Читать книгу Taming the Prince - Elizabeth Bevarly - Страница 7

It didn’t take a lot to make Shane Cordello happy. Just a flawless blue sky overhead, a balmy Southern California breeze ruffling his hair, the spicy aroma of kielbasa and onions on the grill, and the rhythmic, incessant bam-bam-bam-bam of a diligent jackhammer as it pulverized the pavement nearby.

Yeah, life didn’t get any better than that.

Which meant that today was an ideal day for Shane. After punching the time clock at the construction site where he worked as foreman, he headed to the lunch wagon parked just beyond the gate for one of those savory kielbasas. He skimmed off his battered hard hat as he went, running his fingers briskly through his sweat-dampened, shaggy brown hair.

The front of his denim work shirt was damp, too, he noted as he loosened the obligatory necktie that his position as foreman dictated he wear—though not on his off-hours, and lunch hour was one of those, by God—as were the knees of his faded blue jeans, though that last was due not to perspiration, but to the fact that he’d had to kneel down in the mud to look for the gold Waterman pen his mother had given him for his twenty-third birthday earlier in the year. When he’d finally found it, he’d taken it back to the foreman’s trailer and tucked it into his desk where he intended to leave it. He wasn’t the kind of man who should be responsible for things like solid gold pens. He was much better suited to clicking a plastic—disposable—Bic.

Yeah, disposable was the way to keep it, Shane thought. It didn’t pay to get too attached to material things in life, because they’d only get taken away from you, sooner or later, one way or another. He’d learned that, if not much else, during his sojourn on the planet.

He squinted his blue eyes against the sun beating down on him as he made his way toward the lunch wagon. November didn’t bring a cold autumn to L.A. the way it did to other parts of the country, but the air was definitely a bit cooler today and felt a bit less sunbaked than it had during the summer months. It was the ocean more than the air that signified the change of seasons in Southern California. These days, Shane was wearing his wet suit all the time when he surfed, because the temperature of the water had plummeted since summer—and even then, it had been none too warm. Other than having to don his wet suit on the weekends now, though, he hadn’t seen any big changes come into his life recently. Nor was he anticipating any to come anytime soon.

And that, of course, was just the way he liked it.

Amy Collins, who ran the lunch wagon that had visited the construction site daily since work had begun a week earlier, smiled when she saw Shane coming, anticipating his desire—his lunch desire, anyway—by forking up a kielbasa loaded with onions before he even asked for one. As for his other desires…

Well, it was no secret to anyone on the Wellman Towers site that Amy had been trying since day one to capture Shane’s interest. And, truth be told, he wasn’t completely immune to her charms. She was darkly pretty, round in all the right places, boisterously outspoken, even downright sassy at times, which was just the way he normally liked his women. But there was something about Amy, too, that told Shane she played for keeps when it came to men. And keeps was a place he never wanted to find himself, especially with a woman. Mainly because he knew too well that keeps didn’t exist—not in his little corner of the world, anyway. So he steered clear of Amy, knowing she’d meet a forever-after kind of guy someday.

Just, you know, not today.

“Hey, Amy,” he greeted her as he stopped in front of the window and dug into a denim pocket for a few wadded-up dollar bills.

“Hel-lo, Shane,” she replied in a soft, singsongy kind of purr.

He smiled in response, not necessarily because he liked her purr all that much—in fact, he found it kind of off-putting, truth be told—but because he always responded to women with a smile. Shane liked women. All women. A lot. And women seemed to like him, too. All women. A lot. So it was only natural that he greeted one with a smile whenever he met one. Even if she did purr.

“How’s it going?” he asked. The question was, at best, mechanical, at worst, hypothetical. Shane didn’t really expect or require an answer.

But Amy replied anyway. “I could be better, actually,” she said, smiling back. Her cheek dimpled with the action, a gesture he was somehow certain she’d spent years perfecting. “It’s been kind of lonely this week. But there’s a new Schwarzenegger movie opening up this weekend,” she added, having heard Shane remark that he was a big fan of both the actor and action films. “Want to go with me on Friday?”

“I can’t this Friday, Amy. Thanks, anyway.”

“Saturday, then?” she asked audaciously without missing a beat.

He shook his head. “I can’t this weekend at all. Stuff going on.”

