Kitabı oku: «The Irresistible Prince»

Chapter One

Annah barely heard the front doorbell over the giggles and chatter of the half dozen teenagers who were prowling around her secondhand shop in search of dresses to wear to their fall formal. She was on the phone with her accountant, anyway, scribbling a note to herself to look up those figures he kept calling about while tactfully declining his offer to fix her up with his almost-divorced lawyer friend.

When she hung up, the doorbell rang again but so did the phone. It was a supplier this time, calling to break the news that the replacement part she’d ordered for her big coffeepot had been lost in transit. He was trying to track it down, but as it was now nearly five o’clock, he wouldn’t be able to honor his guarantee of same-day delivery. Annah hung up the phone with a groan, knowing that there was no way she would be able to handle the morning rush in her coffee shop without that part.

A tremendous crash brought her out of her office on the run; the teenagers had knocked over a rack of gowns. None of the girls was hurt, but the volume of talk and laughter tripled as they struggled to right the rolling rack. When the doorbell sounded for the third time, Annah seized on the excuse to escape the chaos, stepping over the pile of dresses that all but blocked the doorway. After nearly tripping in the hall, she stopped in the front room to peel away an errant sash that had wound itself around her leg. She threw it aside, and it sailed over the coffee counter and draped itself dramatically over the defunct coffeepot like a pink satin noose.

Annah rolled her eyes ceilingward and said dryly, “If you’re out there, fairy godmother, this would be a real good time to blow the cobwebs off that magic wand of yours and zap me a miracle.”

She flung open the door. There, looking as if he had just stepped out of the pages of a fairy tale onto her front porch, was a handsome prince.

Annah stood staring at him for a few moments, clinging to the doorknob while a frosty November wind whistled around her. Oddly enough, the strangest sensation of rising heat began to infuse her—a prickly kind of warmth that crept over her like the chills she should have been feeling in the cold air. What was happening to her? All of a sudden she was spiking a fever and hallucinating princes. Maybe she was getting the flu. Or else the afternoon from hell had been too much for her. That was it. Her imagination had finally gone haywire and sent her over the edge.

She blinked and looked again at the man standing not two feet in front of her. When she finally met his eyes, the physical jolt it gave her decided the matter: the prince on her porch was no hallucination, and no one in her right mind would call him a figment. He filled the doorway to Annah’s coffee shop, regal and imposing, six feet of muscled male all packaged up in an impeccable charcoal gray suit. The wind was ruffling his hair and bringing her the faint but very real scent of a woodsy, masculine shampoo. This was no storybook prince, but a real-world ruler from a land across the ocean who came fully equipped with a royal pedigree—and the most blatant bedroom eyes Annah had ever seen on a man.

“Annah Lane?” he asked, his deep voice betraying just a hint of an accent.

“You—you know my name?” she blurted out. They had met briefly a few months earlier, at the marriage of her friend Julie to his friend Prince Erik. He had made a strong impression on her, but she never expected that he would remember an unremarkable woman who had been just one of many introductions that day. She cleared her throat. “I mean, how nice to see you again. Your Highness,” she added belatedly.

He didn’t smile, exactly, but his lips twitched before he spoke. “It seems that you know who I am, as well.”

Shocker, she thought wryly. Any woman between the ages of eighteen and eighty who had a pulse would recognize him at a glance—even if he showed up out of the blue on her doorstep. He was Prince Lucas of the Constellation Isles, the inveterate bachelor prince whose marriage deadline had created an international furor. He had the world’s most prominent women tied up in knots waiting for him to choose one of them to be his bride. Annah couldn’t imagine a less likely place for him to be than here in her little out-of-the-way town on the coast of Maine.

“What brings you to Anders Point, Your Highness?” she asked, her voice filled with its customary warmth and with newly piqued curiosity. He was friends with the Anders brothers, but no one was living at their family castle at the tip of the Point right now, what with both princes newly married and taking time off to enjoy wedded bliss.

“I’ve come here to see you, Miss Lane.”

“Me?” Annah said incredulously. A prince looking for a bride, and he’d come this far off the beaten path just to see her?

“Yes. I would like to speak with you.”

“Certainly,” she said, her heart banging around in her chest like an empty trash can rolling down a hill. “Won’t you come in?”

