Falling For The Secret Princess

But she was beginning to weary of doing everything by the royal rules. She wanted her own life.

She couldn’t share any of that with Finn. Instead she aimed for impartial chit-chat. ‘I work in fashion,’ she said.

That wasn’t too much of a stretch of the truth. Organising her high-end fashion auctions was a job, if not a paid one.

‘Retail or wholesale?’

‘Retail.’

Her role often required several changes of formal clothing a day. That involved a lot of shopping in the fashion capitals of Europe. In fact, that had kicked off her idea for the auctions—she and other people in the public eye were expected by fashion-watchers to appear at functions in a different outfit each time. That meant expensive garments were often only worn once or twice.

‘You fit the part.’

His eyes lit with admiration as he looked at her simple sheath dress in a deep rose-pink overlaid with lace. It wasn’t silk, but it was a very good knock-off of a French designer whose couture originals took up considerable hanging space in her apartment-sized humidity-controlled closet back at the palace before they were moved on to auction.

‘Thank you,’ she said, inordinately pleased at the compliment. ‘What do you import and export?’ she asked, deflecting his attention from her.

‘High-end foods and liquor,’ he said. ‘It takes me all around the world.’

She nodded. ‘Hence your work with Party Queens?’

‘Exactly,’ he said.

She finished her champagne at the same time he did, then placed her glass on the wide veranda railing. Someone would be along to pick it up.

But Finn reached for it. ‘I’ll put that glass somewhere safer,’ he said.

Mistake, she thought as he took the glasses and placed them on a table just inside the doorway. Regular girl Natalie would not be used to household staff picking up after her.

Finn was back within seconds. ‘Tell me, Natalie, are you here with a partner?’

He glanced at the bare fingers of her left hand—without realising he did so, she thought. She did the same to him. No rings there either.

‘No partner,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he said, with a decisiveness that thrilled her.

‘Either here at the wedding or in my life.’

‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘Single. Never married.’

Her spine tingled at this less than subtle trumpeting of his single status. She was single and available too. For today.

Maybe for tonight.

‘Likewise,’ she said.

This handsome, handsome man must be thirtyish. How had such a catch evaded matrimony?

‘D’you think they’ve put us at the singles table for the meal?’ he asked.

‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘I... I hope so.’

‘If they haven’t I’ll switch every place card in the room to make sure we’re seated together.’

She laughed. ‘Seriously?’

‘Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I want to sit with the most beautiful woman at the wedding?’

She laughed again. ‘You flatter me.’

He was suddenly very serious. ‘There’s no flattery. I noticed you as soon as you walked across the grass to take your seat. I couldn’t keep my eyes off you.’

She could act coy, not admit that she’d noticed him too, flirt a little, play hard to get... But she’d never met a man like him. Never felt that instant tug of attraction. And time was in very short supply.

‘I noticed you too,’ she said simply.

For a long moment she looked up into his eyes—up close a surprising sea-green—and he looked down into hers. His gaze was serious, intent, totally focused on her. The air between them shimmered with possibility. Her heart set up a furious beating. She felt giddy with the awareness that she could be on the edge of something momentous, something life-changing. He frowned as if puzzled. Did he feel it too?

‘Natalie, I—’

But before he could say any more Gemma came up the steps, Tristan hovering solicitously behind her. Her sister-in-law smiled politely, as if Natalia were just another guest, although her eyes gleamed with the knowledge of their shared secret. Tristan’s nod gave his sister a subtle warning. Be careful. As if she needed it. She was only too aware of her duty.

Duty. Duty. Duty. It had governed her life from the moment she was born. Duty to her family, to the Crown, to her country. What about her duty to herself? Her needs, her wants, her happiness? She was twenty-seven years old and she’d toed the line for too long. If she wanted to flirt with the most gorgeous man she had met in a long time—perhaps ever—she darn well would, and duty be damned.

