Cursed: Gowns & Crowns, Book 5 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Other Books in the Series

  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

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Charmed

  About Jennifer Chance

  Cursed

  Gowns & Crowns, Book 5

  Jennifer Chance

  Copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Chance

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-943768-18-9

  Cover design by Liz Bemis, Bemis Promotions

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase/Download only authorized editions.

  Also by Jennifer Chance in the Gowns & Crowns series

  ~ The First Family ~

  Courted

  Captured

  Claimed

  Crowned

  ~ The Saleri Sisters ~

  Cursed

  (available now!)

  Charmed

  Chosen

  (Coming in 2017)

  For Ann

  The best sister a girl could have.

  Chapter One

  Someday... my prince will come...

  But he could stow it for the moment.

  Countess Edeena Saleri strode along the bright, cheerful corridors of the Charleston International Airport, slightly behind her sisters Caroline and Marguerite, half-disbelieving they’d finally made it. The six-thousand-mile flight from Garronia had taken nearly two months to arrange, every day fraught with anxiety that her father would realize that Edeena and her sisters weren’t merely heading off for a vacation, but attempting to create a beachhead from which at least two of them could start a whole new life.

  A life that had nothing to do with the kingdom of Garronia—or any of its princely curses.

  Now Edeena focused on her sisters as they chattered excitedly. They’d all agreed to only speak English from the moment they got on the plane for the final leg of their journey, headed for the United States. It wasn’t much of a hardship; the trio could speak Garronois, Greek, and English proficiently, and Caroline spoke a little French as well, mainly because there were so many French visitors to their little seaside kingdom. Marguerite had started and stopped a dozen different languages in college, as the mood struck her. Like most things for Marguerite, she could never settle specifically on one language that made her happy, so she simply chose not to choose.

  But neither of her sisters would have to make any choices for a while, Edeena resolved. This journey would take them to their mother’s vacation home of Heron’s Point, one of the largest houses on Sea Haven Island, South Carolina, perfect for a getaway. In fact, they were just coming to the secured exit of the airport now, where waiting for them should be…

  Edeena’s stride faltered, her heart jolting as her gaze connected with a pair of intense, laser-beam eyes from across the corridor. She recovered as smoothly as she could while her sisters exclaimed in delighted recognition of their family name, featured on the tablet held aloft by Laser-Beam’s partner.

  The two men stood slightly apart from the other car service representatives. Though they were dressed in subdued dark suits, they seemed far more restless, more competent than their peers—and they should, of course. They were more than limo drivers.

  The shorter man smiled broadly at Edeena as she caught his eye, his dark bald head gleaming in the harsh fluorescent lights. Then his gaze locked on her sisters as if he was memorizing their stride, their faces, the very distance between them as they walked. Edeena forced herself to study him as well, though it had been the taller man who’d nearly bowled her over.

  Was he Greek? He had to be Greek. But in South Carolina?

  Regardless of his nationality, he looked Greek—as in Greek god, to be more specific. Tall, dark and ridiculously good looking, with all the confidence and charisma to go with it, the man was easily over six feet tall, with cropped tawny brown hair and bronzed skin, his muscular physique filling out his suit with impressive solidity. Dismay skated through Edeena as she took in his no-nonsense expression. She’d long prided herself on being able to overwhelm her staff, friends and colleagues by the sheer force of her personality. Frankly, she’d expected to be able to do the same with anyone sent by the security firm she’d hired to protect her and her sisters while they vacationed in America. This man didn’t look easy to overwhelm, however. He looked like…

  She stared at him a little longer.

  Hot, she decided. He looked hot.

  Focus, Edeena chided herself as they cleared the security gate. This man was her employee, even if he did manage to make his polite smile look more like a concerned scowl. More unsettling, his gaze remained fixed on her—it hadn’t shifted away since the moment he’d seen her. She’d never been studied so closely, at least not when she was aware of it, and she’d been living in the public eye for most of her life.

  With her habitual concern for her sisters’ safety, Edeena scanned the baggage claim area, then herded Caro and Marguerite forward, uncomfortably conscious of the man’s narrowing eyes. This wasn’t any low-level bodyguard, she suddenly knew. This was the firm’s owner.

  Edeena tightened her lips. She hadn’t been a hundred percent honest with Mr. Vincent Rallis of Rallis Security in their numerous phone conversations, and it seemed like he realized that, somehow. But how could he tell such a thing at a glance? Or had he known from the start?

  The man nodded as they reached him, holding out his hand. “Miss Saleri,” he said. It wasn’t a question, and Edeena grasped his hand firmly, her chin coming up as her pulse jumped. Rallis’s hand was rough, calloused and warm, and her mind instantly leapt to what he did to keep his skin so hardened, his grip so strong.

