Royals: Claimed By The Prince: The Heartbreaker Prince / Passion and the Prince / Prince of Secrets

It was a good twenty degrees hotter than it would have been in Antibes. Through half-closed eyes he saw Charlotte Denning, her lithe, tanned body arranged on a sun lounger by the infinity pool, a bottle of champagne on ice, ready to fulfil her promise of a special birthday treat.

Recently divorced and enjoying her freedom, she was making up for a year spent married to a man who did not share her sexual appetites.

In short she was pretty much his ideal woman.

She would be angry at his no-show and later, when she found out the reason, she would be even angrier—not that marriage would put him out of bounds. Knowing Charlotte, he thought it might even add an extra illicit thrill.

There would be no thrills for him. Marriage would put the Charlottes of this world off-limits. He had his memories to keep him warm. The ironic curve of his lips that accompanied the thought flattened into a hard line of resolve. He would marry because it was his duty. For a lucky few duty and desire were one and the same... Once he had considered himself one of the lucky ones.

He took a deep breath of fragrant air, and closed the window, refusing to allow the insidious tendrils of resentment and self-pity to take hold. If he ever thought he’d got a bad deal he simply reminded himself that he was alive. Unlike his little niece, Leila, the baby who might have become his, had things been different. She died when the plane that was carrying her and her parents crashed into the side of a mountain, killing all on board, starting an avalanche of speculation and changing his future for ever.

He had a future, one he had inherited from Leila’s father. Since becoming the heir and not the spare he had not thought about marriage except as something that would happen and sooner rather than later. With limited time he had set about enjoying what there was of it and in his determined pursuit of this ambition he had gained a reputation. At some point someone had called him the Heartbreaker Prince, and the title had stuck.

And now a freak set of circumstances had conspired to provide him with a ready-made bride who had a reputation to match his own. There would be no twelve-month marriage for him; it was a life sentence to Heartless Hannah. Those tabloids did so love their alliteration.

* * *

‘It is done.’

Kamel turned back and nodded calmly. ‘I’ll set things in motion.’

As the King put the phone back down on its cradle Charles Latimer shocked himself and the others present by bursting into tears.

* * *

It took Kamel slightly less than an hour to put arrangements in place and then he returned to give the two older men a run-through of the way he saw it happening. As a courtesy he got the plan signed off by his uncle, who nodded and turned to his old college friend and business partner.

‘So we should have her with you by tonight, Charlie.’

Kamel could have pointed out that more factually she would be with him, but he refrained. It was all about priorities: get the girl out, then deal with the consequences.

Kamel felt obliged to point out the possibility he had not been able to factor in. Not that this was a deal-breaker—in life sometimes you just had to wing it and he was confident of his ability to do so in most situations. ‘Of course, if she’s hysterical or—’

‘Don’t worry, Hannah is tough and smart. She catches on quick. She’ll walk out of there under her own steam.’

And now he was within moments of discovering if the parental confidence had been justified.

He doubted it.

Kamel thought it much more likely the man had not allowed himself to believe anything else. Clearly he had indulged the girl all her life. The chances of a spoilt English society brat lasting half a day in a prison cell before she fell apart were slender at best.

So having been fully prepared for the worst, he should have been relieved to find the object of his rescue mission wasn’t the anticipated hysterical wreck. For some reason the sight of this slim, stunningly beautiful woman—sitting there on the narrow iron cot with its bare mattress, hands folded in her lap, head tilted at a confident angle, wearing a creased, shapeless prison gown with the confidence and poise of someone wearing a designer outfit—did not fill him with relief, and definitely not admiration, but a blast of anger.

Unbelievable! On her behalf people were moving heaven and earth and she was sitting there acting as though the bloody butler had entered the room! A butler she hadn’t even deigned to notice. Was she simply too stupid to understand the danger of her position or was she so used to Daddy rescuing her from unpleasant situations that she thought she was invulnerable?

Then she turned her head, the dark lashes lifting from the curve of her smooth cheek, and Kamel realised that under the cool blonde Hitchcock heroine attitude she was scared witless. He took a step closer and could almost smell the tension that was visible in the taut muscles around her delicate jaw, and the fine mist of sweat on her pale skin.

He frowned. He’d save his sympathy for those who deserved it. Scared or not, Hannah Latimer did not come into that category. This was a mess of her own making.

It was easy to see how men went after her, though, despite the fact she was obviously poison. He even experienced a slug of attraction himself—but then luckily she opened her mouth. Her voice was as cut glass as her profile, her attitude a mixture of disdain and superiority, which could not have won her any friends around here.

‘I must demand to see the—’ She stopped, her violet-blue eyes flying wide as she released an involuntary gasp. The man standing there was not holding a tray with a plate of inedible slop on it.