She took a step closer to Finn. Smiled up at him as Tristan went past. The rigid set of her brother’s shoulders was the only sign that he had noticed her provocative gesture. But Finn mistook her smile for amusement.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It isn’t every day you go to a wedding where the groomsman is a prince and the bridesmaid a princess and everyone is pretending they’re regular folk like you or me. That’s despite the security detail both out on the road and down on the water to keep the media scrum at bay.’

‘Bizarre, isn’t it?’ she said lightly.

In fact, it was rare that she went to a wedding where the bride and groom weren’t royalty or high-ranking aristocracy. This wedding between people without rank was somewhat of a novelty.

‘Bizarre, but kinda fun,’ Finn said. ‘When else would our paths cross so closely with royalty? Even if the Prince is from some obscure kingdom no one has ever heard of.’

Obscure? Natalia was about to huff in defence of her country. Montovia might be small, in both land mass and population, but it was wealthy, influential and punched above its weight on matters of state. But for today she was just plain Natalie—not Princess Natalia. And she wanted to enjoy the company of this very appealing Aussie guy without getting into any kind of debate that might give the game away.

‘A prince is a prince, I guess, wherever he hails from,’ she said.

‘And a princess always adds a certain glamour to an occasion,’ Finn said drily.

‘Indeed,’ she said.

A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. If only he knew.

‘Talking of fun...let’s go inside and swap those place cards if we need to,’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said.

Startled, she almost corrected him. Ma’am was a term of address reserved for her mother, the Queen, not her. But of course he was only using the word generically. She really had to stay on the alert if she were to successfully keep up the act.

She went to tuck her hand into his arm but decided against it. If she touched him—even the slightest touch—she wasn’t sure how she’d react. She’d only known Finn O’Neill for a matter of minutes but she already knew she wanted him.

He could be the one.

CHAPTER TWO

FINN FOLLOWED NATALIE along the veranda towards the ballroom of the sandstone mansion where the formal part of the wedding reception would shortly take place. He couldn’t take his eyes off her shapely swaying hips. How could she walk so surely and confidently in those sky-high heels? Maybe it was the sexy shoes that gave her bottom that enticing little wiggle. Maybe—

She stopped abruptly, so that they collided.

‘Sorry,’ he said automatically. Although he wasn’t sorry at all to be suddenly in such close proximity to this enchanting woman.

‘No need to apologise,’ she said, not moving away from him.

Her blue eyes glinted with mischief and her lush mouth tilted on the edge of laughter. He was close enough to catch her perfume...sweet, enticing and heady. She didn’t seem in the slightest bit disconcerted by the sudden intimacy. Whereas he was overwhelmed by a rush of sensual awareness. He ached to be closer to her. To kiss her.

He took a step back from temptation, cleared his throat. ‘Why did you stop?’

‘I believe this is the room where the meal is to be served,’ she said in a conspiratorial tone, gesturing to where wide French doors had been flung open to the veranda. She glanced furtively around her in an exaggerated dramatic way.

‘Coast is clear,’ he said, amused by her playfulness.

Drinks were still being served in the garden. They had time before the other guests would flood into the ballroom.

He followed her as she tiptoed with dramatic exaggeration to the threshold of the room. Over her shoulder he could see circular tables set up for a formal meal, with a rectangular bridal party table up top. All elegantly decorated with the Party Queens trademark flair.

‘No one in there,’ Natalie whispered.

‘Okay. Commence Operation Place Card Swap. We’ll make a dash for it. You—’

She put her finger up against her lips. ‘Shh... We have to be covert here. No bride likes her arrangements to be tampered with. We can’t be caught. You go in—I’ll guard the door.’

Finn found Natalie’s place card first and filched it from its silver card holder. Then he searched for the place that had been assigned to him. As anticipated, he had not been seated anywhere near Natalie—four tables away, on the other side of the room, in fact.

Predictably, Eliza had placed him near Prue, a friend of hers from university, who was an attractive enough girl but who didn’t interest him in the slightest—in spite of Eliza’s matchmaking efforts. There was also the fact that Prue often played fast and loose with the truth, and if there was one thing Finn loathed it was a liar. Yet Eliza persisted.