  “You must be Mr. Rallis,” she said, her tone perhaps a bit harsher than she wanted. She removed her hand a little too quickly from his. “I didn’t expect to meet you here.”

  “I thought it wise. This is Rob Marks,” he said, turning and introducing his partner, who also held out his hand first to Edeena, then to Caroline and Marguerite. Edeena started as she realized that Vincent Rallis’s voice had a distinctive slow drawl to it, despite his formal manner. Rich and full, it sounded like warm caramel drizzled over a cold scoop of—

  Stop it.

  “Once we collect our bags, Rob will escort you both in his limo, then we’ll follow behind,” Rallis continued, addressing her sisters. Edeena’s gaze jumped to his face as he slid his glance back to her. “That will allow us to go over the particulars of the work without taking up any more of your time, Miss Saleri.”

  No doubt about it, he had somehow ascertain
ed that she hadn’t given him the whole story. That was only fair, she supposed. Probably a good thing, in fact. She didn’t want a security firm staffed by fools.

  Still, what had tipped him off? She hadn’t said a word beyond his name, hadn’t done anything, in fact, but approach him.

  She puzzled over the issue as they collected their bags. In short order, they’d left the baggage area and were whisked into their respective cars, Edeena hesitating as Rallis held the back door open for her. She didn’t want him stealing searching glances at her via the rearview mirror the entire way to Sea Haven.

  “It would be best if we kept up appearances of me as your driver, Miss Saleri,” Rallis said quietly. “Especially if the people who you believe are following you are, in fact, here.”

  She blinked in surprise. “Excuse me?”

  “Yo, Prince!”

  Edeena’s heart almost stopped as Marks came trotting around the SUV, his face instantly abashed as he realized she was still standing beside the vehicle and not inside. “Oh, pardon me, Mr. Rallis.”

  His grin was infectious but Edeena couldn’t get past the address.

  “Prince?” she nearly choked out, looking between them, trying desperately not to sound unhinged. “You’re a prince?” The curse of the Saleris clanged loudly in her head, but surely this man—surely it wasn’t possible—

  “And a gentleman and a scholar,” Marks assured her, then addressed Rallis, speaking quickly as he glanced to his own car and back again. “Marguerite is already asking about arrangements with the security team, how long they’ll be assigned, scope of the operation. Seems there’s a resort she’s eager to visit. How much information should I provide?”

  Rallis turned to her and Edeena sighed. Marguerite far more than Caroline had chafed under the need for security, especially since she’d managed to pull several strings in advance of their departure from Garronia to ensure she wouldn’t be “wasting her time” while on vacation. Through an intercession by Count Matretti, Garronia’s ambassador to the US, she’d finagled some internship for the remainder of the summer at a vacation resort near their residence on the island—the perfect capstone to her hospitality management degree, she’d insisted. And she wanted to visit that resort immediately.

  “Tell her that security will accompany her everywhere,” Edeena said tersely, and Marks’s brows lifted at her tone. “Everywhere. She won’t like it, but at least for the first several days, I don’t want to take chances.”

  “I’ve assigned Rob here and his wife, Cindy, as their detail,” Rallis told her. “They’re the best I have. Your sisters will be safe.”

  “You got my word on it.” Marks grinned. He nodded again to Rallis, then turned on his heel.

  “We should get going,” Rallis said before she could ask him about the husband-wife security duo. Instead he ushered her into the SUV with an almost stern formality. Sighing with frustration, Edeena slipped into the back seat, then watched him stride around the front of the vehicle. His gaze never stopped moving, and he waved Marks’s town car forward as he slid into the front seat.

  Then he stared at her in the rearview mirror with exactly the kind of searching intensity she’d been hoping to avoid.

  Edeena cut off whatever he was going to say. First things first, and her heart was already in her throat. There simply was no way this drop dead gorgeous Greek-American could be a prince…especially when a prince—a real prince—could potentially solve all Edeena’s problems. Her life simply didn’t work that way.

  But she had to know for sure.

  “Before we discuss anything, Mr. Rallis,” she said in her sternest voice. “You mind explaining why your associate called you Prince?”

  Vincent “Prince” Rallis had seen his share of beautiful, tightly-wound women, but the gaggle of females that had bustled off the airplane in the Charleston International Airport had taken him by surprise, even though he’d been emailed their photo IDs in advance. On screen, they’d been pretty enough, but in person they’d turned out to be vibrant balls of energy, each more vivacious than the last.

  Except for the most senior of the Saleri women, anyway, who now glared at him in the mirror, her rigid demeanor and frankly bizarre question at odds with her lush Mediterranean beauty. But she seriously needed to chill out—at least until he figured out why she was such a bag of nerves. He knew she hadn’t told him everything up front—clients frequently didn’t—but that didn’t account for the tension that’d practically radiated off her from the moment he’d locked eyes on her. A tension that hadn’t abated despite his and Marks’s presence. And nobody stayed tense around Marks very long.

