“Wow.”

Luanne whirled around to the source of the compliment, only to feel her heart about to explode out of her chest at the sight of Alek in a white dinner jacket and black bow tie, looking like something out of a James Bond movie.

Then she swallowed, wishing she had something to grab on to. Like her sanity. She watched as Alek came up to her and said, “I come bearing gifts.”

She froze. “Alek. I—”

“—would be honored to wear your mother’s necklace tonight,” he murmured as he lifted a strand of perfectly matched pearls spaced with small, brilliant diamonds, which he smoothly draped around her neck.

“Alek, I can’t accept this.”

“You’re the mother of my child,” he whispered against her temple. “If I want to give you an occasional gift, that’s my prerogative.”

She shook her head. “I can’t be bought, Alek.”

His smile didn’t even waver as he leaned over, placed a soft kiss on her forehead. “Which makes the challenge all the sweeter,” he whispered.

Dear Reader,

Happy (almost) New Year! The year is indeed ending, but here at Intimate Moments it’s going out with just the kind of bang you’d expect from a line where excitement is the order of the day. Maggie Shayne continues her newest miniseries, THE OKLAHOMA ALL-GIRL BRANDS, with Brand-New Heartache. This is prodigal daughter Edie’s story. She’s home from L.A. with a stalker on her trail, and only local one-time bad boy Wade Armstrong can keep her safe. Except for her heart, which is definitely at risk in his presence.

Our wonderful FIRSTBORN SONS continuity concludes with Born Royal. This is a sheik story from Alexandra Sellers, who’s made quite a name for herself writing about desert heroes, and this book will show you why. It’s a terrific marriage-of-convenience story, and it’s also a springboard for our twelve-book ROMANCING THE CROWN continuity, which starts next month. Kylie Brant’s Hard To Resist is the next in her CHARMED AND DANGEROUS miniseries, and this steamy writer never disappoints with her tales of irresistible attraction. Honky-Tonk Cinderella is the second in Karen Templeton’s HOW TO MARRY A MONARCH miniseries, and it’s enough to make any woman want to run away and be a waitress, seeing as this waitress gets to serve a real live prince. Finish the month with Mary McBride’s newest, Baby, Baby, Baby, a “No way am I letting my ex-wife go to a sperm bank” book, and reader favorite Lorna Michaels’s first Intimate Moments novel, The Truth About Elyssa.

See you again next year!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

Honky-Tonk Cinderella
Karen Templeton

MILLS & BOON

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KAREN TEMPLETON,

a Waldenbooks bestselling author, is the mother of five sons and living proof that romance and dirty diapers are not mutually exclusive terms. An Easterner transplanted to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she spends far too much time trying to coax her garden to yield roses and produce something resembling a lawn, all the while fantasizing about a weekend alone with her husband. Or at least an uninterrupted conversation.

She loves to hear from readers, who may reach her by writing c/o Silhouette Books, 300 E. 42nd St., New York, NY 10017, or online at www.karentempleton.com.

To our own little Chase, who was clearly a royal child in some other life, and to his four nearly grown big brothers, of whom we couldn’t be more proud if they had been.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Chapter 1

He felt like an insect being scorched under a magnifying glass.

Barely nine in the morning, and already the west-Texas sun seared through Alek’s knit shirt as he walked down the dust-filmed, airless street. Even on shaded porches, petunias drooped in their baskets, commiserating with the patches of bleached grass infecting otherwise tidy lawns, while dogs sprawled like dead things under whatever shelter they could find, dreaming, not of steak or rabbits, Alek imagined, but of cooling breezes.

Hottest August on record, according to the woman at the quaint little bed and breakfast where he was staying. Just might be something to this global warmin’ business after all, she’d said, then told him the street he was looking for wasn’t but four blocks away, he couldn’t miss it. He walked slowly, squinting up through his sunglasses at hazed house numbers, uncomfortably aware of his loafers scuffing against the root-buckled pavement.

No one had recognized him. Thank God. True, he was more filled out, his hair both darker and shorter than it had been during his twenty-four-hour sojourn in Sandy Springs more than eleven years before. But unlike his hitherto reclusive sister, Sophie, Prince Aleksander Vlastos of Carpathia wasn’t exactly unknown to the press. Not these days, at any rate. And Jeff Henderson had been the town’s fair-haired boy, especially with his string of Grand Prix wins last year—

Up the street, a screen door slapped open. He stilled as a very pregnant woman, her dark, curly hair clipped up off her neck, came out onto the porch of a modest yellow-and-white two-story house huddled underneath a pair of ungainly mulberry trees. She paused to let out a half-grown, straw-colored pup too young to know how hot it was, then made her cumbersome, barefoot way down the gray steps. The dog tumbled down in front of her, nearly tripping her as she crossed to a hose neatly coiled by the outside spigot.

He said her name, softly. Prayed for the strength to get through this.

A sandwich of some sort clamped in one hand, she twisted on the water, then dragged the hose across the yard to a small flower bed, bending awkwardly to lay it among the wilted plants. Alek was still far enough away, his presence apparently camouflaged by the comfortless shade of a struggling cottonwood, that she hadn’t noticed him. His wrist, only recently sprung from a cast, complained; absently, he rubbed it.

And watched.

Too-thin arms protruded from a sleeveless white T-shirt underneath a pair of baggy, thigh-length overalls tenting over her bulging middle. Scraps of hair floated around her jaw; she impatiently shoved one of them behind her ear, her wedding rings flashing in the sunlight. He was pressing an unfair advantage, he knew, but he needed these few minutes to observe, to adjust. To prepare.

To face his memories, one at a time.

She slowly straightened, absently kneading the muscles in her lower back, turning just enough for him to glimpse her face. His breathing damn near stopped altogether: she was far too pale and frighteningly gaunt, despite the obvious weight gain from the pregnancy. Yet, oddly, her limbs seem weighted, burdened with a deep, soul-weary sadness that tore at his heart.

He’d bet his life she wouldn’t take his sudden appearance well. But he had his reasons for finding her, some of which would be readily apparent, even as others, still undefined, would perhaps become clear to them both with the passage of time. One reason, however, he would keep to himself. He’d hurt her once, albeit unintentionally; damned if he’d do it again.

Grief and regret clawed at the door to his consciousness, demanding an audience he refused to grant. Not now, at least. Now it was all he could do to make himself cross the street and face his past.

Not to mention a future that, six weeks ago, he couldn’t have dreamed of.

Luanne shoved her bangs off her already-sweaty forehead, allowing as how it was only marginally cooler out here than in the unair-conditioned house. God bless little boys who could sleep no matter what, she thought, then forced down another bite of the packaged cheeseburger she’d just microwaved, the only thing with protein in it she figured she could manage, just at the moment. The ketchup helped some. Funny how she’d always taken her hamburgers plain, until this pregnancy. Nowadays she pretty much only ate the hamburgers as an excuse for the ketchup.

