Cinderella's Prince Under The Mistletoe. Cara Colter

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      He shook off the faintly heady feeling of elation. His father would not have approved of it. The current circumstances of his life required him to be more responsible, not less.

      But still, for a little while, it seemed he had been granted this opportunity to experience freedom from his duties and his responsibilities whether he wanted that freedom or not.

      He did not know how long the reprieve would last.

      And he realized he had no idea what to do with this time he had been granted. Though the first order should be fairly simple. He needed to find something to eat.

      He opened his bedroom door and was greeted with a wall of inky darkness. He became aware of a faint chill in the air. Obviously, the heating system was reliant on power. He fished his cell phone back out of his pocket and briefly turned on the flashlight, memorizing the features of the hallway before he turned it back off to conserve the battery. Feeling his way along the wall, and using his memory, he found the sweeping staircase and inched his way down it.

      He didn’t use the flashlight on his phone again as his eyes began to adjust to the darkness. He saw an arched entry to a room just off the foyer at the base of the stairs. Dining hall?

      He entered and paused, letting the room come into focus. Not a dining room, but some kind of office and sitting room combination. There was a large desk by the window, a couch and a fireplace, which it occurred to him they might need.

       They.

      He could well be stranded here with Miss Albright. He felt a purely masculine need to protect her and keep her safe against the storm, and he went over to investigate the fireplace. Of course, he was not usually the one lighting fires, but he would have to figure it out. Miss Albright protecting him and keeping him safe was embarrassingly out of the question.

      He moved deeper into the room, and jostled up against the sofa. A small thump on the floor startled him.

      A cell phone was on the floor, and the bump had made it click on, its light faintly illuminating the fact that Miss Albright was fast asleep on the sofa! The cell phone must have fallen from her relaxed hand.

      He picked it up, and a photo filled the screen. The picture was of Miss Albright, laughing, her face radiant with joy, as she gazed up at the man she was pressed against. Her left hand was resting against his upper arm, and a ring twinkled on her engagement finger.

      It was a small ring, nothing at all like the heirloom Buschetta ring he had given Princess Meribel on the occasion of their formal engagement. That ring had been carefully chosen from the famous Valenti royal collection as the one that would show not just her, but her family and her kingdom, how valued an alliance this one was. The ring, by the famous Casavallian jeweler, had been appraised at fifteen million dollars.

      In retrospect, had Meribel accepted that ring with a look that suggested a certain resignation? Had she looked at the ring longer than she had looked at him? Certainly, there had been nothing on her face like what he saw in this picture of Miss Albright.

      Carefully, Luca set the phone on a coffee table in front of the sofa. He could taste a strange bitterness in his mouth.

       Love.

      Obviously, that radiant look on Miss Albright’s face came from someone who loved and was loved.

      It was the very thing he had trained himself never to desire, the thing that had nearly collapsed the House of Valenti when his father’s first marriage, a love match, had ended in abandonment, scandal and near disaster instead of happiness.

      Luca had been taught by his father that love was a capricious thing, not to be trusted, not to be experimented with, an unpredictable sprite that beguiled and then created no end of mischief in a well-ordered life.

      Meribel’s admission of loving another—of carrying another man’s baby—total proof that his father’s lessons had been correct.

      And yet that glance at the photo of Miss Albright and her betrothed had made him feel the faintest pang of weakness, of longing for something he had turned his back on. Something unfamiliar niggled at him, so unfamiliar that at first he could not identify it. But then he knew what it was. He felt jealous of what he saw in the photo of Imogen and her man.

      The feeling was unfamiliar to the Prince because, really, he was the man everyone perceived as having everything. Soon to be King, Luca had wealth and power beyond what anyone dared to dream.

      And yet, what was the price? A life without love?

      What was it like to love as deeply as Meribel loved, so deeply that the future of a nation could be jeopardized? What was it to feel that kind of joy? That kind of abandon? What would it be like to lose control in that way? To give oneself over to a grand passion?

      His family’s history held the answer: to give one’s self over to a grand passion was an invitation to ruin.

      And it seemed his father’s personal catastrophe, more than thirty years in the past, still had the power to wreak havoc. Had there been a child from the King’s brief first marriage? Was the claim real, or in this world so filled with duplicity, was it just a lie, a sophisticated extortion attempt of some sort?

      Luca glanced once more at Miss Albright’s sleeping face.

      He saw sweetness there, and vulnerability. He became aware of that feeling of protectiveness again, especially as he felt the chill deepening in the air. Still, he did not want to risk waking her by lighting the fire.

      Instead, he saw a blanket tossed over the back of a wing chair, quietly made his way to it and went back and laid it over her.

      Some extraordinary tenderness rose in him as the blanket floated down around her slender shoulders. He reminded himself that she was committed to another. Then he noticed her hand. The ring that had been in the photo was missing.

      Not that that necessarily meant anything. Maybe she didn’t wear it to do chores.

      Luca forced himself to move away from her, and once again went in search of something to eat.

      He found a cozy dining room, and on a large plank harvest table, perfectly in keeping with the woodsy atmosphere of the Lodge, sat a single table setting and a bowl of soup—mushrooms clustered in a thick broth and garnished with fresh herbs.

      Beside the soup was a plate of cheeses, gone unfortunately dry around the edges, along with strawberries and grapes. All were artfully placed. He considered that for a moment. He wondered if Imogen had been disappointed when he did not come for dinner. He sampled her offering, taking a slice of cheese. Unfortunately, it was as dry as it looked, but it piqued his hunger. He turned his attention to the bowl of soup. It probably only needed heating. Forgetting he would need power to do that, Luca scooped up the bowl and went in search of the kitchen.

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