Chapter One
Sagro Prison Island, Italy
Boots slapped on the concrete floor, keeping a regular
rhythm. The night security lights were on, enough to see the
guard who was texting on his phone as he strode out of
sight, a sly grin on his pockmarked face. A minute went by,
then another. The steel door opened then closed at the end
of the cell block.
The two a.m. check was complete. Nobody would be by again
until morning.
Roberto, fully dressed, slid out of bed, making no more
noise than his shadow as it moved across the floor. He laid
his pillow lengthwise on the bare mattress then draped the
bed with his blanket, creating a bulky form.
His sheets had been ripped, twisted into rope and wrapped
around his waist before he’d gone to bed. Now he bent and
squatted one more time to make sure the cumbersome
arrangement wouldn’t limit his movement. He adjusted a tight
strip under his left armpit before he stole to the door and
pressed the top part of the lock hard.
Click. The sound was so soft even he barely heard it.
Jose had fixed the locks. The oldest of the team, Jose had
been a locksmith before a drive-by took out his family in
the godforsaken backstreets of Bogota. With nothing to live
for, he’d signed up for the rival gang. Jose understood revenge.
So did Roberto. It pushed him forward as he stole down the
hallway, moving fast in a crouch. He listened to the snoring
of the other inmates. A bed creaked now and then as someone
turned over in his sleep. He listened for any indication
that someone noticed him, not trusting—despite the
substantial bribes and threats—that they wouldn’t betray him
and sound the alarm.
Jose was waiting for him at the water block, along with
Marco, the third member of the team.
“Any trouble?” Roberto kept his voice to a low whisper.
Marco shook his head. He was young and sullen, still not
over the fact that they’d been imprisoned. That here, on the
other side of the ocean, the boss couldn’t protect them. He
was ready to go, but didn’t think it fair that they had to
orchestrate the escape themselves. He’d griped and whined
through the preparations. Which better stop right now, right
here. Robeto flashed him a sharp look that warned him to be
on his best behavior.
The young thugs coming out of the slums these days were too
hotheaded, only after the glory, and rarely willing to put
enough effort into a job to get it done right. They wanted
the fastest car and the biggest gun, wanted to build
reputations overnight, which led to too much senseless killing.
“All’s according to plan,” Jose was saying.
Exactly what Roberto wanted to hear. His sticker, a spoon
handle sharpened into a knife, waited stashed inside a
showerhead. He retrieved the makeshift tool then went ot
work on removing a wall panel.
A hundred years ago, Sagro Prison had been the hunting
castle of some Italian king. When they’d rebuilt it into a
prison in the fifties, they changed just about everything.
Security had been upgraded several times since, but the
prison’s waste and sewer system still connected to the old
castle’s cistern.
All Roberto and his men had had to do over the endless
months that they’d been locked up here was dig through the
wall. The cistern’s ducts, carved from stone, were plenty
wide to accommodate a man.
Jose squeezed in first, then Marco, Roberto going last,
pulling the wall panel into place behind him. By morning
they’d be free men. His to do list was simple: get food,
finish the boss’s business in Trieste, then get the hell out
of Italy.
But he wouldn’t go back to Bogota, not straightaway. He had
personal business in the area which he meant to see handled.
He was going to Valtria, the small kingdom to the north, to
gain retribution for his brother’s death.
An eye for an eye, a life for a life. He might have been too
old-school to condone all the senseless killing the new
gangs did these days, but revenge was part of a man’s honor.
And he did believe that. He certainly did.
Island of Morka, Nature Preserve, Valtria
She was the scourge of his life, a relentless thorn under
his royal skin. Prince Lazlo of Valtria watched Milda Milas
bare down on him and knew what it felt like to be hunted.
A professional matchmaker from New York.
He loved his mother as much as all his brothers did, but the
Queen had gone too far this time. One of her ladies in
waiting had a cousin in New York who’d been Milda’s client.
Apparently, a recommendation had been made. He didn’t like
the idea of his mother discussing his personal life with her
ladies in waiting. Shouldn’t they have been talking about
the royal gardens or copying antique tapestries and the like
when they retired to the Queen’s private quarters?