She expelled a breath that bordered on impatient, and her smile fell some. “Stuff going on,” she echoed dubiously. “Right. You know, Shane, you could give a girl a complex, if you’re not careful.”

“Oh, I don’t want to do that,” he said honestly. “I really am going to be busy this weekend, Amy. That’s all.” There was no reason to tell her, he decided, that he was going to be busy doing nothing. That probably came under the heading of Too Much Knowledge.

“Yeah, right,” she said, punctuating the comment with a hmpf for good measure. “I bet the queen of England herself has called you up to invite you to tea.”

Shane grinned again and was about to offer some flip response when he was halted by the sound of his name sailing through the crisp afternoon air.

“Yo, Cordello!”

The voice bellowing the summons came loud and strong from the foreman’s trailer, and when Shane turned in that direction, he saw Daniel Mendoza, the contractor for Wellman Towers—oh, yeah, and his boss, too—standing at the open door of the trailer. He was holding his hand beside his head, forefinger and pinky extended, in the internationally recognized hand gesture for “You’ve got a phone call, dude.” Seeing it, though, immediately roused Shane’s apprehension.

Who would be calling him at work? he wondered anxiously. Most of his friends were co-workers on this very site, and those who weren’t knew better than to disturb him during the workday. His mother was currently honeymooning with husband number five in Tahiti—not that Shane thought the marriage would last much beyond the honeymoon, because they rarely did for her—so she was sure to have other things on her mind at the moment.

And his brother, Marcus, lived in Chicago and had way too much going on in his workaholic life to call Shane more than once or twice a month, and Shane had just spoken to him about a week ago. Not that Shane held it against his fraternal twin to be relatively incommunicado. Hell, his own life was plenty full these days, with work, if nothing else. He and Marcus had a solid, close relationship, one that transcended a need for constant communication. And that was no easy feat considering the fact that the two of them had been separated by divorce at nine years of age, when Shane went to live with their mother and Marcus went to live with their father. But the two boys had spent a month together every summer while they were growing up, and even in that limited amount of time, they’d managed to forge the kind of bond that few brothers—hell, few twins, for that matter—forged when they were raised in the same household.

Shane’s father was someone he rarely saw or heard from these days, so long ago had the two of them lost touch, and he doubted the elder Cordello would be calling him for any reason, at work or at home. So since Shane’s friends were all here on the site, and his relations were all hundreds of miles away with other things on their minds, then there was no reason for anyone to be calling him at work. Not unless…

Not unless it was an emergency.

Leaving the kielbasa sitting on the lunch wagon window where Amy had placed it, Shane sprinted toward the foreman’s trailer with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. That sickness grew more resolute with each stride he completed, until it had coalesced into a cold, greasy lump when he saw the grim expression on his employer’s face. Oh, no…

“What is it, Mr. Mendoza?” he asked breathlessly as he took the trailer’s metal stairs two at a time.

His boss’s expression turned malevolent. “I’ve told all of you that personal phone calls to or from this site are prohibited.”

Shane relaxed at the censure. If Mr. Mendoza was this ticked off, the call couldn’t be much of an emergency. “I’m sorry,” Shane apologized, even though he’d had little control over who might have picked up a telephone and dialed this particular number. “Who is it?”

“A woman,” his boss said with distaste, making clear his opinion of that half of the world’s population.

Shane’s earlier concern changed immediately to confusion. “A woman?” he repeated. “I’ve never given this number to any women.” In fact, he hadn’t given it to anyone but Marcus. With strict instructions that his brother only dial it in case of emergency, Shane couldn’t help recalling, his anxiety rising to the fore once again. “What woman? What does she want?” he asked.

“How the hell should I know what woman?” Mr. Mendoza snapped. “She says it’s personal,” he added, his voice dripping with even more repugnance than before on that final word. Obviously the man disliked personal matters even more than he disliked women. “And she sounds like a woman who’s old enough to be your mother. Frankly, Cordello, I do not want to go there. It’s just too—” He punctuated the statement by giving his entire body a shudder of disgust.

Ignoring the other man, Shane’s confusion turning again to concern, he snatched up the phone. “Mother?” he said without preamble. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

There was a slight pause from the other end of the line, then a woman’s voice—indeed old enough to belong to his mother, but not his mother’s voice—replied, “Mr. Cordello?”

