Cinderella's Prince Under the Mistletoe Read online

  She bit back a desire to giggle at the absurdity of it. “Oh my gosh. I nearly hit you. I’m so sorry. Your Highness. Prince Luca. I could have caused an international incident!”

  He didn’t seem to see the humor in it. His handsome face was set in grim lines. His eyes were snapping.

  Somebody else had eyes like that when they were annoyed. Who was it?

  “What on earth?” he snapped at her. “You were going to attack what you presumed to be an intruder? Who would come through this storm to break into your kitchen?”

  “I wasn’t thinking a human intruder. I was thinking it might be a bear.”

  “A bear?” he asked, astounded. He took his hands from her shoulders, but his brow knit in consternation.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Seriously?” His face was gorgeous in the near darkness, and his voice was made richer by the slight irritation in it.

  “It’s not unheard of for them to get inside. Or other creatures. Storms, in particular, seem to disorient our wild neighbors in their search for food and shelter.”

  His brows lowered over those sinfully dark eyes. “I meant seriously, you were going to attack a bear with—” He bent and picked it up. “What is this?”

  “A lamp base.”

  “It is indeed heavy.”

  “As I found out when I dropped it on my foot.”

  “It seems impossibly brave to attack a bear with a lamp. Or anything else for that matter.”

  “I may not have thought it through completely.”

  “You think?” He set the lamp base carefully aside.

  “On the other hand, I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve learned you have to deal with situations as they arise. You can’t just ignore them and hope they go away.”

  “It was extraordinarily foolish,” he said stubbornly.

  “You obviously have no idea what a bear can do to a kitchen in just a few minutes.”

  “No. And even though Casavalle has missed the blessing of a bear population, I have some idea what it could do to a tiny person wielding a lamp as a weapon in the same amount of time.”

  Did he feel protective of her? Something warm and lovely—suspiciously like weakness—unfolded within her. She saw the wisdom of fighting that particular weakness at all costs.

  “Let’s make a deal,” she said, and heard a touch of snippiness in her tone. “I won’t tell you how to do your job, if you don’t tell me how to do mine.”

  He was taken aback by that. Obviously, when he spoke, people generally deferred. Probably when he got that annoyed look on his face, they began scurrying to win back his favor. She just pushed her chin up a little higher.

  The Prince shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and rocked back on his heels and regarded her with undisguised exasperation.

  “Are you all right, then?” he asked, finally.

  “Oh sure,” she said, but when she took a step back from him, she crunched down on the broken bulb, and let out a little shriek of pain.

  To her shock, with no hesitation at all, Prince Luca scooped her up in his arms. Imogen was awed by the strength of him, by the hardness of his chest, by the beat of their hearts so close together. His scent intensified around her, and it was headier than wine: clean, pure, masculine.

  The weakness was back, and worse than ever!

  “There’s more broken shards over here,” he said, in way of explanation, “and it’s possibly slippery, as well. I dropped the soup bowl.”

  “That’s the sound that made me think there was a bear in here.”

  “Ah. Well, let me just find a safe place for you.”

  As if there could be a safer place than nestled here next to his heart! An illusion—the way she was reacting to his closeness, being nestled next to his heart was not safe at all, but dangerous.

  He kicked out a kitchen chair and set her in it. He slipped a cell phone from his pocket and turned on the flashlight, then knelt at her feet.

  “You should try and save the battery,” she suggested weakly.

  He ignored her, a man not accustomed to people giving him directions. “Which foot?”

  “Left.”

  Given the stern look of fierce concentration on his handsome face as he knelt over her foot, he peeled back her sock with exquisite gentleness. He cupped her naked heel in the palm of his hand and lifted her foot. Her heart was thudding more crazily now than when she had thought there was a bear in her kitchen!

  “Miss Albright—”

  “Imogen, please.” Given the thudding of her heart and the melting of her bones, that invitation to more familiarity between them was just plain dumb.

  “Imogen.” His voice was a soft caress, and his tone was one that might be used to reassure a frightened child. Perhaps he could feel the too-hard beating of her heart and had mistaken it for pain and fear instead of acute awareness of him?

  “There seems to be a bit of blood here.” He leaned in closer, so close that his breath tickled her toes and made her feel slightly faint. “And just a tiny bit of glass. I think I can remove it with tweezers, if you can point me in the direction of some. A first aid kit, perhaps?”

  “On the wall over there.” Her voice, in her own ears, sounded faintly breathless, as croaky as a frog singing a night song.

  He set her foot down carefully, stood and crossed the room. She took this brief respite from his touch to try and marshal herself, to slow down the beat of her heart.

  She told herself it was a reaction to the circumstances, to the adrenaline rush of waking to a crash in the night and preparing to do battle with the unknown, and not a reaction to his rather unnervingly masculine touch and presence.

  But as soon as he returned with the first aid kit and knelt at her feet again, she knew it had nothing to do with the circumstances. Even in the dark, his hair was shiny. There was a little rooster tail sticking up from where he had slept on it. She had to fight the urge to smooth it back down.