His glance swept the dimly lit room that housed her coffee shop and came back to rest on her again. “This is a private, personal matter,” he said in a low voice that made those warm chills race along her skin.

“I...see.” She gulped. “My coffee shop is closed, so we’ll have privacy here.”

Just then a wave of laughter swept in from the back room. He looked at her questioningly.

“Oh, I forgot. I’m waiting on a batch of customers in my secondhand shop in back. That’s my other business,” she explained. There was a loud shuffling noise, and one of the girls called out for her. “I’d better take care of this.” Whatever was happening back there, it was something she felt more up to handling than the prince’s sudden appearance in her life. A little dose of real life—her life—might not be a bad idea right now.

His eyebrows drew down in the slightest frown. “Miss Lane, this is a matter of import...and urgency.”

“I figured it must be. That’s why I’m going to see you next,” Annah assured him. “Right after I finish with these customers and close up shop.” She saw his frown deepen. Unless she missed her guess, it wasn’t every day that His Highness the Prince of the Constellation Isles was asked to wait his turn while the owner of a modest secondhand shop sold used clothing to a group of teenagers. “You’re welcome to come back and have a look around in the meantime,” she added politely.

Just then a new gale of giggling swept in from the back room. She glanced down the hallway and then looked back at the prince. Somehow she couldn’t picture him browsing through the racks with the girls. “On second thought, maybe you’d be better off waiting up front here, Your Highness. Please, come in and make yourself comfortable.”

He hesitated just inside the doorway, looking about as comfortable as a snowman at the equator. A tiny, wayward impulse plucked at Annah’s heart. Not caring that she was probably breaching several of the more consequential rules of royal etiquette, she took him by the arm and steered him over to the counter. He felt solid and real under the expensive material of his suit jacket, and Annah felt that unfamiliar tide of warmth begin to rise again. She dropped his arm abruptly and went behind the counter, busying herself with filling a teakettle.

“Feel free to make yourself a cup of tea. Water’s on, and you’ll find everything you need here behind the counter,” she said as she hurried off “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

In the hallway she paused to exhale, leaning back against the wall. She addressed the ceiling again. “You know, when I asked for a miracle before, I was thinking more along the lines of the deliveryman with my replacement part. Are you sure this isn’t some kind of a mistake?”

She glanced over her shoulder, but the prince didn’t disappear in a puff of smoke, so she disappeared into her secondhand shop.

Prince Lucas leaned over and grasped the edge of the counter, slowly counting to ten as his knuckles turned white. Waiting was the last thing he wanted to do right now. Time was running short for him, shorter with each tick of the clock. A delay after he had come this far served no purpose beyond giving him fodder for second-guessing—which was all too easy to do when he was on the verge of putting his pride on the line. This was a real gamble, coming here to see this woman with whom he was barely acquainted. It wouldn’t take much to send him walking back out that door before he even asked her what he had come to ask her.

He released his grip and straightened up, trying to relax by sheer force of will. He looked around him, feeling conspicuously out of place in her cozy little house in this quaint little town that time and tourists seemed to have overlooked. It was one thing to think of Annah Lane as an abstract idea. It was quite another to come barging into her world to turn that idea into a proposal.

Right now the whole idea seemed more like a foolish risk than a viable solution. And even beyond convincing himself, he had to convince her. Because, dammit, he needed her; he had never needed anyone as he needed her right now. The stakes couldn’t be higher for him... and his hand was forced.

After his father’s unexpected death last year, Lucas, his only child, had assumed rule of the Constellation Isles, as tradition would have it. His succession was unanimously confirmed by a vote of the council of elders, the elected body that ruled hand in hand with the prince, but with one great big caveat. To stay on the throne, he had to get married—and he had just one year in which to do it.

On paper, a year had seemed like enough time. Not surprisingly, ever since the deadline had been announced, women had been launching themselves at him from all sides. But even in the exclusive stratum of society that was the milieu of royalty, an altar-bound prince seemed to meet nothing but social climbers, hangers-on and mercenaries—all cleverly disguised as the ideal princess. He himself had met one too many. After ten months Lucas had finally faced up to the fact that the kind of woman he wanted wouldn’t be the type to come sashaying up to the palace gates, anyway. He would have to go to her. So here he was.

