Cinderella's Prince Under the Mistletoe Read online

  Luca lifted a shoulder and dropped his finger from her chin.

  “I feel it,” he said. “Though I consider myself the most pragmatic of men, there are things, sometimes, that intuition knows. I have been trained, even as a child, to respect the gift of intuition as a tool in guiding my kingdom toward a future where sometimes it is hard to know the right answer, where sometimes facts are not enough to arrive at the correct decision.”

  Imogen felt his voice, his presence, wrapping itself around her.

  It had been the most perfect of days, and this was the most perfect of endings. She did not really know how completely she had lived without peace until it was restored to her.

  By a prince, sitting beside her in his bright red long johns!

  Maybe it was all a dream.

  It had to be. Because she drifted off with the deep weariness of one who had traveled a long, long time and had finally arrived at where they wanted—and needed—to be.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IMOGEN AWOKE. EVEN though she was faintly disoriented, she was aware of a glorious sensation from the bottom of her toes to the top of her head, filling every cell of her being, pumping through her bloodstream with every beat of her heart.

  She felt something she had thought that she would never feel again. But then yesterday, building a snow family with the Prince, she had felt it again. Yesterday, just before falling asleep, she had felt it again.

  That the feeling remained, even without the laughter ringing in the air between them, even without the quiet contentment of his voice weaving around her, was wondrous indeed.

  She realized she had fallen asleep sitting up. Now she found herself nestled against Luca, the steady drum of his heart beneath her ear, his warmth seeping into her, better than a blanket, his tangy masculine scent dancing with her senses.

  He had fallen asleep sitting up, too. His arm had found its way around her shoulders. She snuggled deeper against him. And let herself just feel it, that feeling that she had thought she would never have again.

  Of being blissfully happy.

  After a while, she shifted her position and allowed herself the luxury of studying his face in sleep. The tension she had noticed when she had awoken in the same room with him—could it really be only yesterday?—was gone from his features. How could she feel she knew him so well in such a short period of time?

  His features: the whisker-roughened chin and cheeks, his full, sensual lips, his lashes as thick as a sooty chimney brush, filled her with a kind of delight.

  His words from last night: spoken with such confidence and so hope-filled that the memory of them made her feel as warm as his body pressed against hers.

  Hope.

  She had wandered in the desert of despair for so long, unable to find her way out. And the way out had found her.

  Taken her completely by surprise.

  His words, his sharing his intuition with her, had been an extraordinary gift. Imogen felt a sudden intense desire to give him something in return, something he had never had, a continuation of the ordinary pleasures they had explored yesterday.

  But what could she give him that held a candle to the extraordinary sense of hope that he had reawakened in her?

  The answer whispered within her, so softly she dismissed it. But then it came again, louder.

  Christmas.

  She could give him Christmas. Not the trappings of Christmas, but the feeling of it. The delight of it. The sense of the miraculous that was inherent in that day. She could give him not a regal Christmas, where true meaning could become lost in pageantry, and in the pomp and circumstance, but the simplicity of Christmas, where one thing, and one thing alone, shone through.

  Shone through as clearly as a star that had led wise men on an incredible journey of faith to a message that had survived over a thousand years, that was still celebrated around the world as intensely as if that babe had been born yesterday.

  The message that the babe—and all babies—carried.

  The message she had given up on, but that now beat again strongly in her heart.

  Love was the true strength, the only way to heal a troubled heart.

  Imogen contemplated that for a frightening moment.

  Did she really want to be thinking about that—about love—when she was nestled into the safety of his strong, beautiful body? When she could feel the beat of his heart, and his breath stirred her hair?

  Of course she did not love him! It was impossible. Despite the fun they had had yesterday—the adventure of survival that they were embarked on together—she could not know him that well. She could not love him.

  Except maybe in the greater sense of that word.

  The Christmas sense: where love was the force that made you better than you were before, and stronger, and able to give to others from a well of compassion deep within your own soul.

  Was not the very spirit of Christmas, somehow, to give joy to a complete stranger, with no thought whatsoever of return, of what was in it for you?

  She slipped out from under the protection of his arm, got off the sofa and quietly went and stoked the fire, then tiptoed out of the room so as not to disturb Luca. She had no idea what time it was, but she located her cell phone.

  Because it had not been used at all, it still had battery. The time was three in the morning, but Imogen had never felt more awake.

  The picture of her and Kevin’s engagement had popped up as soon as she had opened the screen to check the time.

  She was going to close the phone, but she made herself look at the picture. Then she took a deep breath, and with a new resolve, a sense of extraordinary strength, she deleted the photo. She waited for some feeling—sadness, regret. A feeling came, but it was not the one she expected.

  A feeling of newness, of being open to whatever happened next, of not being stuck anymore.

  Imogen moved on to see that although there was no cell service at the moment, there had been. A message from Gabi had arrived sometime yesterday. Imogen opened it eagerly.