That was the trouble with weddings. There was some kind of myth—promulgated by women—that a wedding was the perfect place to meet a life partner. Love being in the air and presumably contagious. As a result, weddings brought out their worst matchmaking instincts. As if, at the age of thirty-two, the combined efforts of his Italian, Chinese and Irish families to try and get him to settle down weren’t enough, without his friends getting in on the act.

Marriage didn’t interest him. Not now. He’d lost the urge when his first serious love had broken both their engagement and his heart. No one he’d met since had made him want to change his mind. Besides, he was in the midst of such a rapid expansion of his business, opening to exciting new markets, and he did not want the distraction of a serious relationship. International trade could be tumultuous. He had to be on top of his game.

He removed Prue’s place card and deftly replaced it with the one that spelled out Natalie Gerard. Things were definitely looking up. Now he’d be sitting next to the only woman at the wedding who held any appeal for him. The only woman who had sparked his interest in a long time.

‘I’ll put this place card where yours came from and no one will be any the wiser,’ he explained to his accomplice, who had now stepped cautiously into the room.

‘Except Eliza,’ Natalie said.

‘Who I doubt will even notice the swap,’ he said.

Natalie, for all her bravado, seemed unexpectedly hesitant. A slight frown creased her forehead. ‘Is it really the right thing to do?’

‘To sit next to me? Without a doubt.’

‘I mean to mess up the seating plan.’

‘A minor infringement of the wedding planner’s rulebook,’ he said.

‘An infringement all the same. I... I usually play by the rules.’ She averted her gaze, looked down at the pointy toes of her shoes.

‘Perhaps it’s time to live dangerously?’ he said.

Her frown deepened. ‘I’m not sure I know how to do that.’

‘Live dangerously?’

She looked back up to face him. ‘Yes,’ she said uncertainly. The mischievous glint in her blue eyes had dimmed to something distressingly subdued.

‘Then let me be your tutor.’

‘In the art of living dangerously?’ she said.

‘Exactly,’ he said.

She sighed. ‘You can’t imagine how tempting that sounds.’

The edge to her voice surprised him. ‘Don’t you ever give in to temptation?’ he challenged.

Her smile returned, slow and thoughtful, with a sensuous twist of her lips. ‘It depends who’s doing the tempting.’

She was so tempting. Finn held up his hand. ‘Consider the position of your tutor in Living Dangerously for Beginners to be officially filled,’ he said.

She laughed, low and throaty. ‘I hope you find me an apt student.’

He hoped so too.

‘We’ll start by finishing the place card swap. Why don’t you do it? Your first “living dangerously” challenge.’

It would be a step towards others infinitely more interesting.

‘That’s not so dangerous,’ she said, with a dismissive sweep of her perfectly manicured hand.

There was a touch of arrogance to her gesture that surprised and intrigued him. ‘You think so? The sun is setting and I think I can hear people coming up the steps to the veranda. You’ll have to be quick if you don’t want to be caught in the act and bring down the wrath of the bride on your head.’

Any hint of haughtiness gone, Natalie made a sound somewhere between a squeal and a giggle that he found delightful. Without another word he held out Prue’s place card.

Natalie snatched it from him. ‘Mission accepted,’ she said.

He watched as she quickly click-clacked on her high heels—hips swaying—to the table where she’d originally been seated and slid the card into place. When she returned she gave him a triumphant high five.

‘Mission accomplished.’

‘Well done. Now I won’t have to find excuses all evening to visit you at your table.’

‘And I won’t need to take any opportunity to seek you out at yours.’

She coloured, high on her cheekbones, in a blush that seemed at odds with her provocative words.

‘Would you have done that?’ he asked. ‘Seriously?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You are by far the most attractive man here.’

She seemed such an accomplished flirt, and yet her blush deepened and her eyelashes fluttered as she voiced the compliment.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

Considering the men of the bridal party were all good-looking billionaires—one a prince—Finn could only be flattered. And gratified that the instant attraction wasn’t only on his side. He wasn’t a fanciful man, but insinuating itself into his mind was a thought, wispy and insubstantial but growing in vigour, that this—she—was somehow meant to be.

