Spotlight & Giveaway: Queen by Royal Appointment by Lucy Monroe

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Lucy Monroe to HJ!

Hi Lucy and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Queen by Royal Appointment!

 
Hey, Sara and everyone, thanks so much for having me!
 

Tell us about the book with this fun little challenge using the title of the book:

Q is for the queen she never thought she’d be.
U is for undeniable passion.
E is for everyone who *thinks* they get a say in her life.
E is for everyone who doesn’t get to tell her what to do.
N is for no way, no how is she going to marry the prince.

B is for biding her time until she’s free.
Y is for youthful crushes that are more.

R is for Royal Wedding.
O is for oxygen stealing kisses.
Y is for yielding to desire.
A is for agreements signed.
L is for love hidden.

A is for advantageous match.
P is for pleasure.
P is for painful truths.
O is for obstinate.
I is for insufferable.
N is for nonplussed.
T is for time.
M is for marriage of convenience.
E is for enervating ideas.
N is for nighttime dates.
T is for trouble and then some.

Please share the opening lines of this book:

Lady Nataliya Shevchenko stood outside the private reception room in the Volyarus palace, feeling more like she was entering a war tribunal than going to the family meeting her “uncle,” King Fedir, had decreed she attend.

And she was the one about to be on trial for Acts Against the State.

Only, legally, she’d done nothing wrong. Morally, she hadn’t either, but she did not expect “Uncle” Fedir to agree.

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book.

Nataliya was born into the royal family of Volyarus, but she has spent most of her life living in Seattle in exile. She’s a brilliant computer programmer/white hat hacker and not keen to fulfill the terms of a contract she signed when she was only eighteen.

Nikolai married for love the first time around and it was a disaster. He’s looking for an honorable woman to be his queen, someone who understands putting others first. He’s attracted to Nataliya but has no idea just how strong her effect will be on his libido until they share their first kiss.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I started this book because I wanted to see what happened when the alpha hero who had behaved badly *didn’t* end up with the heroine.
• This book is linked to the my By Royal Decree 2 book miniseries.
• When I started this book, I had no idea it would be the first in another miniseries, but the brothers started clamoring for their own stories.

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

Nataliya had a teenaged crush on Nikolai, but when he married another woman, she put her feelings away. When he offers himself in the stead of his brother to fulfill the contract, feelings she thought long dealt with come rushing to the fore.

When Nikolai first met Nataliya, she was a teen and he saw her as a child. But after the death of his wife, he sees Nataliya as a compassionate and caring woman. When he realizes she stirs his libido as well, he starts making plans.

The First Kiss…

But the expression in his eyes was saying plenty. His gray eyes were molten with desire, his body rigid with self-restraint. And that’s when she knew he wanted her too.
“You want to kiss me,” she said wonderingly.
“Yes,” he ground out.
“So, do it!” Why did men always make things so complicated?
She gasped in shock when he took her up on her offer. Nikolai’s tongue was right there sliding between her parted lips. This was no polite peck of lips.
Nikolai took possession of her mouth with passionate domination and Nataliya fell into the kiss with every bit of desire coursing through her virginal body.
He pulled her close, one hand cupping her breast through the lace of her gown and she moaned. She’d never been touched like this. She’d never even been kissed with tongue.
And she liked it all. Every new sensation building something inside her so that unfamiliar tension coiled within her.
She put her hands on his chest, squeezing his pecs, then feeling down his stomach, wishing his shirt were not in the way.
He made a sexy growling sound deep in his chest and yanked her into his lap, deepening the kiss. Everything went hazy, passion burning all rational thought from Nataliya’s brain as the kiss went on and on and on.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

The opening scene because it is in these moments that both Nataliya and Nikolai’s basic characters are revealed as well as their initial attraction to one another. If an actor can get that right, they’ve got the rest.

Nataliya had no idea what the current King of Mirrus thought of the proceedings and what had prompted them, but even his unreadable regard did things to Nataliya’s insides she wished, for the hundredth time at least, it did not.

And because she never lied to herself, she did not try to believe she did not care what that was. He was not the man she was supposed to marry, but he was the only man in the House of Merikov whose opinion carried any weight with her.

