“You’re Out Of Here!”

Dan’s wide hand shot out. He seized Elly by the arm and marched her firmly toward the door.

Elly had only enough time to swipe her purse from the coffee table and grab her coat from the back of her chair before he ushered her out of the room.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, and I don’t care. You’re leaving, lady.”

“But don’t you want to—”

Before she could get out the rest of her sentence, she found herself standing alone in the cold ocean mist on Madge’s lemon-bright porch. After the door slammed behind her, she could still feel the pressure of Dan’s strong fingers on her arm and his palm on her backside. The nerve of the man. He’d thrown her out!

Then the implication of what had just happened hit her. A triumphant grin spread slowly across her lips.

She had found her missing prince!

Dear Reader,

Celebrate the rites of spring with six new passionate, powerful and provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire!

Reader favorite Anne Marie Winston’s Billionaire Bachelors: Stone, our March MAN OF THE MONTH, is a classic marriage-of-convenience story, in which an overpowering attraction threatens a platonic arrangement. And don’t miss the third title in Desire’s glamorous in-line continuity DYNASTIES: THE CONNELLYS, The Sheikh Takes a Bride by Caroline Cross, as sparks fly between a sexy-as-sin sheikh and a feisty princess.

In Wild About a Texan by Jan Hudson, the heroine falls for a playboy millionaire with a dark secret. Her Lone Star Protector by Peggy Moreland continues the TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: THE LAST BACHELOR series, as an unlikely love blossoms between a florist and a jaded private eye.

A night of passion produces major complications for a doctor and the social worker now carrying his child in Dr. Destiny, the final title in Kristi Gold’s miniseries MARRYING AN M.D. And an ex-marine who discovers he’s heir to a royal throne must choose between his kingdom and the woman he loves in Kathryn Jensen’s The Secret Prince.

Kick back, relax and treat yourself to all six of these sexy new Desire romances!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

The Secret Prince
Kathryn Jensen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KATHRYN JENSEN

has written many novels for young readers as well as for adults. She speed walks, works out with weights and enjoys ballroom dancing for exercise, stress reduction and pleasure. Her children are now grown. She lives in Maryland with her writing companion—Sunny, a lovable terrier-mix adopted from a shelter.

Having worked as a hospital switchboard operator, department store sales associate, bank clerk and elementary school teacher, Kathryn now splits her days between writing her own books and teaching fiction writing at two local colleges and through a correspondence course. She enjoys helping new writers get a start and speaks “at the drop of a hat” at writers’ conferences, libraries and schools across the country.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

One

“You’re mine, lady.” Daniel Eastwood tossed his jeans on top of the sweatshirt already in the sand and fixed his dark eyes on her. “Giving me the cold shoulder won’t keep me away.”

She was even more beautiful this morning than she’d been the day before…or the one before that. The muscles angling across his taut stomach and lean thighs tensed, primed for action. He rolled his wide shoulders in anticipation.

Three long running strides, and he dove into the chill waves of the Atlantic. She yielded, as always, to his fierce strokes. Her cool fingers supported him, beckoned him to deeper waters, challenged him. He could feel her strength in each liquid gray-green surge. He swam exactly half a mile along the deserted beach before flip-kicking around to slice back through the icy foam, back toward where he had started, directly below the pastel bungalows of the Haven.

Dan had sustained an intimate relationship with the sea since the first day he had seen her. The school field trip to Ocean City had carried him a good three hours by bus from the grim streets of south Baltimore, a world away. Never had he forgotten the sense of awe, respect, and fascination he felt that day—a city kid, standing on that endless stretch of pale sand, so much water all in one place. Water that seemed to breathe with its own movement and the motions of living things hidden beneath it. And all that clean air hitting him in the face, filling his lungs, it made him feel strong and new inside. Although he had to return to the city with his classmates that day, he had never forgotten the ocean’s beauty or wanted to live anywhere but beside her.

As soon as he was old enough, he had returned to take a summer job as a lifeguard. And each June after that, with the exception of those four he had spent with the marines, he had been drawn back to her as surely as the tide is pulled by the moon. He never lost sight of her capricious temperament, though. The unpredictable squalls. Sudden drops just off shore that hadn’t been there days before. Riptides that could seize a strong swimmer, drag him out to frigid depths, and rob him of his will to ever breathe again. He loved her beauty and power, despite her faults.

As he turned his head to draw a final breath that would carry him the last four strokes of his morning regime, he glimpsed a woman standing beside his clothes, her hand held delicately above her eyes to shade them from the early-morning sun. She gave the impression of having come for him, not just someone idly watching a lone swimmer brave fifty-degree water.

“What the devil,” he muttered, swallowing a mouthful of salt water in his distraction. His people knew not to disturb him at this time of day. That is, if any of them were in the office this early. Setting his feet down, he stood in chest-deep water, the sand sucking and scraping beneath the pads of his feet as he studied her.

Not a local. He would have recognized her this time of year with all the tourists gone. She was tall for a woman, maybe up to his chin, which would make her about five-nine. Her hair was russet streaked with pink-gold highlights from the dawn sky, pulled back in a prim knot at the nape of her neck. Her dark-green business suit seemed absurd beachwear. Tan leather pumps dangled from one crooked finger. Her mouth was pulled into an annoyed pout. The tiny grains of sand sifting between the threads of her pantyhose probably weren’t helping her mood.

But as soon as he started up the slope out of the water, her expression changed. The water line crept teasingly down his chest, not yet revealing the presence or lack of a bathing suit. Her eyes widened with alarm. He smiled, kept on coming, and soon the upper edge of his flesh-molding Speedo showed above the white spume.

Immediately, her lips lifted in a weak smile of relief.

Dan chuckled to himself. What he would have given to have been swimming in the buff that morning, just to watch the shock in her pretty eyes.

A nippy breeze off the water hit him, and the sudden cold took his breath away. “Throw me that towel!” he called to her.

She scowled as if she hadn’t at first heard him over the grating, gurgling rush of the waves against the sand. Looking around, she focused on a generous pile of terrycloth near his clothing and scooped it up. “Isn’t November a little extreme for swimming in Maryland?”

“Not for me.” He couldn’t resist. “I’m naturally hot-blooded.”

She rolled her eyes and tossed the towel at him. “Oh please—”

“Seriously. My body temperature runs two degrees above normal. Always has. I draw the line, though, at breaking through ice for my morning constitutional.”

“Limits are good.” Her eyes sparkled with humor.

Elly forced herself to look past the near-naked man toward the softly glowing horizon. She tried to remember the reason she was standing on a beach in the middle of winter in her stocking feet. But Dan Eastwood was very difficult to stop looking at. No male she’d ever personally met possessed a body like that. Wide, muscled swimmer’s shoulders, a rock-hard stomach, and hips that slimmed to strong, efficient kicking levers. But she hadn’t come to flirt with the owner of the Haven. Her mission was much more important than that and, she reminded herself, time was of the essence.

