Czytaj książkę: «The Rebel Prince»

CHAPTER ONE

JET lag—maybe he could blame it on that.

Or maybe on the general state of simmering anger he’d been in since he’d been told life as he knew it was over and he was to submit meekly to living his brother’s life instead. That might have thrown his aim off.

Whatever.

He’d missed the shot and he’d hit the young woman by mistake. And that was when everything began to spin out of control.

Prince Sebastian wasn’t used to missing a shot—he had an arm like a rocket launcher and had once even been urged to join his country’s Olympic water-polo team. He’d never injured anyone with a shot before—except other players in the generally rough play of the game he loved. But he seemed to have the reverse Midas curse these days—everything he touched went bad.

For a fraction of a heart-stopping second, he was afraid he’d killed her.

Pacio, one of the young footmen who’d been playing the game of water polo with him, said as much, swimming over to the side of the indoor castle pool behind him.

“She looks like she’s dead. Muerta,” he added for good measure.

“She’s not dead,” Sebastian corrected sharply, though his nerves were still jumping from that momentary fear.

Vaulting out of the pool, he kicked the still-bouncing water-polo ball out of the way and crouched over her, shaking away the water that dripped from his sleek body.

“Is she breathing?” Pacio asked with interest, climbing out of the pool as well. “Wow. She went down just like a rag doll.”

Sebastian didn’t bother answering. She seemed to be unconscious. Not a good sign.

“Hello,” he tried, touching her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

There was no response.

He put two fingers to the pulse at her neck, glad to find it strong, then noted her chest move. She was breathing, but she looked so pale and vulnerable lying there in her cutoff jeans and sleeveless jersey top. He wanted to gather her up and get her off the cold floor. But he probably shouldn’t move her. Had she hit her head on the tile? Maybe she was in shock.

Snagging a large towel someone had hung on the railing, he draped it over her and bit back frustration. Why the hell wasn’t she moving? And why the hell couldn’t he remember more of his decade-old life-saving classes? It was obviously time to recruit someone who knew what he was doing.

“Go get the doctor,” he ordered as two others who’d been in the pool with them came up, shivering and dripping water everywhere.

“You mean Will?” Pacio asked hesitantly.

Sebastian looked up at the three young men who were staring at him blankly. “Of course I mean Will. Get him. Now.”

The three of them looked surprised, but they jerked into action, hurrying off. He felt a fleeting sense of satisfaction that he’d managed to conjure up a tone of command. That was something he was going to have to do often and better if he was really going to end up as the king of Meridia—if this really wasn’t just a bad dream he was going to wake up from and laugh at.

Meridia—the crazy little country that knew him as Sebastian Edwardo Valenza Constantine Marchand-Dumontier, prince of Meridia and second son of King Donatello and Queen Marguerite, both deceased. And now that his older brother Julius had abdicated the throne, Sebastian was crown prince and heir apparent. If he actually let them do this to him.

He looked down at the young woman he’d decked and swore softly, his heart doing a quick stutter. She had to be okay. If she was seriously injured…

“I’m not dead,” she murmured suddenly, though her eyes didn’t open.

His heart lurched in relief. She could talk. Thank God, he said silently, but aloud he was less reverential.

“Then why are you pretending?” he asked, not really keeping the exasperation from his voice.

“I’m not pretending,” she said drowsily. “I’m resting.”

Sitting back on his heels, he stared at her. “Strange place for a sudden nap,” he noted dryly.

She opened large blue eyes at that, eyes that widened at the sight of his bare, muscular chest, jerked up to meet his gaze, then quickly snapped shut again.

“Too much, too soon,” she muttered softly, snuggling down under the towel as if she were holding the world at bay.

Her words were barely audible and he frowned. She wasn’t making any sense.

“What was that?” he said sharply.

She didn’t respond. She was lying so still he could almost believe he’d imagined her talking a moment before.

He wanted to run his hands over her, looking for injuries, but he was fairly sure she wouldn’t accept that without protest. And he couldn’t blame her. After all, if he found an injury, what was he going to do about it? Better to wait for Will, who was supposed to know what he was doing in this arena.

At least her color was returning. She was beginning to look less like an accident victim and more like a perfectly healthy young woman. No visible signs of harm. So why was she just lying there?

Women. Who could figure them out under the best of circumstances? Luckily, for most of his life he hadn’t had to. Women came and went like the weather—a different type for every season. Very early he had learned to keep his emotions out of relationships. That way he didn’t have to try to analyze motivations. When you didn’t expect much, you didn’t feel shortchanged.

