Cinderella’s scandalous secret
Their forbidden passion had consequences!
Overwhelming. Irresistible. Off-limits. Teo de Luz was all those things to innocent Amelia. Until she attends his opulent masquerade ball, and they share a deliciously anonymous encounter! Now Amelia must tell this brooding Spaniard he’s the father of her unborn child.
Teo can’t forget his runaway Cinderella, but discovering her true identity stuns him. His loathing of Amelia’s family means he cannot dismiss her deception! He will marry her. He will claim his heir. And he’ll exact a sensual revenge on Amelia, one pleasurable night at a time...
“You don’t want to hear why I’ve come?”
“I am certain I do not.”
“That will make it fast, then.”
Amelia could admit she felt...too much. Perhaps a touch of shame for having to come to Teo like this—especially after the last time she’d shown up here, uninvited. Her pulse kicked at her, making her feel...fluttery. And she was, embarrassingly, as molten and soft as if he’d smiled at her the way he had in September.
When he hadn’t ventured anywhere near a smile.
Just do it, be done with it and go, she ordered herself.
And who cared if her throat was dry enough to start its own fire?
“I’m pregnant,” she announced into the intimidatingly, exultantly blue-blooded room. To a man who was all of that and more. “You’re the father. And before you tell me that’s impossible, I was at the Masquerade last fall, and yes, I dyed my hair red.”
One Night With Consequences
When one night...leads to pregnancy!
When succumbing to a night of unbridled desire, it’s impossible to think past the morning after!
But with the sheets barely settled, that little blue line appears on the pregnancy test, and it doesn’t take long to realize that one night of white-hot passion has turned into a lifetime of consequences!
Only one question remains:
How do you tell a man you’ve just met that you’re about to share more than just his bed?
Find out in:
The Argentinian’s Baby of Scandal by Sharon Kendrick
His Cinderella’s One-Night Heir by Lynne Graham
The Sicilian’s Surprise Love-Child by Carol Marinelli
Bound by Their Nine-Month Scandal by Dani Collins
The Queen’s Baby Scandal by Maisey Yates
Look for more One Night With Consequences stories coming soon!
Caitlin Crews
Secrets of His Forbidden Cinderella
USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–nominated author Caitlin Crews loves writing romance. She teaches her favorite romance novels in creative-writing classes at places like UCLA Extension’s prestigious Writers’ Program, where she finally gets to utilize the MA and PhD in English literature she received from the University of York in England. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest with her very own hero and too many pets. Visit her at caitlincrews.com.
Books by Caitlin Crews
Harlequin Presents
Conveniently Wed!
Imprisoned by the Greek’s Ring
My Bought Virgin Wife
One Night With Consequences
A Baby to Bind His Bride
Secret Heirs of Billionaires
Unwrapping the Innocent’s Secret
Bound to the Desert King
Sheikh’s Secret Love-Child
Stolen Brides
The Bride’s Baby of Shame
The Combe Family Scandals
The Italian’s Twin Consequences
Untamed Billionaire’s Innocent Bride
His Two Royal Secrets
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Contents
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
EXCERPT FROM CROWNING HIS CONVENIENT PRINCESS BY MAISEY YATES
CHAPTER ONE
“HIS EXCELLENCY IS not at home, madam.” The butler sniffed, visibly appalled.
He did not so much bar the door to the grand and ancient palatial home as inhabit it, because such a glorious door—crafted by the hands of long-dead masters and gifted to the aristocratic occupants likely on bended knee and with the intercession of a heavenly host, because that was how things happened here in this fairy tale of a place that had claimed this part of Spain for many centuries—could not be blocked by a single person, no matter how officious or aghast.
And the butler was both, in spades. “One does not drop in on the Nineteenth Duke of Marinceli, Most Excellent Grandee of Spain.”
Amelia Ransom, considered excellent by her closest friends instead of an entire nation and with decidedly lowbrow peasant blood to prove it, made herself smile. Very much as if she hadn’t, in fact, turned up at the door of a house so imposing that it was unofficially known as el monstruo—even by its occupants. “I know for a fact that the Duke is in.”
An old acquaintance of hers still lived in one of the nearby villages—“nearby” meaning miles upon miles away because the Marinceli estate was itself so enormous—and had reported that the Duke’s plane had been seen flying overhead two days ago. And that the flag with the Marinceli coat of arms had been raised over the house shortly thereafter, meaning the great man was in residence.
“You mistake my meaning,” the butler replied, his deep, cavernous face set in lines of affront and indignation that should have made Amelia slink off in shame. And might have, had she been here for any reason at all but the one she’d come to share with Teo de Luz, her former stepbrother and the grandiose Duke in question. “His Excellency is most certainly not at home to you.”