“You’re Daniel Robert Eastwood?” she asked, risking another glance his way. God, he was gorgeous!

“I’m Eastwood. And you?”

He was drying off his beautifully muscled chest, his long, strong arms—the towel dropped lower—his everywhere. She looked away, tiny beads of sweat springing up beneath her hairline despite the frigid air. “I’m Elizabeth Anderson. I need to ask you a few questions, if you can spare me ten minutes.”

He frowned. “If you’re selling hotel supplies, you’ll need to see my business partner, Kevin Hunter. He takes care of all the ordering. His office is in the main building.”

“I’ve already spoken with Mr. Hunter. He told me where you’d be.”

“He did, did he?” She liked the way his dark eyes flashed at her, suggesting he wasn’t at all displeased with his partner’s decision.

With a sudden jolt, Elly realized that she had been running the tip of her tongue across her upper lip and she stopped herself. He might read the gesture as an appreciation of his near-nakedness, which of course it was. But it was crucial that she keep her mind on the business at hand. A lot of people, very important people—not the least of which was her father—were depending on her.

As Dan tugged his sweatshirt down over his head, he snuck a good peek. She looked slim and healthy, though a little on the pale side, as if her work rarely took her out into the sunshine and she didn’t take much time off for outdoor recreation. Her pleated skirt was short, revealing elegant, long legs. Her breasts…hard to tell. All he could make out was a promising swell beneath the ultra-conservative suit jacket. Pity it wasn’t August. She’d have been hard put not to strip down under Ocean City’s blazing sun.

“Suppose we walk up to my house,” he suggested. “You can tell me what this is all about.”

“Why don’t you get yourself dressed, Mr. Eastwood? I’ll meet you back at your office.”

“That’s not convenient.” He started walking away from her, up the sloping beach. A moment later, he heard her scurrying behind him in the sand, and he smiled to himself.

“Why isn’t it convenient?” she called out.

“I have a nine o’clock. No telling how long the meeting might last. Ever heard of making appointments, Miss Anderson?”

“There isn’t time. I need to speak with you right away.”

Dan stopped and turned to face her. The urgency in her tone signaled trouble. “Maybe we’d better settle this right here. What’s the big crisis?”

She sighed and gazed thoughtfully along the wind-swept beach then turned back to study his face with an odd intensity.

“Talk fast,” he prompted. Pretty soon his fingers were going to fall off from the cold. After that, who knew what would be next.

“All right then,” she snapped, giving him an irritated look. “I am a professional genealogist. I work for my father’s company, and we’ve been hired to verify the ancestors and descendants of a gentleman, now deceased. There’s a possibility you might be related to his family.”

He laughed. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” she said. “All I need to do is ask you a few simple questions, then I’ll be out of your hair.” She tipped her head to observe him. “Your lips are turning blue. I suppose it’s all right if we talk at your place, since it’s so cold outside.”

“Thank you.” He stepped up onto the boardwalk that ran over a mile along the shore. Most of the structures at the far end of the driftwood-gray planks were high-rise condominiums and hotels. But here, in the older part of town, along with the arcades, snack shacks and amusement park rides, were a few of the older-style beach bungalows that had survived the ocean’s violent mood swings. Four years ago when Hurricane Evelyn had swept away entire blocks of the low wooden structures, Dan had seen the opportunity he’d been waiting for. He was out of the Corps, had earned his degree in business on the GI Bill and saved up a nest egg. He was looking for an investment that would keep him close to his beloved beach.

He and his best friend Kevin put together a proposal to buy the ruined property. They raised the level of the land by bringing in tons of fill, built protective man-made dunes, then erected sturdy, smaller versions of the original bungalows—twenty-five of them in a cluster. The Haven evolved into a far more successful business than either of them had expected. Dan couldn’t help feeling proud of what they’d accomplished.

But now that most of the hard work had been done, the days often ran together. The off-season was particularly lonely. After Labor Day, the tourists disappeared, including most of the dateable women. But here was pert, intriguing Elizabeth Anderson with her burnished locks, long legs, and baffling need to interrogate him. He toyed with the tempting idea of canceling his nine o’clock to spend the morning with her…if he could find a way to stretch her promised ten minutes to a few hours.

“So tell me about my mystery family.” He opened the door to the first house they came to and waved her inside.

“We don’t know that they are your family,” she cautioned. “Not yet. That’s why I need to talk to you.”

“So shoot.” He tossed the damp towel on the arm of the tan leather sofa and she followed it with a look of female disapproval for his casual housekeeping.

“What are your mother’s and father’s full names?”

“My mother is Margaret Jennings Eastwood. She goes by Madge. My father, I never knew. His name was Carl Eastwood. He died shortly after I was born.”

She nodded, sliding a small pad of paper and pen from her purse. Elizabeth wrote a few notes. “And the date of your birth?”

He told her.

“That makes you, let’s see…thirty-two?” He nodded. “Your mother’s current address and phone number?” she asked smoothly.

He stopped halfway into the bedroom and turned to face her, suddenly suspicious. “Why do you need to know that?”

“I’m sure she’ll be as interested as you are in your shared heritage,” she said with a brilliant smile. But her eyes shifted away from his before she’d finished speaking. He wondered if she might be concealing something he should know before giving her more information.

“If you need to speak with my mother, I’ll take you to her. What else do you need from me?”

She looked vaguely disappointed, but glanced down at her pad. Her tongue did its little lip-flick thing again. “Well…where were you born, Mr. Eastwood?”

“It’s Dan. In Baltimore, Mercy Hospital.”

She blinked, checked something she’d written a few pages back, then nodded. He sensed she was holding her breath as she asked the next question. “And have you always lived in Baltimore?”

“Until I graduated from high school. Then I enlisted in the Marine Corps. After that I took up permanent residence in Ocean City. We’ve been here ever since.”

A subtle blink of her eyes told him he must have given her a piece of information she thought valuable. That troubled him. He didn’t like being kept in the dark.

“Do you have any siblings?” she continued.

“No.”

“Not even half brothers or sisters by another father?”

Dan scowled, even more uneasy at the intimate turn of her questions. “What are you implying, Miss Anderson?”

“My friends call me Elly.” She beamed at him—all hazel-eyed innocence. Something tightened pleasantly in his stomach, and he couldn’t help smiling back despite his growing suspicion that she was setting some kind of trap for him. “It’s a simple question, really,” she continued. “These days, many families include step-kids, half siblings…yours, mine, and ours…. Women are allowed to marry more than once, you know.”

“My mother never remarried,” he stated quickly.

“I see.”