  Edeena Saleri continued staring at him stonily, however, so he needed to clear up her strange confusion first. “It’s a nickname,” he said, keeping his voice as patient as he could manage. “My first name, as you know, is Vince. I’m the oldest son of a very proud Greek family who are first generation Greek immigrants, and our home looks ever so slightly like a temple. Since we live in South Carolina and not, say, Greece, the building didn’t so much say ‘temple’ to our friends and neighbors as it did ‘castle.’ You see where I’m going with this? I’m not a prince, Miss Saleri. It’s simply an old name that stuck, and Marks and I go back far enough that he uses it all the time. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” Edeena said, her cheeks flaring with embarrassment. “It’s just—I thought…” she sighed. “I don’t know what I thought. The word caught me off guard. I apologize.”

  “I’ll instruct the team not to use it,” he said mildly. “No apologies necessary.” Apologies, no. Information, yes.

  “Thank you.” Edeena slid her gaze away to look out the window, and as he idled at a light Vince was able to examine her more closely. No question about it, she was a stunner—a pile of dark curls framed her face, which was dominated by large, flashing eyes, a heart-breaker of a mouth, and smooth olive-toned skin. She was the same medium build as her sisters, but her coloring was decidedly darker than theirs, her features more delicate. Yet she nevertheless gave an impression of overall strength, carrying an air of somberness far weightier than her siblings’ playful demeanors.

  What had happened to her to make her so serious? He wondered. Her face looked like it had been fashioned for laughter, not frowns, but she wasn’t laughing now—and hadn’t for a while, he suspected.

  Then again, Edeena Saleri’s penchant for worry was why he was there. According to her cousin Prudence, a friend of his mother’s and the woman who’d first contacted him about the Saleri job, the young countess ‘could fret an ocean into a thimbleful of salt.’ He’d done some research of his own, of course, but the Saleris seemed fairly run of the mill, for all that they were nobility. There was nothing about the sisters, their long-deceased mother, their newly-remarried father, or his somewhat younger and by all accounts heavily pregnant wife that bespoke more than the usual amount of family drama. Yet Edeena was acting like she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders and had a knot of enemies on her tail.

  And he needed to know why.

  “Miss Saleri,” he began, but Edeena held up her hand, the faint blush remaining on her face.

  “Please, call me Edeena,” she said. She glanced to meet his gaze then stared resolutely away, as if preparing to give a speech that pained her. “And allow me to forestall your questions. I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with you about the nature of our stay in Sea Haven. I owe you that full explanation.”

  Well, that was certainly easier than he’d expected it to be. Easier and ever so slightly disappointing. If Vince was honest with himself, he’d been secretly looking forward to interrogating the woman, getting her alone like this, forcing her to focus on him—

  Annnnd…boom. With that one highly inappropriate, totally unprofessional thought, his entire body had gone hard, alert and ready for action.

  Vince grimaced. Great. This was going to be one hell of a job.

  Fortunately, Edeena was far too caught up in her own co
nfession to notice how tightly he was gripping the steering wheel.

  “The Saleri name is a very old one, stretching back to the founding of the country of Garronia and even earlier,” she said, and Vince gratefully refocused his attention. “Unfortunately, we’ve suffered a fair amount of adversity over the years and made our share of poor choices, and our continued misfortune became so famous that it was formally calcified in the mid-tenth century as a curse.”

  “A curse.” Vince was proud of himself for keeping his voice steady, because of all the things he’d expected, this wasn’t one of them. “What kind of curse?”

  Edeena sighed again as they approached the bridge that would lead them to Sea Haven Island. Her tense frown lightened somewhat at the sight of water, and despite himself, Vince felt a pang of pity for the woman. Whatever she was facing, she believed it was real. He needed to respect that until he knew the whole story.

  “The kind of curse that presaged that doom, gloom, and dire happenings would continue to beset our family, unless a set of highly specialized demands were met. The oldest records of the curse maintain that a child from a special generation is destined to marry a prince—or princess, presumably. If the child succeeds in fulfilling that destiny, the curse will be broken.”

  “And you’re a member of an, um, special generation?” he hazarded. She glanced at him with a rueful smile.

  “A generation of only daughters qualifies, yes,” she said. Her lips twisted, as if she fully understood how ridiculous this all sounded. “So too does a generation of only boys, or of twins, or of a single child. As you might imagine, the Saleris have had many opportunities to marry into royalty over the intervening centuries since the curse first came into play, but no one’s been able to pull it off.”

  Vince frowned. “But your father has remarried, and they’re expecting. What if the baby—”

  “It’s a girl,” Edeena said flatly. “He recently had the appropriate tests run.”

  Vince didn’t bother hiding the expression of distaste that curled his lip, and Edeena seemed to relax further in the face of his disdain.