Spotlight & Giveaway: Cinderella’s Royal Seduction by Dani Collins

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Dani Collins to HJ!

Hi Dani and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Cinderella’s Royal Seduction!

 
Hi HJ’s! I’m so excited to be back!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Well, it’s your (mostly) classic Cinderella story. Cassiopeia, or ‘Sopi’ as her rotten stepsisters call her, is trying to hang onto her mother’s spa resort while her evil stepmother runs it into the ground.
Prince Rhys Charlemaine has to marry and when word gets out that he’s staying at the resort, all the eligible women in the land turn up–but the only one who interests him is Sopi.

There’s a nod to the single shoe and a midnight rendezvous, then she discovers he double-crossed her…but he also reveals a secret about her that makes it impossible for her to reject his proposal.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

When Sopi accidentally sees him naked:

She pushed her face into the stack of towels she held, no longer breathing as she tried to suppress her shock and abject mortification. She fought to push back a rising blush of hot embarrassment and something she didn’t even recognize.
Because she had not only seen their special guest, the prince of Verina, in a private moment. She’d seen the crown jewels.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

Last winter, my husband wound up with a few days off work. It wasn’t long enough to catch a flight somewhere warm so we looked for a nearby getaway. My massage therapist had recommended a spa not far from us so my husband called and booked us in.
When he hung up, he said, “Any chance you can write this off as research?”
I was about to start this book and was looking for Sopi to have an appropriate business that had belonged to her mother that she could be trying to save. Voila!
And p.s. that spa also has ‘European Hour’ from 10pm to 11pm which is, ahem, clothing optional.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

See the line above. Sopi sees him naked and he’s very much all that. She winds up scolding him for swimming naked and he’s intrigued by a woman who doesn’t seem the least bit interested in him when there’s a hotel full of women stalking him.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

Here’s where Sopi has her moment of abject humiliation with her stepsisters. She brags that she has a vintage dress of her mother’s. I felt so bad for her!

Moving all of that aside, she drew out a zipped fabric box that also stored her summer wear. She dumped her clothes onto the floor and drew out the tissue-wrapped dress.
Sopi bit her lip as she noticed the moths had been into it. Voraciously.
Nanette arrived at the top of the stairs and said, “Oh my God. I thought I lived in a hovel.”

Which made me cheer when she gave Nanette her comeuppance later!

Readers should read this book….

If you love a retelling of Cinderella! As well as sexy prince heroes and heroines who find their own inner strength and you want to be swept off for a happily ever after in a kingdom far, far away…

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I’m currently working on an Ugly Duckling, if you can believe it. Earlier this year I tackled Beauty and the Beast so look for that one in June. (That one is actually part of a duet called Duelling Billionaire Brothers. The first one, A Hidden Heir to Redeem Him, is out in May.
I’ll wait to tell you about my September book, but I really hope you love it! (If you want a peek, check out the excerpt for Confessions of an Italian Marriage on my website.)
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One signed print copy of Cinderella’s Royal Seduction, open internationally.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Have you ever been to a natural hot spring? What about a resort? Have you ever gone skinny dipping?

 
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Excerpt from Cinderella’s Royal Seduction:

Here they’ve gone skinny dipping in a secluded natural hot spring on a snowy night…