Dan wished he could get a look at what she was writing. Her pen was in constant motion now, scratching out far more than the few words of each of his responses. The sense that his privacy was being invaded in some mystifying way that he couldn’t yet understand became almost overwhelming.

“I have to change and get to that meeting,” he grumbled. “Unless you’re willing to be straight with me about what you’re really up to, Miss Anderson, this is the end of our discussion.”

Looking disheartened, she flipped the little book shut then shoved it and the pen into her shoulder bag. “I’m afraid, for the time being, anything more than what I’ve already told you is confidential.”

“Then you’d better leave,” he said gruffly. He told himself he was being an idiot, shaking off the prettiest thing that had crossed his beach in months. She looked as good indoors as she had outside in the salty air. If anything, her eyes seemed brighter, more alive than before—as if she was excited by something she had just learned.

But the meeting with his contractor really was important. And even as his libido urged him to get her phone number, his brain was warning him to distance himself from her. She was pure trouble, although what variety he hadn’t as yet figured out.

“I’ll let you know if I can tell you anything more,” she promised coolly then stuck out her hand to shake as if determined to conclude their conversation with a professional gesture, even if it had begun under less than businesslike conditions.

“Next time, maybe you’ll join me for a swim,” he suggested as he opened the door for her.

She laughed. “In November? Don’t hold your breath.”

Too bad, he thought as he stood alone in his living room a moment later, the knob still in his hand. I’d love to be the one to warm you up after a winter dip.

Elly sat in her car gripping the steering wheel, trying to compose herself. Her father would be furious with her for not getting everything out of Daniel Eastwood they so desperately needed. But things had started out badly. She’d nearly keeled over when he came up out of the water—all gleaming muscles and smooth, bronzed skin. A classic vision of Neptune in his younger years, sans trident. That skimpy red Speedo hadn’t left much to the imagination. Not much at all!

She felt a hot flush across her cheeks and brow and let out a yip of frustration. She wasn’t usually flustered by men. In fact, she’d become pretty much immune to these feelings from choice. It was her defense against getting involved. Involvement meant intimacy, and intimacy meant…

A flash of dark memory rocked her without warning. Suddenly, she could hear and see everything as it had been that night. The high-pitched cry in the night…her father’s frantic shouts into the telephone…the wretched look of helplessness on his face. And finally, her mother’s unmoving body glimpsed through the half-open bedroom doorway seconds before sirens shattered the silence in the little house.

Just as quickly as the horrible vision had struck, it passed, leaving Elly trembling, her body moist with sweat, her heart pounding erratically in her chest. She covered her eyes with her palms and drew in deep, calming breaths. “It’s over. It’s over,” she whispered until the fear slowly subsided and the pressure in her chest lessened and her brain cleared so that she could think again. Where had she been? What had she been thinking when…

Yes, she reminded herself, Dan Eastwood.

She opened her eyes and focused on the long line of gray-green surf on the other side of the sand from where she was parked. She could do this. She could do this!

Eastwood. Even if he hadn’t refused to answer any more questions, it would be torture to go back and attempt to grill him further. As long as those dark eyes rested on her, Elly knew her mind would wander to that scene on the beach and she’d be incapable of focusing on her job, and—Lord, help her—she might even fall apart as she had just now, only right in front of him. And she couldn’t bear that.

The real problem was, although she’d verified several basic points of their investigation she still didn’t have enough information to prove he was the one they were looking for.

She looked at her watch. Within a few hours, she’d have to call her father in Elbia with an update. They both knew that if she failed to find the person they were looking for within twenty-four hours, all hell was going to break loose in the international press. The London tabloid that somehow had been leaked information from the palace would reveal a scandal that might threaten the Elbian crown. And Anderson Genealogical Research would earn a very big, very black mark for breaching their own right-to-privacy rule, even if it hadn’t been their fault.

Now what was she going to do?

Worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, Elly slid her notebook computer off the passenger seat and into her lap. She flipped open the screen, booted up and summoned the correct file. From memory, she added the information Eastwood had just given her. She had found his name and address through an Internet search, but his mother’s phone number and address hadn’t come up, probably because she didn’t have an e-mail address and her phone number was unlisted.

However, Eastwood had let slip that his mother lived somewhere in the area. “We’ve been here ever since…” We, not I. And he’d offered to take Elly to her, so the woman couldn’t be far away.

Elly finished typing her notes then grabbed her purse and locked the car behind her. Neighbors were always a great help in instances such as this, she thought with renewed hope. That was where she’d start.

Elly stood on the top step of the tidy yellow bungalow, straightened her suit jacket, put on a friendly smile, and knocked. It was only a moment before the door opened.

“Yes?” A short, middle-aged woman with blond hair stepped into the opening and gave her a curious smile.

“Margaret Eastwood?” Elly asked.

“Yes, hon.” Her accent was pure Bal’morese.

“I was just speaking with your son and—”

The woman’s face lit up. “You’re a friend of Dan’s?”

“Well, not exactly a friend. You see, I was looking for you, but I found Dan’s name first and—”

“Come in and tell me why he sent you over.” Margaret beamed at her. “This is one of the nicest things about the Haven. A gated community, they call it. You can feel safe chatting with folks, not like in the old neighborhood where we had to be so very careful who we let into the house.”

“Well, yes, of course,” Elly agreed, feeling just a little guilty, for she was about to become a most unwelcome intruder in this woman’s life.

As Elly stepped into the cozy colonial-furnished living room, she focused on a collection of antique glass bottles arranged on shelves in a bay window, then on a display of photographs on top of an upright piano. There were several of a little boy at different ages, babyhood through toddler, then at various school ages. Elly sniffed the air, distracted by a delicious aroma. “Something smells wonderful.”

“Gingerbread,” Margaret said. “I always make old-fashioned New England gingerbread in the fall. It reminds me of home, and Danny loves it.”

“Then you’re not from around here?”

“Oh my goodness, no. But Maryland is my home now. I’ve been here all of my adult life. Sit down, I’ll bring you a cup of coffee and a warm slice.”

Elly turned around to protest but Margaret was gone.

“You said you’ve lived here all of your adult life?” she shouted toward the kitchen door.

“In Maryland, not Ocean City. We lived in Baltimore while Dan was young. But he turned into such a beach bum after a few summers of lifeguarding down here. After he was discharged from the service, he wanted me to move down here with him while he attended the community college. Later, he and his friend bought this land and built these cute little cottages.” She was beaming proudly as she walked back into the room, holding a tray laden with coffee mugs and plates of fresh gingerbread topped with mountains of whipped cream. “Danny also runs a summer camp for city boys and girls.”

“I didn’t know that,” Elly admitted.

“Oh yes. He feels very strongly about giving inner-city children a few weeks off the streets, to let them see a different world from their troubled neighborhoods.”

