The Prince She Had to Marry Read Free

because she glanced up. Still sobbing, her eyes red and her perfect nose redder, tears streaming down her cheeks, she caught sight of him in the doorway. With a cry of sheer misery, she leaped to her feet. “Oh, Alex. The most terrible thing has happened. It’s Rule.” She said his older brother’s name with another agonized cry. “He’s married someone else.”
    He should have retreated right then. He should have shut the door and locked it and not opened it again.
    Instead, he’d pulled the door open wider. She must have taken that as an invitation. She’d thrown herself into his arms and drenched the front of his shirt with her tears.
    By that point, he absolutely should have pushed her away and shut the door. But he hadn’t. He’d taken her into his sitting room and sat with her on the sofa and listened as she continued wildly sobbing, as she poured out her misery—that his brother loved another, that Rule would never be marrying her now, that Rule didn’t love her and never had. That she was nothing more than an honorary little sister to him, and always had been.
    When she finally paused to suck in a few shaky, hiccupy breaths, he’d handed her a tissue and told her exactly what he was thinking. “Calm yourself, Lili. There is so much true suffering that exists in this world. Don’t you realize how little your petty problems matter in the larger scheme of things?”
    His remarks had not gone over well. Lili had responded in her usual way. With an ear-flaying shriek of outrage, she’d drawn back her hand to slap his face.
    He should have let her do that, allowed her to vent a little more of her considerable frustration. But no. He’d automatically caught her wrist before she could carry through.
    And that was when it happened.
    He still had no idea how. Or why.
    All at once, she was in his arms. She smelled like her name, like some fine, sweet, exotic flower. She...overwhelmed him. There was no other word for it. Silly Lili overwhelmed him. Somehow, at that moment, having her in his arms was like holding hope and light and all the good things that were lost to him forever. Her skin was so soft and her eyes were the incomparable blue of lapis lazuli.
    And then her mouth was under his, opening, sighing....
    Something snapped in him. Something gave way.
    What happened then was raw and perfect and really quite beautiful.
    With Lili.
    Lili, of all people.
    Afterward, she smiled. So softly. Contentedly. And she reached up and laid her delicate, graceful little hand against his cheek. “Alex,” she whispered, as though his very name held wonder for her now.
    He couldn’t bear that. He didn’t need her looking at him like that. She should never ever look at him like that.
    And so he’d said without inflection, “You should go now.”
    She did go. She pulled on her clothes swiftly—and silently, for once. Without looking at him again, without so much as another word, she left him.
    After she was gone, he’d called himself any number of ugly and richly deserved names. And then he’d told himself it was best for her if they simply put the unfortunate incident behind them, if they went on with their separate lives as though it had never happened.
    That was what he’d been trying to do. And then she sent that letter that he hadn’t allowed himself to open. She’d called him. Twice. Both times she’d left messages demanding he call her but giving no reason whatsoever why he should.
    Now, at last, he knew why. Now it all made sense.
    There would be a child and that meant they couldn’t put what had happened behind them. Now they only needed to do the right thing. And both her father and his family were as eager as Alex was to turn this potential disaster around.
    A marriage between Leo’s only daughter and one of the Bravo-Calabretti princes would bolster the sometimes-strained relations between Alagonia and Montedoro. For years, most of the world had assumed that Lili would end up wed to Rule. But