  I am safe. Did not get caught in the snowstorm, though my life is stormy in other ways. I will be in touch soon. Love you, my friend.

  Imogen stared at the message. Gabriella’s life was stormy? How was that even possible? How could her best friend have a stormy life without her awareness? Had she been that self-involved in her own misery that she had missed some unfolding drama in Gabi’s life?

  But how? Crystal Lake was too small for the details of people’s lives not to be noticed. Everyone knew everything.

  But people had suspected something was going on. Imogen had. Rachel had also known something was off with Gabi. But a storm?

  Storms usually meant men! And there were no men in Gabi’s life, no strangers in town causing tongues to wag.

  The only stranger about was the one sleeping in Imogen’s office, and no one knew about him.

  And it was not as if Gabi ever went anywhere where she might meet someone. While Imogen sometimes worried Gabi must be lonely, Gabi steadfastly claimed complete contentment with her life. She rarely left Crystal Lake, not even to drive two hours to the city. No, her big event seemed to be the delivery of new books to her store every week.

  She loved reading. She loved book club. She loved teaching literacy.

  Who was less likely to have a storm in her life than Gabi? Her friend was gorgeous, with her huge brown eyes and her thick chestnut hair that hung midway down her back. She was tall and curvy in the way that made men stop in their tracks and look at her twice, though her innate composure kept most of them from approaching her with their interest.

  Gabriella was delightfully unaware of those second looks, of her own extraordinary beauty. She reminded Imogen just a little of Belle, in Beauty and the Beast, her nose buried in a book while men floundered at her feet. In fact, Gabi usually forgot she had her reading glasse
s perched on the end of her nose, making her look like one of those very sexy librarians.

  Gabriella Ross was a self-proclaimed hater of excitement.

  And yet excitement, of some form, seemed to have found her. But her friend’s storm would have to remain a mystery until the storm that raged unabated outside the Lodge subsided.

  Terrible, Imogen thought, using up some of her precious battery on her phone to find her way through the darkened Lodge, to be hoping that the storm would not subside for a long, long time.

  She quickly went about the business of stoking the other fireplaces in the Lodge, and then went to a storage room and unearthed dusty boxes of Christmas decorations. Feeling delightfully like one of Santa’s elves, she quietly reentered the office.

  While Luca slept, she hung garlands and wreaths. She put out treasured figurines that had been in her family for generations. They might not be Buschetta, but they warmed her heart: reindeer and sleighs, Santa and his missus, a group of carolers. Finally, on the wide sill of the big window, she put out the manger scene. There were dozens of Christmas candles and she put them where, when lit, they would light the figurines. There were candles left over for the mantel. She drizzled shiny tinsel off the door and window frames. Finally, she hung two red socks.

  She sat back and took it all in. The room had been transformed to a magic place. It only needed a tree.

  And some gifts.

  What could she give a man who had everything? How about a memory of a perfect day? Again, she made her way through the darkened lodge, searching out this and that: Ping-Pong balls from the games room, cotton balls from the first aid kit, colorful place mats that she could cut into squares of cloth.

  Hardly feeling the cold, Imogen sat down at the kitchen table, and with her tongue caught between her teeth in fierce concentration, she made her gift.

  When it was done she regarded it with grave satisfaction, wrapped it carefully in butcher paper and tied it with a piece of string. Then she plundered the cupboards for stocking stuffers: baker’s chocolate, a package of pecans, a few pouches of hot chocolate powder.

  Tonight, for Christmas dinner, they would have those little chickens that were in the fridge. She would wrap them in tinfoil and slow roast them on the coals of the fire all day.

  She went back to the office and put her offerings in one of the socks. And then she went around the room and lit each of the candles.

  * * *

  Luca woke slowly. He could smell hot wax in the air. He opened his eyes to an enchantment.

  Candles burned around the room. They lit small figurines and sent a golden glow into a room that had been transformed. Tinsel sparkled like new icicles. There were red-bowed wreaths on the doors. There was a manger scene of figurines in the window. Two bright red socks hung over a fire that blazed merrily.

  His eyes found Imogen. She was adorable in her long johns, a red Santa hat with white trim and a huge pom-pom on her head. She was watching him, the smile on her face more enchanting than anything in the room.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “It’s a gift, for you. It’s the gift of Christmas.”

  He looked at the light in her face and saw her absolute joy in giving this to him. He was not sure a gift—and he had experienced so many of them that were grand—had ever touched him so completely. She must have been up for hours getting this ready.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said softly. What he wanted to say was, You are beautiful.

  “We just need a tree,” she said, suddenly shy, as if he had said those words—you are beautiful.

  Astonishingly, he could feel the spirit of what she was doing, creeping into him. He couldn’t wait to get a tree.

  And so they ate a hasty breakfast, donned their now-dry outdoor clothes from yesterday and went outside.

  She unearthed an ax from near a woodpile and they set out across the lawn, past their snow family and into a grove of trees. By the time they got there, they were both breathless with the exertion of plowing through the deep snow.