She grimaced at the sorry-looking flowers, half of ’em all burned up and papery around the edges. Why was she even bothering? Wasn’t like she’d planted them herself, since they were here already when she’d rented the house two weeks ago. Like as not, unless they got some decent rain sometime soon, they were all gonna die, anyway—

Icy fingers squeezed her heart until she just about couldn’t breathe. She clamped shut her eyes, waiting it out, wondering why, instead of lessening, the pain only seemed to get worse with every passing day. After more than six weeks, it still made no sense, even though she’d reminded herself of Jeff’s death a hundred, a thousand times in a desperate attempt to assimilate the truth. Since the race had only been a practice session, there’d been no tape made of it, which she’d at first thought a blessing. Now she wondered if maybe witnessing her husband’s death might make it any more real.

Except she knew, deep down, that this was the good Lord’s way of sparing her and Chase from even more sorrow. Intellectually she knew the raw agony of loss would fade, that grief would eventually yield to acceptance….

The flowers blurred, the last bite of burger turning to cardboard in her mouth. Deep in her womb the baby stirred, sweetly oblivious. Luanne skimmed her fingers over her belly, almost reverently. She loved this child, who had taken so many years to conceive, with all her heart.

And she’d never resented anything so much in her entire life as she did being pregnant right now.

Guilt swamped her as she lunged for the spewing hose, jerking it up and across the yard, praying Odella didn’t get it into her head to come outside—

A movement out of the corner of her eye made her spin clumsily around, nearly tripping over the dog. She didn’t recognize him at first, what with his hair being shorter and him being older and the way he’d caught her off guard like that. On a cry of alarm she hurled the remains of the cheeseburger at his chest, then turned the hose on him, those being her only means of defense at hand.

“Luanne!” Alek tried to dodge the spray, as well as the dog who had dived for the burger before anybody might notice. “What the hell are you doing?”

Jerked back to her senses, she jettisoned the writhing hose and took off for the house, wanting to hide, wanting to die, wishing, wishing, wishing the nightmare would end—

Except Alek cut off her flight before she even hit the steps, whipping her around to face him. She could see little rivulets of water meandering down his just-shaved cheeks, dripping off a sharply defined jaw rigid with anguish; she flinched, even as her hands balled into fists of their own accord and began pummeling his chest.

“Why are you here?” she cried, flailing and beating and sobbing like a dadburned fool, dimly aware this was the first time since Jeff’s death she’d given her emotions their head. Ketchup streaked the drenched shirt, she noticed, sending a perverse trickle of satisfaction through her fury. “You are the last person I want to see right now!”

“You think I don’t know that?” His clipped, not-quite-British accent sent a herd of unwanted memories stampeding through her already muddled brain. She let out another sob, of frustration mostly, then suddenly Alek was holding her, stilling her hysteria, one gentle hand stroking her hair. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and she shut her eyes, realizing he smelled like ketchup and pricey cologne and, after all this time and much to her extreme annoyance, a lonely twenty-one-year-old girl’s fantasies.

She wrenched out of his arms, scrubbing the tears from her face, not sure which of them she was more angry with. Shame ripped through her that she should let another man—this man—touch her like that when she hadn’t been a widow but a few weeks. “Then why’d you come? And why now?”

Lord, but she sounded like a bitch. Which was not like her, not at all. Mama had always said there was little point in letting the bad stuff get you down, that a person’s outlook on life went a long way toward shaping his or her experiences. And Luanne, who had had more than her fair share of opportunity to put that philosophy to the test, had found it a useful one, more times than not.

Until now.

It was ungodly hot, she was pregnant, and her husband had died less than two months ago, leaving her with a devastated child who looked to her for bolstering when she could barely keep from drowning in sorrow herself. And then this man, whom she didn’t ever figure on seeing again, shows up without so much as a by-your-leave at eight-thirty in the morning and with her looking like…well, like someone without much reason for fixing herself up anymore.

Luanne swiped a stray hair out of her face, trying not to shake. “You could have at least given me some warning, instead of scaring me half to death like that.”

“I didn’t know where to find you at first,” Alek said, which she had to admit was a valid excuse, since she’d gone into seclusion with Chase immediately after the accident. But then he added, “And after I found out where you were, I was afraid…”

Luanne narrowed her eyes at that, straining to catch his meaning. “Afraid of what?”

Alek swept a trembling hand through his damp hair, not looking at her at first. And when he did, his eyes begged forgiveness.

“I want to meet my son.”

And Luanne marveled, in a stuttering, not-quite-focused kind of way, that there had been enough of her heart left intact to now be crumbling into a million pieces.

Even as short as she was, there was no avoiding the bitter, brittle heat of those impossibly blue eyes as Luanne backed away, her arms laced over her unborn child. The pup circled her feet, worried.

“Jeff swore to me he wouldn’t tell you.”

Alek swallowed down the acrid taste of guilt, hating this moment more than he’d ever hated anything in his life. “I haven’t known for long.”

He watched as her eyes squeezed shut, as she drew in a shuddering breath, opened them again. Resolve now flickered in their bright-blue depths, if not ameliorating the panic of moments before, at least fortifying it. “And I don’t suppose you’d consider pretending you’d never found out, would you?”

It was as close to begging as he imagined she’d ever come, and it nearly broke his heart. He dragged an arm across his wet face, then shook his head. “I think it’s time we all stopped pretending, don’t you?”

The prick to his conscience came hard and fast. How ironic to reach a point in his life where integrity should suddenly become all-important, only to have circumstances laugh in his face. But, in those cases where kindness and honesty seem to be mutually exclusive, which one was the more noble choice?

However, as he watched the clearly distraught woman in front of him, his ambivalence vanished. As did, apparently, some of her reticence. Her emotions as transparent as he remembered, Luanne stared at him for several seconds, then banged back the screen door. “Inside,” she said softly.

Alek and the pup both obeyed.

Once in the house, she headed down the short hallway toward the back, leaving a trail of damp footprints on the bare floor. She flapped her hand toward a sparsely furnished living room off to the left. “You may as well take a load off while I go to the little girl’s room.” The words were almost flippant, the tightness with which they were spoken, anything but.

“Luanne.”

She turned, her gaze wary.

“I’m not here to take Chase away from you.”

Purple smudges lurked underneath eyes now gone expressionless. “And I reckon I have your word on that?”

“Yes.”

He hadn’t expected her to laugh, although the sound was as dry and dusty as the air outside. “And just what’ve you ever done that would give me any reason to trust you, Your Highness?” she said, then disappeared down the hall.

Point to her.

Every muscle in his neck strung tight, Alek wandered into the bare-floored living room, the pup clicking at his heels. A quick swipe at his backside determined that he was dry enough to sit stiffly on the edge of a cushioned wicker chair; the pup wriggled over to him, flopping onto his back to get his stomach scratched. Alek complied, distractedly, glancing around the white-walled room, glaringly bright from the sunlight streaming in through the pair of curtainless windows. A large ceiling fan droned lazily overhead, barely stirring the thick, stifling air; dozens of boxes, like an oversize children’s block set, were towered throughout the room. Even from here he could see the labels: Books— History or Books—Bio or Books—Novels A-D. He wondered, vaguely, why she’d moved back from Dallas.