“There you are.” He tilted his head. “The trees were in the way. Cassiopeia.”
Hardly anyone used her whole name, not when they addressed her. She’d begun to think Cassiopeia only applied to things that weren’t really hers.
“A queen, if memory serves.” It was hard to read his expression with the shadows and his beard.
She almost mentioned the silly rumor about her mother being descended from royalty but thought he might think she was trying to elevate herself to his stratosphere.
“A vain one who gets tied to a chair for eternity,” she said instead. “Maybe I am vain.” She didn’t look for the W in the sky, having searched it out nearly every starry night since childhood. “My tiny mind was blown when I learned on the first day of school that not everyone had their own constellation.”
He snorted. “I don’t.”
“Because you’re a star on earth.”
“Don’t,” he said flatly. The steam seemed to gust off the water so there was no mist between them, only clear, dry air that stung her cheeks and nose. “Don’t put distance between us.”
She swallowed her surprise, but a lump lodged in her chest, one that her voice had to strain to speak around. “There is a continent and an ocean between us.” Among other things. His mountain of society and stature, her vast desert of education and life experience.
“Rhys,” he said, laying down a gauntlet. “If you’re going to reject me, use my name so I’m clear that you mean me.” It was such an outrageously arrogant statement she wanted to laugh, yet he drew her in as his equal by offering the familiarity. Such an enigmatic man.
“I thought I was pointing out the obvious,” she said quietly.
“You’re the least obvious person I’ve ever met. Any other woman would be naked and straddled across me by now, whether I wanted her here or not. You wouldn’t even come to dinner with me. Why not?”
Cowardice.
“I didn’t think you were serious,” she repeated. “Where would this even go? That’s not opportunism talking. I don’t have affairs with rich, powerful men. You tell me what happens. How long does it last? What happens when it’s over?”
His eyes were obsidian, his jaw gleaming like wet iron. With a muttered curse in what sounded like German, he turned his glower toward the frozen lake below.
He didn’t tell her she was wrong.
Sopi felt for another of the worn rocks that provided a rough seat and settled onto it. “Do you want the truth?”
“Always,” he bit out.
“Maude wants you to marry Nanette. I thought if I facilitated that, I could get rid of all three of them and finally have my home to myself.”
A pulse of astounded silence, then he barked out a humorless laugh. He snapped his head around to glare at her. “I’ll marry if and whom I desire. It won’t be either of them. I promise you that right now.”
She kissed goodbye her pipe dream of being free of her stepfamily, which left her to contemplate whether she should allow herself to get closer to this compelling man who, for the moment, at least, was not that far away.
“I don’t know what happens, Sopi. I wish I did,” he said cryptically.
At the sound of her nickname on his lips, she found herself trying out the sound of his. “Rhys.” It caught with tugging sensations in her chest and across her shoulders.
He looked at her.
Everything altered. The air shimmered and the earth stood still. Her scalp prickled and her breasts grew tight and heavy.
“That does not sound like a rejection, süsse.” His voice melted her bones. He extended a long arm across the surface of the water, palm up in invitation.
She hadn’t consciously meant to turn this into anything, but her hand went into his. She floated across the short space between them, drawn by his firm grip to set her hand against his neck. The top of her foot hit a rock, and she reacted with a jerk of her knee, knocking it into his.
He made a noise of concern and gathered her into his lap. His hand cupped her knee and he soothed her kneecap with his thumb. “Tell me,” he murmured. “Do you feel the same when I touch you?”
“The same as what?”
The hand behind her back ran up to cradle her neck. With the lightest squeeze, he had her shuddering and turning her torso into his.
“Like that,” he growled, lips coming close enough to nibble at her chin. “The way you made me feel on the table today.”
Streaks of light and heat seemed to shoot through her at the graze of his whiskers and the mere touch of his mouth on her skin. She cupped his wet beard and searched for his lips with her own, not really knowing what she was doing, only knowing she needed the press of his mouth to her own.
They both moaned as their lips parted and slid and found the right fit. Forever, she thought. She wanted the forceful play of his mouth to consume hers forever. Then his tongue tagged touched her inner lip, delved, and the taste of him shot lightning through her again, spearing a jolt of pleasure straight between her thighs.
She jerked away to catch her breath, stunned, but went straight back after his mouth, pressing the back of his head to encourage him to ravage her.
He growled and they kissed with more fervor, wildly, deeply, a sound rumbling in his chest like a predatory animal. His arms flexed around her, drawing her tighter into his lap and twisting her chest to rub against his.
Her bra shifted as they slithered against one another, abrading and annoying her as it kept her from feeling him with all her skin. She tried to scrabble behind herself with one hand and release it, but his confident fingers met hers and easily unclasped it. She drew back to pull her arms free and he threw it into the snow.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

His until midnight

Will she wear his crown?

Sopi is exhausted! With Prince Rhys Charlemaine staying nearby, the luxury spa she calls home is overflowing with aspiring princesses! It’s frantic…until working all hours leads to a late-night encounter with charismatic Rhys himself…

Untouched Sopi gives herself one chance to feel like a princess in Rhys’s arms. She knows it cannot go further, until Rhys stuns her with his convenient proposal! He promises exquisite pleasure, but Sopi has seen the man behind his royal mask—dare she believe he wants her for more than desire?
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Meet the Author:

Award-winning and USA Today Bestselling author Dani Collins thrives on giving readers emotional, compelling, heart-soaring romance with some laughter and heat thrown in, just like real life. Mostly she writes contemporary romance for Harlequin Presents and Tule’s Montana Born, but her backlist of nearly sixty books also includes self-published erotic romance, romantic comedy, and even an epic medieval fantasy.
When she’s not writing—just kidding, she’s always writing. She lives in Canada with her high school sweetheart husband who occasionally coaxes her out of her attic office to visit their grown children.
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