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CHAPTER ONE

“SOME days, being a princess is right up there with long-term incarceration on Alcatraz” Therese muttered the words as she pulled up the zip on her favoritefor yet another formal dinner in the Palazzo di Scorsolini

It wasn’t the prospect of one nitaries who had coh It was frustration with a day spent in her own version of purgatory She loved the king of Isole dei Re and was closer to him than her own father

But there were still times she wished she and Claudio had their own home, not just a set of apartments in the royal palace of Lo Paradiso No matter how beautiful, the suite afforded little privacy when she and Claudio were expected to eatroom The fact that her duties as princess ruled even her personal tiht, when she was jittery with the need to share the news she’d received froone to the States for this particular exauarantee absolute discretion

She alotten hold of the story, at least she would be saved fro to iht and she was no coward

But even she, with years of training as a diploe with equanimity Unlike her parents, she did not see life as a series of political and social moves and counter on his second cuff link and pulled both sleeves straight with precise, familiarthat faeous face a cynical cast “I will be sure and tell your mother you think so”

Therese stopped on her way to the table where she had left the jewelry she planned to wear tonight “Don’t you dare”

Claudio found hertendencies a source of auine She, after all, was the ladder her mother expected to climb up on

“I have no desire to listen to Lecture 101 froedit was that Claudio had chosen Therese froible women in the world She really didn’t want to hear that particular treatise, right now

“Perhaps she will be able to understand your apparent disenchante in Claudio’s voice said he was only partially kidding and his dark gaze was serious and probing

“I’m not disenchanted with my lot” Merely devastated by it, but noas not the ti her char, but she’d been too blind to see it She’d bought into the fairy tale only to discover that love on one side brought pain, not pleasure The happily-ever-after was only for princesses in storybook land…or those ere loved for themselves, like the tomen married to the other Scorsolini princes

“Then what is this co my wife to that of a convict incarcerated in prison?” Claudio towered over her with his six-foot-four-inch fra her just how much she would one

He was every woman’s dream, the kind of prince that fairy tales really were h fantasies around him to know He had black hair, rich brown eyes and the dark skin tone of his Sicilian forefathers, but the height of a professional athlete His body was muscular, without an ounce of fat anywhere and his face could have been that of an Ah No pretty boy looks, but rugged angles and a cleft chin that bespoke a strength of character that she had come to rely on co “I did not say being your as like that”

“You said the life of a princess, which you would not be if you were not hed “But I didn’t uaranteed to send her nerve endings rioting He so rarely touched her when they were not in bed that when he did so, she didn’t kno to handle it

“I am not offended, merely concerned” She could hear that concern in his voice and it …except choose the incorrect woh day, that’s all”