Falling For The Secret Princess. Kandy Shepherd
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dated. He’d had steady girlfriends. He’d been engaged. But none of those relationships had started with a lightning bolt from nowhere.
‘Surely you can take your eyes off her for long enough to speak to me?’ said Eliza drily as he danced with his friend the bride.
‘What do you mean?’ he blustered.
‘You’re mesmerised by Natalie. She’s beautiful. Charming. I get it. But you need to back off from her, Finn. She’s not for you.’
‘This is about Prue, isn’t it?’ He gritted his teeth. ‘How many times do I have to tell you I’m not interested?’
‘Even so, it was rude of you to change those place cards. What on earth got into you to do such a thing?’
Eliza had always been an outspoken kind of friend.
He shrugged. ‘Sorry.’
But he wasn’t sorry at all, and Eliza’s sigh told him she knew it.
‘This can’t end well. That’s all I can say.’
In spite of himself, he felt a chill of foreboding. ‘Are you telling me that Natalie has a criminal record or—?’
Eliza looked aghast. ‘Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Is she after my money?’ he joked.
Ever since that Sunday newspaper had included him in a list of the most eligible young millionaires he’d been plagued by women whose interest in him was purely mercenary. Which had made him even more cynical about relationships.
‘I very much doubt it,’ Eliza said. ‘She’s just not for you. You’ll have to trust me on this.’
He snorted his disbelief. ‘You’re warning me off? In the meantime, your neighbour Kerry is suggesting I propose to Natalie because we seem so perfect together.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah. In fact she asked if we’d made wedding plans.’
‘Really?’ Eliza frowned. ‘Kerry reckons she’s psychic. She... Well, she wouldn’t say that if she didn’t believe it was true.’
Finn rolled his eyes. ‘Psychic? Huh! She seemed nice enough until she came out with that nonsense.’
‘What’s stranger still is that her predictions often come true. The first time she met Jake she told me I’d marry him. It seemed highly unlikely at the time.’
‘Coincidence—a lucky guess,’ Finn said dismissively.
‘Superstitious nonsense?’ Eliza said.
Finn agreed. The trouble was, he came from three cultures where superstitions were taken seriously. By the older generation, that was. Not by him. He was a facts and numbers man.
‘But it was disconcerting,’ he admitted.
‘In this case she’s got it wrong,’ Eliza said. ‘I’ll say it again—back off from Natalie.’
‘You’re seriously warning me, Eliza?’
‘As a friend. Yes.’
‘And as a friend, I appreciate your concern—although I don’t know where it’s coming from. But I’d rather you wished me luck than tossed a bucket of cold water over me. Because I like Natalie and I’m going to continue to enjoy her company for the rest of the evening.’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Thank you for the dance. Again, congratulations to you and Jake. Now I’m going to march over there to your husband and claim my dance partner back.’
* * *
Natalia couldn’t remember when she’d so enjoyed a man’s company. Dancing with Finn, their steps perfectly matched, was magic. Chatting with him, laughing with him, deepened the spell.
But the enchanted evening was winding down. The bride and groom had left to a chorus of good wishes for their honeymoon and a long life together. Other guests were starting to disperse and the band had announced the last number for the evening.
Soon the big room would echo with emptiness. Her bodyguards would be discreetly waiting to escort her back to the harbour-side hotel where she was booked in under her Natalie Gerard name. She would never see Finn again. She felt plunged into gloom at the thought.
The last dance was a slow one and they danced it close together. She breathed in the scent of him, felt his warm breath ruffling her hair. All sorts of potential conversations were running through her head. But all she managed was to look up at him and stutter. ‘I... I don’t want the night to end.’
His green eyes met hers. ‘Neither do I.’
Too many hopes and possibilities were trembling on her lips for her actually to articulate the words I want to be with you. But finally she managed to choke out an invitation of sorts—although not the one she really wanted to communicate.
‘I’m staying at a lovely hotel. It has a very smart bar, open all hours. Would you like to come back for a drink? Or a coffee? Or...?’ Her voice trailed away. She was articulate in five languages, yet she was stumbling on a simple offer to extend the evening with a drink in a bar.
He tilted her chin, so his gaze met hers. ‘Yes—to whatever you’re offering.’
‘I have a car and driver booked,’ she said. And there would be another car with the second bodyguard following.
‘Cancel it. Let me drive you in my car,’ he said.
For a moment she was tempted. There was nothing she would have liked better than to be alone with Finn in his car. But ‘living dangerously’ had its limitations. The helicopter accident that had claimed the lives of her brother, his wife and their toddler son had been an accident, not an assassination. But after such a tragedy, security for the remaining heirs had become an obsession with the royal family. She could not dismiss her bodyguards.
‘I can’t do that, I’m afraid,’ she said. She held her breath. Would that be a deal-breaker for Finn? ‘You would have to come in my car. Or we could go to the hotel separately and meet there.’
‘I’ll ride with you.’ Did he, like her, not want to waste a moment of the limited time they had together?
She sighed her relief. ‘Good. My driver is outside. I’ll call him and tell him we’ll have an extra passenger.’
Would Finn wonder why she should do that? Most hire car drivers wouldn’t have to be notified of an extra passenger.
‘I’ll have to go back to the table and retrieve my handbag. My phone’s in it,’ she said.
‘As long as you come straight back to me,’ he said, in that deep husky voice.
‘Count on it,’ she said, thrilled by the look in his eyes.
She called her bodyguards and provided Finn’s name. She knew they would immediately run a security check on him. Perhaps she was being foolish, but she felt sure nothing untoward would come up on the check. She scarcely knew him, but she felt she could trust him to be who he said he was. It was she who was twisting the truth about herself right out of shape.
‘Ready to go?’ Finn said when she returned to his side.
‘The car will come around to the front to pick us up,’ she said.
He put a possessive arm around her as they headed outside. She leaned into him, loving the closeness to his strength and warmth. Then felt bereft when she moved away from him for the sake of appearances as they reached the main doors.
The street level entrance to the grand old house was bracketed by tall palm trees and large old-fashioned carriage lamps. Cars and taxis inched forward on the circular driveway to pick up the departing wedding guests. Natalia spotted the unobtrusive dark sedan driven by her bodyguard in the line-up. The other bodyguard wouldn’t be far away. Their orders were to be close