HOW TO MARRY A PRINCESS Read Online Free PDF Page B

that he’d hired you?”
    “Gilbert was joking with me. He saw me sweeping and asked me if I needed a job. Your brother Damien had introduced us the day before. Dami knows I love horses and wanted me to have a chance to ride while I was here. And I had told him I was hoping to buy one of your stallions. He said I would have to talk to you about that.”
    “You’re great friends, then, you and my brother?”
    “Yes. I consider Damien a friend.”
    She thought again of the blonde and the redhead at dinner. He’d seemed to take their fawning attentions as his due. “You’re a player. Like Dami.”
    “I’m single. I enjoy a good life and I like the company of beautiful women.”
    “You’re a player.”
    “I am not playing you, Alice.” He held her gaze. Steadily. Somehow the very steadiness of his regard excited her.
    She did not wish to be excited. “You’ve been playing me from the moment you picked up that broom and pretended to be someone you’re not.”
    “Everything I told you was true. Everything. Yes, I’ve got all I’ll ever need now, but I started out in L.A. with nothing. My parents were both dead by the time I was twenty-one. I have one sister, Lucy.”
    “And you went to work on a ranch when you were eighteen?”
    “No. I visited that ranch. Often. My boss took a liking to me. He flipped houses in Los Angeles for a living and he hired me as a day laborer to start. I learned the business from the ground up, beginning on his low-end properties in East L.A.”
    “You’re saying you learned fast?” She wasn’t surprised.
    “Before the crash, I was buying and selling in all the major markets. I got out ahead of the collapse with a nice nest egg. Now I manage my investments and I do what I want with the rest of my time. Oh, and that second cousin you mentioned, the one who lives in Bel Air?”
    “Jonas.”
    He nodded. “I know him. Jonas Bravo and I have done business on a couple of occasions. He’s a good man.” He pulled her a little closer again. She allowed that, though she knew that she probably shouldn’t. They danced without talking for a minute or two.
    Finally, she muttered grudgingly, “You should have told me all of this at the first.”
    “I can see that now.” He sounded so...sincere. As though he truly regretted misleading her.
    She tried not to soften. “Why didn’t you, then?”
    “Alice, I...” The words trailed off.
    “At a loss? I don’t believe it. Just tell me. Why weren’t you honest with me from the first?”
    “I don’t know, exactly. Because it was fun. Exciting. To tease you.”
    She started to smile and caught herself. “That’s not a satisfactory answer.”
    “Look. I came early to ride and I saw you there, saddling that beautiful mare. It was still dark out and there was no one else around. I didn’t want to scare you. I picked up the broom and started sweeping, because what’s more nonthreatening than some guy sweeping the floor? And then... I don’t know. You thought I was a groom and you talked to me anyway. I liked that. I got into it, that’s all. In a way, the Noah you met in the stables really is me. Just...another possible me. The one who didn’t make a fortune in real estate. I thought it would be something we would laugh over later.”
    The dance ended. For a moment they swayed together at the edge of the floor. She should have pulled away.
    She stayed right where she was.
    He was getting to her. She was liking him again. Believing the things he told her....
    Yet another song started.
    He pulled her even closer and whispered, his breath warm across her skin, “I screwed up, okay?” He whirled her around. They danced in a circle along the outer rim of the floor.
    “You knew who I was from the first. Before we met. Right?”
    He pulled back enough to give her a look. Patient. Ironic. “Please. I’m friends with your brother. He’s told me about you—and your sisters and brothers. Also, I want one of your stallions and I know