It was tempting to take that as the final word on the matter. Amelia would have been just as happy not to have to make this trip in the first place. It had been a gruesome red-eye flight out of San Francisco to Paris, particularly in the unappealing seat that had been all she could get on short notice. The much shorter flight to Madrid had been fine, but then there was the drive out of the city and into the rolling hills where the de Luz family had been rooted deep for what might as well have been forever, at this point.
“I think you’ll find he’ll see me,” Amelia said, with tremendous confidence brought on by fatigue. And possibly by fear of her reception—and not from the butler. She stared back at the man with his ruffled feathers and astonished air, who did not look convinced. “Really. Ask him.”
“That is utterly out of the question,” the butler retorted, in freezing tones. “I cannot fathom how you made it onto the property in the first place. Much less marched up to pound on the door like some...salesman.”
He spat out that last word as if a salesman was akin to syphilis.
Only far more unsavory.
If only he knew the sort of news Amelia had come to impart. She imagined he would cross himself. Possibly spit on the ground. And she could sympathize.
She felt much the same way.
“I expect you go to great lengths to keep the Duke’s many would-be suitors from clamoring at the door,” she said brightly, as if the butler had been kind and welcoming or open to conversation in any way.
“He must be the most eligible man in the world by now.”
She’d personally witnessed the commotion Teo caused when enterprising women got the scent of him, long before he’d assumed his title. That was why she hadn’t even bothered attempting to get in the main gates, miles away from the front entrance of the stately home that was more properly a palace. The grand entrance and gates were guarded by officious security who could be reliably depended upon to let absolutely no one in. Amelia had therefore driven in on one of the forgotten little medieval lanes that snaked around from the farthest corner of the great estate, there for the use of the gamekeeper and his staff. Then she’d left her hired car near the lake that had been a favorite reading spot of hers back in the day.
That way she could walk to clear her head from the flight and so little sleep, prepare herself for the scene before her with Teo and best of all, actually make it to the soaring front door that would not have looked out of place on a cathedral. Her car would have been stopped. A woman on foot was less noticeable. That was her thinking.
She hadn’t really thought past getting to the door, however, and she should have.
The butler was slipping a sleek smartphone from the pocket of his coat, no doubt to summon the security force to bodily remove her. Which would not suit her at all.
“I’m not another of Teo’s many groupies,” Amelia said, and something flashed in her at that. Because that wasn’t precisely true, was it? Not after what she’d done. “I’m his stepsister.”
The butler did not do anything so unrefined as sneer at her for the unpardonable sin of referring to Teo by not only his Christian name, but a nickname. He managed to look down his nose, however, as if the appendage was the highest summit in the Pyrenees.
“The Duke is not in possession of a stepsister, madam.”
“Former stepsister,” Amelia amended. “Though some bonds far exceed a single marriage, don’t they?”
Her smile faded a bit as the butler stared down at her as if she was a talking rat. Or some other bit of vermin that didn’t know its place.
“I doubt very much that His Excellency recognizes bonds of any description,” the butler clipped out. His expression suggested Amelia had offended him, personally, by suggesting otherwise. “His familial connections tend toward the aristocratic if not outright royal and are all rather distant. They are recorded in every detail. And no stepsisters appear in any of these official records.”
Amelia pressed her advantage, scant though it was. “But you don’t know how Teo feels about members of the various blended families his father made while he was still alive and marrying, do you? Do you really dare send me away without finding out?”
And for a long moment, they only stared at each other. Each waiting to call the other’s bluff.
Amelia wished that she’d stopped somewhere and freshened up. She’d dressed to impress precisely no one back in San Francisco many, many hours ago, and she was afraid that showed. She didn’t particularly care if Teo saw her looking rumpled, but butlers in places like this tended to be far more snobbish than their exalted employers. Her ratty old peacoat was a good barrier against the blustery cold of the January day. The jeans she’d slept in on the long flight from San Francisco were a touch too faded and shoutily American, now that she considered it in the pale Spanish morning. And the boots that hadn’t seemed to need a polish back home seemed desperately in need of one now, here on the gleaming marble stair that led inside the palatial house she still dreamed about, sometimes.
Because el monstruo was truly a fairy-tale castle, and then some. There were turrets and dramatic spires, wings sprouting off this way and that, with pristine land rolling off on all sides toward the undeveloped horizon. Standing here, it was easy to imagine that the breathlessly blue-blooded family that had lived here for the better part of European history was the only family that had ever existed, anywhere.
The de Luzes would no doubt agree.
Of all her mother’s husbands—all the titled gentlemen, the courtiers with hints of royalty, the celebrities and the politicians who had found themselves charmed and captivated and discarded in turn by the notorious Marie French—none had impressed themselves on Amelia as much as Luis Calvo, the Eighteenth Duke of Marinceli. Teo’s father, whom Marie had pursued, caught and then inevitably lost over the course of a few whirlwind years when Amelia was still a teenager.