Back to where their child had been conceived, eleven years ago.

Alek leaned back on his elbows in the bleachers, oblivious to the sun biting through his cotton shirt and jeans, oblivious to everything save the sassy little Chevy Corsica spitting dirt from its wheels as it sped around the makeshift track. He’d come to Sandy Springs as he had to a dozen other small American towns—for the racing. Not the major venues, but the dusty little amateur tracks where tomorrow’s stars were earning their stripes, where dreams burned through a young man’s—or, less frequently, a woman’s—veins as hot and fierce as the souped-up stockcars burned rubber. He’d heard about the track from someone in another town, fifty miles to the east. And about twenty-two-year-old Jeff Henderson, who was gonna win one of the big ones one of these days, you just wait and see.

Prince Aleksander was hardly the first royal to be bitten by the racing bug. In fact, he could name at least a dozen blue-bloods who either drove or sponsored various teams, traveling from track to track to satisfy their lust. In Alek’s case, however, it wasn’t the thrill that had lured him into the sport as much as his discovery that racing was a terrific common denominator. Socioeconomic barriers simply vanished, leaving nothing except shared euphoria—or profound disappointment—in their place. And that camaraderie had gone a long way, in the past nine years since his parents’ deaths, to stanch a despair so chronic, he barely felt the ache anymore.

Still, it lurked inside him, just waiting for an unguarded moment to assault him afresh. So he kept on the move, racing pretty little cars and dallying with equally pretty women who understood not to expect emotional commitment. Not now, certainly. Perhaps not ever.

His grandmother, Princess Ivana, didn’t understand. And he knew she worried. Which worried him, in turn. To an extent. But not enough to date anyone for more than a few months. Or stay in Carpathia for more than a few days at a time.

Alek had been gone nearly six months this go-round, didn’t plan on returning for several more, at least. For some time he’d had the odd thought about putting together his own racing team. He had both money and connections; he could certainly get the cars. Now all he needed were drivers.

New drivers. Hungry drivers. Drivers who handled a car as sweetly as the cocky, loose-limbed kid he’d been honored to watch tear up a track this afternoon.

Not that he was anywhere near ready to make an offer, or even to reveal his true identity. In fact, he was using his father’s name—Hastings—rather than Vlastos, the royal name handed down through his grandmother and mother, masquerading as just another bored, wealthy European bumming around the States. Watching, taking mental notes, planning—those were sufficient for the moment. Alek took risks, yes, but he wasn’t impetuous. Or incautious. Still, a frisson of exquisite, almost sexual pleasure had hummed through his veins at the way Jeff Henderson seemed to effortlessly balance passion with precision. Like Alek, Jeff clearly only took chances he knew he could pull off.

The young man said as much, when Alek approached him after the practice session to compliment him on his style. Determination glittering in his golden-brown eyes, the freckled, mustached redhead with the ready smile soaked up the compliment, then went on to say that he intended to drive professionally one day. Just as soon as he found a sponsor.

Alek just smiled, then took Jeff up on his invitation to join him later on for a beer and a bite to eat at the local watering hole, if he had a mind.

The night had already cooled considerably when Alek pulled his rented Porsche convertible alongside a monster SUV in front of the post-and-rail fence edging someone’s pasture. A light breeze stirring his shoulder-length hair, he sat and stared for several moments at the neon-drenched adobe box from which blasted the sounds of a live country-western combo, complete with female vocalist with a set of lungs to rival any opera diva he’d ever heard.

Well. He supposed he was about to pay his first visit to a gen-u-wine honky-tonk.

Alek got out of the car, imagining that, unless he opened his mouth, he’d fit right in. The soft, button-fly jeans hailed from his Oxford days, as did the worn denim shirt, the sleeves rolled to just below his elbows. Of course, his two-week-old custom-made boots—when in Rome and all that—did creak a bit as he crossed the dirt lot, nodding in silent response to assorted “howdys” and “heys” along the way. His self-consciousness vanished, however, the instant he stepped inside the dimly lit bar choked with noise and body heat, his nostrils flaring at the tangled smells of hops, barbecue sauce, cheap perfume.

He scrubbed a palm across a jaw hazed with three-day-old stubble, then grinned, the despair retreating just a bit further into the shadows.

Cigarette smoke ghosting around the stage lights, the microphone squawked as the sultry-voiced singer asked for requests. A slightly slurred voice shouted out something rude: The dubious-aged, big-haired blonde, a blur of sequins and six-inch-long satin fringe, laughed and lobbed a zinger of a rebuttal in the heckler’s direction, just as a piercing whistle sliced through the din.

“Alek! Over here!”

Alek squinted through the haze and bodies, then chuckled at the sight of Jeff Henderson standing atop one of the tables, madly waving his arms and grinning with youthful exuberance.

“Sit, sit,” Jeff ordered after Alek threaded his way through the crush, then dropped into his own chair, edging back the brim of a ball cap with his thumb. “Beer?” Jeff asked. “Or something stronger?”

“Beer’s fine.” The singer launched forth into her next number. Jeff nodded, signaling to the pretty, dark-haired waitress a few tables away. “And food,” Alek added, snatching the laminated menu from the metal stand in front of him.

Jeff grabbed the menu from his hand, plopped it back into the stand. “Menus are for wimps. You come to Ed’s, you eat the barbecued ribs. Period. Side of slaw, side of beans. Biscuits to sop it all up with. Hey, sugar—” With another of those ingenuous grins, he reached up, playfully tugged at the hem of the waitress’s apron. “What took you so long?”

A quick laugh met Jeff’s remark—along with a good-natured smack on the hand with her order pad. A bit of a thing in a white sleeveless blouse and jeans, her nearly black hair waves framing classic features, the young woman was one of those rare creatures who, while undoubtedly pretty enough without makeup, could knock a man’s socks off with it. Smoky shadow and carefully applied eyeliner only served to accentuate huge, ice-blue eyes, while she had the kind of mouth just made for red lipstick. And Alek knew more than one European model who would kill for that flawless complexion.

“It’s about all these other customers, Jeffrey Eugene?” she said in an accent thick as treacle, then turned that bright, sweet smile on Alek, and he was startled to feel his blood stir in a way it hadn’t for a long, long time. Flirting with waitresses wasn’t Alek’s thing. Nor was he flirting now. Exactly. But that smile certainly snagged his attention. Not to mention a libido he’d been sorely neglecting of late.

“Luanne Evans, Alek Hastings.” Jeff took a swig of his beer, then another tug of her apron. “Be nice to him,” he said in a stage whisper. “He’s from out of town.”

“Oh, yeah?” Her voice was breathy and weightless, like a child’s. She picked up Jeff’s sweating bottle, then wiped off the already-clean table, which made her breasts move in a way Alek found more than a little distracting. “From whereabouts?”

His eyes jerked to her face. “Carpathia.”

“No foolin’?”

