How to Love a Princess

Prologue

“Wake up,
cucciola.
”

Catherine’s dream blended
into the soft morning light streaming through the blinds. She opened her eyes,
reluctant to release the night, the love…the fulfilment that swelled her heart.
Her breath caught as knuckles grazed her cheek tenderly from behind and the
husk whisper repeated itself, warm and teasing against the curve of her
collarbone.

“Wake up,
cucciola.
The day is half gone.”

The deep baritone sent a
wave of warmth pushing through her tummy and down to her toes. Her eyelids
slowly shut on a smile lit from inside as she eased from her side onto her
back.

It’s real.

All real.

No dream. This is now
my life. My love.

“Nicolas,” she murmured,
still smiling, her eyes still closed. “Pinch me. Quickly.”

Those slender, capable
fingers went up her throat, slowly and provocatively, and then went on to trace
her smile. “There are many things I’d do right now,
dolce cuore
, but
pinching is not one of them.”

“I thought the day is half
gone,” she teased, well aware that for Nicolas, who usually woke at five a.m.
and often worked throughout the night, half the day could mean anything between
eight and ten in the morning. She opened her eyes to look at him and stretched
the foreign stiffness from her muscles.

“So it is.” He brought his
rogue grin low to brush her lips in a tender kiss, then toppled his side of the
covers on top of her and slid from the bed.

Catherine groaned. She’d
led such a ridiculously sheltered life that there was no doubt much more he’d
have to teach her, but there was one contribution she’d make to this
relationship: Nicolas Vecca would be made to see the advantage of lying in,
especially on a Sunday morning.

She watched him pad to the
bathroom, all they’d shared still new enough to make her blush. She
instinctively pulled the sheet up to her throat.

He turned around at the
bathroom door and her gaze flew up to his handsome face, much more familiar and
comfortable with that sight than the body he had no qualms about displaying. A
lazy grin slashed his bristled jaw and she saw, with a warm jolt to her heart,
that the depths of his brown eyes held a languid smile and none of the
energetic vitality that usually brimmed from a mind that never stopped.

“Where are you going?” Not
to work, Catherine prayed. Not today. Not after last night.

Nicolas gazed at the woman
he loved more than life. Oh, yes, it had taken him all of three minutes to fall
in love with her, but three long months to admit it to himself.

His grin grew.

He couldn’t help it.

His research team were
going to have a field day come Monday if he went in with this half-baked grin
plastered on his face. He held her vivid blue eyes for another moment, then
grazed further down, over her flushed cheeks and stubborn chin, the swirl of
auburn tangles hitched there, and to the slim fingers clutching the sheet at
her throat. The sapphire stone on her ring finger glinted blue fire in a ray of
sunlight streaming through the blinds. So much like her eyes.

If his grin wasn’t
half-baked before, it surely was now.

Nicolas laughed, lifting a
broad shoulder in an amused shrug as he imagined the comments that would fly in
his laboratory.

He didn’t care.

The woman who’d driven him
crazy for three months was here, in his home, in his bed, in his heart. Soon to
be his wife. Today, he couldn’t seem to care much about anything else.

He’d already begun the
process of schedule shifting and delegation that would open up his life to
include Catherine and the family they’d make, and it cumulated into today. “I’m
going to make us breakfast
and then we are going to spend the day doing
exactly as you wish.”

Blue eyes flashed
mischievously. “Now I know I’m dreaming. I cannot possibly be getting Nicolas
Vecca to myself for the entire day.”

“You’re getting him for
the rest of your life,
dolce cuore,
” he murmured, smiling.

Then, before he gave in to
the temptation to jump back into bed and show her just how much he loved her
for a few more hours, Nicolas went into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
Within seconds, the steaming water was washing over his body. He closed his
eyes and threw his head back, allowing his mind to wander over the unease that
habitually crept up on him.

At twenty-one, Catherine
was more innocent than most women her age. All along, he’d attributed his
reluctance to take their relationship into the bedroom to his conscience. While
he enjoyed physical pleasures, he was serious about responsibility and duty
and, in his eyes, taking a woman’s virginity came with many responsibilities.
Now, however, now that he’d admitted how much he loved her, that he couldn’t
live his life without her, now that he’d proposed and been accepted, he had
reason to wonder.

Conscience…or fear?

He hadn’t wanted to be
just the man she lost her virginity to.

He hadn’t wanted to be a
pleasant memory she one day shared with a close friend, or maybe even a future
lover.

Catherine was still much
of a mystery to him. She had come to London on some extended tour to celebrate
her coming of age. Yes, he
had
been afraid that he was no more than an
extension of that celebration, a tourist attraction on her journey into
adulthood. That he was simply the vessel she’d chosen to awaken the secret of
sexual pleasures.