Elly accepted a steaming mug of coffee and a dessert plate with a second twinge of guilt. She didn’t want to deceive this woman who was being so hospitable to her. “Mrs. Eastwood, I have to confess that Dan didn’t actually send me over to talk with you.”

“Oh?” She looked disappointed.

“I’ve been hired by a European family to fill in a missing branch on their family tree. The von Austerands. Do you recognize the name?”

Elly watched as the woman’s face grayed and her fingers pinched nervously at the napkin in her lap. “No.”

“They’re like the Windsors of England. They are the royal family of a small country that borders on Austria. Elbia.”

“I think you’d better leave,” Madge said tightly.

But Elly was determined. She continued choosing her words carefully. “We have reason to believe that a young American woman had a brief romantic liaison with the young king of that country thirty-three years ago, before he married. There is a chance that she was carrying his child when they parted, but if so, she disappeared before the baby was born. Would you know anything about this, Mrs. Eastwood?”

Dan’s mother firmly set her plate on the coffee table and turned her face toward the rainbow of glass in the window. “My husband was an American. His name was Carl Eastwood, and he died before Dan was a year old,” she pronounced tightly.

Carl Eastwood. There it was again, the name Dan had used. Carl with a C according to the documents she’d already dug up. Could it be a coincidence that the young king’s name had been Karl? His Royal Highness Karl von Austerand had died just a few years ago, and now his son Jacob wore his crown. Jacob had always been thought to be the king’s sole heir, until evidence of a secret love affair turned up in a routine cataloguing of the family’s papers only days ago. Days which now felt to Elly like weeks and months of frantic searching.

“I wouldn’t know about affairs or kings or illegitimate royal babies,” Madge said sharply.

Elly’s heart beat faster despite the woman’s denial. Something in her pale eyes told Elly this was a woman unaccustomed to lying, who was desperately trying to do just that.

“I understand how difficult this must be for you,” Elly said softly, setting aside her own coffee and fragrant gingerbread to reach across the space between the two chairs and pat the other woman’s arm. “But if you can just give me a little more information, please.”

Madge’s chest rose and fell with labored breaths. She stiffened and leaned back into her chair, her hands gripping the arms. Her features contorted into sharp folds, as if she was trying to work out a difficult puzzle. “Go,” she whispered hoarsely. “Get out of my house.”

Elly sighed inwardly. She respected the woman’s right to privacy, but if she didn’t get to the truth soon, both Madge and her son would find themselves in a terrible fix. This was no time for cat-and-mouse games. A simple statement from the woman would save days they didn’t have for a full public records’ investigation. She’d already picked up and lost two reporters on her way from Connecticut to Baltimore. They might show up at any moment—then it would be out of her hands, if her theory about Dan Eastwood was right. She decided to try a different angle.

“Mrs. Eastwood, I’m not trying to upset you. But in cases where relationships have broken up, the children often want to know about their lost family members. Don’t you think Dan would like to learn who his real father is?” She was bluffing, just a little, for she wasn’t one-hundred-percent certain of all the facts. But if it worked she would know for sure.

Madge’s mouth flew wide on a horrified gasp. “My son doesn’t need to know—”

Her words stilled in the air as the front door clicked shut and footsteps approached the sitting room from the hall. Both women turned to face the doorway.

Dan Eastwood looked around the corner, his dark eyes glittering dangerously. Even at a distance, Elly could see the thin blue vein throbbing at his temple and the tense cut of his mouth. “I don’t need to know what, Mother?”

Elly’s heart felt as if it were being squeezed by a cold, hard hand. She crossed her fingertips over her chest and swallowed. The warning rumble of Dan’s voice sent icy prickles down her spine.

She glanced quickly at Madge, whose expression had altered with amazing speed from a stubborn glare to a helpless pucker. “Oh, dear. I guess I shouldn’t have let this young woman in. She told me she was your girlfriend, Danny.”

Elly gasped in outrage and shot to her feet. The woman wasn’t as guileless as she appeared. “I never said that! Mrs. Eastwood, you know that I never implied my visit was—” She let out a frustrated wail. Between his mother and a stranger, who was the man likely to believe? “Never mind. I came alone because I felt your mom might feel less self-conscious speaking to me without your being here.”

Dan quirked one skeptical, dark brow at her.

“Honest. I didn’t mean any harm.”

“I told you I would bring you around if necessary!” Dan snapped, then turned to his distraught-looking mother. “I don’t know how she found you. I’m sorry. Now, ladies, what is it I don’t need to know?”

Madge firmly pressed her lips together.

“Then you tell me,” he stated, swiveling back to Elly.

“At the moment, there may or may not be anything to tell.” She was doing her best to be discreet. But Dan was making things harder by the minute, and Madge seemed incapable of saying anything to either stop the truth from coming out or to set facts straight. Elly stood to face him. “It’s important that I find out if your mother was ever in Europe…specifically, in Paris.”

Dan looked from the woman he’d fantasized about less than an hour earlier, to his mother. He read a level of anxiety in Madge’s eyes he had never seen before. “What’s going on here, Mom?”

“She’s upsetting me,” Madge whimpered. “Make her leave.”

Dan ground out words between clenched teeth, fighting to hang on to his temper. “She’s going to leave as soon as she explains what the hell she’s fishing for!”

As infuriating as Elly was, his body still reacted with disturbing warmth to her presence. It was impossible to keep his eyes off her pretty, animated face…or her hands, which kept moving from twin perches on her hips to tug nervously at her blouse’s neckline or tuck themselves away when she folded her arms over her chest. Which was another issue entirely…her enticingly lovely, perfectly proportioned chest. She’d evidently left off her jacket for this visit, which offered a much nicer view. Someone help him!

“Why does it matter whether or not my mother ever was in Europe?” he had the presence of mind to demand.

Elly took a deep breath and stepped toward him, praying the right words would come to her. “Papers have recently come to light that indicate a young American woman named Margaret Jennings spent a year abroad, as a student in Paris. That was your maiden name. Right, Mrs. Eastwood?”

Dan answered for her. “Yes, and her junior year she attended the Sorbonne. You told me you did, Mom.”

Madge closed her eyes but acknowledged nothing.

Elly held her breath and asked, “Was it during that year that you met a young man named—”

“I met Carl Eastwood there, yes!” Madge snapped, pushing herself up from her armchair with startling energy. “We married, and nine months later Dan was born. But Carl died very young.” Tears filled her eyes and she wiped at them with the sleeve of her dress.

Dan frowned, looking more puzzled than ever. “I thought you and Dad hooked up in Baltimore.”

“No. No, it was in a little village outside of Paris.” Madge sniffled and looked away from her son. “Years later, I heard the church burned down. Probably destroyed all its records too.”