Alek leaned back in his chair, a smile tickling his lips. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Some of us,” she said, obviously for Jeff’s benefit, “actually paid attention in geography class.” Then she rattled off not only the location of the tiny principality nestled in central Europe, but the square mileage, Carpathia’s capital and the fact that their monarchy—now constitutional—had gone unchallenged for more than four hundred years. And while Alek sat there, at once flummoxed and extraordinarily impressed, she stared at him for a long moment, ignoring repeated entreaties from the next table. Then she crossed her arms underneath that pair of truly lovely breasts. “One thing bothers me, though.”

“And what might that be?”

“What in tarnation are you doin’ here?”

Alex smiled. Slowly. Now he was flirting, no holds barred. Her directness, her intelligence, her spirit—and, all right, her physical attributes—positively inflamed him, body and soul. “I thought I knew, up until a few minutes ago.” The smile broadened as he leaned forward, let their gazes tangle. “But now I wonder if perhaps I’ve been led here…for reasons I’ve yet to discover.”

Although she kept her smile in place, not even the darkness could disguise her blush. Alek felt duly—and justifiably—chastised. But before he could apologize, he caught the look on Jeff’s face, one that clearly said I want that as he gave Luanne their orders, then snatched her pencil out of her hand. Playful, still. And respectful—Alek, took note—despite an attraction that Alek surmised had more substance than his friend was letting on.

“So, darlin’—when you gonna put me out of my misery and marry me?”

Ah.

But, apparently recovered from Alek’s gaffe, Luanne only laughed. Carefully arranged tendrils grazed her cheeks when she shook her head. “Now, you know as well as I do that marrying you would be like marrying my own brother.” She recovered her pencil, then popped him lightly on the head with it. “Wouldn’t be natural.” Then she sashayed off, giving them both an enticing view of the way her jeans cupped that extremely nice, perfectly rounded bottom, how her hair water-falled nearly to her waist.

On a sigh, Jeff lifted his bottle of beer, peered at it with one eye closed. “Kinda makes incest look a lot more attractive, don’t it?”

Alek chuckled, counting his blessings the young man had apparently missed Alek’s lame, and ill-considered, attempt at a pick-up line. “You’ve got a thing for her, I take it?”

Squinting, Jeff tipped back his chair. “Oh, we tease a lot, Lulabelle and me—shoot, we’ve known each other since we were in grade school—but I don’t suppose it would seem natural, like she said. But I’m here to tell you—” he nodded his beer bottle in Alek’s direction before he took a pull “—I’d do anything for that gal, I really would. No matter what my dang-fool family thinks.”

Alek frowned at the edge to Jeff’s voice. “Meaning?”

The chair thunked back to the floor as Jeff leaned forward again. “Meaning, some folks seem to think where you live or what you do for a living is more important than you who are. Never mind that Luanne was the smartest girl in school—fact, if it weren’t for her, I never would have gotten my sorry butt through algebra—or that, after her mama got sick, she supported the two of them for three years without askin’ for a lick of help from nobody.” Jeff shook his head, disgust pulling his mouth taut. “Galls the life out of me, sometimes, the way people judge other people, y’know? Well, damn it, I know what she’s worth. If anything, she’s far too good for the likes of ninety percent of the men around here, and that’s a fact.”

Although Alek had to smile at the young man’s pup-protecting-his-mistress loyalty, something—a vague disingenuousness, perhaps?—kicked up the odd hackle or two. Nothing he could define, just an odd feeling that a smart person would do well to not take Jeff’s easygoing manner at face value. However, applause for the singer, followed by Luanne’s appearance with their food, stanched further musings. The waitress had a smile and hair ruffle for Jeff…and a cool, cautious head-nod and “Hope you enjoy your dinner” for Alek. She didn’t seem angry or hurt, though, as much as…disappointed.

She moved off to another table a few feet away, chatting and joking with the patrons as if she’d known them all her life. Which she undoubtedly had.

Alek suppressed a sigh. Granted, he was used to getting what he wanted. In fact, most people would probably consider him spoiled. With good reason. Even so, he found no pleasure in using people or in taking undue advantage of his position.

Or in hurting feelings, if he could help it. That a woman working in a bar should be more thick-skinned was beside the point. Perhaps she had little choice in her place of employment. Perhaps she dreaded coming to work, night after night, fearing that, just because she was pretty and friendly, some moron might misinterpret her natural ebullience as a come-on.

Well, the least this moron could do was to attempt to remedy the situation.

She jerked, a little, when he caught up to her at the bar a little later. Although her lips curved into a smile as she deftly loaded drinks onto her tray, a certain guardedness immediately settled into those bright blue eyes—eyes that, nevertheless, had no compunction about meeting his.

“Everything okay?” she asked over the barrage of conversation cocooning them. “C’n I get you boys anything else?”

“I just wanted to apologize,” he said, and the eyes went saucer wide.

“For what?”

“For offending you earlier.”

She stared at him for a long moment, clearly having no earthly idea what to do with his comment. Then she yanked the tray off the bar, averting her gaze. “No offense taken,” she said softly.

Only she turned back, the beginnings of a smile tweaking at one corner of her mouth. “But I appreciate you taking the trouble to apologize. That was real sweet of you. Most men… Well, it was just real nice, is all. Thanks.”

And that should have been that. Except, for the rest of the evening Alek found his attention straying to the vivacious young woman with a laugh or smile or friendly word for everyone. If life had been less than kind to her, she certainly didn’t seem to be holding it against anyone. And he acknowledged to himself that, in those few seconds between his apology and her acceptance, something in Luanne Evans’s honest blue eyes had shot straight through to the cynicism knotted inside him, loosening it just a bit.

Edging aside the despair just enough to let in the barest trickle of something he couldn’t quite define. An alien feeling, to be sure, but pleasant enough to make him think, More, please, to inexplicably draw him to whatever it was that kept Luanne Evans’s smile so naturally, so constantly, in place.

To make him take the kind of chance he rarely did.

Jeff and he left together, around eleven. But at one in the morning—closing time—Alek returned, the parking lot now empty save for three or four pickups and a motorcycle the size of Poland close to the building. A storm had begun to brew: wind slapped at his hair and shirt as the tang of imminent rain filled his nostrils. Thunder trembled in the distance, accompanied by lightning that pounced across the relentlessly flat landscape in an eerily beautiful dance. He put up the top, then cut the engine and waited, realizing the odds of his making a complete ass of himself were about as high as they could get.

The first enormous drops began to pound the dirt when Luanne and another waitress emerged a few minutes later. He saw the other woman poke Luanne in the arm, point toward him; Luanne glanced over, enough light spilling from the bar for him to see her hesitate, then shake her head and swat in his direction, before the two of them took off in a blur of raindrops and giggles across the lot to their vehicles, their purses held over their heads. In an almost comical synchronization, two doors opened, two women jumped into their trucks, two doors slammed shut. The other woman took off first, tires spitting gravel as she gunned the truck out of the lot. Then, on a teeth-rattling bellow of thunder, the skies split open.

Well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Alek thought on a bemused sigh as he reached for the ignition….