When she did not let the clearly strategic silence force her into speech, King Fedir frowned. “You know why you are here?”

“I prefer not to guess.”

“You signed a contract promising marriage to Prince Konstantin.”

“I did.” Though if any man did not live up to his name, it was the one she was not engaged to, but still expected to marry one day. “Ten years ago,” she added, letting her tone tell them all what she thought of a decade-long wait for that contract to be fulfilled and yet her being here because she’d done what? Gone on a few dates?

Not that she hadn’t wanted just this reaction, but seriously?

Get real.

A very unroyal-like sound came from Prince Evengi. “Then explain yourself.”

Nataliya stood and gave the King a curtsy, acknowledging him formally, before returning to her seat. One must observe the niceties. “What would you like me to explain?” she asked.

“Do not play obtuse,” he barked.

King Nikolai said something in an undertone to his father and the older man yanked his head in acknowledgement.

Prince Konstantin, current heir to his brother’s throne, frowned at Nataliya. “You know very well why you have been summoned here, why we have all had to take time from our busy schedules to deal with this mess.”

“What mess might that be?” she asked, unimpressed.

Had she curtsied to him? No, she had not and the ice cap on Mount Volyarus would melt before she did.

This man lived and breathed the company that made up the majority of his country’s economy. The time he’d taken for his affairs had been negligible and Nataliya had felt no actual envy toward the women he’d taken to his bed and done nothing else to romance.

Ten years ago, she had signed that draconian contract for two equally important reasons. Ten years in which this man had not even made enough time in his schedule to announce the engagement. Ten years during which Nataliya had lived in a stasis that had not upset her all that much, honestly.

Her mother’s limbo, she was not so sanguine about. Because one of the clauses of the contract was that Countess Solomia would be able to return to Volyarus upon the marriage of her daughter to the Prince of the House of Merikov.

Without the formalized engagement, much less a marriage, that had not happened.

Her second reason had been no less successful. Nataliya had hoped that by agreeing to marry Konstantin, her inappropriate feelings for his married brother would go away.

While she’d gotten over Nikolai, it wasn’t because of her commitment to Konstantin.

“This mess,” Konstantin threw down the fashion magazine that had run the “50 First Dates for a Would-Be Princess” article.

“Are you hoping to claim that in the past ten years, you have not dated anyone, Prince Konstantin?” she asked him, with little interest in his answer and aware that the term date was in fact a misnomer. “Only I have a whole file full of pictures that would indicate otherwise.”

“You had me followed?” he asked with fury, surging to his feet.

Only his brother’s hand on his arm kept the angry Prince across the room.

She should probably be intimidated, but anger and posturing held no sway with a woman who had endured years in her father’s household. She could have told her erstwhile intended that.

His position as Prince was no more impressive to Nataliya. She’d been raised as part of the royal family of Volyarus until the age of thirteen and had never ceased being the daughter of nobility.

“Perhaps you would like to explain, Uncle Fedir?” she prompted, her own anger a wall of cold ice around her heart, making her voice arctic.

And she did not regret that. At all.

The King of Volyarus winced as his own family and that of the other royal family present gave him varying looks of anger and condemnation.

“Of course we kept track of Prince Konstantin, but it was in no way nefarious.” He made a dismissive gesture. “I have no doubt you had your interests watched, as well.” He indicated Nataliya with a tip of his head.

She wasn’t offended being referred to in that manner. The King’s ability to hurt her had passed years ago.

“You shared your investigator’s findings with your niece?” Nikolai asked, his voice laced with censure, but no shock at the other royal’s actions.

If he’d given a bit of that censure to his brother, Nataliya would have respected him more. And something in her expression must have told him so because he gave her a strange look.

If your hero had a sexy-times play list, what song(s) would have to be on it?

Oh, I think he’d go with updated old school. Like Michael Buble and other modern crooners singing songs from the past.

If you could have given your characters one piece of advice before the opening pages of the book, what – would it be and why?

I’m not sure I would. I think they both do an awesome job of learning and growing and building something really good between them. Even when they mess up, they’re figuring out life and really that’s what it is about, isn’t it? Figuring it out. Besides, they’re both really stubborn. Not sure advice would make a whole lot of difference if given.

