Crown Prince's Bought Bride Read online

  ‘The most perfect of moments—which is every second I spend with you, my wife, my heart. And with our son. With this love that fills my heart each day.’

  He kissed her again, his hand resting on her belly. And, as if fate itself had decreed it, their child gave his first ever kick.

  Maddie gasped, tears of joy filling her eyes. ‘Oh, my God—did you feel that?’

  Remi’s smile was shaky. ‘Si. That was our son, confirming what I already know. That we are blessed beyond words. That each day you hold my heart in your hands is a lifetime I would never wish to be without. I love you, Madeleine.’

  ‘I love you, my king. Always.’

  * * *

  If you enjoyed Crown Prince’s Bought Bride by Maya Blake, you’re sure to enjoy these other Conveniently Wed! stories!

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  Keep reading for an excerpt from Heiress’s Pregnancy Scandal by Julia James.

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  Heiress’s Pregnancy Scandal

  by Julia James

  CHAPTER ONE

  NIC FALCONE STEPPED through the service door into the casino, glancing around with a deeply satisfied sweep. Yes, this had been a good idea, acquiring and restoring this fading hacienda-style hotel deep in the western desert, yet still within reach of both Las Vegas and the West Coast. Another prestigious money-spinner for the global Falcone chain of luxury hotels. More glittering proof of just how far he’d come in his thirty-odd years—from the backstreets of Rome to being one of the richest men in Italy.

  The fatherless slum kid who’d started his first job at barely sixteen in the basement—literally—of the fabled Viscari Roma hotel had, by his own gruelling efforts, climbed as high as that dilettante playboy Vito Viscari, who’d had a legendary hotel chain handed to him on a plate by his family.

  Nic’s expression shadowed as he remembered. Through dogged hard work he’d worked his way up through the ranks at the Viscari Roma, every promotion striven for, until he had finally been in line for the big move into management that he had known he was totally qualified for.

  But Vito’s uncle, the chairman of the company, had instead preferred that his inexperienced nephew—fresh out of university, with none of the hard-earned, hands-on track record that Nic had under his belt—should get a taste of his future inheritance.

  Nic had been passed over—and from that moment he’d known that from now on he would work only for himself. The seeds of the Falcone hotel chain had been sown. Falcone would be the rival that would outsoar Viscari once and for all.

  And through a level of hard work that had absorbed his whole life Nic had succeeded—fantastically. So much so that last year he had been able to swoop, like his namesake the predatory falcon, to take ruthless advantage of an internal power struggle within the divided Viscari family and snap up an entire half of the Viscari portfolio of hotels in a blatantly hostile acquisition.

  It had proved, though, to be a triumph that had turned to ashes. Yet again Nic had felt the pampering hand of nepotism thwarting him. This time it had been, of all things, Vito’s mother-in-law, persuading Nic’s own investors, who’d funded his acquisition, to sell the hotels back to her so she could hand them over to her son-in-law, Vito.

  Yet again Vito had prospered without lifting a finger for himself—thanks to help from his family.

  But the determination that had lifted Nic from the backstreets had kicked in again, and in the months since losing his grip on the Viscari portfolio he had reacted by lining up a string of potential new Falcone properties, including this, the newly opened Falcone Nevada, with its oh-so-lucrative on-site casino.

  His keen eyes swept the crowded gaming floor as he strolled forward, noting that a good few of the gamblers had likely come over from the conference wing of the hotel, where a gathering of astrophysics academics were holding their annual shindig. Including the cluster of young hopefuls now quitting the bar area to head to the gaming floor. Leaving behind a woman who was now raising a hand to them in a casual goodnight.

  A woman who halted him in his tracks. Tall, graceful and dazzlingly blonde.

  Every sense went on high alert. In his time he’d seen—and sampled—many, many beautiful women. But none like this. He felt his stomach muscles clench, held his breath. His eyes fastened on her. And desire—hot, intense and instant—quickened...

  * * *

  Fran watched the post-grad students go off to buy their chips and hoped they wouldn’t lose their shirts at the tables. They were clearly in demob happy mood and making the most of this, the final night of the conference. As for herself, she should head off, for she still had a poster session to give the following morning, before the plenary session, and it wouldn’t hurt to run through her presentation again.

  But as she turned back towards the barman to call for her bill a voice behind her spoke.

  ‘No temptation to try your luck at the tables?’

  It was a deep voice, with an American accent that did not sound western, and it held a gravelled timbre that made her turn.

  And as she did so her eyes widened.

  Oh, wow...

  The silent exclamation, as instinctive as it was unstoppable, resonated in her consciousness.

