from her tight chignon and were bouncing in tiny cork-screws about her ears. With the abundance of flowers in the foreground and the ancient castle in the background, she looked like she had stepped out of the pages of a fairy tale.
He took out his phone and selected the camera option. Click.
She suddenly turned and glared at him. ‘Did you just take a picture of me?’
‘Yes. It was a beauty. The light was amazing.’
She put the flower basket down on the flagstones and stalked over to him with her hand outstretched. ‘Give me your phone.’
Lucca held the phone just out of her reach. ‘What’s the problem? It’s just a photo.’
Her eyes glittered and burned with resentment. ‘You had no right to photograph me without my permission.’ She made a grab for the phone by doing a series of little leaps. ‘Give it to me, damn you!’
‘Whoa there, sweetheart.’ He wrapped his fingers around her flailing arm to hold her steady on the uneven flagstones. ‘You’ll do yourself an injury bouncing about like that.’
She stamped her foot like a three-year-old child, making those cute little curls beside her ears bob up and down like springs. ‘You are an odious brute!’
‘I know, but that’s part of my endearing charm.’ He loosened his hold a fraction. ‘Now be a good girl and I’ll show you how cool the photo is.’ He brought the picture up and repositioned himself so she was standing shoulder to shoulder with him. ‘See?’
She looked at the picture for a moment and then glanced up at him with a frown puckering her brow. ‘Why did you take it?’
He slipped the phone in his pocket. ‘No special reason.’
‘I don’t like being photographed.’ She gave his fingers around her wrist a scowling look. ‘And I don’t like being manhandled either.’
He turned her wrist over and slowly raised it to his mouth so he could access the sensitive underside with his lips. He held her gaze as he brushed his lips against her delicately scented skin, watching as her eyes widened and her pupils flared like twin spills of black ink.
Lust heated his blood, set it moving, thundering, roaring to his groin as the tip of her small pink tongue darted out and swept over her lips, making them glisten invitingly. Her slim throat rose and fell as she swallowed; he even heard the tiny gulping sound in spite of the background chirruping of birds and the light whistle of the breeze moving through the cypress pines in the distance.
He lowered his head until he was barely a breath away from connecting with her lips, pausing there to give her the chance to pull back if she wanted to. He breathed in the sweet vanilla-milkshake scent of her breath as it danced over his lips as her mouth softly parted.
Come on, little princess, you know you want to….
The sound of the gravel being shifted by the tread of approaching footsteps made Lottie spring back from Lucca as if someone had fired a cannon from the battlements. She whipped around to see Madeleine coming towards them arm in arm with her fiancé, Edward Trowbridge. If the loved-up couple had seen anything untoward they were showing no sign of it; they were too engrossed in each other with their heads bent close together as they ambled along the pathway.
A tiny pang of envy twisted her insides. It would be so wonderful to have a man look at her with nothing but love and adoration in his eyes. No one would ever think she had romance running with wild hopes in her veins, but she secretly longed for a man to look at her as if his world began and ended with her. Would she ever find that sort of happiness? Or would she always be left on the sidelines, the spare part no one needed. The wallflower. The not-pretty-enough, not-smart-enough princess everyone either mocked or pitied.
Madeleine looked up and smiled. ‘Ah, Mr Chatsfield, at last I get the chance to meet you and to personally thank you for stepping in at the last minute to help Lottie with the wedding arrangements.’
‘It’s my very great pleasure, Your Royal Highness,’ Lucca said.
He was so charming, so adaptable to every situation, Lottie thought with growing annoyance. No wonder he had the reputation of being irresistible. That smile would melt through steel and leave it in a little silver puddle at his feet.
‘How is she behaving?’ Madeleine asked him once formal introductions were out of the way. ‘She can be a little headstrong and overcontrolling at times.’
‘Princess Charlotte is a delight in every way imaginable,’ he replied with consummate charm.
Lottie shot him a narrow-eyed little glare while the others weren’t looking.
‘Oh, you don’t have to address her so formally,’ Madeleine said. ‘Family and friends call her Lottie. I’m sure she doesn’t mind, do you, Lottie?’
‘Not at all.’ She stretched her mouth in a rictus smile.
Lucca’s dark brown eyes gleamed with a wick of wickedness. ‘Your sister was just consulting me about the flowers for the ballroom.’
‘Oh, really?’ Madeleine looked a little surprised. ‘But I thought—’
‘He’s great at flowers,’ Lottie said. ‘A natural. Born to it. Should have been a florist. Missed his calling if you ask me.’
Edward Trowbridge’s brows lifted ever so slightly. ‘How … nice …’
‘I thought she would’ve had you working on the entertainment program for my bachelorette party?’ Madeleine said, swinging her gaze back to Lottie. ‘What are you up to, Lottie? You’re not up to mischief, are you?’
Lottie smiled innocently. ‘You know me better than that.’
Madeleine swung her gaze back to Lucca. ‘I’m afraid Lottie wasn’t too happy about having any help with the planning at this late stage. She’s a bit of a control freak. But this team effort will be really good for her. I’m sure you’ll do a splendid job helping her to learn to let go a bit.’
‘I’m putting in my very best effort,’ Lucca said with a smile that would have charmed a seagull away from a food scrap.
Madeleine and Edward made their goodbyes and wandered off towards the grotto at the far end of the palace gardens.
‘Nice couple.’
Lottie snatched up the flower basket. ‘Just for the record, I would’ve slapped your face if you’d kissed me back then.’
‘What makes you think I was going to kiss you?’
She stopped marching and rounded her gaze on him. Had she imagined his intentions? Was she so out of touch she couldn’t tell when a man was interested in her or not? But whether he wanted to kiss her or not, she had been alarmingly close to pressing her mouth to his. Caught up in the moment she had been entranced, mesmerised by the thought of feeling his lips against hers. Her body had thrummed with the need to taste him. The teasing breeze of his breath against her lips, the way his breath had mingled with hers in that erotic way, had almost been her undoing.
‘You … you weren’t?’