What are you currently working on? What are your up-coming releases?*

I’m currently working on the third book in the Princess by Royal Decree miniseries (slated for release spring/summer of 2022). My next release is Book 2, His Majesty’s Hidden Heir (Oct 25, 2021).

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Signed paperback copies of the By His Royal Decree duo, ONE NIGHT HEIR & PRINCE OF SECRETS. US only please.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Do you like books that link back to previous stories?

 
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Excerpt from Queen by Royal Appointment:

CHAPTER FIVE
KISSING NATALIYA HAD BEEN a good decision.
No way was she still worried that he did not desire her. As if.
If anything, his sexual feelings for her were so strong, he had almost dismissed his idea of fulfilling the contract in his brother’s stead out of hand. Nikolai refused to be at the mercy of his libido. Again.
Only he’d realized that wanting her was not a bad thing. Having her would be a better thing. All he had to do was keep his emotional distance and never allow her to use his desire for her to control him.
Knowing that she wanted him, had always wanted him, even when she’d tried her best to hide it? That gave him the certainty that she would not withhold herself from him as Tiana had done. Would not use his desire as a weapon against him.
Nataliya was too honest and forthright to play those kinds of games, regardless.
He ignored the small voice telling him that all women were capable. He would not put himself in a position for sex to become a bargaining chip.
Never again.
But that did not mean he could not allay her fears on that score.
Nikolai was proud of both his superior decision making skills in sharing that intimacy with her. When she had climaxed in his arms, he’d wanted to shout in triumph. Nataliya had proven she could not withhold her reactions from him and that was something he needed to know after the pain of his first marriage, where sex had been a bargaining chip, a battleground, but never just pleasure.
And though her response to him had shot his libido into the stratosphere, he’d maintained the control he’d fought to hone.
He’d wanted to take her right there in the limousine, but he hadn’t even undressed her. Nataliya’s uninhibited passionate response had been deliciously surprising and nearly obliterating to his self-control.
But he had controlled himself and that was what mattered.
As he’d told Nataliya, his heir would not be conceived outside the legal bonds of matrimony.
A marriage he had no doubts would take place regardless of her posturing.
So, she wanted a proposal. He was a king, but he was also a man with superior intellect. He would give her the proposal of her dreams and she would finally agree verbally to what they both knew was a foregone conclusion.
Their marriage.
*
Nataliya was relieved that Jenna and her boyfriend were not back yet when she entered the hotel suite.
She needed some time. To parse what that kiss meant.
No way could she legitimately wonder if he wanted her. He’d been hard and she’d felt it. The fact he hadn’t taken it farther than a kiss was a tick in the plus column. Nikolai could and would control his own sexual desires when necessary.
That boded well for the concept of fidelity.
Even so, she needed time to deal with the emotional aftermath of her first orgasm with another person and how vulnerable it made her feel.
Because as much as she respected that he hadn’t pushed for more, the fact she was the only one who had come was a little disconcerting. She’d never seen herself as very sexual. Yes, she’d always wanted him, but in a vague, undefined way.
She’d experimented with toys, but her pleasure had taken longer to achieve and not been as devastating.
Far from having the slow fuse she’d always thought, with him, it was short and explosive.
Oh, man. So explosive.
It was time to do some research.
Research she should have done weeks ago, but she’d been putting off.
She didn’t want to do a deep dive into Nikolai’s life, but she wasn’t marrying a man who had a long-term mistress like her uncle or a string of them like his own brother and her father.
She needed to know just how he lived his life now and if he was currently involved with another woman.
You could just ask, her conscience reminded her.
But Nataliya needed cold hard facts and as much as she knew Nikolai expected every word he uttered to be taken as gospel, her past made that kind of blind trust impossible.
She ordered a pot of coffee and pulled out the laptop that beat her desktop for speed and memory. It was a pretty cool betrothal gift. Sort of fitting she was using it to check out how smart betrothal to the King would be then.
Several hours later, Nataliya had some answers. And they were all good ones.
