Free The Princess and the Billionaire by Barbara Bretton Page A

her hands in his for a moment. “You can’t keep crying into your dress.”
    She didn’t even look at him, just grabbed hold of his jacket and buried her face in its dark folds. Her tears were hot, quickly saturating his shirt and warming his skin. So many tears....
    He looked down at her, mesmerized by the way her dark hair fell across her face, the way it shimmered in the starlight. If this was an act designed to tug on his heartstrings, she deserved an Oscar. He wanted to gather her up into his arms, kiss away the tears, then make love to her right there on the terrace.
    The fact that she’d probably have him sent to the guillotine if he tried it wasn’t enough to dissuade him, but the fact that she’d already been hurt enough was.
    He groped through his pockets for a handkerchief.
    “Here.” He pulled one from his inside breast pocket with a flourish. “This beats using a St. Laurent for a tissue.”
    She reached for the square of linen gratefully. “It’s—it’s n-not St. Laurent,” she said between sobs. “It’s a Ch—Christian Lacroix.”
    He couldn’t hold back a grin. “I never was very good at playing Name-the-Designer.”
    She waved her hand in the air with the gesture he’d come to know. “You can g-go now.”
    “You’re finished with me?” He should have known better than to feel sorry for her.
    She nodded. She didn’t know him well enough to recognize the menace in his words. “I want to be alone now.”
    “A minute ago you wanted to throw your champagne in my face.” And a minute ago he’d wanted to kiss away her tears. Thank God he’d stopped short of making a total ass of himself.
    “That was before. Now I wish to be left to myself.”
    “We don’t always get what we want.” His glance strayed toward the glittering ballroom where the happy bride and groom commanded the dance floor. His meaning was unmistakable.
    Her teary dark eyes suddenly flashed with fire. “Don’t you dare say anything!”
    “I could have said, ‘I told you so.’”
    “An admirable display of restraint on your part.”
    “Wish I could say the same about you. Dancing on the tabletop was hardly your shining moment, princess. Your old man should’ve locked you in your room and thrown away the key.”
    “I’m high-spirited,” she said with a toss of her head. “It’s expected of me.”
    “No,” he said slowly, “what’s expected of you is that you take a backseat to your sister.”
    “You don’t understand how it is.”
    “Maybe not, but lover boy out there sure as hell does.”
    She rose to her feet, her slender frame visibly shaking with anger. “Don’t you dare say anything bad about Eric!”
    “I wasn’t about to, princess. On the contrary, I was going to pay him a compliment.”
    Even in the darkness of the terrace he saw the look of suspicion on her face. “I find that hard to believe, Mr. Bronson.”
    “He’s a lot smarter than I’d figured. If you’re going to dally with the prince’s daughter, why not dally with the one who’ll inherit the throne?”
    She turned away from him, and for a moment he almost regretted the harshness of his words. But just for a moment. Someone had to tell her the way the game was being played.
    “I could spell it all out for you,” he said, his tone a bit softer, “but somehow I don’t think you’d believe me.” Unpaid debts, broken promises, and cold-blooded family mergers were hardly the stuff of dreams.
    She wheeled around to face him again, and for a second he saw the woman behind the beautiful mask. “I’m not a fool,” she said, her husky voice etched with pain. “I know what my father and Honore are about with this match. Eric had no choice. He’s not to blame for what’s happened.”
    “And what about your sister?”
    He heard her intake of breath. Now he was getting somewhere. “She has always done what was expected of her.”
    “Even sleep with the man you love?”
    Isabelle reacted purely from instinct. He understood