by CA Quigg
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About Juliana Conners
Juliana Conners is an Amazon bestselling author who writes sizzling hot romance about bad boys with filthy mouths and even dirtier thoughts, and the feisty ladies who win not only their rock hard, tattooed bodies but also their hearts. She is the only female human living in a house she shares with her bad boy techie husband and their two usually good little boys. They do live with a female cat and a female dog to even out the score! She enjoys weather as warm, food as spicy and coffee as hot as she likes her romance. She aims to write stories that will captivate your mind, warm your heart and fulfill your fantasies>
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Deceived
A Flirty and Dirty Royal Romance
CA QUIGG
Copyright © Callie Quigg/CA Quigg
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
Cover Design and formatting: Callie Quigg
Cover image photos: Deposit Photos
Deceived
A flirty and dirty royal romance
When some mistakes come back to haunt you, they steal your heart and soul…
Sixteen years ago, I royally f**ked up.
A tequila soaked night in Vegas went wild and I ended up making a mistake that’s now threatening to destroy my future.
What happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas.
How do I know?
My twenty-one year old stepdaughter is on her way and has the power to end my royal family's thousand-year reign.
I won’t allow that to happen.
My first thought was to throw her into the city's dungeons and leave her there to rot. If she’s dumb enough to even hint at blackmailing me with whatever she knows about my past, she’ll never see the light of day again.
But then I saw her and everything changed.
Sweet, innocent Emma.
This book is dedicated to my readers
Every day your emails and Facebook posts make me laugh
Deceived by CA Quigg
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Emma
Lack of sleep stung my eyes. I'd look like a raccoon for days, but I didn't care. In all of my twenty-one years, I'd never stepped foot onto an airplane, but now, in the space of a day, I'd been on two, and I wanted to remember every single second. Until now, a Greyhound bus was as exotic as it had gotten for me.
Not once during my current Air France flight from JFK to Charles De Gaulle in Paris, had I closed my eyes. Nor had I closed my eyes on my almost five-hour Delta flight from Vegas to New York to catch my flight to Paris.
So far, I loved everything about flying—the way my ears popped on takeoff and landing, the incessant white noise of the engines, the overheated gelatinous food, and the free booze in the teeny bottles that were almost too cute to drink—almost.
I gazed out of the window at the peaceful world below. The glowing sun peeked over the horizon, setting the sky on fire. I sucked in a lung-filling breath at the beauty. How lucky was I? I'd never used the word blessed before because every time I heard people use it, I wanted to roll my eyes and sigh, but for the first time, I got a warm sense of overwhelming happiness that made me feel…blessed.
Brian, the middle-aged man, snoring beside me, had kindly given up his seat when I'd explained the lack of travel in my life. He took up to three flights a week, and he'd said the thrill of sitting by the window vanished a long time ago.
I still couldn't believe that I, boring old Emma Brown who waited tables in seedy bars and who grew up wearing Goodwill clothes was on her way to Rhias, a principality off the French Riviera to meet her stepfather Prince Kristian Tandorf.
Okay, he wasn't really my stepfather, but he was the person my mom had married before she'd died. Were she still alive, she might not even have remembered marrying him.
Grandma had often said my mom's life was nothing but parties, alcohol, and drugs, which, subsequently, led to my arrival when she was a few months past sixteen. No one but my mom knew who my dad was and she took that secret to her grave. I didn't miss having a dad. How could I miss what I'd never had?
The Prince didn't seem to remember my mom, or at least that's what his assistant Beverly had told me over email. I hadn't been in direct contact with Prince Kristian yet, but I hoped to remedy that when I reached Rhias. Maybe meeting me would help jog his memory.
After my flight landed in Paris, I had to take a seventeen-hour bus journey before I reached Rhias, and when I arrived, I still wasn't sure if the Prince would take the time to meet with me. No matter. If it took all week—all month—I wouldn't leave without seeing him. I would nag and pester whoever I had to because I wanted to know how my mom ended up married to royalty.
When I turned twenty-one, my grandma gave me a tin that had belonged to my mom. I shook my head and gave my reflection in the window a sad smile. My mom's short life amounted to nothing more than a cookie tin filled with mementos. A cookie tin that held a wedding certificate—the wedding certificate.
Was I surprised to find a wedding certificate amongst her things? I wasn't not surprised. Living in Vegas meant getting married was as easy as ordering a Big Mac, but I was surprised when I couldn't find any record of an annulment or a divorce decree. If the Prince and my mom were still married when she'd died, did that make me a princess? A member of the royal family? I bit back a giggle so as not to sound like an idiot, or wake up Brian. I knew I wasn't a princess, but for the past six months, I'd imagined knighting people and saying things like, "Off with their heads."