He squinted through the deluge at the sight of a figure clumsily hauling itself out of another pickup some twenty feet from Luanne’s. Obviously drunk and yelling something indecipherable, the man lurched unsteadily in her direction. Alek froze, barely having time to wonder why Luanne hadn’t left yet before the man jerked open her door.

Alek shot from the Porsche, reaching the old Ford just as the huge man lunged inside, groping like a bear for the obviously terrified waitress now huddled against the passenger-side door. Between the din from the storm and the other waitress’s departure, she must not have heard the man’s approach.

The walrus might have bested him in sheer mass, but at six foot one and nearly solid muscle—not to mention having sobriety and adrenaline on his side—Alek had the clear advantage. Greasy ponytail viced in one hand, the other twisting a massive, flabby arm into a tight hammerlock, Alek yanked the sputtering, cursing oaf out of the truck, keeping his grip iron tight as torrents of surprisingly frigid, blinding rain pelted them both.

“I take it,” Alek shouted to Luanne over the downpour, “this man’s attentions were unwelcome?”

A crack of thunder made her jump, but in the yellow glow from her truck’s ceiling light, he saw her wide-eyed nod.

“Just checking.” Alek then spun the drunk around, fully intending to connect fist to flabby jaw. Except, before he got the chance, the cretin let out a truly hideous belch, then splatted into the mud like a harpooned whale.

“What the hell?”

Alek’s gaze shot to another man in a white T-shirt and jeans—middle-aged, balding, big-bellied—bending over the fallen one. Hands on knees, completely oblivious to the rain, the man let out a short, pithy expletive before he glanced up—still bent over—and stuck out a hand. “Hey. Ed Torres. The owner.”

Alek returned the shake, blinking against the rain slamming into his face. “Alek Hastings—”

“Yeah. I know.” Ed grabbed the downed man’s chin, torqued his face from side to side. “One of those damn Simmons boys, looks like. Probably here for Earl’s third girl’s wedding, figured a little celebratin’ was in order. Worthless piece of…” Shaking his head in disgust, Ed straightened, pointlessly hitched up his jeans, then glanced into Luanne’s truck, rain sluicing off a face folded into a frown of genuine, fatherly concern. “Luanne, honey? You okay?”

She nodded, even though she clearly was anything but.

“Thirty-two years I’ve had this bar, and this is the first time one of my waitresses has been out-and-out accosted. I was just coming out, y’know, saw dogturd here headed toward Luanne’s truck. Lucky you got here when you did.” Worn features perked up into a grin; Alek thought he might have heard a chuckle over the next roll of thunder. “Yeah. Damn lucky. Hey—you mind gettin’ his feet, helping me drag his sorry ass inside? Last thing anybody needs is this idiot back behind the wheel. He can just wait inside until the sheriff shows up. So you might as well…you know…”

Ed nodded in Luanne’s direction. Offered a sodden, conspiratorial wink.

Alek wasn’t sure quite how to take that. However, he leaned into the truck where Luanne was still hunkered by the far door, still obviously shaken. His heart did a slow turn he decided he’d best not think too hard about. “Would it be too presumptuous to ask that you stay put until I get back?”

Her breasts rose rather prettily with the force of her enormous sigh, disseminating a hint—over the lethal dose of secondhand smoke trapped in her hair and clothes—of actually rather nice perfume. “Looks like I don’t have a choice, seeings Miss High and Mighty here—” she slammed the heel of her hand against the dashboard “—won’t start. Again. Otherwise I would’ve been gone long before…” She bit her lip, hauled in a short, steadying breath as she looked away. “Thank you,” she said, before her gaze met his, albeit reluctantly. “I’m much obliged.”

Alek shrugged. “Can’t take much credit, I’m afraid. But I can give you a ride home.”

She stiffened, looked away again. “I can get one from Ed.”

One hand braced on the roof of Luanne’s truck, Alek glanced around the lot. Other than the Porsche and Romeo’s truck, the Harley was the only vehicle in sight. He leaned back inside, determined to exude patience and sensitivity when, in fact, he was soaked through to his briefs and beginning to shiver and the adrenaline that had fueled his macho performance a few minutes ago had long since petered out. “It’s pouring.”

“I know that.”

He was reminded of the time when, as a child, he and the palace gamekeeper had come across a wounded wolf in the woods backing the estate. The poor thing was frightened out of its wits, but still fiercely wary of the humans who only wanted to help it.

“Luanne?” Ed’s exasperated voice cut through the pounding rain. “I know you’re shook up and all, but this ain’t no time for prevaricatin’. And you and I both know, you don’t want to be riding on the back of the Hawg in this weather.”

“I am not prevaricatin’!” Luanne shot back, then swiped back a stray hank of hair, obviously nearer to tears than she cared to admit. “I’m…weighin’ my options.”

Alek and Ed exchanged a weary, universally understood glance.

“Besides,” Alek pressed, trying to keep his teeth from chattering, “Ed has to stay until the sheriff shows up. And who knows how long that could take?”

Luanne’s mouth thinned, her arms tightening around her ribs.

“Tell you what, then,” he said. “You ‘weigh your options’ while I help Ed get this creep—” who was beginning to groan ominously at Alek’s feet “—inside. Then you can let me know what you decide when I return. Would that be acceptable?”

Very slowly one dark eyebrow slid up. And, if he wasn’t mistaken—yes, there it went—a corner of her mouth twitched as she gave a nod.

But damned if she wasn’t sitting in the Porsche when he got back….

Loud, irregular clomping in the hallway behind him jerked Alek to his feet. Instinctively he faced the door, almost immediately finding himself the recipient of a mutinous, ice-blue glare, a sharp contrast to the tinges of childish pink that still lingered in the high-boned, freckled cheeks, the flattened mouth.

Then the mouth opened and spat out, “Who the heck are you?”

Chapter 2

Drowning in a gray T-shirt, baggy shorts and a pair of heavily-tooled, well-worn cowboy boots that wouldn’t fit him properly for at least another three or four years, the kid seemed tall for ten. And thin—his wide, serious eyes enormous in the narrow face. Red highlights glimmered in uncombed brown hair that straggled below tops of ears and eyebrows, the color not dissimilar to Alek’s at that age. Luanne’s eyes, absolutely; but to someone who didn’t know otherwise, Jeff’s build, Jeff’s coloring.

That nose, however, could be seen in any number of portraits lining Carpathia’s palace walls, a feature that had chosen, as it had done with both Alek and his sister, not to transform until the onset of puberty. Jeff had shown Alek innumerable pictures of Chase as a little boy, and not once had Alek even suspected that Jeff wasn’t the child’s father.

Until now. Now there was no doubt, even if he hadn’t already known. Without thinking, Alek rubbed the telltale bump on the bridge of his own nose, then rose and extended his hand, swallowing down the nerves that threatened to make him dizzy. His sister, the one who’d set up the refugee children’s home in Carpathia, the one who’d married a man with five kids, had a natural affinity for children. Not Alek. Children had always made Alek feel awkward, off-kilter.

Especially grief-stricken children who just happened to carry his genes.

Awe and anger, both, nearly rendered him speechless. Except he managed to get out, “I’m Alek, Chase. A friend of…Jeff’s.”

