Czytaj książkę: «A Crown by Christmas»

CHAPTER ONE

IMOGEN ALBRIGHT GAVE the perfectly made bed one more completely unnecessary swipe with her hand. The Egyptian cotton sheets, with their one thousand thread count, were soft beneath her fingertips, and a light, deliciously clean fragrance tickled her nostrils.

A little nervously, Imogen tucked a honey-blond strand of her shoulder-length hair behind her ear and glanced around the room. As were all the rooms at the Crystal Lake Lodge, a boutique hotel high in the Canadian Rockies, this room was subtly luxurious and faintly mountain themed with its beautifully hand-hewn wooden furniture and the river rock fireplace at one end of the room.

But was it good enough for a prince?

Ever since she was a little girl and the hotel was managed by her parents, Crystal Lake Lodge, with its promise of luxury in the heart of true wilderness, had attracted an elite clientele. Imogen had grown up with a fuss being made over her and her two sisters, by famous actors, heads of state and sports figures. Some came every year, and a few remained as friends to the family. When they were teenagers, Imogen and her sisters had been the envy of all their friends with their autographed collections of celebrity photos.

But to her knowledge, Crystal Lake Lodge had never hosted royalty before.

One thing about rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous all her life? Imogen knew, better than most, that the fabulously wealthy and well-known were just people. With few exceptions, especially when they came here, they wanted the barriers to come down, to be treated as normal and to be liked for themselves.

Prince Antonio Valenti might have an entirely different attitude, though, if the thick protocol book that had been delivered just yesterday was any indication! There was something so intimidating about that heavy binder that she had not yet opened it.

Was the delivery of the protocol book the reason she felt so nervous? She never felt nervous before guests arrived.

But there was some mystery shrouding this arrival.

For one thing, the Prince was not arriving with an entourage. He was coming by himself with a single bodyguard. For another, the booking had been made with hardly any advance notice.

And for yet another, it was the shoulder season. Imogen wandered to the window and looked out. Even though she had lived here all her life, she felt her breath catch in her throat.

The Lodge was perched high on a mountainside. The views were stunning: from this distance, the town in the narrow valley below looked like one of those Christmas miniature villages that people collected.

The community had been built around the shores of Crystal Lake, which was tranquil and turquoise, reflecting the blaze of fall colors around it. The valley walls were carpeted with emerald green forests that gave way to craggy rock faces. The mountains soared upward to dance with bright blue sky, their pyramid-shaped peaks crowned in brilliant white mounds of snow.

It was October and so the thick stands of pine and fir and balsam were interspersed with larch, the needles spun to stunning gold, lit from within by the late-afternoon autumn sun. Imogen knew if she opened the window, the scents of fall would envelop her: clean and crisp, with the faintest overtones of wood smoke.

Still, as gorgeous as it all was, the question remained: Why would the Prince come now? The summer season—that lake dotted with kayaks and canoes, the air full of the screams of children brave enough to try the mountain waters—was over.

And the ski season was at least a month from beginning.

The mountain trails in this area were world famous for hikers and recreational mountain climbers. When the Lodge had clientele at this time of year, that was who they usually were—outdoor enthusiasts.

And yet when this booking came in and she had asked the reason for the visit, she had been rebuffed as if she had overstepped a line by asking. Then, they had requested she book the whole hotel, though there were only two of them arriving—the Prince and his security man. Thank goodness it was the shoulder season, or she would not have been able to accommodate that request.

“Gabi,” she said, backing out of the room, giving it one last glance, and then closing the door. “Where are you when I need you?”

“Did you say something?”

One of the local girls, Rachel, who helped at the hotel, popped her head out of the room they were preparing for the security man. Newly married, her baby bump was becoming quite pronounced.

Why did it seem baby season was hitting Crystal Lake in such a big way?

Everywhere Imogen looked there were babies on the way, or people toting brand-new infants. And every single time, she felt that pang of loss and regret.

“Sorry, no, I was talking to myself,” Imogen explained.

“I heard you say something about Gabi.”

“I was just wondering where she was, that’s all.”

“Well, everyone is wondering what is up with Gabi, so let me know when you figure it out.”

Imogen smiled at the pregnant girl. This was what was lovely—and occasionally aggravating—about small towns. No one could ever have a secret. Did Gabi have a secret?

Instead of promising to share gossip, Imogen said, “Rachel, you be careful. No lifting!”

“Ha. My mother was chopping wood when she started having labor with me.”

Imogen knew that, despite this assertion, Rachel’s pregnancy had not been without complications. She had been going to the city to see a specialist, and the delivery was planned for a hospital there.

Imogen had actually asked the young woman to stop working, but Rachel had brushed off the suggestion with the claim that she was from sturdier stock than that. Imogen was fairly certain Rachel kept working because her young family needed the money, and so she had put her on light duty and told her absolutely no chemicals were to be used for cleaning.

Imogen moved away from Rachel and her thoughts returned to Gabi. Gabriella Ross ran the bookstore in Crystal Lake. They were lifelong friends. They had always been there for each other, but their friendship had deepened even more when Imogen’s sisters had accepted jobs overseas and her parents had moved to a warmer climate. When Gabriella’s aunt and uncle had passed away, they had become each other’s family. They knew each other’s secrets and heartbreaks and dreams in the way only closest friends do.

Until recently, that was. Imogen frowned as she went down the wide, curved staircase and headed down a back hallway to the kitchen. Gabi had seemed stressed and preoccupied lately. Normally, she would have been helping Imogen get ready for the arrival of a crown prince. Normally, her friend would have been over the moon with excitement.

Gabi was very bookish, and by now, usually Imogen could have counted on her to have researched all there was to know about the island kingdom of Casavalle. Gabi would have read that protocol book, beginning to end, in about an hour and provided Imogen with a short synopsis of its contents.

