Taming the Prince

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.

Two

By the time their jet took off from LAX, it was past one-thirty, so backed up was the air traffic. The moment the wheels left the ground, Shane reminded himself he’d be trapped in this little metal bucket for sixteen hours with only a few infrequent breaks, and told himself to relax. Better yet, he thought, sleep. It had been one helluva day—hell, two helluva days—and God knew he was close to exhaustion. But something kept him wide awake—gosh, he couldn’t imagine what—so he remained wide-awake, assessing his situation instead.

He replayed everything in his head that Marcus had told him the day before, correlating it with everything the two of them had discussed the last time they spoke. But much of it still made no sense to him. Adopted. That, of course, was what was spinning fastest and foremost in his brain. Marcus and Shane had been adopted as newborns, his brother had told him yesterday, because their mother had been unable to conceive. Neither parent had ever seen fit to tell the boys, evidently. The opportunity had never arisen. There had never been any cause. The timing was never right. Take your pick of lame excuses. But Marcus had assured him that their father had verified it when he’d asked for the facts. Still doubtful, however, Shane had tried to call their mother to hear her version of things. But he’d been unable to reach her, and she hadn’t returned his call by the time he left his apartment. He’d had to leave a message for her instead.

Adopted. It didn’t seem possible, but in hindsight, it explained so many things. Deep down, he believed what his brother had told him. But he hadn’t had time to process it all. Adopted. Shane still wasn’t sure how he felt about it. On one hand, it changed nothing about his life. On the other hand, it changed everything.

But even that was the least of his worries right now. Because in addition to having been adopted as a newborn, there was a chance—a reasonably good one, evidently—that Shane and Marcus had been born in Penwyck to its rulers, and that they had been switched at birth with a different pair of fraternal twin boys born at roughly the same time. The mother of those boys, then a recently widowed friend of the queen’s, had died in childbirth, and the queen had arranged for them to be adopted by a wealthy American couple—Joseph and Francesca Cordello.

Somewhere along the line, though, everything had gone awry. The queen’s brother-in-law, Broderick, disgruntled that his brother had inherited the throne instead of him, had instigated a switch of the twins, replacing Owen and Dylan Penwyck with the orphaned boys, and sending the infant princes off to be adopted by the Cordellos in Chicago instead. At least, that was what Broderick was claiming. Queen Marissa, who had known of her brother-in-law’s intentions, thought she’d thwarted the plan before it could be carried out, but now, apparently, she had reason to think otherwise. Now, apparently, she had reason to think that maybe the boys she had raised as her own were not her own, and that the American Cordello twins might very well be.

Frankly, the whole situation made Shane’s head spin. Even after having had two days to mull it all over, he was still trying to figure out the whys and wherefores and what-the-hells. That was another reason why he had agreed to this trip to Penwyck—just to have explained to him once and for all, hopefully with audiovisual aids, what the hell was going on. He honestly couldn’t believe that he and Marcus were the missing heirs to the throne. His gut told him no, and his gut was never wrong. Queen Marissa, too, seemed to think it unlikely, though she did grant there was a possibility. That was why she had insisted on Shane’s and Marcus’s coming personally to Penwyck, so that they could administer a DNA test on them, in the queen’s presence, just to make sure the Cordello twins weren’t, in fact, the Penwyck twins. Or vice versa.

Or whatever.

Oh, man, did Shane have a headache now. And he was already exhausted, before his trip had even begun. Sixteen hours, he marveled again. And all of it stuck on a little jet with an escort who seemed disinclined to do anything more than rigorously read big books and sip tea.

The jet might be small, he noted, but it lacked nothing in comfort. He and the prim-and-proper Miss Wallington were the only two passengers on a vessel that was outfitted for a dozen more, and one of the flight attendants had pressed a Scotch and water—damned good Scotch, too, he mused as he enjoyed a second sip—into his hand within moments of him sitting down. Obviously the service was going to be excellent. And the decor was posh and luxurious, reminding him more of a five-star hotel than a jet—not that he had much experience with five-star hotels, not since he was a child at any rate—with oversize seats and plush carpeting down the aisle and pink-tinted lighting to make things easy on the eyes. And his traveling companion…

Well. He certainly had no complaints there, either. Talk about easy on the eyes. When Marcus had called him that morning to go over final preparations for the trip, he’d said the queen was sending an envoy to meet him at LAX who would accompany him to Penwyck. Shane had immediately pictured some doddering old stuffed shirt with a walruslike handlebar mustache decked out in an overly decorated uniform of the Empire. Even when Marcus had said the envoy was named Sara Wallington, Shane had altered his description only slightly, making the stuffed shirt a stuffed blouse, instead. The rest of the description had remained pretty much the same, right down to the mustache, though it hadn’t been quite so walruslike on the female version.