  A nervous giggle escaped her as he picked up her foot again, his hand warm, strong, unconsciously sensual.

  “Am I tickling?” His voice—deep, and with that faintly exotic accent—was as unconsciously sensual as his touch.

  Her giggle deepened, and he smiled quizzically.

  Oh, that smile! Though somehow it seemed familiar, she realized it was the first time she had seen it. It changed his entire countenance from faintly stern and unquestionably remote. His smile made him even more handsome. He appeared dangerously approachable, and as if he was quite capable of enchanting people with hidden boyish charm.

  “No,” she managed to gasp out, “not tickling. It’s just this situation strikes me as being preposterous. I have a prince at my feet? Somehow when I got up this morning, I could not have predicted this event in my day.”

  “Yesterday morning,” he corrected her, absently. “It’s already a brand-new day.”

  She contemplated that. It was, indeed, a new day, ripe with potential, full of surprises. When was the last time she had allowed herself to be delighted by the unexpected? A long, long time ago. Since her breakup with Kevin, she realized now, she had tried desperately to keep tight control on everything in her world.

  “It’s true,” he continued, and she detected an unexpected edge of harshness to his voice, “that sometimes we cannot predict the surprises our days will hold.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Sorry.”

  Tentatively, she said, “You said that as if you’ve had an unpleasant surprise recently.” She realized she was being much too forward and was glad for the darkness in the room that hid her sudden blush of insecurity. “Your Highness.”

  He looked at her. “Shall we just be Luca and Imogen for a little while?”

  His invitation to familiarity was quite a bit more stunning than hers had been. It was as stunning as f
inding a prince at her feet, giving tender loving care to her very minor wounds.

  Maybe she was dreaming! If she was dreaming, would she give in to the temptation to reach out and touch the dark silk of his hair? Her fingertips tingled with wanting.

  She tucked her hands under her thighs.

  “Luca,” she said experimentally, and then, “Ouch!”

  “It’s a bit of disinfectant. It’ll just sting for a second.”

  Had he done that on purpose? To distract her from the question she had asked about his recent unpleasant surprise?

  He finished with her foot, cleaning and bandaging it with exquisite sensitivity. Imogen had to steel herself over and over again from gasping, not with pain, but delight.

  “That’s great,” she said, the second he was finished. She started to get up. “Thank you.”

  His hand on her shoulder stayed her. “Don’t get up yet. I have shoes on. Let me find all the broken glass and clean it up.”

  “No, I’ll just—”

  “Do as you’re told?” he suggested drily.

  Despite herself, she giggled again.

  He lifted an eyebrow at her. “What?”

  “I can clearly see you are used to telling people what to do, but I was just wondering if you’ve ever cleaned up anything before in your whole life? It doesn’t seem very...er...princely somehow.”

  “Ah, most monarchies have come out of the dark ages,” he said, amused. “I might not be quite as pampered as the fairy tales would have you believe.”

  “Still, I don’t think it would be appropriate for you to be mopping up, while I sit here and watch!”

  “I think we are stranded here together in this storm, Imogen. Perhaps, for the duration, we could pretend to be just ordinary people?”

  She stared at him. Nothing about him was ordinary, and probably never could be. Yes, he would have to pretend to be ordinary.

  She, on the other hand, possessed that quality of being ordinary quite naturally and in great abundance.

  It seemed to her it was a very dangerous game he was inviting her to play. Prince Luca was not ordinary. She was. Their positions in life were completely at odds. Their stations dictated that they could never be friends, never mind the more that his exquisite touch on her injured foot had triggered a weak longing for.

  And yet life had dealt them a surprise, and they were going to have to get through it together. What if she let go—just a little bit—of that need to be in control?

  And was there something ever so faintly wistful in the way he had said that, too? As if he was experiencing a longing of his own? Perhaps to leave his role behind him, however briefly, and try some very ordinary things?

  Wasn’t that what she had learned in her lifetime of work here at the Lodge? That everyone—no matter how famous, no matter how rich, no matter how successful—needed a place where they could just be themselves. The holiday they needed most, whether they recognized it at first or not, was to have a break from lives that were far from ordinary, where they could be normal, if just for a tiny space in time.

  “All right,” she agreed slowly. “The broom closet is over there, by the door.”

  It became evident in seconds that, though he might not have been pampered, his experiences with a broom and dustpan were limited! For a man who exuded grace and confidence, his efforts to clean up were clumsy.

  And it was so darned endearing! Was it possible Prince Luca, as an ordinary man, was going to be even more compelling than he was in his royal role?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “WHAT BROUGHT YOU to the kitchen in the first place?” Imogen asked, as Luca finished wiping up the spilled soup and used his flashlight on his phone to scan the floor for any remaining glass from the lightbulb.

  “I was as hungry as a—”

  “Bear!” She finished the sentence for him, and they both laughed. It was such an amazing sensation to share laughter with him. He threw back his head when he laughed, and the sound of it was deep, pure as water bubbling over rocks.

  Someone else she knew laughed like that, with a kind of joyous abandon that made the laughter contagious, though she couldn’t put her finger on who it was at the moment.

