Page 4 of His Highness's Hidden Heir

The strength in his arms was an iron cage, but he held her more with the pierce of his gaze. Then he dropped his touch and gave her a disinterested nod.

She had to do some of her best acting as he walked away, hiding how bereft she was as she moving in the opposite direction.

He left the gala moments later. She felt the energy in the room change. Maybe it was the awareness inside her that dimmed. Either way, she was dejected and swimming in loss.

She told herself it was because she hadn’t managed to find Bernadette. She went back to the entrance of the ballroom and asked the greeter if the director had turned up.

The young woman checked her tablet. “It doesn’t seem so.”

Damn. Everything about this trip had become a complete waste of resources.

Lexi threw in the towel, unwilling to go back into the ballroom and face the growing stares. They were even more rude and speculative now that she’d danced with the prince.

He had probably wanted distance after being informed about her. She imagined he was furious that she’d compromised him.

For some reason that ate at her worse than the money she’d thrown away by coming here. Why? He was a total stranger. He meant nothing to her.

Yet she couldn’t stop thinking about him as she made her way down the corridor to the elevators, worrying over their brief interaction like an abscessed tooth, poking at all the most painful aspects.

She had to keep an unbothered look on her face as she went. Small groups of people were chatting in alcoves and she had to step aside for another entourage of royals.

Wait. Was that—? It was!

Lexi was rarely starstruck, but she paused to watch Queen Claudine and her husband, King Felipe, continue toward the ballroom. Claudine had been a beauty contestant from New York, competing in Nazarine when she’d fallen in love with its crown prince. He had since ascended to the throne. Their courtship was straight out of a romance novel, the kind Lexi would love to develop into a movie and star in, not that she could touch Queen Claudine’s natural beauty—

“Lexi!” a male voice called.

She glanced to the end of the corridor where it ended at the mezzanine. A man stood on the far side of the circular rail that looked onto the hotel’s entrance foyer below. He lifted his camera to point it at her.

The paparazzi was roped off outside, but that wasn’t just any photographer. Her heart nearly came out her throat as she recognized her stalker.

Instinctively, she pushed through the nearest door.

She had an impression of half a dozen men, including Prince Magnus, before someone grabbed her. Shock rendered her meager self-defense training useless. Her right arm was twisted into the middle of her back and her scream was still trapped in her throat when her face smacked into the wall.

CHAPTER TWO

MAGNUSTHOROLFHADalready been in a foul mood when he arrived at this hotel. It was a version of the foul mood he’d been stewing in for the last fourteen years, ever since he’d been plucked from his training session on a ski hill in Norway and shuffled into a van by men in suits and sunglasses.

One blood test later, he was deemed the legitimate heir to the Isleif throne, something his mother could have told him at any time in the previous eighteen years of his life.

I was afraid they would take you away from me, she cried when the truth came out.

That was exactly what had happened.

His life, which at the time had been filled with endless possibility, had shrunk to duty and protocol and service to a crown he had no desire to wear.

Which suggested he didn’t love Isleif, but that was the furthest thing from the truth. The best memories of his life were summers and Christmases at his mother’s cottage in the windy island nation, chasing his brother and sister down a beach or across a snow-covered field. He couldn’t think of that time without a knife of nostalgia turning in him.

Ignorance really was bliss.

It certainly had been an hour ago, when a woman had snared his attention and he’d thought he might have amenable company in his bed tonight.

He wasn’t even sure how or why she’d caught his eye. Yes, she was beautiful. Her blond hair was swept to the side, exposing one of her high cheekbones. Her pillowy lips were painted an earthy red, her eyeshadow bronze to match her gown.

The gown itself had been both elegant and sexy as hell. The silk had wrapped her throat then left her shoulders bare as it parted to cradle her ample breasts. It was fitted to her waist and hips, then fell open across one thigh, making the most of her stunning figure.

So, yes, she was easy to look at, but beautiful women made themselves available to him all the time, not that Magnus took full advantage of that small perk of his title. He’d had lovers, obviously. They were always vetted to within an inch of their life and his private secretary, Ulmer, damned near applied the condoms to Magnus himself.

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