Elly opened her mouth to tell the woman she knew that was a lie, but at the last second thought better of it since her six-foot-plus son stood by ready to defend his mother’s honor.

“Go on,” Dan growled, his too-perceptive gaze locked onto Elly’s face. “What were you about to say?”

She swallowed over a sandpaper-dry spot in her throat. “There is no record of a marriage, that’s true.” She hesitated, but the look on Dan’s face told her she must finish what she’d begun, regardless of how he took the news. “There is no record…because there has never been a Carl Eastwood in your mother’s life. And there never was a marriage.”

“All right, you’re out of here!” Dan’s wide hand shot out. He seized Elly by the arm and marched her firmly toward the door.

She had only enough time to swipe her purse from the coffee table and grab her coat from the back of her chair before he ushered her out of the room.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, and I don’t care. You’re leaving, lady.”

“But don’t you want to—”

Before she could get out the rest of her sentence, she found herself standing alone in the cold ocean mist on Madge’s lemon-bright porch. She could still feel the pressure of Dan’s strong fingers on her arm and his palm on her backside after the door slammed behind her. The nerve of the man. He’d thrown her out!

Then the implication of what had just happened hit her. A triumphant grin spread slowly across her lips.

She had found her missing prince!

Two

Elly bounced in anticipation on the edge of the hotel bed, her ear pressed to the telephone receiver. Someone had gone to find her father to take her call. She’d never seen the castle in person, but photographs of Der Kristallenpalast, the famous crystal palace, revealed an immense, turreted structure of pale, lustrous marble and hundreds of richly appointed rooms. Frank Anderson could easily be half a mile from the nearest phone.

His unmistakable smoker’s voice suddenly rasped across the line. “It’s about time. What do you have?”

“It’s a boy!” she cried.

“The old king had a son with the Jennings girl?”

Elly grinned, enjoying her moment of triumph. “That girl is now in her fifties, goes by Madge and is being really stubborn about admitting that she had a royal fling thirty-some years ago.”

“Understandable,” he grumbled. “She married now? Not wanting her husband to know about her past?”

“No,” Elly admitted with a sigh. “But she’s sticking to a story about an American husband who died young. I’m certain she made him up for her son’s benefit.”

“But you’re sure about this young man?”

She hesitated barely a heartbeat. “Yes. Dad, he even looks like Jacob. And the photos of Karl when he was young could be Daniel Eastwood today. They have the same dark hair and strong, angular features, although Eastwood’s eyes are dark brown, not blue.”

“That could easily come from the mother’s side. Good. I’ll tell Jacob.”

“Do we have enough to prove legally he’s the old king’s son, though?” she asked. She trusted her intuition and the facts she’d uncovered, but the law was another thing.

“Karl was studying at the Sorbonne the same time as Margaret Jennings, according to the school’s records. He kept her love letters to him and her farewell note. A handwriting expert can make quick work of comparing this woman’s handwriting with that of the person who wrote those letters. There are other documents as well.”

Elly was so excited she could barely speak. But she was also deeply moved by the drama revealed by the decades-old letters they’d found. Those must have been desperate times for a young prince, soon to become king, and his frightened mistress. Had Karl even known that the girl he’d fallen in love with but could never marry carried his child? Nothing they’d found to this date mentioned her pregnancy. How very sad, Elly thought, if the man had died never knowing he had another son.

But now, years later, wonderful things might come of this discovery for Dan and his mother. Not that they deserved it, Elly thought ruefully, tossing her out the way they’d done. But imagine discovering a brother you never knew existed! And a royal one at that!

“What now?” Elly asked her father breathlessly.

“Jacob’s advisors told me this morning that if you found the woman and she had a child by the king, they’d want both of them brought over on the first possible plane.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“Damage control. They believe that with the pair here in Elbia, the press will have a harder time getting to them. There are also some touchy legal issues to be ironed out, the sooner the better from the crown’s perspective.”

Elly’s mind whirled, and she felt short of breath. “Eastwood doesn’t even believe me. How will I get him on a plane to Europe? Dad, this isn’t our job. All we agreed to do was verify historical records. We’re not private investigators.”

“Elizabeth.” His chastising papa-bear growl ended in a soft cough. She hated that he smoked. But since her mother had died there had been no one, including herself, who could talk sense to the man about his health or anything else.

“Well, we’re not!” she insisted.

“We have no choice at this point. The king blames us for the leak. He’s absolutely convinced that no one in his court would peddle such volatile news to the press. Now we have to do what we can to save a bad situation. And—” He balked.

“There’s more bad news?” She didn’t want to think about one more complication.

“Consider the many implications of this discovery, Elly. There is enormous wealth at stake. Even an illegitimate child might demand a portion of his father’s fortune. And what about the mother? As far as we know, she has never been compensated for her pregnancy or given any financial help in raising the boy.”

Elly rolled her eyes to the motel room’s chalky ceiling. The packet of letters her father had only recently discovered hidden behind a panel in an ancient armoire had turned into a modern Pandora’s box. In addition to the love notes, signed “adoringly, Margaret,” other letters, returned from the United States as undeliverable, indicated that over the next ten years Karl had tried to locate his lost love, but failed. Perhaps it was just his beloved Margaret he searched for. Or maybe he feared the existence of a child and knew the danger an illegitimate offspring, older by several months than his son by the queen, would pose to his dynasty.

“Get them on a plane,” Elly repeated dully, shaking her head. “Short of kidnapping mother and son, I’m not sure how I’ll manage that.”

“We don’t have much time,” Frank reminded her. “If I were that young man or his mother, I’d want to find a good place to hide out for a while. The press will eat them alive.”

Elly shook her head. “Something tells me this guy isn’t the type to run away from anything.”

“Elizabeth,” her father whispered hoarsely, sounding increasingly worried, “if this explodes in our faces, our professional reputation will be destroyed. We might as well give up the business. Do you understand?”

She swallowed. It was that bad then. “I’ll bring them to you,” she promised. “Somehow.”

Dan was thirty minutes late for his appointment with the contractor, mostly because he had other things on his mind. His thoughts boomeranged back and forth between memories of manhandling an attractive redhead out his mother’s door, his hand placed strategically on her pretty rump, and the less enjoyable knowledge that he’d probably never see Elly Anderson again.

Luckily, the contractor was still in his office. They negotiated a few terms, signed the contract. Within a week the storm damage to the bungalows closest to the shoreline would be repaired. One less thing to worry about.

Dan drove back toward the Haven along Ocean Avenue and turned into the parking lot. A flash of crimson hair in the sunlight caught his eye. Setting the parking brake on his SUV, he squinted through the windshield into the wintry glare. A man and a woman stood where the lot met the sandy boardwalk.