Despite the calming, balmy breeze that streamed from the
endless azure water, Lazlo’s sense of peace was fast
disappearing. He’d been looking forward to spending the day
away from the palace, away from Milda’s harping. He should
have known she wouldn’t let a perfectly good day go by
without doing her best to ruin it. A dull throb started up
in the knee he’d once injured in a crash. Maybe his
subconscious was beginning to associate her with pain.
“And there I was, thinking I could hide from you here,” he
said, when she reached him.
He liked the island of Morka, fifty miles off the Italian
coast, an inhabited chunk of land in the Mediterranean Sea,
owned by the Valtrian royal family and set up as a nature
preserve. With its wild olive and orange groves, the place
was a veritable paradise—but for Milda Milas’s unfortunate
presence.
“You Highness.” She stopped in front of him with that
ra-ra-hurra look that hardly left her face whenever she
dealt with him. She seemed the think that if she smiled wide
enough and pretended that what she was doing to him was
normal—wonderful, even—somehow he could be tricked into
agreeing with her.
“I don’t know how you got here. Never mind that.” He
reconsidered and cut to the point. “You should leave,” he
told her, firmly. “I’m not playing your games today. I’ve
made other plans.”
Since the top of her head only came up to his shoulders, she
usually raised to the tips of her toes when she wanted to
browbeat him into yet another one of her crazy plans. She
was stretching up so hard at the moment that she looked like
a ballet dancer. The wind whipped her long, reddish-brown
hair around her slim face. Her eyes, the exact dusky blue of
his first race car, narrowed as she dropped the smile,
recognizing smartly that it wasn’t going to work today.
“You should face your responsibilities, Your Highness. Don’t
you think all this endless evasion is childish?”
She had his gander up in thirty seconds flat. A new record.
She knew she was annoying him, but she didn’t care. She had
the Queen’s protection. She’d been given fee reign, God help
him.
“I’m childish?” He drew up an eyebrow slowly, regally, and
regarded her with a chilly expression he’d learned early on
in life from his mother. “You torture me for money. What
does that make you?
She dropped back on her heels and stuck her chin out, her
eyes and lips narrowing. “To be honest, I’d torture you for
free. If that makes you feel better.”
He was taken aback for a moment. He was used to more respect
as a prince. Although not from her, admittedly.
“You know what I think?” she asked, with a smirk, losing the
last of her polite veneer.
He allowed a subtle sneer. “A better question is,
mademoiselle, do I care?”
“I think you’re afraid that you couldn’t hold an intelligent
woman’s attention over the long term. That’s why you engage
only in nightlong, scandalous affairs with those twits.” Her
tone turned to lecturing. “Your conduct is embarrassing the
monarchy and the Queen. You were caught on tape in a
compromising situation, for love’s sake.” She rolled her
dusky blue eyes in a way that told him exactly what she
thought of that.
Not that until now he’d been forced to guess. She had
expressed her opinion a number of times since the
unfortunate incident.
He tried to put this latest scandal out of his mind. No
chance of that with her around. She was going to
lecture him on his duties as a prince? His blood pressure
inched up. He drew a long, slow breath.
“You know what I think?” he asked, and kept going, without
giving her a chance to pipe up. “I think American kamikaze
nuptial consultants should stay in their own country.”
He was pleased with himself for resisting the urge to raise
his voice. He was not going to lose control because of her.
He was a prince. He was certainly up to the challenge of
ignoring a troublesome matchmaker. “Where are my brothers?”
He was supposed to be on the island with them, and
only them, on a day hike. Miklos’s idea. Since the
failed rebel attacks of the past two years, the six royal
brothers hardly got to spend time together anymore. If he
didn’t like Miklos’s and Benedek’s wives so much, he would
have blamed it on them, but Princess Judi and Princess Rayne
were too lovely to fault for anything. He couldn’t truly
blame his brothers for not wanting to leave home, even if he
never understood what had possessed them to rush into marriage.
Single life suited him just fine. Being a prince, he already
had more expectations and regulations, more rules governing
his every move than he cared to think about. Marriage would
have been just another prison.
Which Milda refused to understand.
“Your brothers aren’t coming.” Her slim fingers worried the
colorful bead bracelet on her left wrist.
Why couldn’t they just call, instead of sending a message
with her, of all people, when—
Lazlo froze, a terrible premonition holding him
speechless for a moment before he could ask “This is another
one of your traps, isn’t it?”
