Her Royal Husband

Almost. Because when he looked in her eyes for the very first time, he had felt a strange shiver. Her eyes were not the eyes of the class brain, nor even the eyes of a woman who could slice a man with her razor wit. Her gaze was calm, and strong, almost unsettling in what it said about her.

Honest. Trustworthy. Kind.

The word destiny had formed unbidden in his brain as he looked at her, but how could that be when his was already so rigidly outlined for him and when she so obviously thought men were beer-swilling swine whom she had to guard against at all times?

He’d crossed his arms over his chest, rocked back on his chair and replied, “What can I do for you, blond girl?”

She’d smiled, reluctantly.

“I drew your name on the class project. Ben Prince, right? Despite the movie star jaw and the underwear model body, I expect you to pull your weight.”

He’d always been treated with the complete deference of one born to royalty. “Underwear model body?” he’d sputtered with royal indignation. On the other hand, that meant Miss Priss had been looking. He took off the heavy glasses that were part of his disguise. If she was looking, he had a simple male need to look great.

“I know you don’t need those,” she said. “What are they for? To make you look more intelligent?”

So, she had seen through the Royal Elite Team’s best disguise in no time flat. But look more intelligent, as if nothing he had contributed in class had convinced her of that? It occurred to him, tangling with her would be about as much fun as tangling with a porcupine.

If you believed her words, believed her eyes, then you knew she was as much in disguise as you were, his inner voice chided.

“Don’t worry,” she’d said airily. “All I’m worried about is what you have up here,” she’d tapped his forehead lightly, “under the Miss Clairol.”

“Miss Clairol?” he’d asked, slightly dazed because her touch said things her demeanor did not. Her demeanor said, loudly, ice-cold. Her touch said, even more loudly, red-hot.

“Blonde in a bottle,” she’d whispered. “Hair dye.”

“I’m disguised,” he said coolly.

“Really? FBI’s Most Wanted list?”

“Close. Royal family. Small island kingdom you’ve never heard of.”

She’d laughed out loud, caught off guard and unexpectedly delighted, even while he was uncomfortably aware he’d done, jokingly, something he had given his promise not to do. Told her who he was.

Her laughter changed everything. It erased the wariness from her face, and the stiffness from the way she held herself.

“Well, Your Royal Muckety-muck,” she’d said, straight-faced, now, but still relaxed, “which despot in history would you like to do our project on? I thought maybe Stalin.”

“Genghis Khan,” he said, knowing she wanted to walk all over him, and if he let her, he would never be allowed to explore the deeper mystery of her calm eyes.

“Wow. Are you actually planning on contributing to this? You’re not just going to let me do all the work while you go down to the beach and ogle girls in their bikinis?”

“As tempting as that sounds, I’m actually here to learn something.”

She looked at him with reluctant respect, and then smiled. Really smiled, no barriers. It won him completely. Not that he let her know that for a good long time. At least a day and a half.

And so it began. Huddled over tables at study hall, grabbing quick hamburgers, throwing ideas back and forth, reworking sentences, drawing time lines.

That’s how he’d come to love the way she thought—her wry humor, her quick intelligence, the way she danced with words, how much fun it was to spar with her mind.

That’s how he had started to notice the smell of her hair, the light that danced in her eyes, the breathtaking figure she hid under all those layers of clothes she was so fond of.

And he found, just as the first time, he told her over and over who he really was. In ways he had never told another living soul.

That was her gift to him. She allowed him to be normal. To explore normal dreams and ambitions, to be a normal eighteen-year-old guy.

Jokingly, they had called each other Blond Boy and Blond Girl. She teased him unmercifully when his natural dark brown, nearly black hair began to grow out, giving him roots.

How quickly he had come to see her inner beauty, her sharp mind, her wonderful sense of humor, her huge capacity to be kind.

They had become the best of friends almost instantly. It was a relationship based, originally, on mutual respect for each other’s intelligence.

He knew he had to make it stay that way. He knew he could not allow himself to love her. But he sensed he had begun the fall that even the most powerful of men seemed powerless to stop.

Unless he was mistaken Owen Michael Penwyck, aka Ben Prince, was falling in love with Jordan Ashbury.

Without the press looking on, without a royal council vetting his choice, without her lineage being subjected to scathing scrutiny.

He was just a normal guy with a normal girl who had been given the gift of an extraordinary summer.

Respect deepened to admiration, words deepened to silence, eyes locking deepened to hands holding, liking deepened to love. Just like that.

Now, lying in a cell, contemplating the possibility his life was over, and thinking with a clarity that seemed illuminated from the heavens, Owen acknowledged his regret. His one mistake.

Unable to leave her at first, he had begged for and been given an extension on his stay. Two more weeks of exploring remote beaches, and remote places of the heart. Two more weeks of her hand in his, her lips on his eyelids, his hands allowed to go where no man’s had gone before his. But when that was gone, he had phoned home and begged again. This time he had been refused, so he had done what any eighteen-year-old boy in the throes of first passion would have done. He had refused to go home, and moved into Jordan’s tiny basement suite off campus.