She’d hacked into his financial records, run his name and face through her personalized media and social media search engine. She’d checked out every single instance of travel for him in the past year, every expenditure in and out of country and done a less thorough but adequate search for the years since his wife’s death.
Everything had come back empty. No apartments paid for by him but occupied by a woman. He’d had companions at some of the more prominent social functions, but he’d usually brought a cousin who was now married to one of his top aides. Nothing that would indicate he had liaisons, mistresses or even the occasional lover since his Queen’s passing.
In short, on paper anyway, he was her dream guy.
For a woman, who had never thought to marry for love, that was a pretty big deal.
*
Nataliya woke after about four hours’ sleep, still tired but feeling more solid about this royal courtship she was experiencing. She’d known Nikolai was not a carbon copy of his brother, but she’d needed to be sure.
About the fidelity thing. About the fact that there were no other personal contenders for the position of his Princess.
There would always be plenty of women with the right breeding and the desire for the role, but he had not been courting any of them.
Which meant what?
That he wanted her in that role? That the timing had been right, and he’d decided to remarry just when his brother was deciding to renege on the contract?
She couldn’t dismiss the honor thing, because she’d come to accept that for Nikolai, maintaining family honor and fulfilling his house’s terms in the contract were very important to him. Like obsession-level importance.
Whether he’d been raised with an overweening sense of integrity, or it was something innate in Nikolai. Either way, she no longer disregarded it as a very real motivation for him.
And that gave her hope for their future if they were to have one. A man that focused on maintaining family and personal integrity would not look at his marriage vows as multiple-choice options.
And he wanted her. He’d proven that.
Regardless of what others in her position might think, that mattered. As his Princess, Nataliya would lose all the trappings of a normal life she’d worked so hard to attain, but she would insist on having a stable and normal marriage, or as normal as possible married to a king who was also a billionaire business mogul.
That meant sharing a bed and a life. She was not Queen Oxana, and Nataliya would not spend her life finding satisfaction in her duty and her position.
There had to be more.
She’d seen that more in Maks’s and Demyan’s marriages, knew that even if her husband did not love her, he could give Nataliya more than what she’d seen between her aunt and uncle or her own parents, much less the other royals of that generation in Volyarus.
She would have more, or she would not marry.
No matter what she’d signed when she was eighteen.
*
Later, Nataliya was not at all surprised that they were going to have a horse-drawn carriage for their tour of Central Park.
Nikolai had a canny knack for knowing what she might enjoy most.
She was surprised, however, that the carriage looked so elegant and that it was drawn by two perfectly matched horses of the kind of quality she recognized as beyond the means of the average tourist company.
“Are these your horses?” she asked him in shock.
“They are now.” He flashed her a slashing, arrogant smile. “I bought them from stables with an excellent reputation in Upstate New York.”
“And the carriage?”
“Purchased for this occasion.”
“You don’t think that’s a little over the top?”
“I am a king, Nataliya. I do not ride in conveyances that cater to the masses.”
But to buy a carriage? “You sound really snobby right now.”
“Not simply intelligent about my own safety?”
He was talking about assassination attempts. In his father’s lifetime, the former King had survived one and she had no idea if Nikolai had ever been the target of such an attempt. She had no doubt that if he had, he would have kept it very quiet.
“I stand corrected,” she acknowledged. “But I still think you have no clue how the average person lives.”
“And you do.” He said it with satisfaction.
Nataliya gave him a surprised look. “You like that?”
“Very much. Mirrusians live all over the globe in all walks of life. The royal family should understand them if we are expected to serve their needs.”
“That’s a very progressive view.”
“I am a progressive man.”
A man who was getting married based on a contract his father had signed? She did not think so. “Maybe in some things.”
“I am no throwback.”
“No, I’d say you are the inevitable product of growing up royal in the twenty-first century in a country that is still a full monarchy.”
“Volyarus is also a monarchy.”
“I am aware.” She settled back into the comfortable leather squabs of the carriage. “What happens to this carriage after today?”
“It will be sold and the proceeds donated to the charity we’ve been supporting with our courtship.”
“Konstantin didn’t like my online auction.”
“You hit at his pride.”
“It was intentional,” she admitted. “But you provide gifts for the auction.”