Elly’s elegant legs appeared even longer whenever the wind flipped up the hem of her skirt. Her hair, lifting free of confining pins, swirled in russet waves around her face as she talked to Kevin and occasionally lifted a hand to hold flaming wisps out of her eyes.

“What’s that woman up to now?” he muttered, heaving himself up out of the car.

Dear old Kev wore that deer-staring-into-headlights expression common to men confronted by a pretty woman. Dan only hoped his friend hadn’t said anything to encourage Elly’s snooping. He jogged across the parking lot toward them.

“I thought we agreed you were through with this nonsense!” Dan shouted into the wind.

Elly turned to observe him, her eyes far too enticing to cool his simmering blood. Simmering because he was furious with her but also because she looked so deliciously disheveled with the wind tugging at her skirt and hair, and teasing open the collar of her jacket to reveal a sliver of flesh at the top of her breast.

She planted her feet firmly and straightened her spine to meet him. “We need to talk, Mr. Eastwood.”

“Isn’t that where we started this morning?”

Kevin looked from one to the other of them with a puzzled expression then backed off two steps. “I don’t know what this is about, but I’ll let you two hash things out. Got work to do.”

To Dan’s surprise, Elly didn’t so much as blink or make any move that might be construed as retreat. “I need you and Mrs. Eastwood on a plane for Europe,” she stated. “Tonight at the latest.”

He laughed. “You’re not only wrong about my mother, you’re insane!”

“No,” she said solemnly, “I’m not. Not on either account. I have evidence. Please listen to me. If you don’t, both of you are going to be hurt far more than you can imagine.”

There was something fervent and beyond argument in her tone. This was a woman who believed in what she said. For the first time Dan felt deep in his gut that Elizabeth Anderson wasn’t flinging idle fairy tales at him or working some kind of confidence game. He remembered the look on his mother’s face earlier that day. Madge had been afraid—not of lies, but of the truth. And that terrified him.

He looked at his watch. “It’s getting close to lunch time. Are you hungry?”

Elly gave him a guarded look. “Famished,” she admitted. “No time for breakfast this morning. Why?”

“Let’s get a table at Kirby’s. We can talk this out over crab cakes.”

Kirby’s, one of the most popular seafood restaurants on Ocean Avenue, was nearly deserted during off season. They sat in a fifties-style red vinyl booth and Dan ordered two steaming crab cake platters piled high with salty French fries, little paper cups of sweet coleslaw on the side.

Elly poured a stream of rich ketchup over her fries and dug in hungrily. Dan ate more slowly than usual, watching her. He was aware of her thin ankles crossed beneath the table, visible through the space between his bench and the table top. When he lifted his eyes they fixed with fascination on her animated lips as she relished the crunchy potatoes and fat crab cake with its savory Old Bay seasonings perfuming the room around them.

He found it impossible to hold onto his irritation with her. But he was curious and more than a little suspicious of her motives for wanting to whisk him off to another continent. “So tell me about this proof. And why the urgency to get me out of the country?”

“I know you feel I’m intruding,” she began, spearing another fry with her fork and shaking it at him in schoolmarm fashion, “and I don’t like being put in the position of having to accuse anyone of lying about their past but—”

“But that’s precisely what you are doing, isn’t it?” he asked in a low voice.

Elly pursed her lips and studied him for a long moment, as if searching for diplomatic words. “People can be very creative about their past, if they are afraid. A woman has to be particularly careful. And a single mom always has to explain herself to others. No doubt your mother felt that a dead husband was easier for people to accept than the truth.”

“And that truth is?” He might be willing to believe her. Might. But not without one hell of an explanation.

Elly continued with obvious caution as she pulled a manila envelope from the briefcase on the bench beside her. “I have photocopies of letters found on the von Austerand family’s property. There now is little doubt that the ones signed Margaret were written by your mother, but we can verify that as soon as she is in Elbia.”

She put up a hand to stop him from interrupting. “We believe your mother fell deeply in love with Karl von Austerand the year she studied in Paris. She probably believed they would marry, but he wasn’t completely honest with her. He was engaged to another woman of royal blood. And he was the crown prince, soon to become King of Elbia.

“Karl was attending the college under an assumed name to avoid publicity. When Madge discovered they could never wed, she ran home to America—probably just after learning she was pregnant. Instead of returning to her parents’ home in Massachusetts, she found a place to live in Baltimore and hid her shame by inventing a husband. The move probably was intended to elude Karl, too. Perhaps she feared what he might do if he discovered their child. You.”

Dan could feel the heat rising from his chest to his throat. He glared at the folder resting on the table beneath her hand. “This is very difficult to believe,” he said tightly.

Elly slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry. See for yourself.”

He couldn’t move, was barely capable of breathing. Still furious with Elly, he was nevertheless increasingly fearful that what she claimed might be true. She didn’t have to tell him how drastically his life would change if it was.

And what about Madge’s quiet existence? She hated confrontation. She had always favored a life without complications. Any shattered love affair and unwanted baby were as complicated as life got. Unless the father of your baby was a man whose family’s status rivaled that of the royals of England or Monaco—people with unlimited wealth and power, who could never escape their celebrity or stay off the front page of grocery-store gossip rags for long.

Elly rested her warm hand over his on the tabletop. “This must be a shock to you. You’ve grown up believing one thing, and here I am telling you everything is different. I’m sorry. Truly, I am.” Her eyes shone with sincerity and compassion. “I would have preferred to let your mother keep her secret. But it’s out of my hands now. Others have found out, so you both needed to know.”

He couldn’t utter a word. His lips felt as stiff as if he’d climbed from a December ocean.

“Take your time reading while you finish eating,” she offered. “Then let me know what you think.” Her accent was flavored with New England. Maple-syrup sweet, with a touch of Yankee logic. He would have liked to get to know her better, a whole lot better. She seemed a nice person, in addition to being so easy on the eyes. But it appeared that more pressing matters were on deck.

Dan took a bite of his cooling crab cake and chewed without tasting anything, then studied her as she sipped her cola. “There’s a lot riding on this, isn’t there? I mean, aside from being hounded by the press.”

She slanted him a look that would have done the Mona Lisa proud. “There might be.”

Dan slipped a thin stack of photocopies from the envelope. He scanned the first report quickly:

Daniel Robert Jennings. Born August 20, 1970. Verified location of birth: Baltimore, Maryland. Birth certificate on record. Mother: Margaret Jennings. No father listed. Name of mother and child legally changed three months later: Eastwood. Reason given: marriage to Carl Eastwood. No Carl Eastwood match through public records. Internet search unsuccessful. Social Security source reports no matches for location and dates given. Results: Suspect fictitious name.

There were other reports, which he read hastily, his pulse throbbing in his temple, his mouth going stone dry…

Margaret Jennings, scholarship student at the Sorbonne, 1969-1970. Superior student. Dropped out of school 3/70. Reason given: personal.

