The Prince's Housekeeper Bride by Carol Marinelli

Chapter One
    â€œYou need to smarten up, Alisa!” Arranging the tray, Alisa did her best not to get upset by Maria the cook’s pertinent observations. “Prince Benito likes his staff to look immaculate—you won’t keep this job if you don’t make more of an effort.”
    â€œI will,” Alisa attempted an assured nod. “It was just such a rush to get here. I only just found out I’d been offered the job. I had to race home to sort out care for Marietta—”
    â€œDon’t use your child as an excuse, Alisa,” Maria scolded, “A woman in your unfortunate position is lucky to have been offered the position of Prince Benito’s housekeeper here in the villa. There are plenty of other palace maids who would only be too happy to take your place! You should present with your hair neatly tied back and maybe a little makeup—you’re not scrubbing the fireplaces now! You have to look the part. “
    â€œI will, Maria…” Picking up the tray, Alisa headed down the long corridor, her new, shapeless white uniform swishing as she did so, the bulky, rubber-soled white shoes she had been issued not making a sound on the highly polished marble floors. Alisa added smarten up to her endless list of urgent things she had to do.
    Had to do.
    She needed this job. Even if the hours were impossible, even if keeping up with Prince Benito’s exhausting, glittering schedule meant she would hardly see Marietta while he was here in Niroli, surely it would be worth it.
    Alisa saw her hand was shaking slightly as she put it up to knock on the bedroom door.
    As a palace maid, Alisa was used to glimpsing royals and their lavish existence, but it was always from a distance—laundering their sheets, washing their plates, scrubbing their floors. Unnoticed and utterly dispensable.
    Until now!
    Prince Benito had made his spectacular entrance to Niroli just three nights ago. A guest of his cousin, the very adored, if rather reprobate, Prince Luca Fierezza of Niroli, Benito had sailed his hundred-and-seventy-five-foot yacht from the neighboring island Contarini, and in the short time he’d been on the island he’d more than made his presence known, as was usually the case during his frequent visits. Whispers had been echoing down the palace corridors about wild nights of gambling and partying, and the first casualty of his reckless ways had been the villa’s loyal and hardworking housekeeper Bianca, sacked for supposedly rolling her eyes at the excessive requests of his latest girlfriend, Victoria. The second casualty had been Victoria herself—dumped by the prince, it was gleefully rumored, for rolling her eyes at one of his more excessive requests.
    Hopefully the third victim wouldn’t be Alisa.
    Two gentle knocks on the door, a pause for modesty’s sake, and Alisa entered, holding her breath as tightly as she held the tray and taking a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.
    â€œYour coffee, Your Highness.”
    Apparently he didn’t like needless chatter. A brief greeting had been her instructions—his coffee to be poured while he awoke and placed on the table beside him, then the curtains opened and his bath drawn.
    Then she could breathe normally again.
    Only, it wasn’t his royal status that daunted Alisa as she made her way over. It wasn’t that she desperately needed this job to work out. No, it was actually something rather more basic that had the twenty-one-year-old trembling with nerves as she hesitantly stood over him. It was that she’d never been in a man’s bedroom before—at least not while the owner was present.
    Had never stood watching as a man slept.
    Benito was lying prone on the vast bed, pillows tossed on the floor, his hand over the side as if he were on a lilo and trailing the water below. Even in semidarkness he was beautiful, more beautiful than the pictures she had seen. Broad shoulders,