“Including what they like to eat,” Imogen said, swinging open the door to the huge, stainless steel, industrial fridge in the Lodge kitchen.

But instead of having her nose buried in a book, discerning everything there was to know about the royal family of Casavalle, Gabi had disappeared, with only the vaguest of explanations.

Gabriella did have a secret.

Secrecy between the two women was unsettling. It was Gabi who had helped Imogen through the end of her engagement, and it was Gabi who knew, to this day, that tears shone very close to that bright smile Imogen displayed when someone mentioned Kevin to her. Or when she glanced at the engagement picture of the two of them that she could not bring herself to delete as the screen saver on her cell phone.

She felt her heart squeeze, as it always did when she thought of him. He had wanted children so desperately. This was the other thing Gabi knew about her: that Imogen would never have babies.

She had suspected for a number of years, since a serious ski injury, that there might be problems. But after she and Kevin had been dating three years, he had taken her to her favorite Chinese food restaurant, and when she had broken open her fortune cookie, a small diamond ring had winked at her.

“I want you to be my wife. I want us to have babies together.”

Of course she had said yes. That picture on her cell phone had been taken by a thrilled waitress seconds after Imogen had put on the ring. But was it the fact that he had included the baby part in his proposal that had made her, finally, investigate further?

Imogen remembered the day she had told Kevin the results of her tests, the distress on his face. He had stammered that of course, it didn’t matter, but she had known it had. And she had been right: when she had set him free, he had lost no time in finding a new love. Though he and Imogen had been together for three years and had only just begun to discuss marriage, he had married someone else with appalling speed. They already had a baby on the way. And try as she might to be happy about it...

“Stop it!” Imogen ordered herself, when she felt her throat closing with emotion. She would not ponder endlessly the unfairness of life. She would not! She sorted through a few items in the fridge. They were not what they normally stocked. Instead, tiny individual Cornish game hens, strange sausages, unrecognizable vegetables, tropical fruits and exotic condiment bottles filled the shelves.

Thankfully, she did not have to figure out how to prepare anything. These exotic items had arrived at the request of a retired world-class chef who would be here tomorrow morning in advance of the arrival of Prince Antonio.

Imogen closed the fridge door and cocked her head. The sound of a helicopter—spotting for fires, conducting tourist trips and ferrying heli-skiers—was not uncommon in Crystal Lake. But it was more unusual at this quiet time of year.

She went to the kitchen door and opened it, craning her neck at the skies. Despite the bright sunshine of the day, the air was shockingly cold. She glanced toward Mount Crystal, and sure enough she could see a dark cloud coming to a slow boil over the peak. From long experience with changeable mountain climates, she knew what this meant.

Snow’s coming, she thought, just as a small helicopter broke the tree line and then hovered over the Lodge, trees swaying in its backwash, red and orange fall leaves scattering. It tilted, lifted gracefully over the roof, and then the noise intensified.

Imogen went out the back door and quickly followed a stone pathway that wound around the Lodge. She arrived at the front just in time to see the helicopter slowly lowering over the sweeping lawn. Her hair went every which way as the helicopter rocked its way slowly to the ground, until the struts were solidly situated. The noise was deafening for a moment.

It might have only been a two-seater, but the helicopter was silver and sleek, with a dark windshield. It was like something out of a James Bond movie. The roar suddenly went silent as the engines were cut and the rotors drifted to a halt. She saw a crown insignia, gold against silver on the tailpiece of the helicopter.

Her mouth fell open. They were not expecting their royal visitor until tomorrow! They were not expecting an arrival by helicopter.

And, most importantly, she had planned on giving that protocol book a thorough going-over tonight. Now what?

As she watched, the pilot got out and held the door. Though he wore no uniform, everything about him, from his bearing to his closely cropped hair, said he was military. He scanned the grounds to the edges of the trees with narrowed eyes. His gaze fell on her, and he squinted long and hard before letting his eyes move on, taking in the building, his watchful gaze resting on doors and windows.

The set of his shoulders relaxed slightly, and he stepped away from the door of the helicopter, holding it open.

Another man stepped out, and the man holding the door bowed slightly and said something to him. She couldn’t hear exactly what he said, but she was certain he called the other man Luca.

She might have contemplated the name a bit more—they were expecting a prince named Antonio, after all—but Imogen felt the breath sucked from her body and the autumn mountain glory all around her fade into oblivion.

The man who had been addressed as Luca was astounding. Neat, luxuriously thick hair, as dark as fresh-brewed coffee, touched his brow. His eyes were also the deep brown of coffee, his skin ever so faintly golden, the fullness of his bottom lip and the cleft in his chin absolutely sinful. He was perhaps an inch over six feet, his shoulders broad under a beautifully cut suit jacket. His legs were long under tapered pants pressed to knife-blade sharpness.

He exuded an air of power and self-containment, such as Imogen was not sure she had ever experienced before.

She was also struck by a sense of having seen him before, but of course, in today’s world, all royal family members were celebrities. That must be why she felt a tickle of recognition: she had probably seen his face on the front page of a gossip rag. It was, after all, exactly the kind of face that would entice people—especially female people—to buy a copy.

What now? Obviously, even though the temptation was great, she could not run back into the Lodge, as she had a desire to do. She was fairly certain, even without having read the protocol book, that she was probably expected to execute some kind of curtsy. She had planned to practice one. Really, she had!

In fact, she had pictured her and Gabriella, giggling insanely and curtsying to each other.

Apparently nothing about this particular visit was going to go according to plan.

Imogen ran a hand through her scattered hair and lifted her chin. She took a deep breath and stepped forward. No matter what the protocol book said, she wasn’t going to go up to the Prince in her work jeans and blue plaid flannel shirt and try to curtsy!