‘You know I intend to monopolise you all evening?’

‘Monopolise me all you want,’ she said slowly.

She was looking up at him with what he could only read as invitation, although there was an endearing uncertainty there too.

‘You won’t be able to escape me.’

‘Do you see me running?’ she murmured.

Her gaze met his for a long moment, and he wasn’t sure of the message in those extraordinary blue eyes.

Then she smiled. ‘Talking of escape—thank you for rescuing me from the table of people I don’t know at all but who I suspect are Eliza’s elderly relatives.’

‘Don’t speak too soon. We don’t know who we’ve got sitting at my table.’

‘Yes, we do,’ she said.

He frowned. ‘How did you—?’

She spoke over him. ‘Each other. And that’s all that counts.’

The words hung between them, seemingly escalating their flirtation to a higher and more exciting level of connection. Finn felt a buzz of excitement and anticipation.

‘Quite right. Your first exercise in living dangerously has paid off. I don’t care who else is on the table so long as your place card is still next to mine.’

Attending this wedding solo was more duty than pleasure, fond as he was of Eliza, and keen as he was to keep up his contact with Party Queens. But he wasn’t one for wasting time on social chit-chat with strangers he might never see again.

An evening spent in the enchanting Natalie’s company was a different matter altogether. Enjoying the pleasure of her company was now at the forefront of his mind.

Finn was about to tell her so, but there was a sudden burst of chatter from outside on the veranda. ‘The other guests are starting to arrive. We shouldn’t be seen in here.’

Natalia’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘We’ve got time to get out through that connecting door.’

He reached out his hand and pulled her towards him. ‘Let’s go before they realise we’ve been up to no good. Then we’ll march back in with the other guests and take our places at the table.’

‘Innocent of any crime of swapping seats,’ she said.

Not so innocent were his thoughts of where he hoped the evening might lead.

* * *

Natalie couldn’t have borne it if she had been forced to sit on the other side of the room from Finn. She didn’t want to waste a minute of this wedding away from him.

Tristan had probably had a hand in where she had been placed in the seating arrangements and might not be pleased at the switch. Too bad. Princess Natalia might have to sit dutifully where she was directed—not so just plain Natalie. She was going to grab this chance to be with Finn, no matter if she got dressed down for it later.

Tristan took his role of Crown Prince seriously. That meant protecting her. Since the loss of their brother, she and Tristan had looked out for each other. But sometimes she had to remind him that she didn’t take kindly to being bossed around by her brother.

With Finn holding her hand, she made it safely out of the room without detection. Just the casual touch of his hand clasping hers sent shivers of anticipation through her. Never, ever had she felt this kind of thrill.

She was pleased when he didn’t drop the connection after they’d made it to safety. Then, together, they strolled casually back into the ballroom alongside a group of other guests.

Each time she looked up to catch his eye she had to suppress a laugh, and saw that he did too. She felt like a naughty schoolgirl. Although in the private all-girls school she had attended there hadn’t been anyone as handsome as Finn to get into mischief with.

Their surreptitious work had paid off—the swapped name cards were still in place. Finn was hers for the duration of the celebration. She was scarcely able to believe that this gorgeous man was real and seemed to want to be with her as much as she did with him.

‘We did it,’ he said in a low undertone after they’d taken their seats at the table. ‘I caught Eliza glaring at me, but there’s nothing she can do about where we’re sitting from where she is, way up there on the bridal table.’

‘Clever us,’ Natalia said, holding his gaze and revelling in the warmth of his smile.

So this is what it’s like to be really attracted to a man.

Her thoughts were filled with nothing but him. Insta lust. That was what her English-speaking friends called the sudden overwhelming desire to be close to a man. But it wasn’t just a physical attraction. She liked Finn more than she could have imagined she could like someone in such a short space of time. Yes, she ached to touch him, to feel his smooth olive skin under her fingers, and wondered what it would be like to kiss him. But she also wanted to talk with him, listen to him, laugh with him, find out all she could about him.