  The man who stood there, his pose deceptively relaxed, was tall—easily topping her own willowy figure—with broad shoulders, lean hips and a muscled chest that looked as if it could take a punch without even noticing.

  In fact, she registered, in her subliminal sweep of his features, it looked as if his nose, set in a face that was hard-planed and strong-jawed, had been on the receiving end of a slug at some stage.

  The slight bump was a flaw that only added to his powerful appeal. The man might be in a tux, but everything about him said tough.

  Part of the security team here? she wondered, a mind still reeling from the visceral impact he’d made on her. It had been like walking into a wall—a wall she’d never seen coming.

  For a second—a sub-second—she was frozen, taking him in, reacting to him on a level at which she never, just never, reacted to men. Not even the formidably good-looking Cesare, the man she had so nearly married, had had the overpow
ering instantaneous impact the man standing here now was having on her.

  He’s nothing like the men I usually find attractive!

  With the exception of Cesare, with his hawkish, aristocratic demeanour, she’d always only gone for men with studious looks—not the muscled type that she’d always regarded as...well, brutish.

  But there was nothing brutish about this man. Not with eyes like that. Glinting with sharp intelligence.

  And blue—piercing blue—which is really weird, because the tan of his skin tone and the sable of his hair indicates Hispanic, probably...

  Yet even as she made that reasonable assumption she realised she needed to do something other than just gaze dumbstruck at him. Should she acknowledge his remark? Without vanity, she knew from experience that her blonde looks drew male eyes—and more—and if she was chatted up she normally kept her reaction vague to the point of evasive until she could get away or the man gave up. If absolutely necessary she froze them out.

  For the moment, though, she went for option one, and gave a brief, impersonal flicker of a smile and a demurring shake of her head.

  ‘Not my thing...gambling,’ she replied, glad to accept the leather-bound drinks bill, and jot her room number on it.

  ‘You’re part of the conference?’

  Again, the deep, slightly gravelled voice made her glance up as she pushed the folder back to the barman.

  ‘Yes,’ she acknowledged.

  She moved to slip off the high stool, and immediately the man’s hand was there, guiding her. She glanced at him, murmuring her thanks, but wished that she could retain the air of impersonal indifference that she knew she should be displaying at this time.

  Only it was impossible to do so. Impossible to do anything but feel the extraordinary visceral impact on her that he was having.

  An impact that suddenly increased exponentially.

  He was smiling—and the smile was like the smile of a desert wolf.

  Fran felt her lungs squeeze, her breath catch. The smile was swift—a sudden indentation of the firm mouth, a brief flash of teeth, a lightening of his tough features as if the sun had just come out and then disappeared again.

  ‘Forgive me for sounding clichéd, but you don’t look the least like an astrophysicist!’

  Amusement played around his firm mouth, as if he knew perfectly well that it was, indeed, a clichéd observation, but didn’t give a damn. Because the light in those blue, blue eyes of his was telling her just why he’d said what he had.

  He wanted to do anything to keep the conversation going.

  Fran lifted an eyebrow. Whatever was going on here, it was unlikely to be anything to do with the man’s role as a member of the hotel’s security team, if that was who he was, given the air of toughness radiating from him. And if he wasn’t—if he was just another guest—then that made it no better. He was still chatting her up. So maybe she should just call time and walk.

  Except that she didn’t want to. The sudden fizzing in her veins, the catch in her heart rate, was telling her that she was reacting to this man as she had never reacted to any man before—that something was happening to her that had never happened to her before.

  So, instead of whatever she might have been planning to reply to him with, she could hear her own voice, with a clear hint of answering amusement in it, saying, ‘And you’ve encountered many astrophysicists in your time, have you?’

  She was conscious that her eyebrow had lifted, just as her mouth had twitched in amusement, conscious too of how that flashing smile had come again. Her sense was that here was a man totally at ease with himself. Even if he was a security guy, chatting up one of the guests in the hotel he worked in, he didn’t care—and he was inviting her not to care either. He was a man who knew he was blatantly accosting a woman who had caught his eye...

  She was conscious that long, dark lashes had swept down over those brilliant blue eyes as he answered her in turn.

  ‘Enough,’ he said laconically.

  Fran’s eyes narrowed deliberately. ‘Name three,’ she challenged.

  He laughed—a low, attractive sound that went with the flashing smile, and the brilliant blue eyes and the tough face and the tougher body. All of which were doing incredible things to her.

  She felt herself reel inwardly.

  What is happening to me? I get chatted up by some guy strolling up to me in a bar at a casino hotel and suddenly I feel like I’m eighteen again. Not a sober-minded post-doc on the far side of twenty-five, who writes abstruse scientific papers on cosmology at a prestigious West Coast university.