My grandma told me the date on the wedding certificate was around the time my mom worked as a bottle waitress in one of the Strip's top clubs. When not taking her clothes off for money, she sweet-talked guests in the VIP lounges to buy bottle after bottle of marked-up liquor. I was five then and had lived with my grandma. My mom would've been the age I am now. A few weeks after she'd married the prince, she went to a party and had accidentally drowned in the pool.
A pang of loss pierced my heart. When she had died, I was too young to understand what death was. But, every day for months, I'd cried for her, and sometimes I still did. A day didn't pass when I didn't miss her or grieve for the time we'd never have.
She was movie-star stu
nning. At five-five she was a whirlwind of fun with curves in all the right places and wavy jet black hair that skimmed her butt. And her eyes were a vivid shamrock green that always shone with happiness and love. I'd inherited her height, hair, and eyes, but I'd also inherited a double helping of her curves. Hips, tits, and ass that was me. Most days I embraced who I was and what I looked like, but there were days when Shrek's uglier twin sister stared back at me from the mirror.
My mom had partied hard with the people she'd met while waitressing and would sometimes vanish for a week or more. When she would eventually make it home, she would sleep on and off for days, and I would have to be quiet so she could get her beauty sleep. My life growing up wasn't bad or filled with neglect—I was very much loved—but it wasn't a fairytale either.
Was that why my mom had married a prince? Was she after her own fairytale? Had she envisioned a life in Europe filled with privilege and pretty dresses? I shook my head, probably not. If my mom knew she'd married royalty, she would have milked it for everything it was worth.
Most likely, she didn't know who she'd walked up the aisle with.
As soon as I'd uncovered the wedding certificate, I'd dug up as much information as I could about Prince Kristian and the Tandorf family. Their line was older than Columbus' discovery of America. Kristian's ancestors founded Rhias back in the eleventh century, and his family had ruled ever since. I wished I knew what he looked like, but the Tandorfs were fiercely private people and the only pictures I could find online were blurry paparazzi shots that showed nothing but pixelated faces. The citizens of Rhias protected their royal family fiercely. Outsiders weren't welcomed and were often chased away by gun wielding residents.
Wikipedia said Prince Kristian was thirty-seven, single, next in line for the throne, and had two younger sisters. Their mother had died in a boating accident when Kristian was ten, and the princesses were five and two. Their father, King Sebastian, had never remarried.
Rhias was a tax haven with a population of thirty thousand and had draconian immigration laws. There had to be several zeros in your bank account and then some before being considered for citizenship. Aristocrats with double-barreled names lived in mansions by the Mediterranean, and the rich and famous went there to recuperate. I half expected to find streets lined with gold and fountains filled with wine. It would be a far cry from the rundown, weed-filled trailer park I'd grown up in.
After my grandma passed three months ago, I moved out of the park and into a shoebox apartment, but there was no denying where I was born and raised.
For months after I'd discovered the wedding certificate, I hadn't bothered with it, but then loneliness got to me and I had an overwhelming need to connect with someone who knew something—anything—about my mom.
How a prince had technically become my stepfather was something I didn't understand. My grandma hadn't known a thing about him or his relationship with my mom, but she said she'd never knew anything when it came to her daughter.
My mom and I were as different as oil and water. I'd busted my ass, studied hard and earned a full in-state college ride at seventeen while she hadn't even graduated high school or earned her GED. I did what it took to prove the trailer park stereotype wrong. I wasn't a piece of white trash. I was a valedictorian, and as soon as I got back home, I would work for a nonprofit that helped in-need kids and at risk families. No matter what it took, I'd make something of myself and make a better life for those who couldn't.
No one would ever have said Melody Brown was a poster mom, having me when she was still a kid herself hadn't tamed her wild-child side or her need for adventure, but she'd tried. As different as we were, and even though she'd died before I'd reached six, I was still my mother's daughter. Grandma often said I reminded her of my mom. She said I was strong and independent just like her.
Grandma was one hell of a woman too. Because of her raising me the way she did, I didn't suffer fools and no man, no matter his promises, would break me, take me and then discard me when he got bored. Wasn't going to happen. Not to this girl.
My heart and body would be hard won. On every single date, my legs remained locked at the knees. Too many boyfriends to recall had made it their mission in life to take my virginity. The first man I slept with would have to prove his worth.
I wasn't a prude. Far from it. Naughty books were my not so guilty pleasure, and when I was extra horny I watched porn, and just because I was a virgin didn't mean I didn't appreciate hotties or imagine all the delicious things they'd eventually do to me, and the things I'd do to them.