Recognition flared in the boy’s eyes. “Why’d you come? It’s all your fault! Why’d you have to come and make everything worse?”

The room fairly shook as the child stomped out of the room, the pup whimpering at his run-down heels.

Luanne had just about made it back to the living room when Chase nearly mowed her down. She grabbed him by the shoulders, her heart cramping all over again when she saw the tears. Even before Jeff’s death, he’d always cried more than any boy she’d ever known, and he hated it. Hated it.

But there used to be a lot more giggles than tears. And almost never any anger. During the past weeks, however, it was almost like someone had taken away her bright, easygoing child, leaving in his place this pile of screaming, snarling emotions and Luanne at her wit’s end. It wasn’t like she didn’t understand, or even thought Chase was overreacting and should be settling down a bit by now. After all, she was just as much torn up as he was. But it frustrated the very life out of her that she couldn’t make her baby’s hurt go away. In fact, more than once she’d been downright panicked that she might lose it herself.

However, since there was nobody else to pick up the pieces if she did fall apart, that was a luxury she simply could not allow herself.

“Hey, baby,” she said over her own thudding heart, combing his hair back from his face. “What’s going on—?”

“Why’s he here? Why’d he have to come? If it wasn’t for him, Daddy’d still be alive!”

Luanne flinched. “That’s not true, Chase Eugene Henderson, and I don’t want to hear you say that again, you hear me?”

“But if it hadn’t’ve been for him and Daddy making that bet—”

“Then Daddy would’ve found somebody else to make it with! Now you listen to me…” Her grasp tightened, making him look her right in the eye. Not that they hadn’t had this conversation a dozen or more times already, but you would’ve thought the edge might’ve at least begun to wear down some by now. Instead, the pain only seemed to get sharper, brighter, like the way the sun hurts your eyes when you walk out of a movie theater in the middle of the day. “Your daddy had the racing fever long before he met Prince Aleksander. Long before. Oh, shoot, honey—I know all you can think is, if he hadn’t’ve been racing, he wouldn’t’ve been killed. But your daddy could’ve no more stopped racing than he could’ve stopped breathing. Racing’s what he lived for.” And what he died for, she thought as she sucked in a sharp, dry breath. “Whether we understood it or not—”

“You could’ve asked him to stop! Bet he would’ve quit, if you’d’ve asked him!”

She looked over Chase’s shoulder to see Alek standing in the living room doorway, frowning, looking like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Or the rest of him, for that matter. “Should I leave?” he mouthed. And if she’d thought he meant really leave—as in leave her house, the state, her life—she might’ve nodded. Since she doubted that was the case, she shook her head, pinning him with her gaze. Stay, her glare said. See how much my baby needs his mama, the only constant in his life right now.

Except, she hadn’t expected to see her silent demand register on Alek’s expression quite so clearly. She lowered her eyes quickly to her son’s face, stumbling over her words. “Wh-which is why I n-never asked him to.”

Chase swiped at his cheeks. “That don’t make sense, Mama.”

“Doesn’t make sense, and no, I know it doesn’t. But, see—your daddy always said he’d do anything for me. So how could I ask him to quit doin’ the one thing he loved most? That would’ve killed him, or just about, because it would’ve killed his soul.” She cupped Chase’s jaw in her hands, wishing she could kiss away the owie the way she used to when he was little. “I just couldn’t do that to him, baby.”

Her son just looked at her long and hard for several seconds, then asked, “When’s it gonna stop hurting, Mama? When’s the pain gonna go away?”

His plea echoed through the icy hollowness where her heart was supposed to be. She pulled him into a fierce hug, pressing kisses into his unkempt hair. He didn’t return the embrace, which tore her up inside even more, but no way was she going to let go. “I don’t know, baby. All I know is, it will. Eventually, it will.”

It had to, or her heart was going to plumb crack right in two.

Alek cleared his throat. Chase jumped, whirled around, plastering his bony little body against Luanne’s.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.” He lifted his gaze, briefly, to Luanne’s. “Either of you.” His crisp accent only added to the edginess crackling around them. “I would never have done anything to purposely hurt your father. Or you.”

Luanne touched Chase’s head. “Alek got hurt in that crash, too—”

“Yeah, but he’s alive! Daddy’s not!”

“Chase—!”

“It’s all right,” Alek said gently, if a little stiffly. But like he was making an effort, at least. “I understand what he’s feeling—”

“No, you don’t!” Chase’s hands fisted at his sides; his thin frame feeling brittle underneath Luanne’s hands. “You can’t!”

The child’s pain vibrated in the room like a living thing as Luanne watched compassion flood features more sharply defined than a decade before, features she hadn’t really gotten a good look at until this point, what with the sheer shock of seeing him again combined with all these emotions and worries clawing at her. She’d seen photos, of course, during the past decade, photos she’d deliberately sought out, just to prove to herself…

About a hundred miles underneath her misery, memories stirred and stretched. She refused to pay them any mind.

Then she noticed that Alek had crouched down in front of the boy, his hands resting on his knees, not even blinking when Chase recoiled further against her. She could tell Alek was as much at a loss as she was. Maybe more so. That he was scared, too, and maybe more than a little confused. His attempt to comfort a strange child when it was obvious the whole situation made him highly uncomfortable impressed her in a way she would not have thought possible ten minutes before.

And if it was a bad thing to feel a little relief at having someone take the burden from her shoulders, even for a minute, well then, the world would just have to deal with that.

“I lost both my parents when I was sixteen, Chase,” Alek said. “And for a very long time, I felt as if someone had poured acid into my gut, it hurt so badly. So, yes…I do know what you’re feeling.”

Luanne decided Chase’s silence was better than his arguing. Alek straightened up, a slight shake of his head halting her apology for her son.

Well. Now what? She kneaded Chase’s knobby shoulders through his T-shirt for an awkward second or two, then turned him around and handed him a tissue from the pocket of her overalls. “Here. Blow.”

“I’m not a baby,” he grumbled, swiping his hand across his cheek.

“Did I say that?”

Chase glowered at her, but took the tissue anyway and honked into it, after which Luanne suggested he go get himself some breakfast.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You need to eat something, honey—”

“I said, I ain’t hungry!”

Irritation flashed inside her, so hot and fierce it scared her half to death, adding a walloping dose of guilt to her emotions. She’d never once laid a hand on her child. Yet now, when she most needed to have control over herself, there were times when it was everything she could do not to smack him for what, in any other child, she would have called out-and-out insolence. He knew how much she detested that particular backwoods expression, one that wealth and success had never been able to eradicate from Jeff’s speech, either.

But this was not the time to call him on it.

“Fine,” Luanne said in a shaky voice, turning her attention to the dog and away from the pair of astute silver eyes that she wished would just take their astuteness and go away. “But Bo is. So go fill his dog dish, then go on outside and play ball with him for a little while, before it gets any hotter.”

To her amazement—and immense relief—Chase did as he was told.