  Luca stopped in the silence of the trees.

  He could feel something tightening in his throat as he looked at the sanctuary of beauty and stillness around him.

  The moment was made complete when her hand found his. He looked at her to find her gazing into his face, that tiny smile of knowing tickling across her mouth.

  “What?” he asked her.

  “You feel it,” she said, her voice low and husky and reverent, as if they were in a church.

  “Feel what?” he challenged her. She couldn’t really read his mind. And his soul. She couldn’t.

  “Wonder,” she said.

  Apparently she could!

  He looked down at her and let himself feel it. The absolute wonder of this woman wanting so badly to give him something he had never had.

  Luca did something he was pretty sure he had never done, something that was not in the experience of any member of the House of Valenti, something his father would have scorned.

  He felt it unfurl inside of him.

  A banner.

  Of surrender.

  He surrendered to what she was doing, and what she was offering. He surrendered himself to the unexpected gift of a perfect day.

  Shockingly, it did not feel like a weakness to surrender. Shockingly, Luca felt stronger, and bolder, than he ever had in his entire life.

  He felt alive.

  He did something he had been dying to do since yesterday. It was part of that complete surrender. Before he could talk himself out of it, he gave in.

  He lowered his head over hers and tasted the lushness of her lips.

  The warmth of them was absolutely tantalizing in contrast to the cold air. Kissing her was as he had hoped—known—it would be. Real. Her lips told the absolute truth about who she was. And about who he was, too.

  Her lips opened eagerly to his mouth, they welcomed him, celebrated him, danced with him. He felt as if he was drinking a wine that he could never get enough of, a sweet elixir from an enchanted land.

  He made himself pull away from her, stunned by his own lack of discipline. He felt he should say he was sorry, but he was not in the least sorry, and after she had given him something so real, he could not be insincere with her.

  Still, he backed away from her, aware of her wide eyes following his every move, of her breath, quickened, forming little puffs in the cold air. He forced his mind to turn away from her, and it sought desperately for a task to distract.

  He went over to a tree with a sense of urgency. It was six feet high and its thick branches were weighed down with snow. He studied it carefully. He walked around it. He was not sure he had ever seen such symmetry in a tree, such vivid color, such headiness of fragrance. But of course, his every sense was heightened. It felt like the very air was shivering around him with newness.

  He reached into the trunk and gave it a shake. The snow cascaded around him, and he was rewarded with her laughter pealing through the stillness.

  “This one,” he declared. “This will be our Christmas tree.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  IMOGEN WATCHED AS Luca took the ax and swung it powerfully into the trunk of the tree. A fresh bunch of snow fell on top of him, but he shook it off with ease, focused intently on his task.

  A few minutes ago, it might have seemed absurd to think the Prince was showing off for her. But that was before he had kissed her.

  She took off her mitten and touched her lips. They felt faintly bruised, tingly. Her life felt altered.

  Imogen wished he hadn’t stopped. But she understood perfectly. A prince could not go about bestowing kisses on commoners!

  Still, even though he had backed off on that kiss, she was pretty sure Luca cutting down the tree was for her. Not just to give her a Christmas tree, but as a masculine form of preening.

  Aft
er a few minutes, he removed the bulky jacket. The view made her mouth go dry—the full broadness of his shoulders revealed, the taut line of his stomach. His arm muscles, outlined by the fabric, tensing, relaxing, tensing again. Somehow, one would not expect a prince to be quite so buff!

  Watching him work—easy strength set against this task—was like experiencing visual poetry. She could see the play of his muscles, feel his intensity, smell the faint tang of his exertion mingling with the sharp scent of tree sap.

  She had been aware of Luca before. Now that she had tasted the exquisiteness of his lips, the awareness was almost painful, like what she imagined having a tattoo on tender skin might feel like.

  The tree finally came down, falling slowly and silently into the snow that surrounded it. He turned and grinned at her, and she allowed herself the satisfaction of having succeeded at what she had originally set out to do.

  Luca’s face had lost all the sternness and all the tension that had been in it when he had first gotten off that helicopter.

  Standing there, leaning on the ax, the fallen tree at his feet, he looked mischievous and boyish, intensely alive, sinfully sexy.

  Really, could there be a more humble experience than taking an ax to a tree in the Canadian wilderness? And yet his face was alight with discovery, with an embracing of the spirit of Christmas that was almost childlike.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said softly.

  And she didn’t just mean the tree. She meant all of it.

  He put the ax on his shoulder and picked up the trunk of the tree with his free hand. The tree was huge and heavy, the snow was deep, but he forged ahead.

  Imogen leaped to his assistance.

  “We’re a good team,” Luca told her breathlessly as the Lodge came into sight.

  “Yeah, a good team of plow horses.”

  At the stairs of the Lodge, they faced a new challenge. Laughing, gasping, the occasional curse word slipping from the royal lips—which made her laugh all the harder—they finally managed to wrestle the tree up the steps and through the doors.