Even with only two words to go by, Shane detected an accent, vaguely British, in the woman’s voice, a clue that helped him not at all in discerning her identity. He didn’t know anyone from Great Britain. He only recognized the accent because he was a faithful viewer of Benny Hill reruns on cable.

“Yes, this is Shane Cordello,” he said, his fear rising to the fore again as his confusion compounded. “Who is this? What’s happened?”

There was another pause, then the woman said, “Please hold, Mr. Cordello, for Her Majesty Queen Marissa of Penwyck.”

“For who?” he said, certain he must have misunderstood.

“For Her Majesty Queen Marissa of Penwyck,” the woman repeated. “Please hold.”

Shane balked at the cool command in both the woman’s instructions and her voice, and he almost hung up the phone on principle alone. Who did this woman think she was, calling him—at work, no less—then telling him to hold? And for the queen of Penwyck? What the hell was that all about? Why hadn’t they asked him if he had Prince Albert in a can, too? he wondered, so certain was he that this must be a practical joke.

The only thing that kept him from slamming the receiver back into its cradle was that his curiosity was a more potent force than his pride. Not that he believed for a moment that the queen of Penwyck was about to pick up the phone at the other end of the line, mind you, but clearly this wasn’t any run-of-the-mill crank call. No, this was a pretty sophisticated crank call, and Shane wanted to get to the bottom of it. Mainly so he could put an end to it. No sense having the woman call back and rile Mr. Mendoza any further than his employer was already riled. Because the words employer and riled were two words Shane never wanted to see appearing close together in the same sentence.

After a moment of staccato static and erratic popping—giving him the impression of a genuine long-distance phone call, by golly—a quick click signified that someone had picked up another line. Then a different woman’s voice, still old enough to belong to his mother, still not his mother’s voice, came over the line.

“Mr. Cordello?” the second woman said. She, too, had an accent, also vaguely British, and a bit more cultivated than the first woman’s, if such a thing were possible.

“Yeah, I’m Shane Cordello,” he replied with less courtesy than before. “Who the hell are you? And don’t bother telling me you’re the friggin’ queen of Penwyck, lady, ’cause I ain’t buyin’ it.”

There was a stretch of silence from the other end of the line, followed by a single, hasty chuckle. “I have no intention of telling you such a thing, Mr. Cordello.”

“Good.”

“Because I am not the, ah, friggin’…queen of Penwyck.”

“I knew it.”

“I am, in fact, the royal queen of Penwyck.”

Shane rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, lady, what do you take me for? I wasn’t born yesterday, you know.”

There was another brief silence, then, “No, I realize that. You were born twenty-three years ago. On April fourteenth. Am I correct?”

Slowly Shane pulled the receiver from his ear and gazed at it with narrowed eyes, as if in doing so, he might force the phone to offer up more information than it was giving him about the woman at the other end of the line. Then, when he realized how ridiculous he must look to his employer, he put the receiver back where it was. “Yeah,” he told the woman. “That’s my birthday. A matter of public record, too,” he added meaningfully. “It still doesn’t tell me who you are or what you want.”

Instead of a lengthy silence this time, the response from the other end of the line was a weary sigh. “Oh, dear,” the woman said, not quite under her breath. “This is going to be a bit more difficult than I thought.” Then, “I understand why you might be skeptical, Mr. Cordello,” she added. “But I assure you that I am indeed Her Majesty Queen Marissa of Penwyck. And it is very important that I speak with you about a very urgent mat—”

“Right,” he interrupted again. “If you’re the queen of Penwyck, then I’m the prince of darkness. Tell me another one.”

“Actually, Mr. Cordello, you’re not far from the truth,” the woman said, sounding a bit less imperious than she had before.

Shane opened his mouth to mutter another disdainful quip, but what came out instead was “Huh?”

“I said you’re not far from the truth,” the woman repeated. “Though you’re not—quite—the prince of darkness.”

Once again, Shane tried to summons a haughty retort. And once again, what came out was “Huh?”

“Perhaps it would be better if I let you speak to your brother, Marcus, first,” the woman said.

“Marcus?” Shane echoed, growing even more confused now.

