The Prince's Devious Proposal - Holly Rayner Page 0,44

named another country.

Memory was unreliable. It had been a long time ago. And her thoughts had been clouded by anger at the time. What country had her mother mentioned?

Could it have been Sovra?

Naomi wasn’t sure. But she thought it just might have been.

For a moment, she wanted to pick up the phone and call Sarah back. Sarah would know. She probably had it written down somewhere. That sounded like the kind of thing she would do.

But Sarah would also want to know why Naomi was asking, and Naomi definitely didn’t want to tell her.

She looked down at the ring on her finger, feeling horrified. What was it she had thought to herself when she had first heard the news of her inheritance?

I’ve got enough money for the both of us.

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.

But the puzzle pieces were falling together far too easily now. This was an answer that made sense of everything. The picture that was forming in her mind now accounted for every confusing moment, every detail that hadn’t quite fit.

It was a scam.

It had always been a scam.

Petr had never loved her at all. Not a moment of it had been real.

No doubt her mother had told that boyfriend, the advisor to the royal family, about her will. She would have confided in him about the money she was leaving to her daughters. She might even have asked him to help her set it up.

And as the advisor to the royal family, he would have turned around and reported all he knew to the Sovran royals—particularly when they found themselves in debt.

Petr would have known from the beginning that she would be coming into an inheritance. Naomi’s mother hadn’t told her it would be so much. But she probably had confided in her boyfriend. Which meant that Petr had known before Naomi herself had.

It would have been a simple matter for him to track her down—she had never left Los Angeles. An internet search for her name would have led him to her place of business.

He had approached her as a fan because that had been the easiest way to explain his desired to meet her. He had never been a fan of her music. He had probably taken months to learn her album, to choose a deep-cut favorite song and memorize it, practice it so that he could perform it in front of her.

And she had fallen for it.

She was pathetic.

It was all her fault that this had happened. She was the one who had allowed it to happen.

He had spent extravagantly on her during their courtship because he had wanted to dazzle her, to make her forget about how impractical they were being. Maybe he had hoped to buy her love. Whatever he had been trying to do, it had worked. Six months ago, Naomi would have said she was too smart to be taken in by something like this, but it had worked. Every step of the way.

And that explained why the luxuries had stopped once he had gotten the ring on her finger. There had been no need to spoil her after that. He had his prize.

She looked down at the ring. What an idiot she had been, to believe that he’d given her a ring that had belonged to a queen! These gemstones were almost certainly fake.

And now…

Now they were married, and there had been no prenuptial agreement. Petr had assured her, over and over, that what was his was hers, that she would be financially taken care of. But in reality, the reverse was true.

What was hers would now be his.

She hadn’t even taken possession of her inheritance yet, but the moment she did, half of it would belong to Petr Agridis. A man who had never loved her. A man who had only spent time with her in an attempt to steal her money—an attempt that was going to succeed. She had opened the door to him, and he had walked through.

Sarah is going to be so disappointed in me.

Naomi was humiliated, horrified. How could Petr have done this to her? And how could she have allowed it to happen?

She was going to get answers.

She started her car and pulled out of the lot, heading for the Crystal Lounge.

Chapter 15

He was waiting for her at the very same table they had sat at during their first evening at the Crystal Lounge, and for a moment the symmetry made Naomi pause.

Petr. It had only been a few days since she’d