"Tell me more about your parents," Hyun Joong said later in the evening as he and So Min stepped out onto a balcony for a breath of fresh air.

So Min smiled as memories assailed her. "Every anniversary, my father would buy my mother a little trinket from a different country. One year it was a package of Russian tea, the next a bell from Holland."

"My mother always gets a new diamond of some sort from my father on their anniversary," Hyun Joong said.

So Min smiled, trying to ignore how utterly handsome Hyun Joong looked in his formal dress. "Daddy couldn’t afford diamonds. But, he’d promised mother the world and so each year he gave her a memento of some faraway place."

"What did your mother and father does for a living?"

So Min sat on one of the wrought-iron benches that decorated the balcony. Hyun Joong joined her, his thigh warm against hers as they sat side by side. "Daddy was a simple man, a car mechanic and mother was a schoolteacher. He met her when she took her car in for repairs and three months later they married. Their love for each other filled our house every day."

Hyun Joong frowned. "I know my parents respect one another, but they spend very little time together."

"When I marry, my husband and I will spend lots of time together," So Min said fervently. "We’ll share meals and our bed; we’ll share our hopes and dreams. We’ll even argue occasionally, but we’ll always make up and our love will simply grow stronger with each passing day."

She looked at Hyun Joong. "That’s what I want from marriage, what my parents had." She felt the burn of unexpected tears. "And had they lived long enough, my father would have given my mother the entire world." She swiped the tears that had begun to fall. "I’m sorry," she said and forced a small laugh to hide her embarrassment.

"Don’t be," he murmured softly.

"It’s just my father died a year ago of a heart attack, and before I had a chance to mourn for him, my mother became terminally ill. She passed away a month ago." To her horror, as much as she tried to suppress her tears, it was useless.

He gathered her into his arms and she went willingly, grief for her parents welling up inside her.

She pressed her face into the front of his shirt as he her hair tenderly. Even as the tears flowed, she was intensely aware of the strength of Hyun Joong’s arms around her, the attractive masculine scent of him.

"Sweet So Min," he murmured. "Try not to grieve for your parents. Just think, now they have all of eternity to spend together."

In his sweet words, in the tenderness of his embrace, So Min knew she was treading on dangerous ground. She was vulnerable to the fantasy he held out. After the dreadful year she’d just spent, it would be far too easy to fall into the fairy tale of becoming a princess in an exotic, foreign land.

Yes, she was vulnerable, and if she weren’t very careful, she’d fall in love with the Playboy Prince who appeared to know nothing about love.

To be continued?