But Sara Wallington was in no way walruslike. To put it mildly. No, she was, in fact, one of the most beautiful women Shane had ever laid eyes on. She was also, unfortunately, he was fast realizing, one of the most refined. Dammit. With her crisp, cultivated accent, and her pale red hair twisted up into some kind of bun, and her sea-green eyes currently hidden behind a pair of small, oval-shaped, wire-rimmed reading glasses that she’d donned immediately after sitting down and unfolding the huge tome she currently had open in her lap, she might very well be the owner of this jet, so princesslike was her demeanor.

Still, he didn’t think he was the only one who’d felt the little sizzle of heat that had arced between them during their initial encounter. Prim and proper Miss Wallington might be, but there was interest—and more—lying beneath her cool, pink-sweatered facade. And Shane couldn’t wait to explore and find out just what that more might be.

He stifled a groan. Just what he needed. Trapped in close quarters for sixteen hours with a beautiful woman who was obviously interested in him, too, and she was exactly the kind of woman he should avoid. She couldn’t be some flashy, fun-loving, devil-may-care hedonist who had as much experience as he had himself and might be amenable to a little short-term fooling around once they arrived in Penwyck—or even before they arrived in Penwyck, he thought further with a lascivious glance at the washroom at the front of the cabin—and then ride off into the sunset with a cheery “Cheerio.” No, she had to be some delicate, pearls-wearing, pink-sweater-encased, chaste-looking little nun who would doubtless find it unseemly to break into a sweat. At least, into the kind of sweat that Shane had in mind for the two of them.

She for sure looked like the kind of woman who would want a man to stick around for a while. And not the kind of man Shane was, either. No, Miss Sara Wallington would no doubt want some guy in tweeds and button-downs and riding boots, a man who could say words like poppycock and bumbershoot with a straight face, a man who would feel more at home viewing pictures in an art gallery while sipping champagne than digging in the dirt on a construction site while anticipating his first Rolling Rock of the evening. A man who would want the same things she probably wanted out of life—commitment, kids, cocker spaniel and the thatched-roof cottage with a cobblestone fence.

Ah, well, Shane told himself philosophically. It wasn’t like he didn’t have other things to occupy his mind right now, what with all this missing-princes-and-switched-at-birth-and-heir-to-the-throne business going on in his life. Not that it was his mind, necessarily, he’d been thinking of engaging with Miss Pink Sweater over there. Miss Pink Sweater who didn’t seem to be any more interested in sleeping than Shane was. Unfortunately, her condition obviously hadn’t come about because she was preoccupied by the same lusty thoughts that were trying to preoccupy Shane at the moment. No, it was more because Miss Pink Sweater over there was too busy reading her big book. And daintily sipping her tea. And totally not even noticing he was there.

Dammit.

The problem was, Shane didn’t want to occupy his mind with all those other things right now. Maybe not ever. How the hell was a man supposed to react to the news that he might be the heir to a royal throne in a country he’d hardly thought about before? King Shane? Gee, that didn’t sound like the appropriate moniker for a blue-collar construction worker whose closest brush with nobility had been his childhood visits to White Castle. There had to have been a royal foul-up somewhere. Still, he hadn’t quite been able to turn down Queen Marissa’s royal command when she’d insisted he come to Penwyck to join his brother, Marcus, until they could get to the bottom of the mystery.

Hey, if nothing else, Shane thought, he could have a nice little vacation and spend some time with his brother. No matter that he didn’t have any vacation time coming. He was pretty sure he’d lost his job anyway, by taking off the way he had yesterday. Mr. Mendoza hadn’t looked as if he’d believed the story about King Shane any more than Shane believed it himself.

Inevitably, his gaze stole across the aisle to linger on Sara Wallington again. She really was beautiful, he thought, no matter how tightly she bound herself. The loose sweater and tailored skirt had done nothing to hide her curves, and a few errant wisps of silky hair had fallen from their confinement, giving her the look of a woman who might just be able to let herself go wild once in a while if given the right kind of provocation. Her profile, in the soft light raining down from above her, was elegant and fine, her skin creamy and flawless, touched with just a hint of pink on her high cheekbones. But it was her mouth that caused Shane to feel most restless. Full and delicious looking, all he could do was wonder how she would taste if he touched his lips to hers.

Her head snapped up suddenly then, and she turned to look at him, her gaze falling directly onto his. Her expression was slightly alarmed, as if she’d somehow known what he was thinking about—or maybe she’d been thinking about it, too? he couldn’t help wondering—and the pink on her cheeks darkened some when she saw him gazing back at her so resolutely. Instead of calling him on it, however, she only smiled—albeit with a bit of starch.

“Was there something you wanted, Mr. Cordello?” she asked softly.

Oooo, loaded question, Shane thought. What would she do if he answered her truthfully? he wondered. “No, nothing,” he lied instead. “I think I have everything I need.”

“Excellent,” she replied. “Should you think of something…” Her voice trailed off before she finished the remark, as if Shane should know how she’d intended to finish it.