Falling For The Secret Princess. Kandy Shepherd
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.
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,’