Nicolas turned the taps
off and grabbed a towel. As he rubbed down his body and dried his hair, the
irony was not lost on him. For one who’d never been short of female company, he
must be the first and only man in his generation to insist on marriage before
taking his—this specific—girlfriend to bed.

Once again, he did not
care.

Catherine was his now.
She’d promised to be his and he’d hold her to that promise. The sooner they were
wed the better. And the sooner he learnt more about her, the easier he’d sleep
at night.

Her name was Catherine
de’Ariggo. Born in New York, she was twenty-one and had obviously led a
protected life—until she’d decided to travel a little before completing her
Masters in Psychology and Sociology.

She was beautiful and
impish and incredibly stubborn.

She was full with life and
quick to laugh.

She was sweet and her
heart was gentle.

She was his and he loved
her.

Nicolas hitched the towel
at his hips and left the bathroom, a quick glance at the empty bed on his way
to the wardrobe telling him that Catherine was up.

He felt as if he knew
everything there was to know about his wife-to-be and nothing at all. He
dressed quickly in denims and a black T-Shirt, then made his way down the
stairs to the open-plan kitchen and living area. “Catherine…?”

The fridge door was open,
stainless steel and high enough to tower above her head. She stepped back and
shut the door, holding up a carton of eggs. “I thought I’d help.”

He laughed, coming forward
to round the granite counter divider. “What you know about cooking is
dangerous.”

He reached for the carton
and she held it away with a giggle. “Then you’ll have to teach me how to make
your famous herb omelette.”

“Very well.” He stood
aside, leaning against the counter, content to admire the midnight blue
sundress that caressed her figure and swirled at her calves. “You’ll need the
whisk and a bowl to start with.”

Catherine knew exactly
where to find the utensils she needed. She’d watched Nicolas cook often enough.
When she brought the things to the counter, he came to stand behind her, his
chest flush with her back, his arms around her, his hands covering hers
protectively with all the warmth and strength of the man himself. Together they
selected one egg and broke the shell against the rim of the bowl.

“I do know how to crack an
egg,” she protested, while her spine rippled with pleasure at his closeness.

“I wouldn’t know,” he
murmured at her ear. “I know so little. Today, we get to know each other
thoroughly.”

Although softly spoken,
she understood the edge to his tone. “Today,” she promised, and this time her
shiver held a trace of apprehension. “You might not be so eager to marry me
once you learn all my dark secrets,” she added, only half teasing.

“There is no secret dark
enough, no crime vile enough, no discovery black enough to keep me from you,
little one.”

Moisture gathered in the
corner of her eye. But it would be fine, she told herself. She was, after all,
the first woman in her family to be free. The curse was broken. She could live
her life here in London, as a wife and, hopefully, a mother, without the
haunting shadows of her ancestry and country.

Turning her head, she
lifted her chin to him, her heart filled with an abundance of love that pushed
fresh tears of joy to her eyes.

“What’s this?” he asked as
their gaze met. “No tears allowed today.”

“Happy tears. I’m so in
love with you, it feels as if my heart cannot contain it all.”

“I know the feeling.”
Smiling—he just couldn’t stop doing that today—he started to bring his hand up
to wipe beneath her eyes.

She turned her body
slightly to fit into him and an instant later they both jumped at the deafening
crash. Tears forgotten, Catherine squiggled free, saw the mess of the shattered
bowl and the carton of eggs that had been swept from the table, and groaned.

Nicolas chuckled. “I said
this would be dangerous.”

She went to wet a cloth
beneath the tap and came back, looking up at him as she dropped to her knees.
“This is all your fault for distracting me.”

“Guilty as charged.” He
chuckled harder. “I must admit, you make a pretty picture on your knees,
scrubbing floors.”

“Chauvinistic pig!” But
she laughed as well, fully aware that he’d proposed knowing exactly how useless
she was when it came to domestic chores.

“Very well,” he said,
moving to grab the house keys from the peg on the wall beside the fridge, “this
chauvinistic pig will just run down to the corner shop for some more eggs, if
that’s all right with my beautiful wife?”

“I’m not your wife yet.”

“Yes, you are.” He came
alongside her and swung her straight from the floor into his arms with a twist
that put her flat against his chest. His kiss was deep, probing and thorough,
and left her utterly breathless. “After last night,
cucciola mia
, the
wedding ceremony is but a formality.”

“Hmmm.” She kissed him
back, moulding her lips to his warmth, not about to argue.

Too soon, he set her down
and tipped her nose. “I won’t be long.”

Catherine cleaned the
mess, was rinsing the cloth in the sink when the door chimes sounded. She shook
her head as she went to answer it, convinced that she’d seen him take the house
keys. He must have set them down when he pulled her into his arms and forgotten
to collect them on his way out.

“And I’m supposed to be
the one hopelessly inadequate at—“ Her words froze as she pulled the door open
and saw the last person she’d ever expected to see. Here. Now.