  Still, as her laughter joined his, it almost felt as if she had not truly laughed ever before. Or at least for a very, very long time.

  “I’m having a bit of jet lag. My schedule is turned around,” the Prince explained to her. “I was going to try and reheat the soup you left for me. I’ll also chalk it up to jet lag that I forgot I would need power to do that.”

  “And you’re still hungry?”

  “Ravenous.”

  “Well, we can raid the fridge for things that don’t need cooking, or we can find something to cook using the fireplace in the office.”

  “The latter sounds like the Canadian experience I’m looking for.”

  She laughed. “Would you like to try a real Canadian experience of the most ordinary kind? Have you ever had a hot dog?”

  “A what? You’re making me nervous. I didn’t know they ate dogs in Canada.”

  “We don’t!”

  Then she saw he was teasing her. Of course he knew what a hot dog was! And just like that they were laughing again, the chilly air shimmering with a lovely warmth between them.

  “Hot dogs it is. Fast and simple. And some would say delicious. Especially cooked over an open fire.” She directed him to where the hot dogs and buns were in the freezer, and she hobbled over and found condiments, which she shoved into a grocery bag.

  He took the bag from her and crooked his elbow, and they made their way back down the hallway and to the office with her leaning quite heavily on him. He insisted she go straight to the couch while he figured out the fireplace.

  “There’s a generator here,” she explained to him, “but I’ll only want to start it for an hour or so a day, just to keep stuff from spoiling in the fridges and freezers. I don’t want to run out of fuel for the generator by running it too much. We can use the fireplaces for our main source of heat and for some cooking and heating water. We might have to chop some wood. I’m not quite sure if that was in your expectation of ordinary.”

  “You sound as if you’re getting ready for a long haul.”

  The truth was she was feeling quite delirious about the potential of a long haul, snowed in with the handsome Prince! And she could see from the look on his face, he was feeling anything but!

  “I just want to prepare for the worst-case scenario.”

  “What is the worst-case scenario?” he asked quietly.

  “We got snowed in here for a week once, when I was a child.”

  “A week?” he asked, appalled.

  “It was glorious,” Imogen told him. “It was at Christmas. We had guests, and we quickly all became family. We made gifts for each other and cooked over the fire. We popped corn and roasted wienies—”

  “Wienies?” he asked, clearly trying to hide his horror.

  “Another name for hot dogs.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  She cast him a glance, and it seemed, impossibly, as if he was genuinely interested.

  “We played board games and charades. We sang and played outside in the snow. Christmas is always wonderful up here, but that is my favorite memory ever. It was so simple. Real, somehow.”

  “You love Christmas,” he guessed softly.

  “Of course I do! Doesn’t everyone?”

  He was silent.

  “Go on,” she encouraged him softly, and then held her breath, because surely a prince, no matter how ordinary he was trying to be, was not going to share details of his private life with her.

  But then he began to talk, his voice low and lovely, a voice one could listen to forever without tiring of it.

  “Christmas is a huge celebration in Casavalle,” Luca said,
hesitantly. “Even as we speak, preparations will have begun.”

  “It’s October,” she pointed out to him.

  “Yes, I know. But it is an absolutely huge undertaking preparing for the season. To begin, there are over six dozen very old, very large live Norway spruce trees lining the drive to the palace. They are all decorated with lights. I think I heard once that there are over a million lights on those trees. When lit, they are so brilliant, no other illumination is used on the driveway.

  “The central fountain will be having blocks of ice that weigh in the tons placed in it for the ice-carving competition. We can’t always count on cold weather in the valley bottom, so there is a complicated refrigeration system beneath the fountain that prevents melting. A decorated outdoor hedge maze is a favorite with children.

  “The head woodsman will be searching the forest for the perfect tree for the castle’s grand entrance hall. That tree will be over forty feet high, the angel atop it almost touching the ceiling of the front foyer. The foyer is so large that choirs assemble to sing there, in front of that tree, throughout the holiday.”

  Imogen wondered if her eyes were growing rounder and rounder.

  “Have you heard of the jeweler, Buschetta?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He was one of my kingdom’s most celebrated artisans. His inspiration was Fabergé. He started doing jeweled ornaments for the main entry Christmas tree in the late eighteen-hundreds, and his family continues the tradition. They are wondrous creations—they appear to be one thing, but just as the famous Fabergé eggs, they hold a secret. So a hidden compartment might hold a manger scene of the baby Jesus. It might hold a miniature of an entire town, or a replica of the castle. It might commemorate a special royal event, like a birth or a wedding or a coronation.”

  What did she hear in his voice when he spoke of special royal events? What great pain? But he moved on quickly, his voice once again even and calm, someone who had given out this particular information many, many times, like a museum tour guide.

  “Each year the new ornament is unveiled—its secret revealed in a special ceremony—and it is put on display on a special table. The next year it will be hung in the tree. People come from around the world to see the Buschetta ornaments. The collection is considered priceless. That’s part of the reason we start getting ready for Christmas so early in Casavalle—to accommodate the huge crowds, which are quite a boon to our economy.”