His Princess in the Making by Melissa James Read Free Book Online

her utter stone-blindness to his love. After ten years of showing her in every possible way how much he loved and wanted her, she didn’t even think he found her pretty or interesting.
    The doctor’s words of years ago came back to haunt him.
    No matter what you say or do, even you, her closest support person, may never know the depth of damage to her self-esteem or how she sees herself.
    He leaned against the bookshelf where she’d been, inhalingthe last vestiges of her scent. How had he saved her life, been her best friend so many years, and known her so little? How had she listened to every word he’d said to her for so long, yet never truly grasped their meaning? She’d called his endearments “nonsense.”
    At this point, only one thing was clear: he’d shocked her to her core by kissing her today. She honestly hadn’t seen it. She didn’t even see how much he needed her.
    If he wanted to win her, he couldn’t take a single thing for granted. He had to start over from scratch, to show her he didn’t just love her, he found her beautiful and desirable—the only woman he wanted.
    I’m not a child any more, Toby; I’m a woman!
    Ten years dreaming her dreams for her, making her every wish come true, and she’d grown and changed; she’d become a woman before his blinkered eyes. And now she’d gone so far ahead of him he couldn’t see her. Worse, he hadn’t even noticed when she’d left.
    The title and tiara were the least of his problems. She loved him, wanted him, but she didn’t love him, and didn’t want him. After half a lifetime of being everything to her, she’d trusted him with the truth only now, when she believed it was too late.
    How long had she been hiding this resentment from him? How long had she wanted a woman’s life, and he hadn’t noticed?
    I’m a woman! The passionate lilt in her voice as she’d said it had both made him harder than he’d ever been, awakened him from ten years of aching love lost inside a mental fog of fear, and made him smile at last. So Max didn’t see her as a woman? She wanted a man to see her, to want her as a woman?
    As ever, half an hour with her inspired him. With two sentences, she’d shown him the way to opening her guarded and locked heart. She’d even shown him how he could stay in Hellenia, at least for now, how to circumvent the King’s suspicions.
    If Hellenia needed healing, he had some plans that just might impress the crusty old king.
    And if Giulia wanted a man to show her just how much he wanted her, she was about to get it.

CHAPTER THREE

    Two weeks later

    “I T ’ S a truly beautiful country. It’s a shame so much of it has been torn to pieces by the warring factions,” Toby said, sounding deeply thoughtful.
    From beside him in the bullet-proof town car, Lia nodded. Every time she visited a new town or village shattered by the Orakis family’s attempts to regain control, she wanted to cry. She felt so helpless, so inadequate to do all that was needed to help this beautiful, medieval country heal its scars.
    How ridiculous was it that, by an accident of birth, the only choice Hellenia had for her next leader was a hereditary lord with the destructive tantrums of a two-year-old throwing his blocks, and two Australians who knew no more about ruling a nation than that spoiled baby? If it wasn’t for Jazmine…
    “Charlie’s ideas are working very well—the village training system and paying for apprenticeships—and your charities and law repeals for widows, divorced women and orphans are making you a heroine in the nation.”
    Lia flushed. “I’m just doing what has to be done. Anyone would have done it.”
    “What, giving away a third of your fortune thus far to found refuges for women whose male family members are exploiting them? Using your second ancestral home in Malascos as an orphanage? I doubt five percent of the population would have done that.” He added softly, “Papou and Yiayia would be proud of you.”
    Moved by