Royals: Wed To The Prince: By Royal Command / The Princess and the Outlaw / The Prince's Secret Bride

He stayed for so long that Lauren, preparing a meal of fish and salad in the kitchen, wondered whether he was indulging in a ritual of cleaning war’s filthy detritus from his body.

It wouldn’t be so easy or so quick to rid his mind of the horrendous images.

She listened to the soft swish of the tiny waves brushing the sand a few feet away and tried to sort out her emotions. Send him off to the resort, common sense urged. Now—before it’s too late.

But it was too late. He’d issued a challenge and she’d accepted it. Beneath Guy’s tight control she sensed a darkly primitive hunger; remember the traditional recreation of the warrior, she thought—banishing unbearable memories in the pleasure of a woman’s body.

But she didn’t fear him; instinct told her that he wouldn’t hurt her. And she wanted him with a heated desperation that fogged her mind, turning the unthinkable into the inevitable.

Oh, she could blame the heat and danger of the tropics—the perfume floating on the moist air, a sultry, sinful fragrance breathed out from the hearts of the crimson flowers on the vine wreathing the terrace. But the tropics hadn’t produced the smouldering intensity that sent the blood singing through her veins.

Her teeth gnawed her lip as she went on with the dinner preparations. She wanted Guy, but even more important than that, she suspected that tonight he needed her.

When he emerged, clad in the clean shirt and his trousers, she was sitting on the terrace with the second can of beer and a plate of sliced fruit. She didn’t hear him come up behind her, but some instinct switched her gaze from the geckos creeping ever closer to the lamp, intent on picking off the moths that danced in dazzled swirls around the dangerous, alluring light.

Her heart blocked her throat. He’d shaved, and in the soft light he was beautiful, the boldly carved framework of his face a miraculous, exotic blend of Mediterranean machismo and the northern-European angularity that nagged at her memory.

‘That food looks good.’ His voice was cool and noncommittal.

He didn’t fall on it like a starving man, but by the time he’d told her of the situation in Sant’Rosa he’d almost cleared the platter.

When he finished she observed, ‘So the Republic was behind it. Are they likely to try again?’

‘I don’t think so. They lost too many men.’

She said quietly, ‘And if they don’t know by now that they can’t ignore world opinion, they will once the Press gets there.’

‘I’m surprised that a local fracas, however bloody and determined, was interesting enough to attract the attention of foreign correspondents.’ His tone was satiric. ‘There can’t be much happening in the rest of the world.’

‘A meeting of heads of state has just finished in Australia.’ She looked up as a plane flew overhead.

‘Ah, so that’s it,’ Guy said sardonically. ‘And Sant’Rosa is an interesting detour on the way home. As for waking the world up to what’s happening here—it’ll be relegated to obscurity once the next flashpoint explodes.’

Unfortunately he was right. She said, ‘I’d like to be sure that the hotel staff on Sant’Rosa survived. And how did the village in the mountains fare? It was right in the thick of things, surely?’

‘No. As far as I know they didn’t come off any worse than any other village. You’re not going back,’ Guy responded in a flat, lethal tone.

A cold shiver scudded down her spine. ‘But—’

‘No buts,’ he said implacably. ‘You won’t be allowed anywhere near the South Coast. It’s still a sensitive area. Civilians and sightseers—even well-intentioned ones—are nothing but a damned nuisance in a post-war zone unless they’ve got skills to help the victims.’

‘Are you going back?’ She held her breath until he answered.

‘Yes.’

Something about his intonation and the formidable expression made her say, ‘Why? What skills do you have to help?’

His left brow rose, as mocking as the smile that curved his mouth. ‘I have contacts—I know who to apply to for the kind of aid that’s needed, and I can act as go-between.’

An odd, aching foreboding clutched her with a cold grip. Ignoring it, she got to her feet and said, ‘Dinner’s ready. I’ll go and get it.’

Over the meal Lauren set herself to switch Guy’s mind away from the horrors of the past few days. She filled him in on the latest headlines, culled from the newspaper stand outside the immigration office, then skimmed over a couple of juicy financial scandals and the spectacularly spicy meltdown of a singer’s marriage.

He knew what she was doing, but he went along with her and by the end of the meal he was laughing and the lines of tension scoring his lean face were slightly less deep.

Whereas she was now racked by taut expectancy.

‘Coffee?’ she asked, shielding herself with the banal little rituals of everyday life. ‘It’s only instant, I’m afraid.’

‘It’ll be fine.’ He yawned and rubbed the back of his neck, the easy flexion of his big body sending a shivering little ripple of anticipation through her. ‘But before you make it, I’ll go and collect the other parcel I have for you.’

‘What—’

‘You’ll see,’ he said coolly.

It took him about twenty minutes, the longest twenty minutes of Lauren’s life. When he came back she was sitting out on the terrace waiting for him, the friendly darkness pressing against her.

‘Here,’ he said, tossing a parcel onto the table.

‘Oh.’ Another plastic bag. ‘What is it?’

‘Clothes.’

Her clothes from Sant’Rosa. She said, ‘Thank you. I thought they’d have been looted.’

‘They’re new.’ He paused, then said, ‘I should go.’ He spoke abruptly, the words falling stark and curt in the heavy air.

Lauren got up and walked across to the tiny kitchen. With her back to him she filled the battered electric kettle and plugged it in, then set two cups on a tray with sugar and milk. Only when she’d made the coffee and picked up the tray did she ask coolly, ‘Why?’

Guy watched her carry the tray across to the table. She walked as he’d dreamed of her in the hot, foetid jungle nights—with the lithe, easy grace that set off her long, lovely legs and the sensuous little sway of her hips that had dragged him temporarily out of hell.

He waited until she’d sat down and picked up the milk jug before saying in a deliberately prosaic voice, ‘Because if I stay it will be in your bed, and I doubt if either of us will sleep much.’

Guy regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Pragmatism was doing its best to convince him that making love to a woman he’d forced into a temporary marriage was a stupid thing to do.

For once, pragmatism could go bury itself.

Her hand shook so much she had to set the milk jug down. She kept her head down too so that all he could see was the lovely curve of her cheekbone. After a moment she poured the milk in, then got up and turned off the lights.

In the soft half-darkness, illuminated only by the stars, she said quietly, ‘I wouldn’t have asked you to stay if I hadn’t wanted that.’

Damn it, he could taste the need, hot as sin, dangerously heady as any drug; wanting Lauren was an ache in his guts, a reckless loss of control that both excited and infuriated him.

And for the first time in his life he was being propositioned by a woman who had no idea who he was. Here in Valanu they knew him only as Guy Bagaton. Combined with the heated sexual appetite raging through him, Lauren’s offer was damned near irresistible.

‘Neither reward nor gratitude,’ Lauren said.

Was there a hint of nervousness beneath the polished surface? When she stopped a step away, Guy refused to reach out, although the muscles in his shoulders and arms bunched with the effort to keep them still. Leaping on her with famished savagery was not the way to endear yourself to a woman, he thought derisively.