But instead of hearing the woman’s voice in reply again, Shane was treated to his brother’s. “Hello, Shane. It’s Marcus.”

The confusion that had been wheeling around in Shane’s head for the last several minutes came to a crashing halt, crumbling now into a vast heap of bewilderment. “Marcus?” he said, recognizing his brother’s voice immediately. “Where are you? Who was that woman? What the hell is going on?”

“Answering those questions in order,” Marcus said, “as to the first one, I, uh, I’m in Penwyck. You know Penwyck, Shane, surely. Small island nation? Near other island nations of Ireland and Great Britain? It’s been in the news lately because they’re forming a military alliance with the United States. You’ve heard about that, right?”

“Uh…”

“And I think our mother honeymooned here with husband number three, if memory serves,” Marcus continued blithely. “It’s really a beautiful place. Nice people. I mean really nice people. Food could be a little spicier. Not that I’m complaining.”

Marcus Cordello, Shane knew, was not the kind of man to fool around. His brother hadn’t become a millionaire at the age of nineteen by making prank phone calls, and he didn’t maintain a multimillion-dollar real-estate empire in one of the nation’s largest cities by asking people if they had Prince Albert in a can. No way would Marcus jerk Shane around. If he said he was in Penwyck, then, by God, the man was in Penwyck. And if Marcus was in Penwyck, then that meant that the woman who’d called herself the queen of Penwyck could, by God, very well be—

Uh-oh.

“You’re in Penwyck?” Shane echoed miserably.

“I’m in Penwyck,” Marcus confirmed.

“The Penwyck that has a Queen Marissa?”

“So you have been watching the news,” his brother said, clearly holding back a chuckle.

“Um, Marcus?”

“Yes, Shane?”

“Was that really the queen of Penwyck I was talking to on the phone a minute ago?”

“It was indeed.”

“The woman I just blew off so royally was really a queen?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“So you’re standing beside the queen of Penwyck?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Is she, um, really, really mad?”

“Define ‘really, really,”’ Marcus said.

“Like, off-with-his-head mad?”

There was a moment of silence, as if Marcus were contemplating the mood of the woman beside him, a full continent and ocean away from where Shane was standing himself.

“Nah,” Marcus said finally.

Shane expelled a soft sigh of relief.

Then, “She’ll probably just want to take off your hand when you get here,” Marcus added.

“What?” Shane said.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the take-off-your-hand part of Marcus’s statement that got to Shane most deeply. It was the when-you-get-here part that made him take notice.

Then again, Shane thought, why was he surprised by this surprise? Marcus was beginning to make a habit out of dropping bombshells whenever he called. Hell, the last time they’d spoken, his brother had told him there was a possibility that the two of them had been adopted as infants, not that Shane had believed that for a moment. Now Marcus was suddenly in Penwyck, visiting the queen. What next? Would he announce his candidacy for president of the United States? Shane wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Actually, Her Majesty is a very pleasant woman,” Marcus continued, dispelling Shane’s troubling thoughts—sort of. “So she might only want a couple of fingers from you, really.”

Okay, troubling thoughts were back now.

Shane closed his eyes and lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, in an effort—a totally futile effort, he soon learned—to ward off a massive headache that seemed to erupt out of nowhere.

“Marcus,” he tried again, struggling very hard to maintain his feeble grip on reality. Maybe if he spoke a little more slowly, this conversation would make sense.

And maybe, too, he told himself further, Jennifer Lopez would give him a call this weekend and ask him to go skinny-dipping with her in Puerto Vallarta.

“Marcus,” he said once more. “What. Are. You. Talking. About.”

Marcus expelled a long, weary sigh from the other end of the line. “What I’m talking about, Shane,” he said, “is something you’re probably not going to believe. Are you sitting down?”

Shane dropped into his boss’s big, comfy chair without even asking permission, and somehow didn’t even care when Mr. Mendoza began to glare at him as if this were Shane’s last day on earth. Or, at the very least, his last day on the Wellman Towers construction site.

Whatever.

“I’m sitting down,” Shane said. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

“Well,” Marcus began, “once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, there lived a beautiful queen and a handsome king who were blessed with a pair of royal twin sons….”

