Read Online How to Love a Princess by Claire Robyns - Free Book Online

Catherine.
“Good God, we had an amazingtime. You should have been with us. Promise
you’ll come sailing with us in Barbados next weekend?”
    “I wish I could,”
Catherine said, inserting a wealth of warmth and intent into her words.
“Unfortunately, with my mother’s illness…”
    Not to mention a little
country that needed to be run, she thought dryly. Then again, his single-minded
pursuit of pleasure was his one redeeming quality as far as her needs went. The
second son of a second son of an American billionaire, Geoffrey had no
ambition, no arrogance, no backbone, no desire at all to do anything other than
sail his yachts and party through the night.
    Nicolas caught her eye and
raised an arrogant brow. She matched it, aware that he was judging her by the
friends she kept and reminding herself how very irrelevant his opinion should
be.
    “The official guests will
be here shortly,” she told Gascon. “I’m going to freshen up.”
    Once she was safely inside
the guest bathroom on the ground level, she fisted her hands at her sides and
sucked in a deep breath.
    Of course Nicolas judged
her. He probably believed she’d given up the domestic bliss he’d offered in
return for highlife socialising with the likes of Geoffrey.
    What did it matter? What
did it matter what he thought of her? Her tummy clenched and she almost heaved.
It mattered so very much.
    She crossed to one of the
gilt framed puffed chairs on legs that felt disconnected from her body and made
herself sit down and relax, flexing the cramps in her fingers and taking long,
steady breaths. Her eye caught the clock on the wall and she saw that time was
running out. She looked about her and laughed at her silliness. If anyone could
see her now, Princess Amelia Catherine Theresa de’Ariggo, locked up in a
bathroom and too scared to go back out.
    She jumped up and smoothed
her hands down her thighs. Nicolas didn’t make her feel twenty-one again. He made
her feel fourteen.
    At least she was laughing,
even if it was at herself, most of her composure restored. She let herself out
of the bathroom and, as she turned from closing the door, walked straight into
hard chest. Before she looked up, she knew. She knew his scent. Her body had
its unique way of reacting to his presence. Tingles, tremors and shivers.
    He backed her up against
the door, raising one arm above her to put his hand to the wall. His knuckles
grazed underside her chin, then nudged it higher until she was looking into his
eyes.
    “What—what are you doing?”
she stammered. She hated it when he did this. She swore he knew exactly how
devastatingly he affected her, erased her mind and nullified her convictions.
The barest hint of intimacy had the power to slam her straight back into the
past.
    He brought his head down,
his lips a breath away from hers. His brown eyes were intense, burning a heat
into her soul. “You made a pact with the devil four years ago,” he murmured,
his fingers leaving her chin to stroke fire down the sensitive skin of her
throat. “Maybe I’ve come to claim my due.”
    She swallowed hard and
tried to laugh, tried to pretend that everything was normal and her knees
weren’t instantly hollow. “Do you have to be so dramatic?”
    “You bring out the best—”
His thumb pad paused at the base of her throat, applying a gentle pressure,
“—and worst in me, dolce cuore. ”
    “Nicolas—”
    “Catherine,” he
interrupted in that deep baritone. His thumb was moving again, across her
collarbone, edging beneath the strap of her dress, tugging it along as he moved
to the curve of her shoulder. “You’re trembling. You’re not afraid of me,
surely?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve
only to raise my voice and a hundred guards will come trooping through those
doors.”
    “But you’re not
screaming,” he said huskily, his breath warm on her lips.
    She changed tactics. “My
guests will be arriving any moment.”
    His roaming fingers
stilled, then slowly