Prince: Royal Romantic Suspense (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5) Blair Babylon (ebook reader screen txt) 📖

arrived only half an hour earlier. After her name was found on the guest list stored on a computer tablet that had obviously been tampered with by the staff from below stairs, she’d been shown to a large round table in the back of one of the banquet rooms. Her tablemates were all giggly and toasting each other with the free champagne that the waiters kept pouring into their glasses even though the waitstaff eyed everyone at that table with suspicion.

An American couple from Back East sitting next to her were named Ford and Charley Dalio, and they were on their honeymoon and traveling all over Europe for a month. They seemed ridiculously, stupidly in love, giggling all over the place and pecking each other with tiny kisses when they thought no one was looking.

Dree refused to allow herself to get upset. There was no reason why she should be saddened by somebody else’s happiness. She was not that kind of a person.

Besides, she was sneaking into a high-society charity event to spy on Maxence, and really, what could be more fun? Chiara and her other friends on the palace staff had told Dree to seduce Maxence so that he wouldn’t run off and be a priest, but Dree didn’t know how she was going to find him in this melee or how to do that, anyway.

After supper, the other people at the table took pity on the country bumpkin who didn’t know the order of events for the evening and told her that the next thing would be dancing.

Dancing.

Oh, hey. Another opportunity to gawk and plaster herself to the edges of the room, a perennial wallflower.

But Dree tagged along with Ford and Charley, and they found the enormous ballrooms with glass walls that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea.

The jazz band that had been playing earlier had been filled out with more musicians and was now closer in size to an orchestra. Dree was standing in the crowd when Maxence walked out of the other side of the throng of people toward the middle of the dance floor, leading his cousin Marie-Therese.

All sorts of very bad words went through Dree’s head, but the last time Dree had seen that skank, Marie-Therese had been in Dree’s boyfriend’s bed wearing slutty underwear. A few bad words were probably warranted.

And yet, Lady Marie-Therese Grimaldi was the girl in Maxence’s arms that night because Dree Clark was, after all, just a New Mexican sheep-herding farmgirl, standing on the sidelines after sneaking into a royal ball.

The two of them spun around the ballroom dance floor in an elegant waltz. Maxence wasn’t all stiff and show-off like a professional ballroom dancer, but he led Marie-Therese around the floor with confidence, maybe nonchalance, because he was going through the steps and everybody was looking at him while he did it.

Yes, waltzing was just another thing Prince Maxence Grimaldi could do. Of course, he could. Waltzing was probably an essential skill written into the job description of being a prince.

He didn’t do it for very long, though. After one circuit of the dance floor, Max released his cousin and gestured for the crowd to join him on the floor, and that’s when his dark eyes found Dree.

He froze for just a heartbeat.

Dree saw his reaction, and she couldn’t move either.

And then he was strolling toward her. He looked mildly interested, the perfect embodiment of His Serene Highness.

Dree’s heart pounded against her sternum like it was trying to escape. If she ran, she’d fall over.

Maxence stopped in front of her and held out his hand like he was offering her something in his palm, but his hand was empty. He leaned toward her, his voice pitched low, and said, “Chérie.”

It wasn’t fair of him to use that nickname, not when he’d told Father Moses that he was breaking up with her to be a priest. It wasn’t fair.

“Dance with me.” His light tone sounded like the thought had just entered his mind.

People flowed around them onto the dance floor like they were in a tunnel with darkness rushing around them.

Dree shook her head. “I don’t know how to dance like that.”

“The floor will be packed,” Max said, still holding his open hand between them. “You don’t have to know how. Come with me, chérie.”

Come with me.

Not please.

Not, if you want to.

Of course, Maxence ordered her, Come with me.

He was looking into her eyes, practically looking into her mind, and she became aware that he was looking through Dree and into her heart.

She obeyed.

Dree placed her hand in his, and his long fingers closed around hers.

He positioned one of her hands on his shoulder, which always seemed impossibly far up because she didn’t realize how truly tall he was until she was standing right next to him, and he held her other hand in one of his.

His other hand touched her waist and then curled around her back. “For the last month, at every event like this, I’ve caught myself looking for you in the crowd. I’ve watched for you every night. I’ve been waiting for you.”

She grumbled, “You could’ve asked me to go to the dance with you.”

He chuckled. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to.”

“Why would you think I wouldn’t want to go to a dance?”

“Because this is frivolous,” he said. “I don’t think of you as enjoying frivolous things.”

Maxence guided her as they moved around the floor, although much slower and with vastly smaller steps than when he had been dancing with Marie-Therese. The ballroom floor was more crowded than earlier, so it wasn’t like he had the choice. However, the way he pressed her hands and body like he was driving her, somehow, Dree ended up waltzing.

Dree shrugged. “I may be level-headed and down-to-earth. I might be good in emergencies and have my head on relatively straight when it comes to people. But I like pretty dresses, and I like to have a good time. I’m not a stick in the mud. I was never going to be