So help him God—
“You’ll be going hiking with the Lady Lidia, the Lady
Szilvia and the Lady Adel.” Her “this will be fun, you’ll
see” smile returned.
He swore in a way that should have been beneath him as a
prince. “My brothers helped you set me up?” A new low.
Incomprehensible, really. The sense of betrayal was
overwhelming.
And her guilty look confirmed everything.
His brothers had probably thought it was a grand joke. “I’m
going to murder them,” he muttered.
History was full of princes who killed their own brothers to
get closer to the throne. He didn’t care about the throne.
But he might be driven to murder by Milda Milas yet. Except,
then centuries from now historians would speculate that
maybe he’d been secretly in love with her, and the act had
been motivated by jealousy or some such nonsense. That would
be intolerable. She was already messing up his life; he
wasn’t going to let her sully his legacy.
“How dare you?” He stepped toward her, ready to take her to
task, but caught sight of a sizable pile of duffel bags
further up the beach. He’d thought them a pile of rocks
earlier, with the sun in his eyes, but now that a small
cloud blocked some of the brilliant rays, he could see that
he’d been mistaken. “What is that?”
They couldn’t have needed all that equipment for one day.
His own guards were in the process of unloading his
speedboat, removing the two boxes that contained the food
and drink he and his brothers would have needed until they
returned to the palace this evening.
“A two-week hike?” she squeaked, cleared her throat, went
back up on her tiptoes then said again, in a deeper tone of
self-confidence she must have practiced in the mirror, “A
two-week hike with the ladies.” Her damned smile was in full
bloom.
He glanced around but didn’t see any desperate woman ready
to drag him to the altar. Excellent. He had plenty of time
to run for the boat. “Have you lost her mind?”
She drew her slim shoulders up, looking like some sort of
exotic bird taking up defensive position. Or getting ready
to attack. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was
about to be pecked to death.
“The ladies went to see the Painted Rocks. They should be
back shortly. You need to spend time with intelligent,
self-sufficient women, and stay away from your empty-headed
beauties for a few days,” she stated.
So she admitted that the three ladies in question weren’t
beauties. Not that he could bring that up without proving
himself to be shallow—of which she accused him endlessly.
The impatient growl that escaped him didn’t seem to alarm
her in the least. “Once you calm down, Your Highness, you’ll
see this was a good idea.” She didn’t back away. She never
backed down from him, one of her many annoying qualities.
“By tonight, I promise you’ll feel a lot better about this.”
The only thing that would have made him feel better would
have been tossing her into the sea. Sadly, being a prince,
he’d been raised better than to threaten bodily harm to a
woman. Not even a woman who was dead set on ruining his life.
She wasn’t going to quit until she saw him married. She was
the type to see that the job got done. No matter what. In
anyone else, he could have appreciated the drive. He could
appreciate little in her. They’d been doing battle for
months now.
A wave of weariness hit him. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Her gaze never wavered. “For one, as you pointed out, I get
paid for it.”
“I could pay you more to go away.”
“I would never break my contract. You should be grateful.
I’m here to help you. The Queen gave you six months to
announce that you’ve chosen a bride. She wants to see you
settled down. You must end the scandals.”
“I still have another month.” In fact, he’d been counting on
that last month of freedom rather desperately.
“Exactly.”
“Two weeks on this blasted island would waste half.
Absolutely not. When that boat leaves in a few minutes, I’m
leaving with it.”
“And the ladies? Common courtesy—“
“If you want to stay with the ladies, be my guest. Have a
pajama party.” He ignored the intriguing picture that
flashed into his mind and focused on her clenched jaw instead.
But the next moment she was forcing a smile again. He hated
how cheerful she always was, while she tortured him.
“Two weeks in this beautiful place is exactly what you
need.” She sounded like she actually believed it. “By the
time we come back for you, you will have made your choice
The Queen and the country will be happy.”
“Dare I ask, what about me?”
“Try to give these women a chance. Maybe you’ll fall in love
with one of them.” Her eyes brightened at the mention of the
L word.
“In two weeks?” Was she for real? Sadly, she was. She had an
unshakable, deep-seated belief in romance that annoyed the
hell out of him. He gave her his most discouraging
expression, the one he normally reserved for ambushing
paparazzi.
But her eyebrows stayed up, the corners of her lips tugged
into that fake encouraging smile, her gaze steady on him.
