Royals: Chosen By The Prince: The Prince's Waitress Wife / Becoming the Prince's Wife / To Dance with a Prince

All he wanted from the relationship was a hostess and someone with whom to enjoy a few exhausting hours of turbo-powered, high-octane sex every night.

He wasn’t interested in anything else. Not conversation. Not even a hug. Certainly not a hug.

Holly slid into the back of the car, waving to the crowd who had gathered. What would they say, she wondered, if they knewtheir handsome prince had never spent a whole night with her?

He just took her to bed, had sex and then disappeared somewhere, as if he was afraid that lingering might encourage her to say something that he didn’t want to hear.

Did he have another woman? Was that where he went when he left their bed?

To someone else?

Casper had a seemingly inexhaustible sex drive, and Holly was well aware that there had been another woman in his life when he’d first met her in England. One of the papers had mentioned some European princess, and another a supermodel.

Were they still on the scene?

Feeling mentally and physically exhausted, Holly rested her head on the back seat of the limousine and promptly fell asleep.

She woke at Emlio’s gentle insistence, walked into her beautiful bedroom with the view to die for and flopped down on her huge, fabulous bed.

Just five minutes, she promised herself.

Five minutes, then she’d have a shower and get ready for the evening.

Simmering with impatience after a long and incredibly frustrating day of talks with the president and the foreign minister, Casper strode through to the private wing of the palace.

In his pocket was an extravagant diamond necklace, designed for him by the world’s most exclusive jeweller who had assured him that any woman presented with such an exquisite piece would know she was loved.

Casper had frowned at that, because love played no part in the relationship he had with Holly. But she was doing an excellent job fulfilling her role as princess. She deserved to be appreciated.

And this was why she’d married him, wasn’t it?

For the benefits that he could offer her.

Contemplating her reaction to such a generous gift, a faint smile touched his mouth, and he mentally prepared himself for a stimulating evening.

Lost in a private fantasy which involved Holly, the diamonds and very little else, Casper strolled into his private sanctuary.

The first thing that hit him was the unusual silence.

Silence, he reflected with a degree of wry humour, had become something of a scarcity since he’d married Holly.

First there was the singing. She sang to herself as they were getting ready for the evening. She sang in the shower, she sang as she dressed, she even sang as she did her make-up. And if she wasn’t singing she was talking, apparently determined to fill every moment of the limited time they had alone together with details about her day. Who she’d spoken to, what they’d said in return—she was endlessly fascinated by every small detail about the people she’d met.

In fact silence was such an alien thing since Holly had entered his life, that he noticed the absence of sound like others would notice the presence of a large elephant in the room.

Slightly irritated that she obviously hadn’t yet returned from her afternoon of visits, Casper removed his tie with a few deft flicks of his fingers while swiftly scanning his private mail.

Finding it strangely hard to concentrate without background noise, he had to force himself to focus while he scribbled instructions for his private secretary. Intending to take a quick shower while waiting for Holly to return, he took the stairs up to the bedroom suite.

Holly lay still on the bed, fully clothed, as if she’d fallen there and not moved since. Her glorious hair tumbled unrestricted around her narrow shoulders and her eyes were closed, her dark lashes serving to accentuate the extreme pallor of her cheeks.

In the process of unbuttoning his shirt, Casper stilled.

His first reaction was one of surprise, because she was blessed with boundless energy and enthusiasm and he’d never before seen her sleeping during the day.

His second reaction was concern.

Knowing that she was an extremely light sleeper, he waited for her to sense his presence and stir. Contemplating the feminine curve of her hip, he felt an immediate surge of arousal, and decided that the best course of action would be to join her on the bed and wake her personally.

Glancing at his watch, he calculated that if they limited the foreplay they would still make dinner with the president.

He dispensed with his shirt, his eyes fixed on the creamy skin visible at the neckline of her flowery dress. Stunning, he thought to himself, and settled himself on the edge of the bed, ready to dedicate the next half hour to making her extremely happy.

But she didn’t stir.

Disconcerted by her lack of response, Casper reached out a hand and touched her throat, feeling a rush of relief as he felt warm flesh and a steady pulse under his fingertips.

What had he expected?

Unsettled by the sudden absence of logic that had driven him to take the pulse of a sleeping woman, he withdrew his hand and rose to his feet, struggling against an irrational desire to pick up the phone and demand the immediate presence of a skilled medical team.

She was just tired, he assured himself, casting another long look in her direction. Acting on impulse, he reached down and gently removed her shoes. Then he stared at her dress and tried to work out whether it was likely to impede her rest in any way. For the first time in his life, a decision eluded him. Did he remove it and risk waking her, or leave it and risk her being uncomfortable?

A stranger to prevarication, Casper stood in a turmoil of indecision, his hand hovering over her for several long minutes. In the end he compromised by pulling the silk cover over her body.

Then he backed away from the bed, relieved that at least there had been no one present to witness such embarrassing vacillation on his part.

He made thousands of decisions on a daily basis, some of them involving millions of pounds, some of them involving millions of people.

It was incomprehensible that he couldn’t make one small decision that affected his wife’s comfort.

Holly awoke to darkness. With a rush of inexplicable panic, she sat up and only then did she notice Casper seated by the window.

‘What time is it?’ Disorientated and fuzzy headed, she reached across to flick on the lamp by the bed. ‘It must be really late. And I need to change for dinner.’

‘It’s one in the morning. You’ve missed dinner.’

The lamp sent a shaft of light across the room, and she saw that his white dress-shirt was unbuttoned at the throat and that his dinner jacket was slung carelessly over the back of the chair.

‘I missed it?’ Holly slid her hand through her hair, trying to clear her head. ‘How could I have missed it?’

‘You were asleep.’

‘Then you should have woken me.’ Mortified, she pushed down the luxurious silk bed cover and realised that she was still wearing the clothes she’d had on when she’d done her day of royal visits. ‘I only wanted a short nap.’

‘Holly, you slept as though you were dead.’ His dark eyes glittered in the subtle light. ‘I decided that it was better to make your excuses to the president than produce a wife in a coma.’

Holly pulled a face. ‘What must he have thought?’