Call Him Prince Daddy (Complete Series): Call Him Prince Daddy

By Layla Valentine

He's a Prince, a playboy, and a hottie single dad,
And he might just be the end of me…

Hell, I've never had time for a husband, never mind my own Prince Charming,
I'm married to my job, after all.
My fashion brand has brought me riches, but no closer to Mr. Right.
That's until I meet Jacques, the deposed former Prince of Borovik.
Fiendishly funny, irresistibly handsome, irrepressibly charming,
And his daughter? Adorable.
I thought he'd be the perfect face for my brand,
But I should have known, this is no fairytale!
He's got secrets, and if I don't steer clear, they'll bring me down with him…
So why can't I leave Prince Single Daddy behind?

This is the complete Call Him Prince Daddy series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Layla Valentine
• Release date: Jun 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201751586

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

JACQUES

W hat do you mean, it’s delayed? I growled, my heart sinking down into my stomach—and then shooting up into my throat at the range of possibilities that such a delay could bring up. Do you realize how serious that is? Do you realize how bad it could be for my family?

And not just bad, but potentially deadly. Because I was expecting a shipment of diamonds from my native country. A huge shipment in fact, and one that I was very definitely counting on.

And I had been expecting those diamonds yesterday.

The fact that they weren’t here yet, was a very, very big deal.

There was some problem with a storm, sir, the man on the other end—one of my many assistants—mumbled. They couldn’t get through and they had to turn back. Barely got out of the harbor, actually. Making the journey might have meant that the ship itself went down. We could have lost the entire shipment.

I growled again, though this time I put a little less anger into it. Because my assistant had a good point; if the shipment had gone down, it would have been worse than delayed. I needed those diamonds here in the States, and I needed them as soon as possible.

Them sitting at the bottom of the fucking ocean wasn’t going to help me.

So yeah, the captain, who had docked in a small bay in the Caribbean after their journey across the Atlantic—and in preparation for the final leg to Miami—might have made the right choice. The journey up to Miami might have been too dangerous to actually follow through on.

But it still put me in an awfully bad position. And it didn’t explain why I was just now hearing about it when all of this must have happened at least two days ago.

I decided not to bother with that second question, since there was a range of possible answers—including the best one, which was that when you’re smuggling diamonds into the United States, you can’t always count on being in perfect contact with the people doing the smuggling—and went right for the important point.

When do they expect to be here? I asked, my mind running through the things that I would need to take care of. The people I would need to communicate with—and the people that I would need to put off a bit longer. The excuses I could use. The promises I might make.

The protections I could put in place.

Within the week, my assistant said.

I sighed, frustrated. One of the biggest hassles of running your own business—or your own smuggling operation, as the case may be—was that you were the only one who seemed to understand how important details were. Details like a specific day that I could count on. A specific day that I could tell my contacts about.

Do you have anything more specific? I asked tightly.

There was a long, pregnant pause on the other end of the line, and I held my breath.

Because the sooner those diamonds got here, the sooner I could get the mob off my back. Yes, the real live mob. I know. But it was the hand I’d been dealt, for the moment, and it was the situation I was having to handle. No matter how much I hated it.

I think we can count on Wednesday, my assistant finally said.

I breathed out a sigh of relief at that. Wednesday, I could deal with. It was only Friday now, and I could make an excuse about the weekend and then hold them off until Wednesday.

If it was Wednesday, all wasn’t lost.

Make sure it happens, then, I snapped. My life may literally be depending on it. The lives of my mother and father. My daughter. I don’t have to tell you how important this is, Ramiro.

I ended the call before he could answer and leaned my face into my hands, trying to get my brain to work out solutions to the current problem.

The current problem. Not the bigger picture—namely that my family had once been the royal family in charge of Borovik, an island off the coast of Croatia, until we’d been deposed by a military coup. A family that was used to living in the lap of luxury and had suddenly found themselves… well, outlaws, for lack of a better term. Which had brought up another problem: that we’d had to run from the island—from our home—and make our way quickly (and hidden in the bottom of a cargo ship) to the United States, where we’d filed immediately for asylum.

I’d had to take out loan after loan after loan from American loan sharks to get the whole thing done. To get my family here and safe. To make sure we had a life that didn’t depend on the bank accounts in Borovik, which had been seized by the people who were now running the government.

Which, in case you were wondering, is how I got involved with the mob. Because of course they were the ones who had offered the loans. And I’d taken them out of pure, horrible desperation.

I wouldn’t have done otherwise. Even now, with all the fear constantly coursing through my veins, I knew I’d done the only thing I could possibly do. I couldn’t have left my family in Borovik, where they would have been on the run for the rest of their lives. And I couldn’t have moved them to the US without money.

No, I didn’t question my decisions. But regretting that I’d had to make them? Yeah, I had done that just about every day, ever since. I’d spent the last three years trying desperately to pay those loans off—before the sharks came to collect. Before they took what little we’d been able to build here.

Before they hurt my family.

Hence the shipment of diamonds. Borovik was one of the biggest diamond suppliers in the world. Hell, they were about as common to find in the ground as normal rocks, there—which was why the local market wouldn’t give you anything for them. They were too numerous, too easy to come by. Simple economics said that they weren’t worth anything on the island itself.

Get them off the island, though, and they were nearly priceless.

Get them off the island and into the American market, and they brought a very tidy sum. A sum that would, if I sold enough, get me out from under the mob, and into a position of safety.

I slid the magazine I had sitting on my desk toward me, my eyes moving over the cover. It was a big, glossy closeup of me and I looked… exhausted. The paparazzi had caught me, like they always did, when I was coming out of a restaurant with my parents and my daughter, and though I was dressed to the nines and smiling, I also looked like I hadn’t slept in years.