“Stranger things have happened.”
A lot of strange things had happened to him lately, his
mother hiring the pushiest woman in the world to force him
to wed being one of them. But the chances of him falling in
love were slim to none. For that to happen, he would have to
believe in love to begin with.
There was no point in further bickering with her. They were
too different. They would never understand each other. He
glanced at the boat, ready to go, and realized that the two
guards had disappeared, leaving the boxes of food on the
bluff above the tide line. “Where did Ben and Vince go?”
She worried her bead bracelet again for a brief, unguarded
moment before she responded. “They’ll guard the island’s
perimeter. They’ll be in radio contact with each other, but
not with you. I can’t risk you bullying them with some fake
emergency into coming to pick you up.”
The woman boggled his mind. She was beyond all belief. “Good
plan.” He couldn’t help a sneer. “And what would have
happened if there’d been an emergency?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” she said, apparently still
thinking that she could make him stay.
He glanced toward his jacket, draped over the side of the
boat, his cell phone in the pocket. He needed to pay closer
attention to her. She wasn’t to be underestimated. With some
luck, she could have stranded him. The thought was
disturbing.
He needed to maker her see reason and quit this sordid
business. “You really expected me to spend two weeks in the
bush with a bunch of wilting lilies? I’m a racer, not a
camper. And I bet your ladies haven’t seen more nature than
what can be found at the palace gardens. What, exactly, did
you think we would be doing out here?”
She put that pert nose of hers into the air and flashed him
a smug look. “Lady Lidia is an herbalist, Lady Szilvia is a
survival specialist and Lady Adel is a doctor at your
favorite ski resort.”
He sure didn’t remember her. Which must have meant she
wasn’t a looker. Then again, he preferred to sustain his
injuries at the racetrack, so maybe he hadn’t been visited
by the resort’s doctor in the past.
“I’m to attend a race tomorrow evening.” It was to be the
first time one of his cars was running with a modified
engine, a major invention he needed to see in action. He
needed to make manufacturing decisions based on tomorrow’s
race. She was interfering with is business.
“Prince Lazlo-“
“Enough.” He was out of patience with her and her meddling.
She’d been relentlessly after him for the last five months,
since the Queen had sicced her on him. “So you decided to
parade the country cows.” He practically growled the words.
“You need to understand, Milda, that I’m not some prize bull
you can lead into the pasture for breeding.”
“Prince Laz—“
“No.” He raised a hand, palm out. “I don’t care what these
women want from me—title, money or their children in the
line of succession. They need to find another way of getting
it. So you collected a homely bunch of ambitious…” he
swallowed the word a prince wouldn’t utter, and said
“…ladies. Read my lips. I don’t want any of them.” He pushed
by her to stride toward the boat.
“Prince Lazlo.”
“Goodbye, Milda.”
But something in her voice as she called his name again
stopped him. He turned to give her a piece of his mind, in
case she still harbored some doubts regarding how he felt
about the evil job she’d been hired to do.
And he saw the three ladies.
They had come out of the wild olive grove. From the look on
their faces, they’d been standing within hearing range when
he’d made that country cow comment. Blast it, he thought.
By God, he was tired of this. He liked the chase between the
sexes, another sport to him. But, call him old-fashioned, he
liked to be the one to do the chasing. He inclined his head,
his jaw so tight he could barely push out the single word
“Ladies.”
They looked vaguely familiar—and were pretty, to be fair—but
he couldn’t place them. No big surprise there. He’d run into
a lot of women over the years.
“Your Highness.” They curtsied, but if looks could kill…
Which was surprising. The women he regularly saw at court
were more of the simpering kind—lots of eyelash batting and
that sort of thing. He hated simpering. But maybe these
three were different. Maybe Milda had done her homework.
He still didn’t care. He wasn’t going to be forced into
marriage.
What a crazy, absolutely insane idea this has been—him on a
deserted island with three proper young ladies. Ridiculous,
really. For two weeks!
He gave them an apologetic smile he had to force. They’d
been inconvenienced as much as he had. “I’m sorry you’ve
been mislead. Why don’t you wait in the boat? I’ll take you
back to the mainland in a minute.”
