Olivia Gates Bestseller Collection 2012 Read Online Free

come in.”
    Her heart launched against her ribs. She rocked on her feet with the force of the collision. Don’t say it. Don’t…
    He said it. “I’m sending you, the one person I believe can reach Leandro, can convince him to negotiate, or to at least hold down the fort until a more permanent solution is found, if he remains adamant about not accepting the succession.”
    Phoebe’s mind emptied. Her tongue fired blanks. “I—I’m not…”
    “You’re Castaldini’s most potent negotiator. You’ve bailed us out of situations where my old guard and I were ineffectual, detrimental even. And this is our darkest hour. I am countingon your ability, your infallible diplomatic techniques and your own charms, to lure Leandro back when all else has failed.”
    Her own… charms? Now wait a minute here…
    Before she could choke out her alarm, the king hurled another declaration at her.
    “You’re my—and Castaldini’s—last card.”
     
    “We’re landing, Signorina Alexander.”
    Phoebe mirrored the flight attendant’s smile, patted her fastened seatbelt. She waited until the radiant brunette had removed her untouched dinner and hurried away before she let her head thunk against her window. The bonfire of lights that was New York City at night was zooming up at her, an organized maze of the gothic and the postmodern that seemed to be unfurling to engulf Castaldini’s equivalent of Air Force One.
    She closed her eyes over the sand that seemed to fill her lids.
    She hated flying. She’d come to equate it with upheaval.
    The journey that started it all had been ten years ago. Her little sister, Julia, had accepted Paolo’s marriage proposal only to discover he was the King of Castaldini’s son.
    Phoebe couldn’t let her eighteen-year-old, special-needs sister go alone to a foreign country and an unknown future. She’d dropped out of law school to accompany Julia. She’d boarded that jet to Castaldini with anxieties and regrets preying on her. The first over the unimaginable future she and her sister were heading to, the second over the life she’d relinquished.
    Not that she’d had second thoughts since then. Although she was only two and a half years older than Julia, she’d been more of a mother than a sister to her since their single mother had died just days after Phoebe’s thirteenth birthday. When Julia had become afflicted with Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia—a rare form of partial paralysis—Phoebe’s protectiveness had mushroomed. At fourteen, Julia had started suffering from weakness, stiffness and partial loss of sensation in her lower limbs. By the time she was seventeen, she’d been in a wheelchair. Then she’d met Paolo.
    Undaunted by her condition, he’d swept her into a whirlwind romance. It wasn’t long before he’d proposed. And though Julia had accepted after nearly a year of cajoling and insistence that her physical condition made no difference to him, Julia’s psychological state had been fragile and her dependence on Phoebe had deepened with the anticipation of all the upheaval that becoming a princess overnight would bring.
    Phoebe had wondered too many times if she would have done things differently if she’d known her own life would change forever, too. And not just as spillover from the changes in Julia’s.
    What if the first time she’d set eyes on Leandro, she’d had the sense to feel alarmed at her volatile reaction, especially when she’d always been steady and cerebral? To realize that something so out of control would lead to a crash? That a man so voracious in both ambition and passion would end up consuming her while giving nothing of himself in return? What if she hadn’t let him sweep her into that first kiss an hour after meeting, hadn’t thrown herself into his bed a week later?
    She’d always come to the same conclusion. Any alternative scenario wouldn’t have derailed her life, and she wouldn’t have spent years afterward trying to get back on track.