Sara Wallington pushed back the sleeve of her pink cashmere sweater and checked the slim gold watch on her wrist for the sixth time in ten minutes, then sighed heavily with impatience. My, how time crawled when one was having woe, she thought morosely. For there could certainly be nothing fun in acting as a glorified nanny for the next twenty-four hours. A nanny for what might potentially be the heir to a throne, granted, but a nanny nonetheless. However, the heir apparently was nowhere to be seen just yet, and they were due to leave L.A. at precisely 11:00 p.m. Right now, it was nearly ten o’clock. Even if they were flying on a private jet, there was a strict departure time they must meet. If the man were any later, they were going to have trouble keeping to their schedule. And she did so loathe not being punctual.

She sighed heavily again, fidgeted with her pearl necklace, twisted the matching pearl stud in one ear and tucked an errant wisp of pale red hair back into her chignon. Then she scanned the hoards of people scampering through LAX like rabid animals and wondered how in the queen’s name she was going to find Shane Cordello among them. Of course, it had been Queen Marissa herself who’d gotten Sara into this. A favor, Her Majesty had told Sara’s mother in Penwyck when she’d called to see if Sara was available to aid Shane in his travels. Never mind that Sara had finals next month to study for and a term paper to write. She’d escort Mr. Cordello to her native country because her queen commanded it. Favor equaled duty when it came to Her Majesty.

Nevertheless, locating the man was going to be a bit of a task since Sara had been given only a sketchy description of him to go by: brown hair, blue eyes, six-foot-two, one hundred eighty pounds. So she had been able to deduce that he was a largish man, though certainly that wasn’t so unique for this vast country of America. Most men here seemed to be big and boisterous and very nearly overwhelming, she had noticed during her four-plus-year stay. Oh, and Shane Cordello was supposed to be rather good-looking, too—according to his brother, at any rate—which ought to make him oh so easy to spot here in Los Angeles where everyone seemed to be beautiful.

Not much to go on, Sara thought, not for the first time since receiving the queen’s phone call this morning. This morning, she marveled again, thinking about how much her circumstances had changed in scarcely twelve hours’ time. Sara had barely had time to explain the situation to her professors, assuring them she’d return to her classes five days hence, bright and early Monday morning, and would they be so kind as to give her her assignments in advance so that she wouldn’t lose too much time.

Now, armed with both her homework and what few belongings she would need for a long weekend in her homeland, Sara waited patiently to meet her destiny. Or, at the very least, to meet Shane Cordello. She was also armed with a handy visual aid, a big white sign, hand-lettered with the word Cordello, to help her in finding that destiny. Or, at the very least, in finding that man. At present, she held the sign waist-high before her, obscuring the simple, camel-colored straight skirt she had coupled with her white blouse and pink cardigan. She boosted the sign a bit higher, at chest height now, hoping that Mr. Cordello wasn’t one of those handsome, but not-too-bright males whom one met so frequently in this city.

Not that Sara had spent much time with any men, bright or dim, during her four-and-a-half-year sojourn in this country. College courses did rather limit one’s social life, after all, particularly when one was pursuing her master’s degree… At least they did if one was serious.

She checked her watch again. Heavens, five minutes had passed this time between glances. She must be vastly enjoying herself now.

“Miss Wallington?”

Sara glanced up at the summons—rather a long way up, too, she couldn’t help noticing, which, she supposed, shouldn’t surprise her, since she scarcely topped five-foot-two herself—into the face of the man who had just petitioned her. And she immediately realized that brown hair and blue eyes and rather good-looking was a description that didn’t do the man justice. His hair was, in fact, the color of rich, velvety espresso, and his eyes were an incisive cobalt-blue, reminding her of the darkest depths of the ocean. As for good-looking… Oh, my. That phrase did more than a mere injustice to a man who was, in fact, quite extraordinarily, splendidly, unspeakably, dazzlingly, breathtakingly… She sighed deeply in spite of herself.

Magnificent. That was what Shane Cordello was. In his snug blue jeans and white V-neck T-shirt beneath a faded denim jacket, his low-heeled books scraping over the floor as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the man made every system Sara had—and some she hadn’t been aware of possessing until this very moment—go on absolute red alert. Never in her life had she encountered a man who made her mouth water. But as she watched his mouth hook into a crooked, wicked little smile, parts of her now—and not just her mouth, either—were feeling very…ah, liquid, indeed.