Probably because I pretty much hadn’t.

I pushed the magazine away, sighing. The American press loved us. We were royals, and since America didn’t often have those just hanging around, they were obsessed with us. That didn’t change the fact that we were also paupers, though. It didn’t change the fact that if I didn’t do something to fix the mafia problem quickly—and permanently—we were going to be in big trouble.

I was working on a more permanent solution. A real and completely legitimate diamond importing business, and one that could not only support us on its own but make us extremely wealthy. I had dreams about an entire line of Borovik diamonds, including engagement ring and other jewelry designs. I had dreams about being a legitimate businessman and building a company that my daughter would be proud to run one day. And I was making progress on that. I just wasn’t making it quickly enough.

Partially because I couldn’t actually run any diamonds through it yet. It was really hard to start a company without any product—and without any time. And right now, all of my product—and all of my time—went into paying back the mob. Making sure they got their diamonds. Making sure I was the only one they talked to in my family. Making sure my family was safe and the timelines were right to get the mafia what they wanted before they got impatient.

I didn’t know how much longer I could keep all of these pieces together. All of these balls in the air. I needed something big to happen—something big enough to save us entirely. And I needed it to happen quickly.

Tomorrow, if the universe was taking orders.

I just had no idea where it would come from. Or how it might happen.

CHAPTER 2

SOPHIE

Itook a long, slow swallow of my coffee—a large black with a pump of chocolate syrup just to sweeten it up a bit—and then blew out a hot, coffee-flavored breath.

I was here to make something big happen. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling as confident about my chances as I would have liked.

I looked up, squinting and delving deep into my brain, seeking the well of confidence that was usually so abundant for me.

When I found it, I bit my lip, tipped my head, and smiled at no one in particular.

There you are, I thought, somewhat relieved. And without thinking twice about it, I dove right into that well, basking in the feeling of good, hot coffee and a self-confidence that had always been second nature.

Once I was full up on that, I let my eyes start to focus on the real world again.

The building in front of me was enormous—one of the biggest in this part of West LA. But that didn’t scare me. I’d been in big buildings before. Hell, I owned a big building. The swankiness around me didn’t worry me, either. I’d grown up in this area, and I had been eating, sleeping, and breathing this sort of high-power environment since I could walk.

West LA was my jam. I’d been born here, gone to school here, started my career here, and built my company here, and I’d never once considered doing anything else. No place else would have felt right. No place else would have been able to keep up with me. This area of the city knew me forward and backward, and the feeling was mutual. This was my hood. This was my home.

The coming meeting, though… well, yeah, it was getting my stomach a little bit jittery. Hence the coffee and the slow breathing.

Because this was an incredibly big, incredibly important meeting. More important than most of the meetings I’d had this week—and stressful, honestly, because I hadn’t put as much time into the planning as I would have liked. The thing was, I had found out about this meeting at the last minute, and that meant that I’d hurried down here to make sure it happened, making up the script as I drove.

It was not the way I preferred to operate.

As the owner and lead designer of Romanello, I’d made my entire career on careful, well-planned moves and intricate to-do lists. I never made a move without considering it first and making sure I had all the eventualities taken care of. I hadn’t started my own company—and made it a billion-dollar enterprise—by getting sloppy or rushing into situations before I figured out how I wanted them to go.

I also didn’t usually show up to meetings without a script in place.

Unfortunately, today, I hadn’t had a damn choice. And I sort of hated that. Hated the chain of events that had put me into this exact situation.

Not that I’d had any control over it.

Romanello was one of the biggest, most successful fashion houses in the world, and that was great. But it also meant that we had the biggest competition possible—namely, Machille. Another designer of high-end menswear. Another multi-billion-dollar company. And a company run by my mentor, Stephano Ricci.

The man who had taught me everything about the industry. The man who had held my hand as I learned how to be a designer and a business owner, and who had then been my launching point when I started my own company. The man who was now my biggest competition.

The man who competed with me not only for clients and customers, but also for spokespeople.

Which was exactly why I was here right now, standing on the street in Westwood and staring up at the tallest building in West LA.

When it came to fashion, spokespeople were some of the most important contacts you could have. You needed people not only wearing your clothes in the advertisements, but also out on the street. When they went to the hottest restaurant in town. When they went to movie premieres. Even when they went to the beach with their kids. They were the ones that gave you the best advertising, the best publicity. They were the ones that made the Common Joe and the Everyday Jane want your clothes so bad that they were willing to pay whatever it took to get them, just so they could say they were wearing the same dress or shoes or watch or whatever as so-and-so had worn to that event the other night.

They were the ones that ended up swaying the retailers to carry your lines.

At the end of the day, spokespeople—or the lack thereof—could either make or break even the biggest fashion house, and Romanello was no different.

Unfortunately, we’d been losing this particular race of late. Last season, Stephano stole the biggest actor in Hollywood right out from under my nose in the middle of the season—and after I’d thought we had the contract done. I’d thought we had the guy all wrapped up. We were even designing clothes for him already, for fuck’s sake. We’d thought he was a sure bet.

So, when he suddenly started appearing in Machille ads, it had been an extremely big shock. And it had left us in a bind as we scrambled to find someone else who could rep our clothes for us in the film industry.

I was here, at Austin Quinn’s apartment building, to make sure it didn’t happen again. I’d heard that he was looking for sponsorships and interested in working with a fashion house, and I’d been in my car within minutes, speeding toward his building and making up a pitch on the way, with a personal recommendation from one of Austin’s friends in my pocket to get me through the door.

I just hoped he was as willing as I’d heard he was. Because