“It is a worthy cause.” He took her hand, in an unexpected public display of affection that should be entirely innocent.
Only she felt that touch go right through her and had to take a deep breath and let it out slowly not to give herself away.
His knowing look said she hadn’t been all that successful. “So, going back to our earlier words, are you a proponent of constitutional monarchy?” he asked, but didn’t sound worried or even shocked by the idea she might be.
“Power should always be checked.”
“And those checks, do they always work?” He brushed his thumb over her palm, sending electric sparks along that nerve-rich center and up her arm.
She curled her fingers around his thumb to stop him so she could think clearly enough to focus on answering him. “No, but having them gives the people that power is supposed to protect more of a chance of actually enjoying that protection.
“Does your uncle know you have these prorepublic leanings?” Amusement laced Nikolai’s tone.
“Technically, he is my second cousin.”
“But he sees himself in a closer role. You call him uncle.”
“Not anymore, I don’t.” It had taken her long enough, but she’d come to realize that family was more than a word. It was a relationship, and her “uncle” had removed himself from their relationship a long time ago.
Now that seemed to startle Nikolai, when her beliefs that his power should be checked by a parliament didn’t. “Why not?”
“Fifteen years ago, he sacrificed me and my mother to protect his good name when the whole time he has been the biggest risk to scandal in the royal family.” Mama had always known too.
Nataliya had only learned of her King’s infidelity as an adult and quite by accident, but then she’d spoken to her mother about it, hurt and angered by the monarch’s hypocrisy. She’d learned then that Mama had known since the beginning.
It had sparked one of their rare arguments.
“Because of his long-term mistress.”
“Exactly.” The woman he’d refused to marry because of her divorce but had never been willing to give up. “You know about their long-term affair. She’s not the secret he believes she is. If the media starts digging, they won’t have to go very deep to reach a royal scandal of epic proportions.”
“You do not think King Fedir has things in place to protect the monarchy in such an event?”
“He may think he does, but his relationship is too long-standing for him to deny it with any chance at being believed. Too many people know about it. Too many bills have been paid for her through the palace accounts.”
“I’m sure King Fedir has taken precautions so that those bills cannot be traced back to him.”
“I traced them. And as we both saw at the hackathon, I’m good, but I’m by no means the only good hacker out there.”
“You hacked into your uncle’s financial records?”
“I hacked into the palace financial records.”
“You didn’t know about the mistress,” he said in wonder.
“Before we left Volyarus, no I did not. In fact, I did not discover her existence until a few years ago.”
“And realizing he maintained that relationship put a different complexion on his actions with you and your mother fifteen years ago.”
“Yes. I realized that he expects everyone but himself to sacrifice for the sake of his throne.”
“Isn’t that a bit harsh? He has a whole country’s well-being he must take into account.”
“Not if it means giving up the woman he loves, but not enough to marry. If you can call the sort of selfishness that drives him love at all.”
“You judge him harshly.”
“I paid a high price for his pride, but Mama, who had already paid a terrible price for being married to my father, was forced to give up even more.” And Nataliya wasn’t sure she would ever forgive her King for making her mother pay that price.
“The Countess seems to have built a good life for herself in her exile.”
“Mama has, but she should not have had to learn to live without her family and friends. It wasn’t fair.”
“Do you feel that way about the contract? That it is not fair?”
Nataliya thought about that for a minute, never having put the contract in those terms.
“I think me being pressured to sign it and accept the terms when I was eighteen was not fair. I would fight tooth and nail to stop my own child from doing the same.”
He nodded but said nothing. Still waiting it seemed for her to answer the core of his question.
Did she think it fair that she was contracted to marry him?
Instead of answering that, she offered some truth of her own. “I did a deep dive into your life last night.”
“I thought you looked tired.” He took both her hands in his and smiled down at her, obviously not worried about her investigation. “Did you get any sleep?”
“A few hours.” She licked her lips, her gaze caught on his mouth, wanting to taste.
His gray gaze darkened with desire. “A nap might be in order this afternoon.”
Was he offering to take it with her? She shook her head. No, of course not.
“Is that all you’re going to say?” Nataliya asked, stunned he wasn’t offended.