Minor crisis resolved for the moment, she turned to the much bigger one standing far too close for her comfort. She did not wish him to find her wanting, which she feared he would if he studied her hard enough and long enough. But, oh, she was so weary. Crossing her arms, she leaned heavily against the wall. “I think it’s pretty obvious Chase can’t take any more stress right now.” She looked at him directly. “And, frankly, neither can I.”

Alek’s mouth went thin and tight. “I’m not turning my back on my son.”

“But you said—”

“And I meant it. I’m not here to take him away.”

The determined set to his features told another story, however. “Then what, exactly, do you have in mind?”

A pause, then he said, “There didn’t seem much point in formulating a plan until we’d talked things through.”

Luanne had nothing to say to that, which seemed to rattle Alek. Again, he swiped a hand through burnished dark-brown hair much shorter now, though still long enough to defy taming. Just like him, she imagined. He glanced away, then back, his brow pleated. “I’m flying completely blind here, Luanne. I know the timing couldn’t be worse on this, but…” His mouth twisted in frustration. “Chase isn’t just my son. He’s my heir. Not just to a throne, but a sizable fortune as well.”

“We don’t need your money.” Might as well get that point cleared up, right now. “Jeff left enough for us to live comfortably on for some time. I finally got my degree, too, a couple years ago. Once I get my certification, I can start teaching as soon as this one’s old enough to go into daycare.” Another stab to her heart: she’d opted to stay home for Chase, had fully intended to do the same with the new baby. Now, however… “We won’t starve, Alek.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” he said quietly, and that set her to trembling all over again.

Her lip stung. She hadn’t realized she’d been biting down on it. “Jeff’s name’s on the birth certificate.” At Alek’s stunned expression, she added, “I couldn’t very well put down yours, could I?”

Her grandmother’s old cuckoo clock chimed the half hour before Alek said, “I know I’ve done precious little to earn your trust, but please believe me—I only want to work out whatever’s best for all of us. Granted, I don’t have the slightest idea how to go about that, but we have to start somewhere. And the sooner, the better.”

Luanne swiped at her nose with the back of her hand, trying to convince herself she wasn’t trapped. Oh, Lord…the last thing she wanted to do was deal with any of this. But she was in no condition, physically or mentally, to put up the kinds of walls now that would only give Alek a reason to use his power and influence down the road.

She frowned. If she lived to be a hundred and ten, she’d never understand why Jeff had told Alek about Chase when he’d been so all-fired intent on Chase’s real father never getting the opportunity to mess things up.

The baby kicked, hard. Luanne tried not to react, but there Alek was, right in front of her with his arms outstretched, asking if she was all right.

“I’m fine.” She stood up straight to show him she didn’t need his help, either long-or short-term. “So tell me—if it hadn’t’ve been for Chase, would you be here right now?”

She couldn’t read his expression. “To be perfectly honest…I don’t know. Oh, I would have made sure you were all right, I suppose, but…” He ended the sentence with a sad shrug.

Well. Since it was obvious none of this was going to go away and leave her be, she let out a long sigh, then turned and waddled down the hall toward the kitchen, feeling like somebody else had moved into her body until the rightful owner came to her senses. “You hungry? I could fix you some breakfast—”

“Luanne?”

She told herself it was only because she was so on edge that his voice sounded like a caress. That it was only because she was seven months pregnant and a new widow that anything of Alek Vlastos had any kind of power over her at all. But the fact was she’d never felt more alone in her life. Or more helpless. And right this very instant a large part of her wanted to walk smack into those big old strong arms and cry her eyes out.

However, since she had no earthly intention of letting that happen, she simply turned, one hand on the kitchen door frame, and said, “What?”

“I could be angry as well, you know.”

Holding back the tears, she swiftly turned and headed on into the kitchen.

Holding back the memories of that night eleven years ago was something else again….

Sitting in the Porsche in the pouring rain, wondering if she’d truly gone and lost her mind, Luanne could just make out Alek’s mad dash from Ed’s to the car. Not that running did him any good, seeing as he was already soaked through. Unmindful of the wet leather seat—he’d left his door open—he scooted behind the steering wheel and slammed shut his door, shoving one hand through his dripping hair which, combined with his shadowed jaw, made him look almost…wild. For a brief moment she thought he might shake himself like a dog, finding herself mildly disappointed when he didn’t. Her gaze then lingered on his body just long enough to determine that what the wet shirt and jeans had molded themselves to was lean and hard, and that this was having a profound and disturbing effect on her good sense.

She quickly looked away. Here her nerves had just settled down some, and then all that lean, male hardness had to go sending them haywire all over again.

Not, however, because he frightened, or even intimidated her, despite his being more refined and classier than any man she’d ever met, let alone ridden alone in a car with. Oh, no. What had gotten to her, from the moment they met—and what had, paradoxically, made her turn away when she’d seen his car in the lot—was what she’d seen in his eyes.

Working in a bar the way she did, Luanne had gotten real good at discerning, from a person’s body language and the expression in his eyes, not just whether he was dealing with some trial or other, but what that trial might be. She wasn’t sure whether this ability of hers was a gift or a burden, but her knack for pinpointing people’s troubles had proved to be extremely useful on more than one occasion.

Maybe she was only twenty-one, but she’d already seen for herself any number of times that there was a lot of truth in what folks said about money not buying happiness. An adage she suspected held especially true in this case. Off and on throughout the evening she had found herself contemplating Alek Hastings, coming to the eventual conclusion that this was a man with great emptiness inside him, despite his surface cheerfulness. She had not, however, arrived at this diagnosis because she had any special powers to read a person’s mind, as much as this was a general truth she’d learned about men with wanderlust.

Unfortunately, neither of those things stopped her from being powerfully attracted to the man, nor from thinking about things she shouldn’t.

“All recovered now?” Alek now asked, interrupting her thoughts. She managed a nod, not trusting her voice. The rain had dropped the temperature considerably; even wearing the sweater she kept in the truck, she wrapped her arms around herself, only to realize how cold he must be, being wet and all.

“Where you staying?” she asked, only to feel her face immediately flame at how he might interpret her question. “What I mean is, you’re gonna freeze to death if you don’t get outta those wet clothes….”

That got a chuckle. Now even the roots of her hair felt hot, propelling her next words out on an exasperated rush. “I just meant maybe you might be more comfortable if you changed into dry clothes before you took me home. That’s all.”

“I know that’s what you meant,” he said, and she could hear the grin in his voice. “And yes, I think that’s an excellent idea, since I don’t much relish the thought of catching pneumonia. I’m staying at the Come On Inn.”

She burst out laughing. “You have got to be kidding!”

In the glow from the dash, she saw another grin split the dark contours of his beard-hazed face. “So sue me. I’m a sucker for tacky motels.”

“Well then, buddy, you are definitely staying at the right place. How on earth do you get any sleep, though, is what I want to know. I hear the walls are notoriously thin.”

His resulting low laugh sent a whole swarm of warm, foolish thoughts spiraling through her. “Earplugs.”