He paced between the counter and the window, finding a narrow path through a maze of closely set, round tables that were each bracketed by a pair of wooden chairs. Coming here had been the idea of his two closest friends. They were brothers, princes of Isle Anders, which was his country’s long-time ally and closest neighbor in the remote North Atlantic waters near Iceland. Prince Erik and Prince Whit had both recently married, well and fruitfully—Whit had finally settled down with the love of his life, who was the mother of his six-year-old daughter, and Erik and his adored—and adoring—new bride were expecting a honeymoon baby to arrive in the spring. There would be no shortage of heirs to the throne in the kingdom of Isle Anders, and no shortage of marital happiness, either.

That was it in a nutshell. Lucas wanted what his friends had found. And they had both found their princesses in America: sweet, smart, down-to-earth women homegrown right here in Anders Point, Maine. So Erik and Whit had sent him to Anders Point; more specifically, they had sent him to their wives’ friend, Annah Lane. Lucas had enough reservations about the whole thing to sink his island home, but it was more of a plan than he had been able to come up with, and when push came to shove, doing something was infinitely preferable to doing nothing but listen to the hourly chime of the big tower clock in the courtyard outside of his palace.

The kettle whistled softly as steam came out of its spout. He thought again of her inviting him to make himself a cup of tea, as if he should know how to do that. He wished he did. He could use a drink of any kind. But after glancing over the bewildering array of unfamiliar things behind the counter, he spun away. Pacing over to the big front window, he stared out into the dusk. In the darkness he saw her reflection as she worked in the room down the hall. Having seen her up close, he felt objectively that nothing about her looks confirmed his friends’ insistence that she was an extraordinary woman. She was of medium height and medium build, with medium brown hair cut to medium length. Her eyes were uncommonly large and expressive, but they were a common enough shade of brown. Only her lips departed from the earthy hues of the rest of her coloring; they were a lush, rich red that enhanced her every expression, whether upturned with amusement or softened with empathy. But not pouty with flirtiness, which seemed to be the standard for feminine lips since he had been given his deadline. That was refreshing, at least. And for the reason he had come to her, other qualities were far more important than looks.

He turned away from the window and positioned himself in one of the creaky wooden chairs, in order to get a better view into the well-lit back room. Sounds filtered down the hallway, and what he saw and heard caught his interest. The customers she had felt obliged to wait on were no more than girls, and they were keeping her busy. One was asking her opinion as she twirled in front of a mirror in a long dress. Another wanted to look at something in a locked jewelry case. Yet another was asking to try on a hat that was on a top shelf. Many another person would have snapped and growled by now, but it seemed that nothing was too much for Annah Lane. From climbing a ladder for the hat to kneeling on the ground to pin up a hemline, she handled it all with calm efficiency. Her patience seemed unending, and that too would be a desirable trait in the person he was looking for. She always seemed to be almost smiling, as if there was some hidden well of humor within her; and when her laughter bubbled up, it sounded genuine.

As it had been during the brief time she had spoken to him, her warmth was palpable. That was what kept him there in the chair, when his better judgment was of the opinion that he should cut and run. The sounds gradually dwindled, and at last she ushered the girls out the back door and turned the latch. True to her promise, she flicked out the lights and made her way down the hall toward him.

It was too late to turn back now. Now he could only hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst—that she would say no.

Annah was uncomfortably aware of the prince’s eyes on her as she walked down the hallway. She had noticed him watching her while she was working, and had a spot of dried blood on her finger where she had jabbed herself with a pin to prove it. She had been a bit unsteady on the ladder, too, as if proximity to a prince had the power to upset her equilibrium. But Annah’s calm had never been rattled by royalty before. After all, hadn’t her best friends just married princes? But there was something about this particular prince.

He stood up as she entered the room, and Annah found herself nearly overwhelmed by his sheer physical presence. “Thank you for waiting,” she said.

His answer was a regal incline of his head.

She glanced behind the counter and saw the kettle gently steaming. “Oh. Didn’t you have any tea?”

He seemed to hesitate a moment before answering. “No. I...didn’t.”

It dawned on her then that a prince might consider performing such a task beneath him. “Would you care for some now?” she asked, smiling slightly.

“Yes. Thank you.”

She poured a cup for each of them while he watched. “Please, sit down,” she said, placing the cups at one of three booths that lined the far wall. He waited until she was seated and then slid into the opposite bench. When Annah was serving customers there, the booth seemed like a nice roomy spot. But sitting across from Prince Lucas, she was preoccupied with the thought that the smallest slouch on her part would bring her knees into contact with those of His Highness.