The boat could only seat four. Which meant Milda and the two
bodyguards would have to wait until someone returned for
them. Now there was a happy thought. With some luck, the
pickup would take a long time. For a moment, he even toyed
with the thought of not sending his boat back. Two weeks of
freedom without her hounding him… The idea held considerable
merit.
“See what you’ve done?” he asked, once the ladies were out
of earshot, as they marched toward the boat. Obedient they
were, he couldn’t help noticing. After dealing with Milda
for the last five challenging months, he was beginning to
appreciate obedience more and more in a woman. “You managed
to further damage my reputation. You should quit and go home
to New York. You’re a PR liability.”
No evidence of her famous smile now. Her face was turning
red. Her delicate nostrils flared. He wouldn’t have been
surprised to see smoke coming out of her dainty ears.
“I damaged your reputation?” She put her hands on her slim
hips. The movement stretched her shirt over her breasts.
They were on of her very best features, made the endless
hours she spent lecturing him bearable. “I damaged your
reputation?” She was sputtering.
“You can think of ways to make it up to me while you wait
for someone to come for you.” He smirked as he stepped away
from her, ready to saunter across the beach.
“I’m fighting for my business,” she warned him. “My
livelihood and my heritage. I will not give up. I
will not give in.”
“And I’m fighting for my freedom. Something I most cherish,”
he told her… and heard the motor start.
He spun around in time to see the boat pull away, steered by
Lady Adel.
“Wait!” Sand flew up around him as he broke into sprint. His
busted knee slowed him. And the boat was too far, pulling
away rapidly.
They couldn’t leave him, dammit. Not here, not with Milda.
“Wait!” He dashed into the surf after them to no avail. But
he refused to give up. He swam like he never swam before.
Like his life depended on it.
One of the ladies gave him a smug little wave.
The distance between them was growing.
And growing.
His lungs burned from the effort he put into propelling his
body through the water. Then he stopped completely, at last
accepting the unacceptable. He swore an unprincely streak
and let himself sink for a moment, let the waves wash over
his head before he pushed up to the surface again. He
treaded water for another few seconds, too stunned to think.
Then, as outrage took over, he turned to swim for the shore.
He strode back on dry land, fuming and dripping. “You!” He
bore down on the woman of his nightmares. “Get on your cell
phone and get another boat out here.”
Her stricken look stopped him. They were practically nose to
nose anyway, only inches separating them from each other.
Her big blue eyes went impossibly wide. She smelled like
spring, the perfume the Queen’s own parfumeir had created
for her, a scent that lately haunted him, even in his sleep.
“I want another boat. Pronto. As in yesterday.” He barked
the words at her.
She was very quiet all of a sudden.
He didn’t have the patience for this. “Speak.”
“My organizer fell into the water on the way here with the
ladies.” She winced. “I’m a bad swimmer. I always get
nervous around water. I should have—“
“I don’t care about your organizer.” The damn thing was her
ever-present companion. Her nefarious plans for his life
were no doubt in it. He’d been so distracted by her sudden
appearance on the island that he hadn’t even noticed it was
missing. “Good riddance.”
“My cell phone was tucked in the front.”
He walked away from her before he said something he
regretted. But called back, after a moment, “Will the guards
be checking on us?”
“No.” Her voice was small. A first. “They’re supposed to
avoid contact at all cost. They’re to stay out of sight at
all times. They won’t be following you or anything. We, um,
wanted to give you and the ladies privacy. The guards are
only here to prevent the paparazzi from getting on the
island if they get wind of your trip. For all intents and
purposes, we’re alone on an uninhabited island. That’s the
feel I was going for to foster a certain sense of…”
He glared, daring her to say the word “romance.” That and
true love were her favorite things. He’d tried to tell her
in vain that there came a time when a grown woman should
stop believing in fairy tales.
She closed her mouth without finishing the sentence, but she
didn’t fool him. She was hopeless. He turned from her again,
to survey the shore. There had to be a way off… He thought
of something suddenly. She was very methodical about ruining
his life. She was definitely the type to plan for contingencies.
He turned back to her. “What was the emergency plan? If I
broke an arm, how would I have called for help?” He was a
royal person. There was always a backup plan for unforeseen
contingencies.
She was studying her feet, her sandals half sunk into the
soft sand. “The Lady Adel had an emergency radio in her
medical bag,” she muttered.
“The red bag on her shoulder?” He remembered that bag. It
was the one the doctor walked to the boat with.