Still, she wasn’t bad to look at. He’d never seen her before, but he assumed she worked here in the castle—and as he hadn’t been around lately, he no longer knew all the staff. She seemed small and defenseless, all rounded corners, no sharp edges. No makeup, either, which made her seem awfully young at first glance. A second glance revealed a young woman in her late twenties. Honey-colored hair curled around a face that was pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way.

Not his type, though. Not at all.

“Listen, you’re going to have to communicate with me,” he ordered firmly. “I’ve got to know if you’re badly hurt.”

She stirred.

“Hurt?”

Opening her eyes again, she risked another quick look in his direction, her face scrunched up in bewilderment. Then she looked around as though she’d forgotten where she was.

“Wait a minute. Where am I? What happened?”

She didn’t remember? That seemed odd. Despite her claim to be resting, she’d obviously been stunned. He supposed a blow to the head could knock the memory center for a loop—but hopefully it was just temporary.

“You’re at the indoor castle swimming pool where you very inconveniently placed yourself in the path of a stray water-polo ball,” he told her lightly. “Next time, I advise you to duck.”

Her gaze settled on him and her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I see,” she said, her hand going to her head, probing for lumps. “And who threw this stray ball?”

He ignored the sudden unaccustomed flash of guilt. “To tell you the truth, I guess I did.”

She blinked as though trying to figure something out and he realized her mind still wasn’t really clear.

“Were you aiming at me?” she asked, her voice slightly slurred.

His wide mouth twisted. “If I’d been aiming at you, the ball wouldn’t have bounced first.”

The look of bewilderment deepened and he quickly added, “No, of course I wasn’t aiming at you. I was trying to shoot around a defender and the shot got away from me.”

“So it was an accident.”

“Of course.”

She nodded and closed her eyes again.

“Actually, it feels so good to just lie here,” she murmured drowsily. “I’m so-o-o tired. I haven’t slept for days.”

Neither had he, for that matter. Ever since he’d been told to wrap up his affairs and head back to Meridia to prepare for his own coronation, sleep had been elusive at best.

He’d flown in to Chadae, the capital where his ancestral castle stood, only a couple of hours before. Hitching a ride on a friend’s private jet had allowed him to arrive unheralded and given him the time to unwind with a short water-polo game before facing his uncle and the rest of the council.

“What’s your name?” he asked her gruffly.

“Emma. Emma Valentine.”

She was peeking at him from beneath thick eyelashes. He stared right back at her.

“Do you work here at the castle?”

“Sort of. I’m a chef. But I just arrived last night.”

Pacio came skidding back into the pool area as she spoke and Sebastian noticed she closed her eyes more tightly instead of looking up to see what was going on. She still seemed to want to ward off reality. He wondered what she was afraid of.

“Hey, Monty,” Pacio cried, calling Sebastian by the nickname, short for Dumontier, often used for him. He was grinning and motioning toward the scene he saw, with Emma still stretched out before the prince. “This is just like Sleeping Beauty. Maybe all she needs is a kiss from…”

Sebastian shot him a quelling look before he’d finished that sentence and cut him off with a demand.

“Where’s the doctor?”

Pacio stopped short and shrugged. “We can’t find him.”

Sebastian thought for a moment. “Have you checked the stables?”

“No, we—”

“Try the stables. You can call down there from the hall phone.”

“Okay.” Pacio paused, looking down at Emma, then grinned and made a kissing motion, but Sebastian shot back a murderous look that had him hurrying away again.

He turned back to the limp figure on the shiny tile. Her breathing seemed a bit shallow to him.

“Are you falling asleep?” he asked her, incredulous.

“Just a little,” she murmured softly. “I’m so sleepy. Just let me sleep.”

Staring down at her, he wasn’t sure if he was annoyed or amused.

“I don’t think you should do that. You should probably keep talking.”

“I don’t want to talk. You talk.” She pulled the towel up around her shoulders, then opened one eye just a bit to look at him. “Tell me a story,” she suggested sleepily. “I’ll bet you’re good at that. You’re the type.”

He looked at her sharply, wondering if she was more aware than he’d thought. Maybe he was being thin-skinned, but her comment sounded like derision to him.

“I think I resent that.”

She shrugged. “It’s a free country.”

“Meridia?” he muttered cynically. “What gives you that idea?”

She didn’t answer but he hadn’t meant her to. He had mixed feelings about his native country. A love-hate relationship of sorts. Meridia was his home and now his legacy. But it was also a place that had deeply damaged too many in his family—a place where his father had died under suspicious circumstances. A place that now wanted him as king.

“When are you going to start?” she asked.

He turned, looking down at her. “Start what?”

“Telling stories.”

He stared at her, wondering if she was always this strange or if he’d caused it. “Do you seriously expect me to sit here and tell you stories?”