“What do you want me to say? I cannot claim I did not expect you to use your skills to discover if I have any skeletons in my closet. Your main concern about marrying Konstantin was his tendency to have uncommitted sex with women.”
“He wasn’t in a relationship, not like my father.”
“But it still gave you pause.”
“You know it did.”
“You would not have found anything similar in my background.”
“Not even a discreet long-term mistress.”
“I am not King Fedir either.”
“No. You are kind of an anomaly among powerful men. I’d wonder if you had a repressed libido, but I felt the evidence of your arousal in the car last night.”
Far from being insulted by her remark, he laughed. “I can assure you, my libido is everything you will want it to be.”
“I don’t doubt it.” She looked to their tour guide-slash-carriage driver and only now realized he had earbuds in.
She probably should have noticed he wasn’t giving a running commentary, but Nataliya had been so caught up in Nikolai, for once in her adult life, she hadn’t paid the utmost attention to the situation around her.
His smile said he knew. “Just noticed he’s in hear-no-evil, or rather private discussion mode?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not like you.”
“I thought we were doing a tour.”
“The commentary will start when I give him a signal.”
“Your guards are in the pedicabs ahead of and behind us, aren’t they?” She’d just noticed that too.
“They wanted to be riding their own horses, but you would not believe the regulations governing any and all activity in Central Park.”
“Even a king has to submit to red tape.”
He nodded, his expression rueful. “If I’d had more time…”
He’d had time enough to buy gorgeous matching horses and a carriage.
He did some more of that thumb brushing, this time on both of her palms and she shivered.
“You wouldn’t have been sure of me, if I hadn’t kissed you last night.” He sounded very pleased with himself.
“Maybe. I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I kind of see you as this larger than life man. Yes, you are a king, but you’re not a despot.”
“You don’t think so?” he asked, like her opinion actually mattered.
“You’re the kind of king that makes me not worry about you not having a parliament, unless I’m worried about you taking too much on and not having anyone else to help carry the burden.” Why was she being so honest? She’d never have been this open with anyone else.
Nikolai’s expression could be seen as nothing less than satisfaction. “King Fedir?”
“Would benefit a lot by having some checks of power in his life.”
“So, you think I am a good king?”
“Yes.”
“And a good man?” he asked.
“Yes.” She’d always thought so, but she’d had to be sure.
“You have no questions about things you may have discovered last night?”
“I didn’t discover anything. That’s the point, isn’t it? Were there things to discover?”
“About me? No.”
“Then about who?”
“Does it matter?”
If his father, or brother, or someone else had done something she might have questions about? “No. I don’t think it does, but you would tell me, wouldn’t you, if there was something that would affect me?”
“Yes.” Nikolai looked so stern when he said that, but not shifty.
So, she believed.
“I think if I were a different woman, raised in a different way, I might think the contract was unfair,” she said, finally answering his initial question. “If you were a different man, you wouldn’t feel the need to fulfill its terms on behalf of your house.”
“Perhaps.”
“But I am who I am. And honestly, I wasn’t raised to believe in fairy tales and happy endings. I don’t remember Mama ever suggesting she hoped I found true love.” More like Solomia had hoped her daughter would not end up married to a man who would physically hurt her.
But even with that hope, Mama had still encouraged her daughter to sign that contract ten years ago, with no idea about what kind of man Konstantin was.
“I don’t think the contract itself is unfair.” Nataliya acknowledged as much to herself as to him. “I did sign it. I did agree to the terms. I never expected to marry a man I loved, but I won’t marry a man I cannot trust.”
“My brother is trustworthy.”
“Maybe, but his double standard about dating and sex make it hard for me to see him that way.” She didn’t want to talk about his brother. “Regardless, if we marry and are blessed with children, then believe their well-being will be more important to me than that of Mirrus.”
“But that is not how a royal thinks.”
“Then I guess you’d better make sure I never have to choose between duty and my children.”
“That’s a heavy promise you want me to make.”
“No. My promise to you is that if you don’t succeed at that, I will not be browbeaten into doing something that could hurt those I love. Period.”
“That is the perspective of the common man.”
“A perspective you said the royal family needs.”
“Yes.”
“So, that implies you are going to take my opinions into consideration when making decisions for Mirrus.”
“It does, yes.”
“But you hardly know me.”