He remembered the last night, when he could feel it coming to an end, knew his days were numbered.

“Tell me one thing about you that no one else in the world knows,” he had begged. “Your deepest secret.” Something of her that he could hold onto forever.

They had been in her tiny bed. Was there anything more wonderful than two people in a single bed? With her naked skin against him, and her hair, soft and fine as a baby’s spread over his chest, with her fingers tangled in his, she told him.

“I’m a closet romance nut.”

“What?”

“I know. Under all that sarcasm and biting intelligence that scares the boys away, I was dying to be loved, Ben Prince. Dying. Underneath my bed at home are three full boxes of romance novels. Historicals are my favorite.”

He had tightened his hold on her, kissed her temple, knew what she was really telling him was that she had been lonely. And he felt sick that she would be lonely again, soon.

She sighed against him. “It’s like two people live inside of me. The one who wants to be the first female mayor of Wintergreen, Connecticut. And the one who would love to be riding through the dark woods in a carriage, when from their mysterious depths comes a highwayman.”

They had made love after that, wild, passionate, completely unbridled.

“Thank you for making me so happy,” she had said sleepily, trustingly. And he had lain awake, knowing he had to tell her the truth about himself, and knowing at the same time he could not.

In the morning, he had gotten up before her. He walked down to their favorite oceanfront café to get her a croissant and one of those specialty coffees she adored. Filled with thoughts of waking her up with his lips on her cheek, he had walked into a trap.

Four members of the Royal Elite Team, apparently tipped off about his routine, were waiting for him there. They had been sent to escort him home. No more extensions.

“I just need to do one thing. Alone. I promise I’ll come right back. One hour.”

“We can escort you where you need to go, sir.”

But then they would know about her, and her life would be scrutinized and investigated and torn apart for no reason. The security team was the best, but what if there was a leak? What if the tabloids went after her?

“No, no escort.” He must have looked like he was going to make a dash for it, because he’d found himself in the center of a circle of big, intimidating men, who looked sympathetic but unmoving.

“Sir, please don’t make us do this the hard way.”

No goodbyes and no explanations. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe it would be better if she hated him, rather than held some hope in her heart.

He had made a vow, and he was now being asked to keep it.

Owen turned his back on that part of his life that would have made him insane had he allowed himself to dwell on it, to remember it.

He returned to Penwyck and threw himself into the role he had been born to play, the role he had agreed to play in exchange for one magical summer.

He tirelessly attended functions, raised funds for charities and worked on economic development projects for his country. He felt the adoration of the people and tried to be worthy of it. When the Penberne River did its annual flood, Prince Owen was filling sandbags, shoulder to shoulder with the citizens of Sterling. When the Lad and Lassies Clubs were having a fund-raiser he could be counted on to take a turn in the dunking booth, to buy the first pie at the raffle. He cut ribbons and gave speeches, danced the first dance of each and every charity ball.

The rift between he and his brother deepened—Dylan not understanding his brother wasn’t trying to win a crown—he was trying to outrun a broken heart.

It was only his mother that he knew he had failed to convince. Sometimes he caught her watching him, unveiled sadness in her eyes. But had he not always detected a faint sadness when his mother looked at him?

A sadness that was not present in her eyes when she looked at Dylan?

Even so, he knew it to be intensified now.

And really, his campaign who was leading him down the road to being king, and away from the road of being normal, had almost worked.

Had worked until the precise moment his bedroom door had blasted open in the middle of the night, a drug-saturated cloth had been forced over his face, and he had been kidnapped.

Now, ironically, in a cell where the prince had nothing, he had everything once more.

Her memory came to him. And brought him comfort. Once again he could smell her and taste the salt on her lips, feel the silk of her hair sliding through his hands.

“If I die,” he mumbled, “I will die happy if my last thoughts are of her.”

She filled him, and he felt content.

He almost didn’t want to be drawn back from where he was by the far off sound that he could have mistaken for firecrackers, had he not been waiting for it.

Gunfire. It could only mean a rescue attempt.

And he knew he had to do his part. He struggled back from Jordan’s memory, and yet it filled him with a strength such as he had never known.

Shackled, he lurched to his feet. When his cell door flew open, and it was the enemy who arrived first, he lowered his head, like a battering ram, and charged.

And held them until he saw the familiar crest of Penwyck’s Royal Navy Seals on the dark clothed men now swarming down the hall, the enemy fleeing in front of them.

“Your Royal Highness,” a man said, stepping toward him, his smile white against the camo-darkened skin of his face.

Owen recognized the voice and took a closer look. It was his cousin, Gage Weston, a man who had made a calling of showing up where there was trouble.

Gage said, “With all due respect, you fight like a man who was born to it.”

Owen smiled wearily. “So I’ve been told.”

He looked back at his cell, and felt relief. Jordan would be safe now. All his secrets were safe.

Except for the one he had been keeping from himself. He had never, ever stopped loving her.

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