She had never felt like this about a man before. Certainly never for any of the six men of noble birth she had rejected as potential husbands. Not even for the boy she’d had a crush on as a teenager in London.

It hadn’t just been her being caught out at a nightclub that had seen her recalled home to Montovia. She’d also been seen kissing Danny—a fellow student definitely not on the palace-approved list. It had hurt when she hadn’t heard from him again, and part of her heart had shut down, never to recover. It hadn’t been until much later that she’d discovered he’d been paid off by the palace to disappear from her life.

Her family’s betrayal had added a whole new level of hurt.

Back then, the law that forbade her and her brothers from marrying someone not of noble birth had still been in place. She’d discovered they’d done the same thing to Tristan—paying off the parents of an English girl he’d loved and moving her to another part of the country. Tristan had been understandably bitter at their interference. Especially considering what a sham their parents’ marriage was—the King still had a long-time mistress.

The history of unhappy, loveless marriages in their family had made both her and Tristan deeply cynical about marriage. Fortunately Tristan had found Gemma. For Natalia there had been no one.

On a trip to Africa the previous year, to visit a girls’ school that her charity had funded, she had travelled with an attractive photographer. Sparks had flown between them—not the kind of powerful attraction she’d felt instantly for Finn, but sparks just the same. But he had made it clear he would never get involved with her. Not when he knew his life would come under scrutiny and he would have to play second fiddle to a princess. Natalia had appreciated his honesty but had felt wounded because she hadn’t even been given a chance.

That had been back then. Now Natalia wanted to shut the rest of the world out, so it shrank to just her and Finn. She resented the time spent chatting with the other six guests at their table. But politeness dictated that she distributed her time evenly. All that royal training in graciousness and good manners didn’t go away just because she was in disguise.

The other guests were all pleasant people from Eliza’s pre-Party Queens life. Natalia made it a point to chat with each of them. Finn joined in too, charming and thoughtful in his conversation. The others seemed to assume she and Finn were a couple, and neither of them did anything to make them think any differently.

One of the women was Chinese, and Finn surprised Natalia by exchanging a few words with her in her own language. ‘You sound fluent in Chinese,’ Natalia said when he turned his attention back to her.

‘Thankfully, yes,’ he said. ‘One of my biggest new export markets is mainland China,’ he explained. ‘It’s a great advantage to be able to speak Mandarin.’

‘I can imagine,’ she said.

‘My grandfather spoke to me in Chinese when I was a child and my mother insisted I study the language formally when I was older. I studied Italian to please my grandmother—also useful for the business. And my sister Bella studied both languages too.’

Natalia wanted to tell him she was also multilingual, even chat to him in Italian, but it was too risky in case she tripped up over the details of a made-up background. The less she said about herself, the better. Pretending to be someone else, denying the truth about herself, wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. Not when she really wanted to impress Finn.

‘Sounds like your grandparents were very influential in your life,’ she said.

Hers had been too. Her late paternal grandfather had been King when she was a child and had ruled his family like a tyrant, although he’d been seen as a benevolent ruler of the country. She’d been terrified of him. Thankfully her mother and father, despite their differences and the restrictions of their royal duties, had been united in being loving parents to her and her brothers.

‘My wonderful grandparents are both still around, fortunately,’ Finn said. ‘I have them to thank for my start in the business.’

Natalia hadn’t mourned the death of her grandfather, and her grandmother had remained a distant, disapproving figure. She’d never known her mother’s parents.

‘Really?’ she said, fascinated to know every detail of his life in the short time she had with him. Through him she could view life through a very different lens. ‘I’d love to hear about it.’

‘My grandfather and grandmother met each other in high school. It was like Romeo and Juliet set in the western suburbs of Sydney. His family owned the local Chinese restaurant—her family the Italian. Neither family was happy for their child to marry out of their culture—the old migrant story.’