“Sure. Why not? We’re in a castle, aren’t we? Fairy tales would seem to be in order.”

“Have you been drinking?” he asked suddenly as the possibility occurred to him.

“Just the cooking sherry,” she shot back, then giggled. “Only kidding. No, I have not been drinking. But I’m feeling kind of…I don’t know…kind of punchy.” She gazed at him through squinted eyelids. “Can getting hit on the head make you punchy?”

He shrugged. “We’ll ask Will when he gets here. If he ever gets here.”

She frowned, shading her eyes as she looked up at him. “Who is Will?”

“The castle medical man.”

She winced, then yawned. “I don’t need a doctor. I just need a better place to sleep.”

“And I’m pretty sure I’m going to need a good stiff drink myself before this is over,” he muttered. “I might even settle for the cooking sherry. I’ve settled for worse.”

He sank back against a post and tried to get comfortable on the hard floor. Every sound in the high-ceilinged pool area echoed against the walls, every lap of water against tile, every drip, giving the place an eerie, spooky feel. He supposed he could dispel that with the sound of his own voice, but he didn’t want to do that. There was no way in hell he was going to tell her a story. He might go so far as to give her a nudge with his foot if she seemed to be drifting off. Other than that, they would wait for Will.

Emma was racing through a thick forest, dodging trees. That shimmering white vision she’d just barely glimpsed had to be a unicorn. She had to find it. There! Wasn’t that it? She ran faster. You had to be clever to catch a unicorn and now she was tiring, her breath searing her throat. Just a little further. It had to be there. Just beyond that huge ragged trunk…her feet were like stones and the unicorn’s hot breath was on her neck and…

Only it wasn’t that at all, it was a strong male hand on her shoulder and it felt divine. She looked up. It was that tall, handsome man again, the one with the incredible tan and the golden chest hair and the muscles that curled and swelled like waves on a Mediterranean sea. Was she still dreaming? He was really too good to be true.

His face was strong, his features even, and he had the most beautiful golden eyes she’d ever seen. His hair was naturally dark but the ends had been bleached out by the sun, giving him a sort of golden halo effect. That, along with the dark tan, gave mute testimony to a life spent outdoors—either doing manual labor or lazing about at seaside resorts. She had a feeling she knew which it might be.

He was the sort of man women called “hot” and for the first time in her life she thought she really understood what that meant. His touch left tingles behind. She wanted to have that feeling again.

Men like this never paid much attention to girls like her, but she supposed he was only trying to be nice since he’d been the one to knock her down. What would it be like to slip into his arms and hold that beautiful body close to hers? Just thinking of it made her pulse begin to beat a rhythm at the base of her throat. He was looking at her strangely. She had a moment of quick panic—could he read her mind?

No, probably not.

But why did he keep waking her up? She was so tired and it was so hot and humid in this place and she only wanted to close her eyes and let the world go away.

But there was someone else here now. He was testing her out, checking for injuries. His touch didn’t have the same electric charge as the other one, but it had a certain confident comfort to it and she didn’t protest as he examined just about everything there was to examine on her.

“Good lord, Monty,” the new man was saying, teasing. “I’d heard you were losing it. But I didn’t know you’d gotten to the point of having to knock a woman down and drag her off just to get a date.”

Emma had to struggle to open her eyes and see who the newcomer was. But he was worth the effort—a dark-haired, handsome man in riding clothes, bearing a small black bag and looking down at her kindly.

“I didn’t knock her down,” the even more handsome man who’d been staying with her all this time and whose name seemed to be Monty was saying defensively. “Well, not exactly…”

“I heard she got hit by a water-polo ball,” the new man said, slipping a blood-pressure cuff up her arm and starting to pump. “A water-polo ball that you threw. I’d call that a knock-down.”

“We’ve already established the guilt in this situation,” Monty responded acerbically. “But the motives were pure.”

He leaned toward her. “Emma, this irritating man is Dr Will Harris. He’ll get to the bottom of this ‘resting’ business.” He nodded toward the doctor. “Will, this is Emma Valentine. She can’t seem to stop sleeping. Maybe you can find out why.”

“Emma Valentine, ay? Pretty name.” Will smiled at her. “Pretty name for a pretty lady.” He released the pressure and began to take her pulse. “What do you do here at the castle, Emma?”

She blinked at him, then closed her eyes and searched her mind. The facts seemed to have slipped away. What was she doing here, anyway?

“She says she’s a chef.” Monty answered for her. “I didn’t know we were hiring chefs. But then, I don’t know much about what’s going on here these days.”

“Yes, I was surprised to see you back so soon,” the doctor said as he pulled the cuff back off again and took out his stethoscope. “Raring to go, I imagine.”