As formative experiences went, finding herself thrust into the middle of a world like the de Luzes’, so excruciatingly exclusive, deeply moneyed and aristocratic that they might as well have lived on another planet altogether—and for all intents and purposes, did—had been as ruinous as it had been exhilarating. Marie had always preferred rich men. But add together every conventionally rich man in the world and it would still barely scratch the surface of the de Luz fortune. And the nineteen generations of power and influence that infused it, expanded it and solidified it.
Amelia had not recovered as quickly from this marriage as she had from the others her mother had subjected her to over the years. Or from this place. And most of all, she had never quite gotten over the man who lived here now, his father dead and gone. And when she’d belatedly performed a much-needed exorcism to get rid of the hold those years kept on her, she’d soon discovered that she’d created a far bigger problem.
You’ve come here to create a solution, she reminded herself primly.
Not that it would matter why she’d come if she couldn’t get in the door.
Teo de Luz—once her forbidding, stern and usually outright hostile stepbrother, now the latest Duke in a line so long and storied she’d once heard giddy society types braying to each other that the de Luz family was, in fact, Spain itself—wasn’t the sort of man who could be waylaid. There were no accidental meetings with him in local coffee shops; he owned half the coffee farms in Kenya. He did not frequent public gyms or lower himself to the questionable hospitality of bars or restaurants accessible to the hoi polloi. He had chauffeurs. Private jets. Shops closed to accommodate him, restaurants offered him their private rooms, and he stayed in secluded villas in the few locations where he did not hold property, never public hotels.
The sorts of places he went for fun didn’t bother to put names on the doors. You either knew where they were, or you didn’t. You were either in the club, or you were out.
If you had to ask, you didn’t belong.
Amelia was sure that if she looked closely at the de Luz coat of arms, that’s what it would read.
As the daughter of Marie French, Amelia had grown up close to a lot of money, but never of it. Her mother was famous for her many divorces, and she’d certainly gathered herself a tidy sum from various payouts—alimony, divorce settlements, baubles and properties that had been showered upon her by this lover or that—but the kind of wealth and power that the de Luz family had in spades and demonstrated so decidedly here wasn’t the sort that could be amassed by one person. Or within one lifetime.
It would take twenty generations to even make a dent.
If Amelia could turn back the clock and make all of this go away, she would. If she could reach back these few, crucial months and slap some sense into herself long before she’d had her brilliant idea at the end of the summer, she’d swing hard. Her palms itched at the notion.
But wishing didn’t change the facts.
“Please tell Teo that it’s me,” she said sunnily to the dour man towering over her, possibly prepared to stand right where he was for another twenty generations. She smiled as if he’d already agreed. “Amelia. His favorite stepsister.”
She was fairly certain she was not Teo’s favorite anything, but that wasn’t something she planned to share. And for another long, tense moment, there on the front step where she could feel the winter wind bite at her, Amelia thought that the butler would slam the door in her face and let the estate’s security detail sort her out.
A part of her hoped he would. Because surely, if she’d gone to all the trouble to fly herself to Spain, turn up on his doorstep and try to tell him what she needed to tell him, that was enough. Above and beyond the call of duty, really.
She could only do so much, after all. It wasn’t her fault the man chose to barricade himself away like this.
He wasn’t barricaded away last fall, a voice inside her that she was terribly afraid was her conscience chimed in.
It had been late September when she’d found her way here last. She’d come under the cover of darkness, blending in with the extensive crowds who flocked to the estate for the Marinceli Masquerade that took place every fall to commemorate the birthday of the long-dead Tenth Duke. It was a glittering, diamond-edged fantasy that had been going on in one form or another for three hundred years. Amelia had come with such a different purpose then. It had been her one opportunity to enact her exorcism, and she had dedicated herself to the task. She had dressed like a stranger and had even gone so far as to dye her hair and wear colored contacts. Because she had her mother’s violet eyes, and people did tend to remember them.
And she’d spent the months since congratulating herself on a job well done. Sometimes immersion therapy was the only way to go. Even when she’d understood what she’d inadvertently done, she hadn’t regretted what she’d done—only what the result of it would ask of her.
But today, it was creeping toward midday, and the weather was raw. This part of Spain was covered in a brooding winter storm that had made her drive from Madrid dicey. Particularly when she’d skirted around the mountains—the snow-covered peaks of which she could feel, now, in the frigid wind that gusted at her as she waited for the butler’s decision.
She didn’t particularly relish repeating that drive, especially without getting what she’d come for here. But she would do it if necessary. And then she would hole up in a hotel somewhere and either try to come up with a new plan to find Teo and speak to him, or she would simply go back home and get on with this new life of hers.
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