She sat as straight as she could, waiting for him to say something, but he seemed more inclined to study her. Tension wound in her like a spring, while she went through the motions of fishing out her tea bag with a spoon. “You said you wanted to speak with me,” she said, when she could stand it no longer.

“Yes.”

“About whatever is troubling you?”

His eyes met hers abruptly. “Why do you say that?” he asked cautiously.

“The fact that you seemed bent on wearing a path in my linoleum was a dead giveaway,” she pointed out gently.

“You are correct,” he said. “I have a problem, and I am here because I have been told that you can help me, Miss Lane.” His smoky voice brought an odd tinge of warmth to Annah’s insides. “Prince Erik and Prince Whit of Isle Anders have both, ah—” his slight hesitation made her breath catch, in spite of herself “—recommended you.”

Erik and Whit had recently married Annah’s two best friends. That explained what had brought him here, but not what he wanted. “Recommended me?” she asked, frowning. “What sort of a problem is it, Your Highness?”

“In order to keep the throne, I must be married by the first of the year.” He stopped, as if hoping that would be sufficient explanation.

“I know,” Annah told him. “Everyone knows that, Your Highness.” She took a sip of tea, waiting for him to elaborate on how she could help him with his wedding plans. Although amused by the thought, she refrained from asking whether he needed her to clothe the royal wedding party or to cater the reception. “What exactly is it that you need?” she asked diplomatically.

He looked deep into her eyes. “A bride,” he said softly.

Annah felt her teacup slip out of her hand. It fell back onto the saucer with a crash. She ignored it, staring at him. He was in deadly earnest, of that she had no doubt. And so there it was. His softly spoken words found a home deep inside her, a place that had been waiting just for them, it seemed. He had said what she hadn’t even dared let herself think, although the notion had been flickering around the edges of her mind ever since he had appeared. That was why he had come so far to see her—he wanted to make her his bride. Who would ever have believed that a fairy tale could come to life? But it was happening to her. Her handsome prince had finally come to rescue her, and now all of the dreams that she had thought impossible were going to come true at last. She sat there overcome, unable to speak.

“Will you do it, Miss Lane?” he asked then. “Will you help find me a bride?”

Annah stared at him. Find him a bride? Not be his bride? A cloud of confusion swept over her, but the direct look he gave her on the heels of his direct question dispelled it like a brisk wind. Find him a bride. His words tolled the death knell of her reawakening dreams. She looked away quickly. Of course he hadn’t meant that he wanted to marry her, she chided herself. Not her, Annah Lane. How quickly her fancies had allowed her to forget that she wasn’t at all the kind of woman that a man would want for a wife, to have and to hold, for better...for worse. Annah took a deep breath, and the pungent scents of coffee beans and dish detergent in her shop provided a strong dose of reality. No prince was going to come walking through that door to marry her. Fairy tales had to have a happily ever after, and her life was no fairy tale.

However, her life did have a prince in it, for the moment at least. He was watching her, waiting for an answer to his question. He didn’t want her to be his princess, but he did want her to be his...matchmaker?

Looking at him, Annah found it hard to believe that the man sitting across from her needed anyone’s help in finding a bride. True, the matrimonial clock was ticking for him; but he was arguably the most eligible bachelor in the world. He was rich, handsome—and he was a prince, for gosh sakes! International scuttlebutt had it that he was putting off choosing a bride until he had made the most of his last few months of bachelorhood, and Annah had never doubted that. There were legions of women stalking him: famous women, beautiful women—princess wanna-bes who would gladly trade their names and whatever virtue they could claim for the allure, luxury and power of a regal lifestyle. If he wanted to get married to save his throne, all he had to do was turn around and let himself be caught by one of them. Unless...

She looked at him carefully. He was staring out of the window now, his mouth set in a grim line. Suddenly she understood why Erik and Whit had sent him to her, of all people. “Your Highness, you want more than just a bride for the throne, don’t you?” she said softly.

“Yes,” he said, giving her a direct gaze. “I want more.”

Annah sat back in her seat in the booth. Now it all made sense. The gossip had been wrong, and so had she. He had delayed choosing a bride not to enjoy the countdown of his bachelor days, but for the simple reason that he hadn’t found the right woman. And the friends who had nudged him her way knew about her “gift”—her mysterious insight for recognizing true love. On paper, that made her the ideal matchmaker.