There had been several interrogators but always the same two guards, neither of whom spoke. One was short and squat, and the other was tall and had a problem with body odour—after he had gone the room was filled with a sour smell for ages.

This man was tall too, very tall. She found herself tilting her head to frame all of him; beyond height there was no similarity whatsoever to her round-shouldered, sour-smelling jailors. He wasn’t wearing the drab utilitarian khaki of the guards or the showy uniform with gold epaulettes of the man who sat in on all the interrogations.

This man was clean-shaven and he was wearing snowy white ceremonial desert robes. The fabric carried a scent of fresh air and clean male into the enclosed space. Rather bizarrely he carried a swathe of blue silk over one arm. Her round-eyed, fearful stare shifted from the incongruous item to his face.

If it hadn’t been for the slight scar that stood out white on his golden skin, and the slight off-centre kink in his nose, he might have been classed as pretty. Instead he was simply beautiful... She stared at his wide, sensual mouth and looked away a moment before he said in a voice that had no discernible accent and even less warmth, ‘I need you to put this on, Miss Latimer.’

The soft, sinister demand made her guts clench in fear. Before she clamped her trembling lips together a whisper slipped through. ‘No!’

This man represented the nightmare she had kept at bay and up to this point her treatment had been civilised, if not gentle. She had deliberately not dwelt on her vulnerability; she hadn’t seen another woman since her arrest, and she was at the mercy of men who sometimes looked at her... The close-set eyes of the man who sat in on the interviews flashed into her head and a quiver of disgust slid through her body.

People in her situation simply vanished.

Staring at the blue fabric and the hand that held it as if it were a striking snake, she surged to her feet—too fast. The room began to swirl as she struggled to focus on the silk square, bright against the clinical white of the walls and tiled floor...blue, white, blue, white...

‘Breathe.’ Her legs folded as he pressed her down onto the bed and pushed her head towards her knees.

The habit of a lifetime kicked in and she took refuge behind an air of cool disdain.

‘I don’t need a change of clothing. I’m fine with this.’ She clutched the fabric of the baggy shift that reached mid-calf with both hands and aimed her gaze at the middle of his chest.

Two large hands came to rest on her shoulders, stopping the rhythmic swaying motion she had been unaware of, but not the spasms of fear that were rippling through her body.

Kamel was controlling his anger and resentment: he didn’t want to be here; he didn’t want to be doing this, and he didn’t want to feel any empathy for the person who was totally responsible for the situation, a spoilt English brat who had a well-documented history of bolting at the final hurdle.

Had she felt any sort of remorse for the wave of emotional destruction she’d left in her wake? Had her own emotions ever been involved? he wondered.

Still, she hadn’t got off scot-free. Some enterprising journalist had linked the car smash of her first victim with the aborted wedding.

Driven over the Edge, the headline had screamed, and the media had crucified Heartless Hannah. Perhaps if she had shown even a scrap of emotion they might have softened when it turned out that the guy had been over the drink-drive limit when he drove his car off a bridge, but she had looked down her aristocratic little nose and ignored the flashing cameras.

In London at the time, he had followed the story partly because he knew her father and partly because, like the man who had written off his car, Kamel knew what it felt like to lose the love you planned to spend your life with. Not that Amira had dumped him—if he hadn’t released her she would have married him rather than cause him pain. She had been everything this woman was not.

And yet it was hard not to look into that grubby flower-like face, perfect in every detail, and feel a flicker of something that came perilously close to pity. He sternly squashed it.

She deserved everything that was going to happen to her. If there was any victim in this it was him. Luckily he had no romantic illusions about marriage, or at least his. It was never going to be a love match—he’d loved and lost and disbelieved the popular idea that this was better than not to have loved at all. Still, it was a mistake he would not make in the future. Only an imbecile would want to lay himself open to that sort of pain again. A marriage of practicality suited him.

Though Kamel had imagined his bride would be someone whom he could respect.

Why couldn’t the brainless little bimbo have found meaning in her life by buying some shoes? Even facing financial collapse, Kamel was sure Daddy dear would have bought her the whole shop. Instead she decided to become an angel of mercy. While he could see the selfish delusion that had led her to do this, he couldn’t understand why any legitimate medical charity would have taken her on, even on a voluntary basis.

‘I asked you to put this on, not take anything off.’ Kamel let out a hissing sound of irritation as she sat there looking up at him like some sort of sacrificial virgin...though there was nothing even vaguely virginal about Miss Hannah Latimer, and that quality was about the only one he didn’t have a problem with in his future bride!

Digging deep into reserves she didn’t know she had, Hannah got to her feet.