And when Sara noticed all those changes—in both her body and her very psyche—and when she understood how Mr. Cordello’s mere physical presence in her general vicinity had turned her so readily and thoroughly into a volcano about to burst, the relief she had felt initially upon his arrival suddenly evaporated into… Well, into something else entirely. Something damp and steamy and hot, and altogether inappropriate for a woman who had been asked to perform a favor for her queen. And it simply would not do to experience a cumbersome sort of lust for the man one had been instructed to return to the queen unharassed. Lust, after all, was the one thing that prospective members of the Royal Intelligence Institute did not feel for their charges. It could only—would only—lead to trouble.

“Mr. Cordello,” Sara greeted him with as much courtesy—and as little lust—as she could manage. “How delightful to finally make your acquaintance. Queen Marissa has told me much about you.”

His expression, which had been rather open and affable before, suddenly changed then, to one of obvious wariness. “She told you about me, huh?” he asked.

Sara nodded. “She said you were quite charming.”

Actually, what Her Majesty had said was that Shane Cordello was a man who didn’t suffer fools lightly, but one might certainly translate that into charming—if one were frightfully generous about such things, and Sara did pride herself on being a generous person.

“She said that?” Shane Cordello replied dubiously.

“She did indeed,” Sara assured him, trying to quell the hot shudder that wound through her whenever he spoke in that rich, rhythmical baritone that very nearly hypnotized her into a narcotic stupor. American accents were so, ah, delightful.

Oh, dear. She really must put a stop to these strange goings-on inside her this instant. “Now, then,” she continued in as stalwart a fashion as she could manage. Stalwart, she had always told herself, was a very good thing to be. Even if stalwartness wasn’t exactly the most potent boy-magnet in the world, it was still quite the virtue. One should never underestimate the power of a stalwart woman. Ever.

“The jet has been made ready for our takeoff,” she said. “Shall we board? Queen Marissa couldn’t spare the official royal jet, of course, but she has sent one of the smaller jets. Our sixteen-hour flight to Penwyck will be ever so much more comfortable this way.”

Of course, had Her Majesty sent the much larger royal jet, that flight time would have been cut nearly in half, and it would only be approximately ten hours that Sara would be forced to spend with Mr. Very Handsome, Very Interesting Cordello. Providing the larger vessel would have also made it possible for them to arrive in Penwyck at a decent hour, local time. But no. Sixteen hours it would be then, and local arrival time would be approximately… Oh, let her think for a moment… Add eight hours’ time difference…plus sixteen…carry the one… Eleven p.m. tomorrow, she finally calculated. Which wouldn’t be too frightfully indecent an hour, she supposed, if it weren’t for the fact that they were both bound to be exhausted from their sixteen-hour flight and wanting desperately to fall into bed.

Fall into separate beds, she hastily qualified. Alone. Naturally, part of their flight time would be spent on the ground refueling and such, but she and Mr. Cordello would be confined to the very small jet even then. She didn’t want to risk losing him now that she had him by allowing him to wander around an airport for any length of time.

Not that she had him, Sara quickly corrected herself. Not like…that. Not the way a woman traditionally thought of having a man. It wasn’t as if the man belonged to her, after all. Nor did she want him, she quickly reminded herself. Or any other man for that matter. But she did so want to keep Mr. Cordello within eyeshot, because if she lost the man who might be king, it would most definitely look bad on any potential résumé she might want to put together. And it went without saying that she would have to put together a résumé should she lose Mr. Cordello. Because there was no way the Royal Intelligence Institute would take her on if she bungled an assignment as simple as this.

Sixteen hours, she marveled again, unable to look away from his—oh dear…very interested, she could tell—gaze. Sixteen hours on a nonstop—save brief stops for refueling—course across a continent and an ocean, when each of them clearly found the other…interesting. She was going to be trapped in extremely close confines with this extremely interesting man for sixteen hours.

Of course, they wouldn’t be alone during that time, she reminded herself. There would be two pilots and two flight attendants aboard, as well. And the crew’s presence would go a long way toward keeping her in line and preventing her from doing anything rash. Something like, oh, say…leaping across the aisle and straddling Mr. Cordello’s waist and covering his mouth with her own and kissing him and kissing him and kissing him and…

Where was she? Oh, yes. Sixteen hours. Right. It was a rather long time to be saddling—or rather, saddled with, she hastily corrected herself—the man.