Since puberty hit, I'd had a couple of hundred, or maybe a couple of thousand, orgasms—no way in hell would I deny myself that kind of self—made happiness—and, sure, I'd fooled around with guys, but it never went further than a little over the sweater action. One day, just as my mom's had, my prince would come, only mine would stick around.
The lights in the cabin flickered on, and people around me stirred from fitful sleep.
"Won't be long now," Brian said. He wiped a thick hand over his jowly face and yawned.
"Yeah," I agreed trying not to bounce up and down in my seat. "Not long."
In forty-five minutes, I'd be in Paris and, soon after, I'd meet the man my mom had married sixteen years ago. I was peeing my pants to hear his side of the story and hoped he could explain why he'd married and had stayed married to a waitress from Vegas.
Chapter Two
Kristian
I paced up and down my office wearing a path into the rug. Melody Brown was a name I hadn't heard in eons. It was a name I didn't even recall until my PA, Beverly, informed me someone called Emma Brown from Las Vegas insisted on talking to me about her mother and a marriage certificate that bore my name.
I hadn't been to Vegas since I was twenty-one with my cousin Charlie, and the woman I'd allegedly married, thanks to a lost bet, had faded from memory. Ms. Brown had included a picture of her mother in one of her hundred or so emails. Melody was a beautiful woman, if not my type—too skinny—and the photo had jogged some hazy memories of the three of us, Charlie, myself and Melody, stumbling into a wedding chapel in the wee hours, but on the night I'd supposedly said "I do," I'd been drunker than a sailor on shore leave. I remembered shots of tequila in the casino and on the way to the chapel, but after that nothing.
I didn't think the marriage was legal, but Beverly's investigation quickly discovered that Happily Ever After Weddings had filed the license soon after the ceremony, which meant it was very much legal.
Beverly also learned Melody had passed away soon after we'd married. Unbelievable. I was a widower to a wife I'd met only once. A wife I barely remembered. I tried to muster up some sadness but from what little I could recall, I hadn't even kissed the woman, so I had little to no emotion for her. How could I grieve for a woman I didn't know?
The night we'd met was still a blur of loud music, tequila, and Elvis impersonators. The stupidity of my actions was now coming back to haunt me and had the potential to cause tremendous embarrassment for my family and could jeopardize me finding a wife amongst Europe's aristocracy.
My upcoming marriage was one born out of necessity, not love. A matrimonial alliance with the right family would provide me an heir, and more importantly, it would help protect Rhias' political and commercial interests, which were all that mattered.
I was expected to find a spouse from one of Europe's other royal houses. Not an easy task. There was no one suitable available—marrying a third or fourth cousin wasn't desirable. Therefore, it had been decided, after much negotiation and arguments from me against it, that a banquet would be held and ten eligible noblewomen would be invited to attend. I called it a cattle parade. My father called it a necessity.
My father had recently suffered two heart attacks, and was on complete bed rest. That meant no royal duties whatsoever for him and meant I was now Prince Regent,
The citizens of Rhias were growing restless and frustrated. They wanted assurances that the fami
ly line was secure. If I didn't produce an heir soon, the future crown would no longer bear the Tandorf name, and that wasn't acceptable. Not acceptable at all.
To put their minds somewhat at rest, the banquet of brides had been brought forward until tonight. Just in time for this Brown girl's arrival. Most inconvenient.
Beverly's investigations also found out Emma had grown up in a ramshackle trailer with her grandmother and had attended college on a scholarship. If that didn't scream desperation, then I didn't know what did. I wouldn't give into blackmail, but I was curious to meet her.
She said she wanted to meet me so we could talk and wouldn't go away until we did. There was nothing for us to talk about, but after ignoring her pleas for months, I finally had Beverly arrange to get her here the cheapest way possible. I had a fleet of jets and could have flown her from door to door, but why should I treat someone who most likely wanted to extort money from my family like royalty?
To find out what she wanted, I'd do what I had to and if that included flirting and flattery, and deceit so be it.
Chapter Three
Emma
Exhaustion weighed on my shoulders, and I scrubbed the back of my hands over my bleary eyes. Thanks to hundreds of breakdowns and delays, the bus ride had taken over twenty-four hours. But I'd finally arrived in Rhias and now stood outside what had to be the cleanest transit station in the world.
Gleaming white tiles laced with veins of gold covered the walls. The pavements had no dirty trash rolling around or any pieces of gum stuck to them.
With my unwashed hair, ripped jeans and scuffed Converse sneakers, I looked like a hobo. Any minute now, a cop would come along and throw me in prison for polluting the pristine environment.
