Royal Surrender - chapter one

She couldn’t believe she was really doing this.

Noe Ravenna wasn’t a spontaneous sort of woman. She’d never had the option. Growing up as an orphan had made many things clear to her, chief among them that no one was going to step in and save her from anything.

Therefore she was going to have to do it herself.

So she had.

It had taken determination, skipped meals, and sheer stubbornness, but she had built a tidy little life for herself. Now she was a sought-after interpreter all over Europe. She had dined in castles and coolly facilitated communication between heads of state, celebrities, and the truly wealthy, who preferred to remain out of the sullied reach of any media or public recognition.

She’d made it, in other words.

And now she was about to ruin herself.

Over a man she already knew she could not have.

Noe stood on the quiet street in a desperately posh part of London. It was a summer night, late, yet the sky was still a deep shade of blue. The heat of the day still clung to the pavement, making the earth seem to ache beneath her feet.

She could still call this off. It was as simple as turning around and walking away. He was a public figure, a prince of all things, and for all his riches and fame and the castle-studded country in the Alps that he would reign over soon enough, he could not come to her. He could not be seen near her. He could not indicate he was even aware of a woman so far beneath him that her presence in his life could only ever mark her as a mistress, and a low-born one at that.

Meaning, an embarrassment to his kingdom. A tawdry expression of lust and the sort of urges that did not befit a Crown Prince.

She could see the headlines now.

Prince Cajetan of Enrosadira had distinguished himself amongst the rest of the European royal houses by never being a source of shame for his mother, the Queen.

Noe didn’t like the idea that she could change that.

Simply by walking in the unmarked door a little way down the street.

He’d invited her to have dinner with him in that single scrap of conversation they’d risked.

Only dinner, he had said, his dark green eyes lit with the sort of fire that a wise woman would do well to ignore.

But here she was all the same.

Only dinner, she had repeated. That sounds so civilized.

And she had known, then. By the way his sensual mouth curved and changed his finely cut, almost austere expression into something that made every part of her sing. By the way he had not touched her hand.

Not one part of this would be civilized in the least.

She should run. She knew she should.

But instead, Noe took a deep breath, walked to the door of the wildly exclusive Diamond Club, and rang the bell.