Best to think of something else, Sara, she told herself.

She glanced down to see that Mr. Cordello held only one small canvas bag. “Is that all you’ve brought? Don’t you have another bag?”

He, too, glanced down at his burden—unburdensome though it may have been—then back up at Sara. His expression now indicated that he found her question unusual. “Will I need anything more?” he asked. “I didn’t get the impression I’d be staying in Penwyck very long. Just long enough to get this ridiculous story straightened out.”

During her phone call this morning, the queen had explained to Sara all the particulars of the ridiculous story, as Mr. Cordello had referred to it. But Her Majesty wasn’t as ready to dismiss the situation as such. Not yet. There was, at present, compelling evidence to suggest that twenty-three years ago, the newborn sons of Queen Marissa and King Morgan of Penwyck were switched at birth with a pair of different twins.

The way it had been explained to Sara, King Morgan’s resentful brother, Broderick, jealous of Morgan because he ascended to the throne when Broderick thought the position should be his, was claiming that he had arranged twenty-three years ago to have the king’s rightful heirs kidnapped and placed by adoption with a wealthy family in America immediately after their birth. In their place, he said, he’d had a different set of newborn twins passed off as the king and queen’s sons, knowing that neither would be qualified to take control of Penwyck because they weren’t descended from royal blood. And that would be the day that Broderick saw his revenge on his brother fulfilled. In the meantime, he’d relished the knowledge that the boys Queen Marissa and King Morgan had raised as their own weren’t, in fact, their own sons at all.

Now the queen was beside herself with worry over whether or not Broderick was telling the truth, and whether or not he had been successful in carrying out his plan, and she wouldn’t rest until the mystery was solved. The allegedly switched twins had been traced to the Cordello brothers in America, and Her Majesty was adamant that they join her in Penwyck until all was made clear. Marcus Cordello was already in Penwyck, having been accompanied there by Lady Amira Corbin, who had been sent on an errand similar to Sara’s. Now it was up to Sara to bring the other Cordello home.

If, in fact, Penwyck was truly his home.

“You don’t think you may be one of Her Majesty’s missing sons?” Sara asked her Cordello now.

“Hell, no, I don’t think so,” he retorted. Immediately, however, he looked chastened. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Pardon my French.”

Sara bit back a smile. “I’m fluent in several languages, Mr. Cordello, one of which happens to be French, and I didn’t detect any French in what you just said. However, I accept your apology. Though I assure you, you needn’t feel as if you must coddle me. I’m made of firmer stuff than that, I promise you.”

He grinned again at that, but this time it was a grin that told her he didn’t believe her for a minute. But that was all right, Sara thought. She knew most men—those who didn’t know her well, at any rate—looked at her as if she were a delicate porcelain doll who should be kept constantly under glass. What would Shane Cordello say, she wondered, if he knew the master’s degree she was just completing in public administration included minors in tae bahk do and M-16s? Ah, well. No reason to overwhelm the poor man. They’d only be together for—she gulped inwardly—sixteen hours.

“Well, there is apparently substantial evidence, Mr. Cordello, to suggest that the men raised as Prince Dylan and Prince Owen were switched at birth with the rightful heirs to the throne, and that you and your brother, Marcus, may very well be the true princes of Penwyck.”

“Horse doodoo,” he replied mildly. “To put it bluntly.”

Sara laughed. “Thank you so much for sparing my tender sensibilities,” she said. And as she said it, her gaze met Shane Cordello’s again, holding firm this time, and something in the air between them seemed to crackle and fizz and very nearly explode.

Not good, she thought as a strange heat rippled up her spine and into her chest and down into parts of her that in no way needed warming right now. Not good at all. For sixteen hours, she would be seated beside this man on a very small jet, with no one to bother them save two pilots and two attendants. Pilots and attendants who were trained specifically not to bother the jet’s occupants unless those occupants pushed the call button on the arm of their very plush seats.

Sixteen hours, she thought again. Oh, yes. It was going to be a very long flight back to Penwyck indeed.