  Hard-working research academics didn’t go doolally because some muscled hunk smiled at them. And nor, came the even more sobering thought, did the woman who was her identity as well as Dr Fran Ristori.

  Donna Francesca di Ristori. Offspring of two noble houses—one Italian, one English—both centuries old, with bloodlines that could be traced back to the Middle Ages, and estates and lands, castles and palazzos. She was the daughter of Il Marchese d’Arromento, and granddaughter of one of the peers of the British realm, the Duke of Revinscourt.

  Not that anyone here in the USA knew that—or cared. In academia only the quality of your research counted, nothing else. It was something that her mother—born Lady Emma, now Marchesa d’Arromento—had never really understood. But then her mother had never really understood why Fran had turned away from the life she’d been born to in order to follow her deep love of learning to the halls of academia.

  It had caused, Fran knew, something of a rift between them, and it was only because Fran had agreed to marry into the Italian aristocracy that her mother had been reconciled to her research career.

  But last year Fran had broken up with Cesare, Il Conte di Mantegna, whom she had long been expected to marry, and now her mother was barely speaking to her.

  ‘But he was perfect for you!’ her mother had cried protestingly. ‘You’ve known each other all your lives and he would have let you continue with all this star-gazing you insist on as well as being his Contessa!’

  ‘I got a better offer,’ was all Fran had been able to say.

  It had been an offer her mother could never have appreciated—the exciting invitation to join the research team of a Nobel Laureate out in California.

  Fran had been relieved to take the offer, and not just for herself. Cesare was a friend—a good friend—and he would always be a friend, but it had turned out that he was actually in love with someone else and had since married her.

  Fran was glad for Cesare, and for Carla, his new bride, and the baby that had been born to them, and wished them every happiness.

  She had moved out to the West Coast, rented an apartment, and was revelling in the heady atmosphere of one of the world’s most advanced cosmology research centres. Although it was strange not to have Cesare in her life any longer—even long-distance, across the Atlantic—she had joyfully immersed herself in her work, thrilled to be assisting the famous Nobel Laureate.

  Except that this last semester her revered professor had suffered a heart attack and retired prematurely, and his successor wasn’t a patch on him. Already Fran had resolved to seek another post, another university. She would see out this conference and then start actively looking.

  ‘OK—I fold.’ The man blatantly chatting her up held up a large, square-palmed hand to indicate defeat. ‘You called my bluff.’

  The flashing smile came again, and yet again Fran felt her heart give a kick. Tomorrow’s plenary session, the poster session she was giving—both vanished.

  She gave a laugh. She couldn’t help it. The guy was so sure of himself. Usually that put her right off, but somehow, in this man, it was simply one more part of his appeal. As to why he had that appeal to her—she just could not analyse that. It was beyond rational thought.

  ‘Well, we had the conference dinner tonight, so we�
��re all togged up in our best bib and tucker,’ she answered him. ‘None of us are looking like nerdy scientists right now!’

  Blue, blue eyes swept over her. Open in their admiration for her.

  ‘Sicuramente no.’ Definitely not.

  The murmured syllables were audible, and Fran’s expression changed automatically. He wasn’t Hispanic after all...

  ‘Sei Italiano?’

  The question came from her before she could stop himself. The man’s expression changed as she asked it. Slight surprise and then clear satisfaction.

  Fran realised she’d just given him a whole new avenue to chat her up with. And she found she didn’t mind at all.

  She didn’t notice the slight flicker in his expression as he answered her, nor the very slight air of evasion in his voice.

  ‘Many Americans are,’ he said, speaking English now. ‘E sei?’ And you?

  ‘Italian on my father’s side. English on my mother’s,’ answered Fran.

  With every passing exchange she could feel herself simply giving in to this—whatever it was—and still not really knowing why it was happening. Why she should be giving the time of day—make that the time of nearly midnight!—to a muscled hunk who was blazingly sure of himself, blatantly chatting her up, when she really ought to be heading back to her room to go through her presentation for tomorrow.

  She only knew a sense of heady breathlessness that had come from nowhere the moment he’d spoken to her. Knew that he was suddenly making her feel so, so different from the sober-minded research academic she knew herself to be—so, so different from the stately Donna Francesca she had been born to be.

  He was speaking again. ‘English, huh? I thought you were from the East Coast.’

  ‘I lived there for a while,’ she allowed. ‘Studying for my doctorate.’

  A sudden whoop coming from the direction of the post-grads gathered at one of the blackjack tables distracted her and she glanced towards them.

  She frowned suddenly. ‘I hope they’re not trying to beat the dealer by counting in cahoots!’ she exclaimed. ‘They’re all maths hotshots, so they probably could if they tried, but I know casinos don’t like that...’