“You are not the only hacker available to dive deep into someone’s life.”
“Plus your family has had me under surveillance for ten years.” Someone paying attention could know a great deal about her.
“That is true.”
“You’ve read the reports?” she couldn’t help asking.
“All of them.”
All of them? “That’s a lot of reading.”
“Deciding to enforce the contract and fulfill its terms was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. I do not make those.” He said the last like his own warning.
“I believe it.” Though at first that was exactly what she’d thought he’d done. “You came to Volyarus intending to put yourself forward as the Prince of your house referred to in the contract.”
“I did.”
“Did Konstantin know?”
“No. It is not my habit to take others into my confidence.”
“I think I’ll expect you to take me into your confidence, if I marry you.”
“We are separate people. Our duties will live in harmony but not always overlap.”
“Are you trying to warn me that I won’t see much of you if I marry you?” That might actually turn out to be the deal breaker nothing else had.
His jaw went taut. “That will be up to you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her brows drawn together in confusion.
“Though I travel some for diplomatic reasons, all business travel is Konstantin’s purview. I spend most of my time in Mirrus.”
“Wouldn’t your wife do the same?”
“Tiana did not. She found life in Mirrus stifling and preferred traveling with friends in warmer climates.”
That made no sense. No more sense that he would tolerate it. “But she was the Queen. Surely her duties precluded long vacations in Jamaica.”
“Monaco was her favorite haunt, but as to her duties, she found those stifling, as well.”
Nataliya didn’t know what he thought about that. His expression revealed nothing.
“I am used to working long hours,” she offered.
“Will you expect to continue with a career after marriage?” Something about that question made him so tense, she couldn’t miss it, despite how he was so careful to maintain an expressionless mask.
“If I were to marry a king, I think the job of being his Princess would keep me sufficiently busy.”
“Not all women would agree.”
“Really? I can’t imagine a single woman of my acquaintance who would attempt to maintain a full-time career as well as the full-time job of Princess.”
“So you do see it as a job.”
“Being wife is a role, but being a princess? That’s definitely a job.”
“I’m very glad to hear you say that.”
What else didn’t she know about his marriage to Tiana? Nataliya had not known that Tiana spent so much time away from Mirrus, but she’d been careful in her research to respect Nikolai’s personal privacy. Other than confirming that Tiana had not had a bunch of visits from the Palace Physician for unexplained injuries, Nataliya had purposefully not looked too deeply into his marriage.
Just because she could find out just about anything about a person’s life, didn’t mean she would do that. It was a matter of her own personal integrity.
They spent the rest of their tour talking about their families, getting to know each other on a level that no amount of reading investigative reports could achieve. Nikolai never did indicate their tour guide start his commentary.
And she didn’t mind at all.
She wasn’t surprised she enjoyed the King’s company.
Nataliya always had.
He was the guy she’d had her first crush on and being older and wiser only made those feelings seem deeper. But she didn’t love him.
Would not let herself.
She felt something for him though, that would make refusing marriage to him impossible.
Not that she was sharing that revelation with the arrogant King.

Excerpts. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

They say that duty and desire don’t mix…and they’re about to collide spectacularly in this royal romance from USA TODAY bestselling author Lucy Monroe.

Fifty dates to decide…

If she will wear his crown!

As a naive teenager, Lady Nataliya signed a contract promising her to a prince. Now, to release them both, she causes a scandal by going on fifty dates for a magazine. It works… Until her betrothed’s brother, widowed King Nikolai, insists she honor the marriage agreement—with him!

Her first duty? Finishing those dates with Nikolai. Their whirlwind courtship may be thrilling, but no matter how irresistible Nikolai is, Nataliya can’t forget she was never his first choice of queen. His wounded heart will always be off-limits…
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Meet the Author:

With more than 8 million copies of her books in print worldwide, award winning and USA Today bestseller Lucy Monroe has published over 75 books and had her stories translated for sale all over the world. While she writes multiple subgenres of romance, all of her books are sexy, deeply emotional and adhere to the concept that love will conquer all. A passionate devotee of romance, she adores sharing her love for the genre with her readers.
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