedroom is rattling.” It had driven her crazy all night. “I haven’t had time to report it. I wondered if that was something you could fix?”

  In the pause, she could have sworn she heard the gears in his head give a whir of computation. Then, “I can have a look.”

  Oriel’s heart was pounding with nerves, but she pressed her back to the wall, allowing him to enter the small passageway.

  He left the mop and bucket outside the door and briefly crowded her, seeming to steal all the oxygen from this tiny foyer.

  Her instincts prickled another warning, not because she thought he posed a physical danger, but from awareness of the power that radiated from him. He could seduce her without even trying. Her blood
was turning to molasses in the seconds that he loomed close and allowed one corner of his mouth to dent. Those dark eyes of his promised long, sensual nights.

  She had never felt this way on meeting a man. It was pure magic, holding his gaze and feeling connected at a level that went far beyond what happened between strangers.

  Then his expression hardened with refusal. He snapped his gaze forward and stepped into the room.

  He knows. And had decided he didn’t want to make a play for her.

  Her whole body went into free fall, and her self-worth crumpled on impact. Oriel felt rejection very deeply. She had her theories as to why—being adopted and an only child. In her observations, people who had spats with siblings and were still loved afterward had more resilience to the small scuffs of life.

  She hated that she allowed small rebuffs to strike such a deep place inside her, but they always did. The tiniest slights landed directly on that achingly tender center of her soul.

  It was such a perverse reaction, because coming on to a guest could cost this man his job. She had no room in her life for romance, anyway. What did she care if a man she would never see again thought she was worth his time or not?

  Nevertheless, she was so stung she thought about asking him to come back later, but he was already trying the switch on the wall and looking at the fan over the coffee table. He wasn’t wearing a ring and didn’t have a tan line where one was missing, she noted. She was annoyed with herself for looking.

  “The one in the bedroom,” she murmured, waving across the small lounge.

  “You didn’t let him in.” Payton’s voice startled her again.

  She seriously had to get her head on straight. “I did. It’s fine.”

  “This is how scandals are created!”

  “With me doing what? I live like a nun.” She did more scandalous things in public, parading down runways in her underwear, than she did in private. She didn’t travel with any jewelry worth stealing or have any secret predilections worth exposing, either.

  She lowered onto the sofa, deliberately turning her back on the man flipping the switch inside her bedroom door. Trying not to think about how his shoes had looked far pricier than the kind she expected a man in his profession to be able to afford.

  Perhaps they’d been left by a guest and happened to fit him. She occasionally left wine or clothing behind when she traveled. Most hotels had an arrangement in which the housekeeping staff could divvy up abandoned items as a small job perk.

  “If someone saw you letting him in, it could ruin the interest from Duke Rhodes,” Payton said.

  Ugh. Right. The reason for his call. Oriel had been introduced to the aging action star at a cocktail party a few nights ago.

  “Do you really think I should go to Cannes with him? He’s twice my age.”

  “He likes you.”

  “We spoke for five minutes.” He had tried to kiss her on the lips. “I honestly couldn’t say whether I liked him or not.” She hadn’t. “Have you spoken to him? Caught a whiff of his breath?” she added with a wince of recollection.

  “It’s part of his image that he always has a cigarette in his hand.”

  “And a drink in the other? He smelled like scotch.” The sour, lingering stench of heavy drinking had emanated from his pores.

  “It’s good scotch, angel. He smashes box offices. The cameras follow him everywhere. Do you want to take your career to the next level or not?”

  “Of course, but that’s my only week of vacation this year.” And her parents were celebrating their thirtieth anniversary. “It will chop into the first two days of it.”

  “You can fly straight from Cannes to Tours. His people will pay for all of it.”

  Payton was the best in the business. One didn’t move from runway to international ad campaigns without a man like him paving the way. Thanks to him, she no longer shared a room with other models and was given first-class suites like this one, with gorgeous views of the Milan skyline.

  Even so, she found his strategy disheartening. What about working hard? What about advancing on merit? Why resort to timeworn gimmicks? Who would respect her if she couldn’t respect herself?

  “I’m concerned about what a man like Duke Rhodes would expect if—”

  A dull thump and a sharp curse had her sitting up and twisting to see into the bedroom.

  The maintenance man had draped a spare blanket over the bed and was flat in the middle of it, pushing the fan off his chest while blood welled on his forehead.

  “I have to go.” She pulled out her earbuds and leaped to her feet.

  * * *

  “Be careful. Stay on the bed,” Oriel Cuvier rushed in to say. “I’ll call down for help.”