Frigid droplets of sweat skittered down the back of his neck. He stared at the next page’s remarks: “Love letters signed ‘your adoring Margaret,’ no envelopes.” There were even photocopies of two of the letters. He tried not to think about the passion and longing behind the words, which seemed far too personal to be read by other than the two people involved. But he needed only to glance at the handwriting to know it was amazingly similar to Madge’s flowery style. Then there was another notation:

Letters from His Royal Highness Karl von Austerand to one Margaret Jennings in the United States, dated 1970 (3), 1972 (2), 1973, 1975, 1976 and 1980—all returned as undeliverable.

“Well?” Elly asked, glancing up at him from her empty plate.

He smiled weakly. “I imagine Karl’s legitimate son might be a little nervous about this discovery of yours.”

“More than nervous. Particularly since you were born before he was.”

“Ouch.”

“It gets worse,” she assured him. “Somebody in the palace leaked rumors of the affair. A reporter and his photographer are hot on your trail. They were following me, but I shook them off in Baltimore. It’s only luck that I found you before they did.”

Dan no longer felt hungry. He pushed his plate away. Visions of TV cameras, reporters armed with microphones and endless telephone calls from pushy media hawks flooded his imagination. For an instant he tried to tell himself that it might be a good thing—free publicity for the Haven and his City Kids program.

A second later, reality smacked him upside his head. It wouldn’t be his property or his favorite charity that would get all the attention. It would be Madge and the past she’d tried so hard to hide from him, from her friends and neighbors, from the world. This would kill her.

He stared numbly at Elly across the table. “We didn’t ask for this.”

“I know. But I promise you, my father and I had nothing to do with letting your mother’s past become public knowledge. And now we’ll do everything we can to help both you and Madge weather the storm.”

“What do you intend to do? Wave a magic wand and make us disappear?”

She gave him another one of those delicious enigmatic smiles. “Something like that.”

Elly was relieved when Dan told her he would agree to go with her to Elbia. But convincing his mother to evacuate her comfy cottage was, at first, a struggle. Then came the first phone call from a Washington Star reporter.

Apparently the British press who had first been leaked the information had contacted several American newspapers in their search for the missing prince of Elbia. The Star put a team on the story and soon it was clear that the prying phone calls were destined to become even more harassing visits. Madge was so horrified at the prospect of her home being invaded she reluctantly agreed to the trip.

With help from the Elbian embassy, Elly booked all three of them on the Concorde for that night. On their way from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., they somehow picked up two carloads of reporters. “It’s all right,” Elly assured a frightened Madge, “as long as we keep moving, they can’t get to you. And State Department security is waiting for us at the airport.”

The limousine she had ordered raced the two black sedans through twisting roadways approaching the international terminals, then the three of them were led to a lounge where security guards kept the press at bay while they waited to board the plane. Soon, a State Department courier arrived with passports for Dan and his mother, and minutes later they were herded onto the immense jet without being accosted. She felt like giving a victory cheer. But as the sleek, tipped-nose Concorde took off with a gentle rumble into the night, Elly sensed they’d only temporarily eluded their troubles.

The seating on the Concorde felt far more spacious than that on most commercial flights. Elly had never flown on the famous French-built jet that only the elite of the world could afford. Two roomy seats were positioned on either side of the aisle, and the service was impeccably attentive. Madge and Dan sat on one side. Elly was on the opposite side of the aisle, at the window seat, while the place beside her remained empty.

After they’d taken off into the night, Elly closed her eyes for a moment. Exhaustion overcame her. She felt weightless; her mind drifted. Back to another time in her life. A time when there had been more than just two Andersons. Elly, Dad…Mom. She felt herself being sucked back in time as she pictured her mother’s face smiling down at her. Elly fought the memories, struggled to escape from the images that kept her from finding peace in her own life. Her heart began to race. Her breaths came in short, shallow puffs as the muscles in her chest constricted. Resisting was futile…

“It’s going to be all right, Elly,” her mother had promised when Elly became concerned that her baby brother might come at night while Elly slept. Then she’d miss all the excitement. “It’s all planned. The doctor will meet me at the hospital on the date you and I wrote on the calendar. Remember? I’ll have an operation called a cesarean section to take the baby from my tummy. You’ll be able to see him minutes after he’s born, then you and I will fight over who gets to cuddle him.”

They’d laughed together over that. Her father had told Elly that, at twelve years of age, she was almost old enough to be a little mother herself, at least in some cultures in other parts of the world. Even before the baby’s seventh month of gestation, she had begun to feel her little brother in her arms, to sense a growing protectiveness of him and know that they would be a wonderful family together—the four of them.

Then the half sleep she’d sunk into on the plane dragged her deeper into darker memories. Of that night.

Again she was tortured by Patricia Anderson’s agonized screams and her father’s shouts for help to the 911 operator. When she’d tried to go to her mother, Frank had blocked her from the bedroom, shouting frantically at her that she couldn’t go in, shoving her back into her own room as if she were being punished for a crime she didn’t understand.

Blue and red lights flashed in the street outside her window. She’d watched two paramedics rush into the house while the driver pulled a gurney from the ambulance. “She will be okay,” she whispered to herself. “Daddy said so.” But minutes passed and the ambulance still sat there. Soon Elly knew, without being told, that when they did bring her mother out it wouldn’t be to take her to the hospital.

Elly heard a whimper and something moist trickled down her cheeks. She twisted violently in her seat, felt the heaviness in her chest pressing relentlessly, then sensed a warm hand settling on her shoulder.

“Are you all right?” It wasn’t her mother’s voice, as she’d so often imagined at the end of her worst attacks. This voice had a deeper, stronger timbre. “Elly?”

She blinked her eyes open and took a moment to orient herself to an adult world, lights dim along a slender, shining cabin. Her throat burned, and her temples throbbed hotly. Turning her head, she looked up at Dan who had crossed the aisle to sit in the vacant seat beside her.

“You were having a bad dream,” he murmured.

“Was I?” The break between the past and the present seemed liquid, as if she still might float back into the pain and experience it all over again.

Dan took her hand between his and rested it on his knee. “Want to tell me about it? If you share a dream, you can keep it from coming back, you know.” He smiled at her.

“Not this one.” She shivered then swallowed twice, trying to ease the roughness in her throat, trying to calm her drumming heartbeat. Horrid sounds still reverberated in her head. The awful coldness of death clutched at her. “This one’s a keeper, whether I want it or not.”

Dan frowned. “A bad one, huh?”

“The worst.” She would have let it go at that. But his quiet compassion and steady gaze beckoned her to say more. She had a sudden intuitive flash that she and Dan shared something—pasts that would haunt them and remain with them all of their lives. “It’s not fantasy,” she explained. “It’s like an instant replay of something that really happened.”

