Counterfeit Princess

“My man Jordan will stay behind and fill them in,” the crown prince said reassuringly. “I’ll make sure you get home in one piece.”

Home! That was another problem. She couldn’t let him drop her at the little house in the modest suburb where she actually lived. And if he took her out to the princess’s ranch, it would be daybreak before she made her way home again.

She turned to look at him, dismayed. He was certainly making her life difficult. Her chin came up and her eyes flashed. “I insist that you turn this car around and take me back,” she said, surprising herself with how imperious she sounded.

Her manner appeared to surprise him, too. He actually seemed to look at her for the first time and really see how upset she was.

“I’m sorry, Iliana,” he said quietly. “I can’t do that. We must talk and we don’t have much time. This has got to be settled right away.”

She stared at him and realized she was at a crossroads. She could throw a tantrum until he got so disgusted with her he dropped her on the closest street corner. Or she could tough it out, do what she could to avoid answering direct questions, and hope for the best. With a sigh, she opted for the latter.

“All right, Your Royal Highness,” she said, settling back into the plush cushions. “Since I’ve been shanghaied, I guess I might as well make the best of it. Let’s talk.”

Chapter Three

Marco pulled open his tie, glancing at Princess Iliana. Now that he had her here, he could relax. He purposefully worked his shoulders, loosening them, releasing tension, and stretched his long legs out before him. His original reaction to the beautiful woman beside him had mellowed somewhat. She wasn’t as bad as he’d insisted she was when he’d talked to Jordan, but she certainly had turned out to be very different from what he’d first expected.

But what had he expected exactly? Ever since he’d made the alliance with King Mandrake and agreed to marry his daughter, people had been whispering warnings in his ear. Or shouting them at full volume. He almost grinned, thinking of his mother-in-law, Lady Judith, who had been explicit.

“You can’t marry that woman. She’s a floozy.”

The mother of his beloved wife Lorraine, Judith was still a major factor in his life as well as the main caretaker of his two young children. Her opinion mattered. Still, he was a man who believed in keeping his word. Breaking the promise he’d made to King Mandrake would threaten the stability of his newly freed country. His own personal happiness wasn’t as important as the well-being of his country.

For just a moment a picture flashed into his mind. A small, slender pixie of a woman was dancing before him, her dark eyes warm with laughter, her short-cropped gamin hair hugging her head. “Catch me if you can, Mister Crown Prince,” she teased him as she darted away, and his heart twisted with love for her.

His wife, Lorraine, had died almost two years before and the pain sometimes swept through him in a wave that choked and weakened. He pushed her memory away. He wasn’t going to think of her. He couldn’t allow himself the self-indulgence of it. He had to live in the here and now. He had a country to run. And he had to prepare to take a new wife, no matter how much that thought repelled him.

He’d forgotten the princess sat beside him until she said something and he turned toward her with a start, then realized she was asking for a drink of water. Nodding, he pulled an ice-cold bottle out of the little refrigerator and handed it to her, studying her quietly as he did so.

Iliana looked nothing like Lorraine. That was good. It was going to be difficult enough to avoid making comparisons as it was. He had to treat this as a whole new experience. Lorraine was a love match. This was…something else. The capacity for romantic love had died in him the day Lorraine was killed.

At the same time, he couldn’t help but feel Judith was wrong. This woman was no floozy.

“Dallas is beautiful,” he said, looking out at the sparkling lights set in the blackness of the night as the limousine cruised down the highway.

“Yes,” she responded. “And it’s even better when you can actually see it.”

He almost smiled and he had to admit, that was progress. Her quips were beginning to seem more amusing than annoying. “Why did you pick Dallas, Iliana?” he asked.

“Why did I pick Dallas?” she echoed blankly, ready to bristle.

“What made you move here?”

“Oh.” She avoided his gaze. What was the reason again? Greta had filled her in. Oh yes. “My father bought the ranch for me.” She looked at him sideways. “He was hoping to interest me in settling down in a nice town where there was an established Alovitian community he would have ties to.”

“And away from the bright lights of the big bad coastal cities?”

“Exactly.”

“And did his ploy work?”

“Well….” She frowned. This weaving in and out of what she could actually say was getting tiring fast. “I have to say I do love Dallas,” she said quickly instead of answering. “I’ve been very happy here.”

She looked into his eyes, noting the intelligence that shone from them, but also the moody restlessness that seemed to lurk in the dark shadows. As she was calming down and taking this conversation as the currently necessary evil that it was, she was losing some of her animosity toward him. He was still high-handed and arrogant—but hey, he was a crown prince. That was part of his role in life, she supposed. She just had to remember that she was a princess and therefore didn’t need to give way to him entirely.

She tried to put herself in his position. Here he was, talking to the woman he had arranged to marry, trying to find out…what? What could she tell him that would put his mind at ease and make him stop asking her questions she could never hope to answer? In his next statement, he told her.

“What I really want to do is to get to know you better.”