EXCERPT

“I’ll bet you can’t hit the bullseye—no, not even hit the board—throwing with your left hand.” After an hour, Christian was more than a bit tired of watching Mallory rack up points. The woman had skills. Serious skills. She’d-hustled-him skills. And somehow, the more they drank, the better she got, and the more his game fell to pieces.

That said, it was still the best night he’d spent in months. She’d followed his instructions to the letter. No more ‘Your Highness’s’. No more holding back the sass he’d heard her spit at Kelsey. Mallory had zinged him as effectively as she zinged the darts.

She was smart, witty, and deviliciously good-looking. Usually he was content with only hitting two out of those three in a date.

Not that tonight was a date.

It was just two people distracting each other for a few hours.

And holy hell, he was distracted.

“Please. Why would I agree to play with you—to bet you—unless I could throw with both hands?” Mallory barely took the time to sight the shot before letting loose. It didn’t strike the bullseye, but hell if it didn’t hit the next closest ring.

“Aha! You are a hustler.” Christian surged off the stool to point an accusing finger at her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She batted the lashes over her innocently wide green eyes. “Using both of your hands for everyday tasks prevents Alzheimer’s.”

“You’re twenty-eight.”

“It’s never too soon to gird up those neural nets. You’ve no idea all the things I can do with both hands.”

If any other woman outside his family had uttered those words, he’d know them to be a double entendre. A come-on. Flat-out flirting.

Aka, suggestive as fuck.

Hard to tell with Mallory, though. Because she both was and wasn’t family. Because they hardly knew each other. This was probably the first time they’d been alone together.

And she’d been off-limits from the get-go.

Even though he’d sure as hell noticed her from the moment she stepped off the royal jet and onto his homeland. At first he’d noticed her stunning combo of sunrise-colored hair and emerald eyes. Followed swiftly by an appreciation of the long legs that made her tower over his sisters. Made it easier for him to talk to her without getting a crick in his neck, too.

Then he’d noticed how Mallory put her nose to the grindstone, learning everything she could to ease Kelsey’s transition from foreigner to princess. He’d come to find out that she could’ve stayed in New York and started her new job, let Kelsey go off to Europe by herself. Except that thought would never have crossed Mallory’s mind. Her loyalty ran bone deep.

Another important trait to the House of Villani—even for those on the fringes of it.

Huh. Why was she off-limits?

They were both single. Friends, he supposed. Or at least on their way to being so.

Maybe she had been flirting.

While he’d been lost in thought, she’d grabbed the last of their samplers and lifted it to his lips, cupped in both hands.

Suggestively.

“Drink up,” she ordered, laughter lifting the corners of her mouth. “You lost the bet, Christian. No reneging.”

“How dare you impugn the honor of a blood prince with such a suggestion?” he blustered, going one-hundred-ten percent full regal to make her keep laughing. It brought out dimples in both of her cheeks. Little divots. Angel-kisses, his Aunt Mathilde claimed.

Christian wanted to dip his tongue into both of them.

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