The Runaway Princess Read Online Free PDF

their heels and collided into his back in a tipsy jumble of golden limbs.
    “Steady on, ladies!” he drawled—if you can drawl at the top of your voice. “Let’s wait till we get into the party, at least!”
    Everyone’s attention was now trained on the door, and the blood drained from my body.
    A gate-crasher. My worst nightmare. And Jo wasn’t even here to see him off the premises. She was
excellent
with gate-crashers; she usually ended up going on to a different party with them.
    “Who the hell invited him?” muttered Ted, who had made his way through the throng to my side. He
was
looking a bit mafioso, if any of them had played cricket for England.
    “I don’t even know who he is,” I squeaked back. “I mean, what’s he come as?”
    It was supposed to be a whisper, but because I’d been holding my breath it came out a bit louder than I’d meant, plus it coincided with an unfortunate break in the music, which one of the blond girls was now fiddling with.
    Everyone turned to look at me and I shrank down behind Ted as far as I could.
    The man didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he descended on me with both hands outstretched, his huge brown eyes fixed on my face as if there were no one else in the room—no small feat, given that the flat was absolutely crammed. The guests parted like the Red Sea as he approached.
    The nearer he got, the more handsome he seemed. The intensity of his gaze beneath his long dark lashes was unsettling, but, I had to admit, also very attractive. I guessed this was how a rabbit felt, shortly before being swallowed whole by a boa constrictor, scared but oddly flattered at the same time.
    “Hey,” he said in a rich, slightly accented voice like dark chocolate. He managed to wring a whole sentence-worth of meaning out of that one syllable.
    My mouth dropped open but nothing emerged.
    Ted nudged me hard in the back and the breath whistled out of me.
    “Hello!” I managed.
    “Good evening, gorgeous lady,” he said, grabbing my hands, and raised one to his lips to kiss it. “Do
you
need to get aboard the Rolf Express to Partyville? Because it’s heading into the station and I want
you
riding on it.”
    I had no idea what to say to that. I wasn’t even sure what it meant. But I had to say
something.
Fast. Before Ted nudged me again or worse, intervened himself.
    “Yes?” I hazarded.
    Rolf—I assumed that was his name—threw back his mane of hair and laughed, and the girls behind him reassembled themselves. One snaked her fingers through his belt loop, and another rested her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes in the sort of pose that made her look like a model. If I’d posed like that, someone would have offered me a bucket and a sit down.
    “I’m Rolf. What’s
your
name?” he went on, releasing my hand, but not my gaze. “Or can I just call you gorgeous?” He frowned. “No. In the morning. Can I just call you … in the morning? That’s the one.” He cocked an imaginary pistol and fired it at me.
    “I’m Amy.” My throat had gone dry and several really stupid comments were fighting to escape from my mouth. Rolf’s extreme confidence had raised the stakes about a thousand times higher than they were at the best of times, plus everyone was looking at us.
    Where was Jo? I
needed
her here.
    “Amy! Sweet. And how do you know the lovely Josephine?”
    “I live here?”
    Clearly I was doing so badly Ted felt the need to step in. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked. His solid presence behind me was reassuring, even if he did smell of mothballs. I assumed that was the suit, rather than a new aftershave.
    “Good call. What have you got?” Rolf temporarily turned his charm beam off my face, and I was surprised not to fall to the floor.
    “Beer, wine, some blue cocktail Jo’s made. But”—Ted had done the health and safety course for our business—“I have to warn you that it’s been unsupervised for the last half hour and I can’t guarantee what she put in