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‘Sorry. We can get you all the make-up you want when we go shopping.’
‘You’re coming with us?’
‘Marcelo’s asked me to take you.’
He was not prepared for the disappointed pout Clara threw at him. ‘You’re not coming?’
‘No,’ he said smoothly. ‘There is much to organise for our wedding, and besides, Alessia will be a better shopping partner for you. I get bored easily.’
‘So do I! But not when shopping for clothes. I can do that all day.’ She turned back to Alessia. ‘You can give me some pointers on princess stuff when we’re out—I really don’t want to embarrass you all once I’m thrown under the public gaze so I’ll need strict instructions on how to behave.’ Hardly drawing breath and not waiting for his sister to respond, she spoke again to Marcelo. ‘Will you look after Bob while we’re gone?’ The puppy had come in from his trip to the garden and was currently trying to scramble onto a seventeenth-century armchair.
‘No problem.’
She beamed. ‘I’m going to get ready. Won’t be long.’
The silence Clara left in her wake was like the aftermath of a tornado.
Marcelo found himself reluctant to meet his sister’s stare. When he did, she gave a rueful smile. ‘She likes you.’
‘I like her too.’ To his own amazement, he found this was true. Clara Sinclair was a force of nature—a handful as Alessia had described her—and honest to the point of rudeness, but he fully understood too what Alessia had meant about her being inherently loveable.
But what he didn’t like was the way he responded to her, and it wasn’t even his physical response to her that nagged at him. Clara Sinclair’s spirit was so different from the people who littered his royal life that it tugged at him. Made him hanker for a life he could never have.
Marcelo didn’t have a clue how Clara had managed to squeeze herself into Alessia’s dress.
‘Can you even breathe in that?’ he asked, trying very hard not to stare at her breasts so clearly delineated beneath the red fabric. Thankfully Alessia had taken his warning of Clara’s lack of underwear seriously and had chosen a material and colour that didn’t have the slightest hint of transparency to it.
She sucked her cheeks in and widened her eyes, then laughed. ‘Just.’
‘You can borrow something of mine if it would be more comfortable?’
‘Fashion isn’t supposed to comfortable,’ she dismissed.
‘You have nothing on your feet.’
‘Then we’ll just have to go to a shoe shop.’
‘Can’t you borrow a pair of Alessia’s?’
His sister coughed.
‘My feet are two sizes bigger than Princess Twinkletoes,’ Clara explained.
‘Don’t worry,’ Alessia said. ‘I’ve already called ahead to Bonitas. We’ll go through the private entrance. She won’t have to walk on the streets barefoot.’
‘How much spending money do I get?’ Clara asked.
Marcelo strode to the glass table in the corner where his private secretary had left the items he’d ordered before he went to bed. ‘I’ve set you up with an unlimited credit card.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘That you can spend whatever you like. There is no limit.’
Doubt rang in her voice. ‘But there has to be a limit.’
‘Not with this card.’ He passed it to her.
She studied it with suspicion before a hint of mischief came into her eyes. ‘You realise that if it’s true and this really is unlimited then I’m going to take advantage of it?’