Monty gave a short, humorless laugh. “Hardly that.”

“Something told me you might not be completely enthusiastic with the changes around here. But I assume you will do what’s expected of you. Right?”

The silence that followed seemed ripe with an emotion she couldn’t understand, but it did seem to spur her memory.

“I’ve been hired for a special job,” she said suddenly and in a surprisingly loud voice.

She smiled. What a relief to have that information back where she could retrieve it. She needed to wake up. She had to wake up. It was her first day on this job and she couldn’t afford to blow it. She had to get herself together, enforce some self-discipline. But her eyelids were so heavy. Struggling, she opened her eyes and turned so that she could see them both.

“The coronation celebration dinners,” she added. “I’m here to plan for the big event.”

“Oh. That.”

She noted the two men give each other a meaningful look but she couldn’t imagine why and she went on.

“I came, actually, to meet with the prince. You know, the one who’s going to be crowned?” She thought for a moment, then brightened. “Prince Sebastian. That’s his name. And now they tell me he won’t be here until the weekend.”

“They told me the same thing,” the doctor said with a grin she didn’t think she was awake enough to analyze.

“Never trust anything ‘they’ tell you,” Monty offered cynically. He wasn’t grinning but he caught her eye and gave her a significant look, too. She had no idea why, and she frowned at him.

“They told me Agatha was coming as well,” Will said with studied disinterest. “Any truth to that rumor?”

“Could be,” Monty replied. “I haven’t talked to her.”

She was half sitting now, while Dr Will checked out her breathing, thumping her chest and listening intently. The entire situation felt so odd and the cavernous space with the gentle lapping of the water in the background only made it more so. She was in a castle, sitting beside an indoor swimming pool and being carefully examined by two of the most attractive men she’d ever seen. It was enough to turn a girl’s head.

But she had to keep hers right where it was. She had a job to do. She had to keep reminding herself of that.

“So what’s he like, anyway?” she asked them.

They both stared at her.

“Who?” they said at the same time.

“The prince.”

“Ah.” Will laughed softly as he put away his stethoscope. “The crown prince, now.”

“The prince?” Monty chimed in, eyes shining with what she took as amusement. “He’s a fine fellow. One of the best you’ll ever meet. The toast of the nation.”

Will snorted, but he went on.

“I’m sure songs will be written about him soon,” he said in a tone she thought might be a bit sarcastic, though she wasn’t certain she was reading him right. “Stories told, legends taken down. After all, he comes from a long line of kings, and he fits the part, if you ask me. Tall as an Alpine cedar, honest as a cloistered nun, strong as a…as a…”

“A blue ox?” Will put in helpfully.

Monty gave him a baleful look.

“Strong as a northern wind, sharp as a…”

“Serpent’s tooth,” Will interjected. “And just as yellow.”

He leaned toward her earnestly. “Don’t listen to Monty. Truth be told, the prince is an ugly bloke. His eyes are small and evil and much too close together for comfort. And he’s got bad breath and he’s a bit of a drooler, if you know what I mean.”

“Really?” Emma was pretty sure he wasn’t being serious. Despite the fact that her mind was still full of cotton, she was alert enough to know when her leg was being pulled. “I’d heard he was quite handsome.”

“Who told you that?” Monty asked with interest.

But Will waved it away. “They always say that about royalty. You know the media. Always trying to hype their main product. They give royals attributes they don’t deserve, just to make them more interesting to the public.”

Emma frowned. “I don’t know if that’s true.” Her face cleared. “Oh, you’re teasing. I know he’s very handsome. I don’t think I’ve ever seen pictures myself—I don’t really follow the society pages. But I’ve heard it from others, people who pay attention to these things. I’m sure he’s quite good-looking.”

“Well, don’t you believe it,” the doctor said cheerfully as he packed away his instruments. “I know him personally. Lazy layabout, that’s what he is. Never done a day’s worth of work in his life. Always off on some yacht in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean.”

“Isn’t that pretty much the way they all are, those royals?” Emma asked him, looking for confirmation. “At least, from what I hear.”

Monty scowled but Will nodded wisely. “Over-endowed libido, under-endowed intellect,” he noted. “That’s our boy, the prince. Take my word for it.”

Monty’s head swung around at that and his mouth opened in protest. “Hey!”

“Yes, my dear,” Will droned on. “Centuries of inbreeding.” He made a face. “Leaves them a little bewildered, you know. You’ll catch a glimpse of one now and then wandering mournfully about the castle like a lost sheep.”

“That does it,” Monty said, springing lightly to his feet and lunging for the doctor. “You’re going into the pool.”