“Like a soldier having a flashback of battle?”

“Something like that.” Elly drew herself up in the seat, still trembling, and glanced across at Madge. She was fast asleep. “You’re really good to her,” she whispered.

“Why shouldn’t I be? She’s my mother.”

“Some people don’t appreciate what they have, the sacrifices their parents make for them.”

“I guess that’s true,” he agreed slowly, encouraging her with his steady gaze. “Aren’t you good to your mother?”

Her eyes closed. She shuddered.

“I’m sorry,” Dan whispered. “That was far too personal.” He took a deep breath. “I suppose I felt justified, since you’ve dug up so much about me. I know nothing of you, except that you work for your father.”

She shrugged, feeling a little calmer at the sound of his mellow voice. “There’s not a lot to tell. I was twelve years old. My parents had tried for years to have a second child. They were overjoyed when it looked as if my mother would carry to full term.” Her voice was flat, without the emotion she held so carefully within her. “Mom died in childbirth. My baby brother didn’t make it either.”

“That’s terrible.” He squeezed her hand. “It must have taken a long time to get over that.” Then their eyes met and he knew. “Or maybe you never have.”

She looked away from his too-perceptive gaze. The thick-glassed window to her left was black. No moon. But fat, white stars shone through the night over the endless Atlantic Ocean. She felt Dan’s thumb drawing comforting circles over the back of her hand.

Suddenly, Elly found herself talking. Pushing out words without taking a breath, baring her soul as she’d never done with anyone in her life. She couldn’t imagine why everything should tumble out of her at this moment, in front of this man. Perhaps because she fore-saw pain and a struggle coming his way. Or maybe it was because they would soon go their separate ways. Sharing the agony of her past and fears of the future with this man who was passing so briefly through her life was as devoid of threat as confiding in a wall.

As she let the words flow, telling him of the night she had lost her mother forever and her father for many months to his grief, Dan’s arm came around her, as if to shield her from her own memories.

“My dad just stopped functioning after my mother died. He didn’t go to work. He didn’t eat enough to keep a person alive. He started smoking again, and he drank quite a lot, I think. He spent a lot of time away—most of every day and always the nights. He wouldn’t mention her name. We didn’t talk.”

Dan stared at her, his eyes hard and dark with concern. “That was when you most needed him.”

She sighed. “Yes, but I can’t blame him for distancing himself from me. If you ever saw my mother’s college graduation photo, you’d think that I could be her twin. It just hurt Dad too much to look at me, and think about her.”

“That’s no excuse for neglecting a child,” he snapped.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “You can’t understand how it was.” She swallowed. Dare she go on? Dare she tell him the rest, the part that still controlled her future and wouldn’t let her move on with her own life? But now that she’d opened her soul to him it seemed impossible to stop the flood of feelings.

“Years later,” she whispered, “Dad told me what had happened that night. My mother had an enlarged heart. They’d known that since I was born and had elected to do a C-section. Her doctor had advised another C-section to take the stress off delivering her second baby. When she went into labor early, her heart couldn’t take it, and the baby died of asphyxiation before the medics could arrive.” She swallowed three times before she was able to look at him again. Tears clung to her eyelashes.

“I’m so sorry, Elly.”

She nodded, plunging on. “Dad insisted that I get a complete physical a few years later. He didn’t seem surprised when they found I’d inherited my mother’s heart problem, it was just a little larger than it should have been. Nothing easily fixed, just something to live cautiously with.

“From that day, I decided never to have children of my own. I love kids, I really do,” she insisted, her heart breaking even as she said the words. “But I can’t risk my life the way my mother did.”

“Death in childbirth is a very rare thing these days,” Dan commented gently. “Chances are, if she’d been able to reach a hospital, she’d have been all right. You shouldn’t—”

Elly pulled her hand away from him. “Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do!” she snapped. Not wanting to alarm the sleeping passengers around them, she choked back the sob that swelled inside her. The words came out in breathless gulps. “Don’t…lecture…me!”

“I’m not, Elly,” he whispered. “I’m just trying to state a medical reality. All sorts of advances have been made in the last ten or more years. Odds are that if you really want a baby, you could have one without complications.”

She glared at him. “Odds. Chances. Do you really believe that adding one more child to this earth is worth the risk to me or any other woman whose body isn’t strong enough?”

He didn’t answer.

She let out a long breath, feeling strangely better for the release of emotions. She thought more clearly now about her past choices.

Over the years, she’d had a few male friends—mostly kept at arm’s length with no physical relationship involved. A few she’d slept with, but only after first being sure they lacked all desire to settle down and start a family, then guaranteeing she couldn’t become pregnant with them. She had stayed on the Pill during those limited months in a relationship and, because she’d never given her heart, she hadn’t regretted when they’d moved on to other women. The last breakup had been heart-wrenching, though. Sam had been a good person and she’d grown intensely fond of him. His only crime was that he’d changed his mind. He had decided he wanted to be a husband and father instead of a boyfriend.

In the year since then Elly had let no one into her life. But sitting beside her now was a man who was as much temptation as any woman could handle. More than she could, she feared. Instinctively, she gauged the level of her reaction to him, and knew that the passion centered in the core of her being was new and real and strong. He had touched something in her no other man before him had been capable of, although they’d known each other only hours.

“What about you?” she asked quickly. “Why aren’t you married?” A tiny part of her hoped that his answer would be an echo of her own. I don’t want kids.

“I suppose at first I was too involved with other facets of my life,” he admitted. “The marines—that didn’t seem a time for settling down. I was stationed all over the place. Then I went to college on the GI Bill and earned my degree. After that I needed time to start my business. I’ve always wanted a family, but now that it seems the right time, the right woman doesn’t seem to be around.”

She cringed inside. Well, there it was. He was looking for a life-mate, a mother for his unborn children. And I am definitely not her, she thought with an irrational twinge of sadness. Yet Elly was still profoundly attracted to him. He set off tickly sensations in parts of her body she had forgotten existed.

Dan squeezed her softly around the shoulders and she looked up into his concerned gaze. “Feeling better?”

“Yes,” she admitted half-heartedly. “I’ll be fine. Thank you for lending your shoulder.” She patted the damp fabric of his blazer.

He glanced back at his own seat across the aisle. Madge had repositioned herself, lifting her legs to rest them across his cushion. Like many of the other passengers, she was asleep.

“Mind if I stay here for a while?”

Elly nodded. “No problem. She’ll need her strength when we get to Elbia.”

They talked through most of the night, keeping the conversation light. It was as if they both understood that much of what they’d already shared was too personal for people who had just met. But somehow, Elly thought, it had been the right time to speak of such things.

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