  Vijay Sahir sat up to set the contraption on the floor. “I’m fine.”

  He was rattled and bruised, but it was his own fault. He’d been scanning the room for clues about her, eavesdropping on her conversation while thinking less than honorable thoughts about her and the bed he was standing on.

  He’d been paying no attention to the fan he’d been pretending to fix, giving the housing an absent wiggle. The damned thing had come down on top of him, ringing his bell hard enough to leave him angry with himself for being so careless.

  “That could have come down on me last night.” She eyed the wires dangling from the ceiling. “Your head is bleeding. You need first aid, and I need to make a proper complaint.”

  She stepped around the broken fan and reached for the cordless phone in its bedside charger.

  “No!” He threw himself across the bed to catch her wrist. “They’ll fire me.”

  They wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He didn’t work here. Which would be even trickier to explain.

  “Well...” Even wearing a frown of consternation, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  Her profile said she was of mixed Romanian and Turkish blood, adopted at birth by a French couple. Vijay would be damned if she didn’t look Indian with that natural golden tone in her skin and those strong brows. Hell, in person she looked even more like Bollywood legend Lakshmi Dalal with her big brown eyes, her delicate bone structure in an oval face, her near-black hair in an untamed disarray of wavy curls. Her mouth was naked, but still made a bold, full-lipped statement when she pursed it stubbornly.

  “I won’t let them fire you.” She stood tall and wore the confidence of wealth.

  Don’t be a hypocrite, Vijay. You’re wealthy, too.

  Even more so very soon, but he had a well-earned aversion to spoiled heiresses.

  “I’m still new here.” Whether she took that as new to this hotel or this country didn’t matter. Both were very weak versions of the truth. He unconsciously stroked his thumb against her incredibly soft skin in persuasion.

  Her breath caught, and a confused spark flashed into her eyes, one that arced across to stab an answering heat into the pit of his belly.

  Everything about her was slicing his brain into sections, making it difficult to remember she was the subject of an inquiry. Or possibly an innocent bystander chosen for her resemblance to a Bollywood icon. Either way, she was the key to ensuring Vijay’s sister wasn’t conned out of her fortune.

  Vijay made himself release Oriel’s wrist and rolled to his feet on the far side of the bed. “If you give me an hour, I’ll have all of this sorted,” he promised. “I need to fetch a few tools.”

  He wasn’t a certified electrician, but he could rewire a fan.

  “I actually have an appointment.” She glanced at the clock.

  “I can let myself in.” That’s what he’d been planning to do with his ill-gotten, all-access housekeeping card. He had taken a chance, hoping she would already be out for the day. The mop had been a prop, the knock a precaution.

  “I suppose.” Her doubtful gaze dropped to the name tag on his borrowed coveralls, then
came back to his eyebrow. “You’re still bleeding. Did you realize that? Please sit down.” She nodded at the edge of the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

  He touched the wet trickle that was winding its way down his temple. When he saw the blood, he swiped the sleeve of the coveralls across it, leaving a dark streak on the heavy blue cotton.

  “I’ll survive. Don’t worry about it,” he called.

  “No, let me.” She came back with a small bag marked with a red cross. “I asked you to fix the fan. This is my fault.”

  He hesitated, then sat on the bed and closed his eyes, trying not to picture the way the suspenders framed her breasts and cleavage so enticingly. He briefly thought about coming clean and saying, Look, I need your DNA.

  A container ship of worms would open at that point, and for what? The chance that Oriel was related to Lakshmi Dalal was near zero. As far as Vijay could discern, a con man was leaping on Oriel’s resemblance to Lakshmi to get his hands on the money Vijay and his sister would make as they merged ViKay Security Solutions with a bigger, global enterprise.

  On the very slim chance that their “client” was telling the truth and Lakshmi did have a lost child out there, Vijay owed the man his utmost discretion. The mystery seemed too coincidental to be believed, though. When Vijay had booked this trip to Europe, he had seen an opportunity to get to the bottom of things. He’d tacked on this side trip to Milan so he could intercept Oriel. All he had to do was pretend to be a hotel worker for another few minutes, steal her toothbrush, and get on with his life.

  There was a tearing sound, the pungent scent of alcohol, then a cool swipe on his brow that left a sting in its wake.

  He couldn’t help his small wince.

  “Sorry.” She blew on it, making his eyes snap open.

  Her blouse gaped, and he was staring straight down the shadowed valley between her lace-cupped breasts. Lovely, abundant breasts that his palms itched to gather and massage.