How was she supposed to answer him? Her insight wasn’t exactly something she could control, or even understand. It might not even work for him. She looked at him then, really looked at him, and a smoky feminine awareness caressed her insides in a curl of warmth. It had nothing to do with his being a prince, and everything to do with her reaction to him on a far more elemental level. In his mid-thirties, he carried himself with the unselfconscious assurance of a fully mature man. The power she had sensed within him was manifest in his rugged build. His touch-me brown hair and the well-trimmed beard that matched it rippled with mahogany. And deep in those sensual gray eyes lived an intensity that was compelling. His inner vibrations were strong, but that didn’t mean they’d be easy to read. Again those warm chills passed over her body, unbidden and mysterious.

She excused herself and got up from the booth, fanning herself with her hand. In the hallway, she checked the thermostat to see if it had been accidentally bumped up by one of the girls, but it was at the usual setting. Seeking solace in the familiar, she busied herself getting a rag from behind the counter and wiping the tea she had spilled. Then she righted her cup and refilled it.

What could Lucas do, except wait for her answer? He gritted his teeth, feeling his patience stretch thin. And it wasn’t just the waiting. Everything about this situation went against the grain. It was hard enough for a man like him to have to ask for anything, but this—this was an insult to his masculinity. What kind of a man needed help in finding his own bride?

A man who had played with fire and gotten himself burned, that’s what kind. Only a fool would be anything but careful after that. Lucas would be very, very careful.

Still, as hellish as the wedding deadline had made his life, Lucas had to applaud the decision of the council of elders. His marrying was in the best interest of the country he loved, which had a long history as a representative monarchy. As its prince, he had a duty to preserve the succession and carry that history into the future. He had to provide heirs to the throne. Marriage was inevitable. But the deadline had been a stroke of genius, focusing the attention of the world on his little country—and on its finely crafted jewelry, unique scenery and old-world hospitality. Yes, the elders had their eyes nobly focused on the past and the future—and their fingers wisely wrapped around the present, tightly gripping the collective pocketbook of the Constellation Isles. Tourism had swelled, even during the off-season. You had to love that. And the deadline served another purpose. Although none knew why, the elders were wise enough to see that, at thirty-five, their prince needed a little push toward the altar. He could still feel their fingers in his back, all the way across the ocean.

Annah returned to her seat. “Is the tea all right, Your Highness?” she asked him, gesturing toward his untouched cup.

He looked at it as if just now noticing its existence. “Yes. It’s fine, thank you,” he said, and concentrated on taking a drink. She could feel the tension in him.

Annah was a toucher. She felt the strongest impulse to reach out and pat him on the arm, but an even stronger instinct told her that he wouldn’t appreciate that kind of reassurance. And in truth she didn’t know how well she could handle her own reaction if she laid a hand on him again. “You...you’ve taken me a little by surprise,” she said truthfully. “I’m not sure what to say.”

A look flickered across his face, almost of pain. “There is some irony, is there not, in a prince having to ask for help in such a matter?” he said, with a twist of his mouth that passed for a smile. “But being a prince does not make me an expert in this area, Miss Lane.”

His lack of confidence in matters of the heart was typically male, and thoroughly endearing. Just talking about it was costing him, that much was obvious. But she was no expert herself!

He went on. “I have only one chance, and precious little time. I don’t want to make a mistake that I will pay for the rest of my life.”

“No, of course not.” Annah thought that was an odd way of putting it. Not wanting to choose the wrong woman, instead of wanting to choose the right woman.

“That’s why I am willing to put myself—my future—into your hands. Miss Lane, with or without your help, I will be married in two months. That is a fact of my life, because of a circumstance that I cannot change.” He paused. “But whether I will be happily married depends upon whether or not you will help me.”

She knew—oh, did she ever know!—that there was only one way he would be happy in marriage, and that was if he found true love. Without knowing why, she sensed somehow that behind his wariness, beneath his jaded exterior, that was what he was really looking for, whether or not he knew it or wanted to admit it. But she of all people knew that love was a tricky thing. She could match him up with every woman in town and see true love if it was there—but if it wasn’t, she couldn’t conjure it out of thin air. She bit her lip, stymied. How could she explain that to him?