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on your take on it—to meet their soul mate. Mind you, given the example our parents set for us it’s no wonder we’re all a little gun-shy in the marriage mart.’
    There was a pregnant pause.
    Lucca wished he hadn’t revealed quite so much about his background, not that she couldn’t read all about it online or in the gossip magazines if it took her fancy. People were still speculating on the whereabouts of his mother, who had finally walked out on the family soon after his youngest sister, Cara, had been born, leaving signed divorce papers on his father’s desk. No one had seen or heard from her since.
    The train wreck of his parents’ marriage had affected all of his siblings in various ways. He liked to think he was the least affected but he knew it wouldn’t take too many sessions with a therapist to see his inability to connect emotionally with people was a hoofmark of his childhood. He didn’t talk about it. To anyone. He didn’t even think about it. The bewildered little boy who had cried night after night for his mother was long gone.
    Lucca’s philosophy in life was to have fun. The only feelings he wanted were pleasurable ones, physical ones. He was a sybarite, through and through. He didn’t deny it and nor did he apologise for it. He had been born to enormous wealth and privilege and he made the most of it. Exploited it. He didn’t believe in working to live or living to work.
    He lived to party.
    He treated all his relationships as transitory things. Just like a party. He showed up for an hour or two, had a good time and then he left to move on to the next one. His relationships were simply casual hook-ups that had a common goal of pleasure, not permanency. He didn’t set out to deliberately hurt people—he wasn’t wired that way. He had suffered too much hurt in his childhood to make it his life’s mission to do the same to others. He used them certainly, but he always did it with lashings of his signature charm so no feelings were damaged. He got in and out of relationships so adroitly the women he dated hardly noticed they were being dispensed with. The closest he got to commitment was keeping someone’s number in his phone in case he ever fancied a booty call.
    But as if the uptight little princess sensed his family background was a painful subject, or perhaps didn’t feel comfortable offering a sympathy she didn’t feel, she brusquely announced, ‘I would like to inspect the hotel ballroom. I would like you to accompany me.’
    It was the very last thing she would like, Lucca thought, which made him wonder why she had suddenly changed her mind about including him in the wedding arrangements when she had been so vehemently opposed to it initially. Had her sister put the hard word on her? He knew Princess Madeleine was determined to have a glamorous wedding with all the trimmings and there was no better place than a Chatsfield hotel to put on a party to remember.
    Was little Princess Charlotte playing him at his own game? Making him tag along to every tedious meeting or boring inspection of crockery or cutlery until he got so thoroughly sick of it he walked off the job?
    He wasn’t going to let her trick him out of what was rightfully his. If he had to tag along, then he would, but he would make sure he had plenty of fun while doing it.
    ‘Sure.’ He put down his drink and gave her a winsome smile. ‘I’m all yours.’
    * * *
     
    Lottie kept her back straight as a ruler as she led the way to the hotel lift outside the penthouse. She knew Lucca Chatsfield’s dark brown eyes were following her every move. She could feel the lazy heat of his gaze sliding over her with every step she took. The man was a dissolute rake and she had no business in being even vaguely interested in his childhood with its tragic circumstances of a disappearing mother. What did it matter to her if he and his twin had been lost lonely little boys being brought up by their older siblings and a father who was