Once Upon A Time
By: Blair Babylon
Publication date: April 3rd 2018
Genres: Adult, Romance, Suspense
When a real princess falls in love with a man who is definitely not a prince, a royal fairy tale turns dangerous.
ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a beautiful princess, Flicka von Hannover, who lived an enchanted life. She jetted around Europe staging charity events with friends, had married a handsome prince in the most spectacular royal wedding of the 21st century, and should have lived happily ever after.
But then she found the handsome prince in bed with a duchess. And then a coffee shop barista. And then her own goddamn secretary.
Finally, the beautiful princess had had enough of the cheating prince, and she ran away.
Once she had stepped out of the royal fairy tale, life became grayer, grittier, and rougher. The prince didn’t like that she had left and sent henchmen to take her back to the castle. Her worried royal brother sent people to look for her, too.
But the princess didn’t want to be found. The princess got a job as a waitress in a diner in New York City and made her own way in the world. Even cut off from everyone she knew, she was more resourceful than she had thought she might be. She did okay. From hiding, she sent legal separation papers and then divorce documents, but the prince wouldn’t sign them. He said he wouldn’t let her go. Even in these modern times, the prince could lock the princess up in a dungeon of legal forms and provisions that she wouldn’t be able to break out of. The prince wanted his princess back because he couldn’t take his throne without her.
Until a man walked into her diner one day, one who was frankly not a handsome prince.
He was the last man on Earth the princess should have fallen in love with.
—
Her ankles wobbled in her gilded, stiletto sandals every time her feet thudded on the carpeting. Her slim, crystal-encrusted skirt was bunched around her thighs so she could stretch her long legs. Her purse dangled from her wrist and bounced against her thigh with each stride.
Just a few more doors.
—432, 434, 436—
If she could reach room 460, she had a chance.
She glanced behind her, risking a stumble as she sprinted.
Doors studded the silent hallway behind her. Shimmering sconces threw dim light over the grand hotel’s gold carpeting, and black night pressed against the windows. She could still taste the metallic tinge of blood in her mouth.
No other hotel guests were standing around in the hallways at four in the morning.
—442, 444, 446—
When she had escaped from her own suite minutes before, the Secret Service men, armed with handguns and large knives, had been chasing her. Flicka had leaped into the closing elevator, rolling on the floor and slamming her shoulder against the back wall. It had been a stroke of luck that the elevator was at the penthouse and the doors had been closing just as she had run. That little bit of luck had allowed her to make it this far.
At the fourth floor, she had pushed all the buttons to send the elevator lower into the hotel, hoping to confuse her pursuers.
—450, 452, 454—
Flicka ran harder, trying to make it.
She looked back again.
The hallway behind her was still empty. Her husband’s Secret Service men hadn’t expected her to be able to sprint so quickly in high-heeled shoes and a slim ball gown, but princesses are accustomed to wearing evening dress. She could probably rappel down a cliff face in petticoats and pumps.
Flicka von Hannover was a real, modern princess, not a fairy-tale one, and she had run for her life more than once.
The Secret Service men must have made for the stairwells, splitting up to search each floor for her, planning to communicate her position to each other for reinforcements. That’s how she would have orchestrated the search. They would come thundering out of the stairwells at each end of the hallway at any moment and see her racing through the hotel with her pale pink dress hiked up around her hips and a diamond tiara glittering in her blond hair.
Room 460.
Flicka pounded on the door and held her hand against the wood, willing it to open right now.
USA Today Bestselling Author Blair Babylon is an award-winning author who regularly publishes contemporary romance and romantic suspense fiction. After writing literary fiction where reviews usually included the caveat that there was too much deviant sex, she decided to abandon all literary pretensions, let her freak flag fly, and write hot, sexy, erotic romance with crazy, breakneck plot turns.
Copy/paste this link into your browser to sign up for email alerts about new releases, special sales, and free ebooks: http://smarturl.it/Babylon-Email . Blair sends out chatty, fun emails with great deals. Hey, she's a reader, too, and she understands that it's hard to find great new writers to read and harder to find great freebies and deals.
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