Her Royal Wedding Wish

Her Royal Wedding Wish
Cara Colter

Princess Shoshauna of B'Ranasha has followed royal convention all her life.Her greatest wish is freedom–and to marry for love, not duty. A royal assignment: Suddenly in danger, Shoshauna is whisked to an exotic island by soldier Jake Ronan. He's been hired to protect her, and despite the attraction makes it clear he's here for duty, not love….Her wedding wish: Being with Jake, Shoshauna feels truly happy and free for the first time. But can she dream of herself, a royal, marrying this hardened soldier?

If Shoshauna wasn’t a princess, if she was just an ordinary girl…Jake cut off the train of his thought. It didn’t matter if she was a wandering gypsy. It was still his mission to protect her.

The truth was, it would be way too easy to forget she was a princess, especially with her standing there in a badly rumpled and ill-fitting dress.

But that was exactly what he had to remember to keep his boundaries clear, his professionalism unsullied, his duty foremost in his mind. She was a princess, a real one. He was a soldier. Their stations in life were millions of miles apart. And they were going to stay that way.

By Royal Appointment

You’re invited to a royal wedding!

From turreted castles to picturesque palaces—these kingdoms may be steeped in tradition, but romance always rules!

So don’t miss your VIP invite to the most extravagant weddings of the year!

Your royal carriage awaits….

Don’t miss future books in this wonderful miniseries!

In August

Marion Lennox

brings us the final story in her royal quartet

of Alpine principalities

Wanted: Royal Wife and Mother

Prince Rafael is heir to the throne

and looking for a family of his own….

Cara Colter

Her Royal Wedding Wish

By Royal Appointment

Dear Reader,

A terrible thing happened as I was writing this story. My cat, Hunter—bossy, beautiful, one of my greatest inspirations—died unexpectedly. It might be easy to dismiss him as just a cat, but to me it seems he was a spark of the universal life force wrapped in a funny, furry, delightful package.

Love finds us in so many different ways. It comes when we least expect it, when it’s inconvenient; it comes as cats and dogs; its message comes through songs and movies and books. All of life pulses with this undercurrent of something so magnificent it makes us pause in our busy lives and whisper “ahhh,” in awed recognition and gratitude.

There is a sense in this story of the exquisite tenderness of love wiggling its way into Jake’s reluctant-warrior heart, and of love giving a princess her first real understanding of how rich life can be. That is the epitome of Hunter. If you pause for just a moment right now, I hope you’ll hear the rich vibration of purring…and of love.

Best wishes,

Cara Colter

www.cara-colter.com

In memory of Hunter

1997–2007

Beloved.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

JAKE Ronan took a deep, steadying breath, the same kind he would take and hold right before the shot or the assault or the jump.

No relief. His heart was beating like a deer three steps ahead of a wolf pack. His palms were slick with sweat.

He was a man notorious for keeping his cool. And in the past three years that notoriety had served him well. He’d taken a hijacked plane back from the bad guys, jumped from ten thousand feet in the dead of night into territory controlled by hostiles, rescued fourteen school-children from a hostage taking.

But in the danger-zone department nothing did him in like a wedding. He shrugged, rolled his shoulders, took another deep breath.

His old friend, Colonel Gray Peterson, recently retired, the reason Ronan was here on the tiny tropical-island paradise of B’Ranasha, shifted uneasily beside him. Under his breath he said a word that probably had never been said in a church before. “You don’t have your sideways feeling, do you?” Gray asked.

Ronan was famous among this tough group of men, his comrades-in-arms, for the feeling, a sixth sense that warned him things were about to go wrong, in a big way.

“I just don’t like weddings,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately hushed. “They make me feel uptight.”

Gray contemplated that as an oddity. “Jake,” he finally said reassuringly, his use of Ronan’s first name an oddity in itself, “it’s not as if you’re the one getting married. You’re part of the security team. You don’t even know these people.”