Something in the Heir (It's Reigning Men, #1) Read Free Page A

to her parents’ beach house in North Carolina.
    Okay, she had to clarify this a bit. The Great Hall, as a work venue, on a scale from one to wow, was no doubt a wow. Picture every little girl’s fantasy of taking that Cinderella descent down a grand marble staircase, garbed in a luscious tulle ball gown twinkling with crystal beads, with the man of your dreams (like maybe that Adrian guy) waiting at the bottom to clasp your outstretched hand and pull you into an intimate dance. Throw in that two-story tall Christmas tree, which would put the famed Rockefeller Center version to shame on grandeur alone, and, well, this was where that dream would come to life. That is, if that was the kind of fairy tale you could somehow work out for yourself. Good luck there.
    As Emma was working her way toward the coat check, she spied the obnoxious senator pawing at what looked to be a Capitol Hill intern, judging by the badge dangling from her neck. Emma quickly opened up her camera bag, pulled out her camera, and began snapping pictures of the senator in a clinch with the girl, his hand squeezing the young woman’s butt.
    “Hey, Senator,” she shouted over the din of the crowd. “Wonder what your constituents would think about you tapping that.”
    She moved the camera away from her face and gave him a big thumbs-up as the senator quickly detached himself from the girl, who had to be fifty years his junior.
    Gotcha .
    With that, camera still slung over her shoulder, she grabbed her coat from the coat checker, handed the girl a buck, and slipped out a side door, never to be missed by those inside. Now to get back to the car, cross the bridge into Virginia, and be home in twenty-five minutes, tops.

Chapter Two
    H is Royal Highness Crown Prince Adrian was one very ticked-off young man. He paced the floor of the private office-cum-holding room in which he was holed up as if he had somewhere to go. Only he didn’t. Although he might, soon enough, right on down the aisle, what with his mother force-feeding him a heaping helping of Lady Serena Elisabeth Montague, Duchess of Montague, like a fat spoonful of that disgusting, overpriced caviar that girl seemed to be on a steady diet of.
    Despite Adrian’s repeated entreaty to the contrary, his mother the queen had deemed Serena to be “ideal marrying material,” via yet another text message to her son, and palace efforts were now under way to ensure the fulfillment of her wishes, regardless that they were in direct conflict with her son’s own desires. Certainly it hadn’t helped that Serena’s mother, Lady Sarah, a close consort of the queen, had been touting the glories of her daughter to his mother for years now.
    “ Serena Montague .” He growled her name, swatting away his equerry and trusted confidante, Lord Darcy Squires-Thornton. “Despicable would be too generous a word to describe that miserable manipulator. I’d no sooner wed that scheming, conniving—”
    “Adrian,” his aide said, stopping him with a hand against his chest and a stern look in his eyes. “The walls have ears.”
    Adrian glanced around the room, remembering that there were indeed others nearby whose discretion wasn’t guaranteed. It wasn’t easy always having to worry that what you said could be broadcast publicly and not in a good way. Ridiculous, really. He was starting to feel almost imprisoned in his life of privilege, what with the extreme limitations on his privacy, his freedom, and, point in fact, his choice of life partner. He never chose to be an heir to a dynasty; rather, it was thrust upon him thanks to this outdated primogeniture nonsense. Who was to say he was any more deserving of the throne than his siblings, or even Darcy, for that matter? It all might have made sense a few centuries ago, but now?
    He was beginning to wonder if being a relic of days gone by wasn’t more of a strange curiosity that ought to be relegated to sideshow status or somehow set up as a tourist attraction to