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

Swift excitement pulsed through her when the door into the cockpit slid back to let him through. So he was part of the crew.

When he stopped to speak to the steward, Lauren watched him uneasily. He looked different—much less of the beachcomber, much more a sophisticated European. And it wasn’t just the removal of that stubble. She’d always been aware of his bred-in-the-bone authority, but in the hothouse situation on Sant’Rosa and Valanu she hadn’t noticed this cool, urbane detachment.

Now, filling her hungry eyes with the sight of him, she finally accepted something she’d been trying to repress since their first meeting. Some time during their idyll in Valanu she’d slipped over the invisible dividing line between attraction and love.

The knowledge hit with heady impact, sending a tidal wave of adrenaline rushing through her. For a precious few seconds she allowed herself to savour the exquisite thrill of loving Guy. Then she forced herself to lock that love in her heart and throw the key away.

Because Guy didn’t love her. Everything he’d done had been because he was chivalrous and protective. Twice he’d rescued her from unpleasant situations; he’d lent her money and bought her clothes, and he’d made sure she didn’t get pregnant. He’d made love to her with heart-shaking tenderness and raw desire, but all that meant was that for those days he’d wanted her—even though he’d believed her to be Marc’s mistress.

But lust chose without discrimination and died swiftly. The father she shared with Marc had wanted her mother too—for a week—although he’d been married.

She couldn’t let herself love Guy.

He said something that brought a white grin to the steward’s face, then turned. Just in time, Lauren fixed her gaze on the magazine in her lap, every sense strung as tight as piano wire. When he was a couple of paces away she forced herself to glance up enquiringly, because ignoring him would be as much a giveaway as gazing at him with her heart in her eyes.

He sat down beside her with a flash of the reckless grin she remembered from Sant’Rosa. ‘You English and your tea!’

‘Don’t Dacians drink tea?’

His smile disappeared. After a taut second he said, ‘Not a lot—we mostly drink coffee.’

‘You have excellent English.’ It was an inane remark, but it was all her scrambled brain could come up with.

‘I spent some years at school in England, and I’m fortunate enough to be a good linguist.’

She nodded, thinking of his mastery of the Sant’Rosan language, then donned her coollest composure and looked up into his face. ‘Thank you for getting my parents out of that feeding frenzy. I had no idea a media pack in full cry would be so—’ she abandoned frightening to substitute ‘—so intimidating.’

‘Your parents are sensible enough to see when retreat is the best decision,’ he said with a casual lack of emphasis. ‘And you still have holiday time, I believe.’

The aloof enquiry in his tone slammed up more barriers. ‘Another couple of weeks.’

‘You parents said you’d been ill.’

She shrugged. ‘A bout of pneumonia. It wasn’t very serious, and it’s over now.’

‘You’re still pale.’ His voice was deliberate, but an unsettling note in it made her acutely aware of his closeness.

‘I’m always pale, and at the moment I’m jet lagged,’ she admitted with a wry smile. ‘I’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep.’ And to convince him, she finished brightly, ‘I’ve never been to Dacia, but I believe it’s beautiful.’

‘Every bit as much as Sant’Rosa or New Zealand,’ he said ironically, ‘although in an entirely different way.’

She relaxed a little while he told her of its bloodstained history and eventual conquest four hundred years previously by a pirate. ‘He sailed into the harbour and imposed a rule that was ruthless and autocratic, but surprisingly enlightened for the time.’

‘He sounds familiar,’ she murmured dulcetly.

He directed an enigmatic glance her way. Her heartbeat shot into overdrive, a wild counterpoint to the drugging sweetness of desire that washed through her, merciless and compelling.

‘Are you calling me ruthless and autocratic?’ he drawled, eyes gleaming with tawny fire.

Laughter bubbled through her. ‘How intuitive of you to guess! Of course you are—you think nothing of ploughing roughshod over anyone who gets in your way.’

‘Admit that I always try to convince with sweet reason before I bring in the heavy artillery,’ he returned virtuously, the lazy note in his voice belying his words.

‘I’ll admit no such thing,’ she retorted. ‘Within a few hours of meeting you I found myself married to you, and I don’t recollect any sweetly reasonably discussion then.’

And a few days later she’d been in his bed, willing prisoner of a reckless, desperate passion that overthrew years of restraint and self-discipline.

Yet she couldn’t regret it, although the aftermath seemed likely to cause endless complications and heartache. Hastily she finished, ‘And now I’ve been hijacked to Dacia!’

‘Some situations call for action,’ he observed, straight-faced.

Lauren went very still. ‘Yes,’ she said, remembering the all-pervasive smell of fear on Sant’Rosa. ‘I don’t remember whether I actually thanked you for getting me off Sant’Rosa.’ She looked up as far as his chin. ‘I am very grateful. I know what could have happened if I’d been stuck there.’

‘I’d have taken care of you.’

Startled, she took in a face carved of granite, coldly determined, so implacable that a cold finger of foreboding ran down her spine. She’d known him as a beachcomber, as a man of action, as a lover, but her first impression had been of a pirate.

Now she suspected that the pirate persona revealed his true nature.

God, she thought, what have you got yourself into? You should have stuck it out in London…

She said sombrely, ‘I’d have been a nuisance, and as you pointed out then, I’d have put you in even more danger than you were already in.’

‘It’s over now; don’t worry about it.’ He stood up and smiled down at her, although his eyes were unreadable. ‘Drink up your tea, then try to catnap. I’ll see you once we land.’

Throat aching and tight with repressed emotion, Lauren watched him go, remembering moments when she’d lain on the bed in that house in Valanu and watched him walk towards the glass doors onto the terrace. Sunlight had gilded every powerful curve and line of his body, the smooth play of muscles, the lean strength of legs and arms. Unbearably stirred, she had closed her eyes against him, but that bronze image was burned into her retina and her heart.

She dragged her mind back to the present with relief. Both the china and the silverware had the same crest, the Dacian leopard, she’d noticed as she had poured tea.

If she’d had any sense she’d have asked Guy about the owner of the plane. Unfortunately her mind shut down when he came near.

She drank some tea and ate one of the small, delicious sandwiches, then leaned back in the seat and tried to sleep. It didn’t work. Thoughts of Guy tossed through her mind, so to give her restless brain something else to chew on, she reached for the discarded magazine and began leafing desultorily through its pages.

After several moments she realised she’d been staring at one page. Blinking, she focused. Beefcake, she thought as several handsome male faces gazed back at her with varying degrees of interest.

One of them was Guy.

Unable to believe what she was seeing, she shook her head, then gazed again at the photograph. Yes, it was Guy.

He was a model?

Stunned, she began to read the text beneath the photograph.

‘And the most gorgeous,’ it burbled, ‘if you like your royalty moody, magnificent and hard to catch, is Prince Guy of Dacia, billionaire…’

Lauren blinked again, her heart contracting into a cold, hard ball in her chest. Royalty? Prince Guy?

…and at thirty-two still unmarried and breaking hearts all over the world. We wonder if he’ll follow the footsteps of his cousins, Prince Luka, the ruler of Dacia, and Princess Lucia, Mrs Hunt Radcliffe, who both fell in love with New Zealanders.