A Prince of a Guy

A Prince of a Guy
Jill Shalvis

Runaway Princess Carlyne Fortier read a desperate nanny ad in the paper and decided it was the answer to her prayers. Disguising herself, she applied. Anything to escape the demands of royal life!Architect Sean O'Mara welcomed Carlyne with open arms. The woman might have been plain as dirt, but she had great references. Anything to cope with the demands of his sister's four-year-old whirling dervish! What happened next was right out of a fairy tale…

“Did you mean it?” Carly asked

Sean bent to the task of changing his flat tire, only then realizing she’d followed him into the pouring rain when he’d left the car. “Mean what?”

“About this being just the beginning…” Her eyes were huge, her body taut with…nerves?

“I meant it,” he said with an ease that no longer startled him. “Now go stay warm in the car.”

Instead, she went down on her knees in the dirt beside him, reaching out to stroke away a strand of wet hair from his eyes. “You look very sexy all wet, Sean O’Mara.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.” She bit her full lower lip and Sean promptly dropped the jack.

“If I help with the tire,” she whispered in his ear, “we’ll get done faster, which would leave us at least a couple of hours’ darkness left to do…well, whatever we please.”

Sean broke the world record changing the tire, with Carly’s soft laughter egging him on.

“My, my,” she crooned, handing him the wrench. “A man who can use his tools. I like that.”

Dear Reader,

So how many times did you dream of being a princess? Come on, tell me true. I did. Often. Especially when I was little, but mostly that was because I wanted the tiara. As I grew up, the tiara took a back seat to getting Prince Charming. In A Prince of a Guy, my heroine, a princess in her own right, wants Prince Charming, too, but she wants him to be a “normal” guy and look at her as if she’s a “normal” woman. She gets a whole lot more than that when love enters the fray!

I’m honored to be kicking off RED-HOT ROYALS for Harlequin, and hope you enjoy the entire series, including my 2-in-1 ROYAL DUETS in October!

Happy reading,

Jill Shalvis

P.S. You can write me at www.jillshalvis.com or P.O. Box 3945, Truckee, CA 96160-3945.

A Prince of a Guy

Jill Shalvis

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

1

IT TOOK Sean O’Mara a full five minutes to realize he was being taken advantage of, maybe six. His only defense was that he’d worked until past midnight and it was barely five in the morning, leaving him bleary-eyed and bewildered.

“You’re…what?” he asked again slowly, trying to make sense of the whirlwind that had barged into his house.

“I’m going to England for two weeks.” His sister deposited her four-year-old daughter, Melissa, on the floor of the foyer where Sean stood. The little girl immediately vanished into his kitchen. His sister vanished, too, only to return twice, each time with a huge load from her car.

Not a good sign. “England?” he asked, getting less groggy by the passing minute.

“Yep.” She said this as if it was only across the street from his Santa Barbara, California home, instead of across the globe.

“I can’t tell you how much your help means to me, Sean.” She staggered beneath an armful. “Melissa’ll be no trouble, I promise, and I’ll finish the design job ASAP.”

Melissa, no trouble? Ha! That had to be some sort of oxymoron. Exhaustion was quickly replaced by a gnawing sense of urgency to talk his sister out of this. He couldn’t be responsible for a child for two long weeks, he just couldn’t. He had work, he had a life…okay, maybe not a life outside of work, but he did have work, plenty of it.

Besides, and most importantly here, he had no idea how to care for a kid.

“Oh, and don’t forget,” Stacy warned. “She still needs a little help in the bathroom with the, um, paperwork.”

“What? Wait a sec.” He rubbed his temples. He yawned. He stretched, but he didn’t wake up in his own bed, which meant he wasn’t dreaming. “You can’t just leave her here.”

“Why not? You’re responsible. You know how to cook. You’re kind. Well, mostly. What could go wrong?”

“Anything! Everything!” He struggled for proof and hit the jackpot right in front of him. “I can’t even keep goldfish,” he said earnestly. “They die. Look.” He pointed to the ten-gallon glass aquarium sitting on a table in the entranceway. Empty. “I forget to feed them. So really, that knocks out both the responsible and the kind thing all in one shot.”