She found herself chuckling back, wondering at how she could feel so relaxed with her nerves all lit up the way they were. Then she allowed as how the Come On was on the way to her place, and off they purred in his fancy car, his headlights spearing the night as the windshield wipers whispered away the rain. He handled the car like it was part of him, with finesse and confidence, but no bravado, for which she and her twanging nerves were immensely grateful.

Alek popped a cassette into the player on the dash. A minute later, lush, glorious music filled the car.

“It sounds like Beethoven,” she said deliberately, “but I don’t recognize it.”

She saw the flinch of surprise, his hands tighten, just barely, on the wheel. “It’s the Choral Fantasy. He used this as a warm-up for the Ninth Symphony.”

“Ah.” Luanne sighed and let herself sink into the glove-soft leather, shutting her eyes, silently thanking her mother for sending away for one of those cassette sets of The World’s Best-Loved Melodies for $24.95 when Luanne wasn’t but a little girl. “It’s beautiful.”

Which would have been the cue for most men to say, “So are you,” but he didn’t. Instead he said, “So tell me—when that jerk opened your car door, why didn’t you pop out the passenger side and run back to Ed’s?”

“Can’t,” she said on a shrug. “That door hasn’t worked since probably 1976.”

“Never mind the engine?”

“Oh, the engine’s all right, usually.” Then she laughed. “Hey, I bought her off of Fred Sellers for two hundred bucks, what did I expect? And Jeff keeps her tuned up for me for free. Ordinarily Flo and I get along just fine.”

“Flo?”

“The truck. Which reminds me—don’t let me forget to call Jeff when I get home, have him go over and see what’s wrong with her.”

She thought she saw Alek do one of those things with his jaw that men do when they want to ask you something that’s none of their business, but they were pulling up in front of his room at the Come On, anyway, which Luanne figured was probably fortuitous.

He wasn’t gone five minutes, during which time the storm pretty much played itself out. When he returned, he was wearing a serious bad-boy leather jacket over fresh jeans and a plain white shirt, open at the collar, that showed off his dark complexion quite nicely.

Luanne reminded herself that staring was impolite.

She also reminded herself, as she directed Alek onto the dirt road that led to her trailer on the Carlisles’ property, where she lived rent free in exchange for her tutoring their kids during the school year—which was more of a challenge than she’d ever admit to the children’s parents—that she was not in the habit of inviting strange men into her house in the wee hours of the morning, not even those who had come to her rescue. Heck, she didn’t even invite men she knew inside her trailer. Bad enough fending them off in their trucks.

And if the rest of the ride from Alek’s motel had passed in silence, or been filled with dribs and drabs of stilted, boring conversation, she supposed she wouldn’t be tormenting herself like this.

But it hadn’t. And because it hadn’t, it struck Luanne that she had been sorely neglecting herself of late. And then there was this out-and-out sexual attraction that was making her itchy all over and her blood purr like the Porsche’s engine. So by the time they got to the trailer, and Blue, the shepherd mix who’d shown up on her doorstep last year, had made a mad dash out of his dog house for the car, barking his fool head off, she had just about twisted herself inside out with her ambivalence.

Then she looked up and saw her home for what it was—a tacky single-wide with fake wood paneling and fifteen-year-old gold shag carpeting besides.

Alek cut the engine. Luanne leaned out and told Blue to go on, git, which he did. Then she sat there, smelling Alek and listening to her heart stutter, reminding herself that she was not an impulsive person, and that expressing even a friendly interest in this man was very possibly the most impractical, illogical thing she could ever do. Except, right on the heels of that thought came the equally compelling argument that life was awfully short and unpredictable and here was an opportunity that, in all likelihood, would never come her way again. And that tacky though her place might be, it still beat the Come On all to heck.

Staring straight out the windshield—she somehow couldn’t bring herself to look at him—she said, “I don’t suppose you’d like to come in for a little while? For a glass of iced tea or something?”

Silence followed, and she thought, Oh, Lord, I have gone and done it now, except then Alek asked, very softly, “Are you sure?” and her heart bumped even harder in her chest as she replied, still not looking at him, “Yes.”

Then Alek leaned over, his smooth, elegant fingers carefully bracketing her jaw, turning her to face him. And oh, my, how her insides went all liquidy and warm. The clouds having moved off, silvery moonlight flooded into the car, accentuating what was easily the most handsome male face she’d ever seen. A handsome male face that was now within easy kissing distance, she realized. His scent mingled with that of the cool, rain-washed air as his fingers grazed her face with more gentleness than she’d ever thought possible from a man. And she thought, Oh, dear Lord—! but that’s as far as the thought got when Alek whispered, “It’s very late.”

Oh.

All she could do was nod, not having the wherewithal to know what else to do. He was giving her an out, she realized. So she should feel neither rejected nor disappointed, but grateful for his concern for her person and reputation.

Except he leaned just the tiniest bit closer, now clearly intent on kissing her, which both confused and delighted her. Then he hesitated, just as clearly waiting for her to give the go-ahead. So she edged a little closer, too, closing the gap between them, and then she heard herself sigh as his lips touched hers. It was a soft, sweet kiss, not at all what she might have expected from someone who she imagined had known more than a few women in his time, but all the more arousing for the tenderness of it.

There was a lot to be said for a man restraining himself, she thought as the first, tentative contact blossomed into something with a little zing to it. Never before had a man touched her as if she was something rare and precious and delicate, something to be cherished, not wrestled into submission. And when the kiss ended, instead of feeling her usual sense of relief that the ordeal was at last over, she felt a sense of wonder, as if something magical had happened. Oh, it was silly and girlish to feel such a thing, her practical self knew that, but magical moments were few and far between in her life, and she saw no reason not to clutch this one to her heart.

And while she was thinking on all this, she realized Alek had gotten out of the car and was standing by her open door. Slowly, as if in a dream, she gathered her wits and purse, sure by now he could hear her heart pounding in her chest. But then she got a good look at his face, which seemed to be filled with all manner of confusion, and it was only then that it occurred to her that he had yet to answer her question.

“If I accept your invitation,” he said, all seriousness, “I would be no better than the man you thought I was earlier this evening.”

Well now, that was certainly a good argument. Only she heard herself say, “It was only for a glass of tea….”

He snagged her chin in his fingers, his eyes blazing in the moonlight.

“Was it?” he asked, and she felt her skin go warm that he should have guessed her innermost thoughts when she herself hadn’t even had a chance to take a good look at them yet. But it was true: crazy though it might be, this was the only man she’d ever met that she’d been the least bit inclined to let see her naked. To touch her in places she didn’t normally like to be touched. That he was one step removed from being a complete stranger, that she’d had colds that had lasted longer than this relationship would, and that neither of those things particularly bothered her, made no sense.

“I guess it wasn’t,” she heard herself say, nearly stunning herself with her own boldness, only to turn and walk away, her palms cool and damp against her hot cheeks.

“That hardly seems fair to you.”

She twisted around, her laugh sounding a little tinny to her ears in the breeze smelling of clean air and damp soil and the sage plants that grew wild around the trailer. “I stopped believing in fair when I was five years old. I do, however, believe in making the most of whatever opportunity life seems interested in tossing my way.”

And there are times when I think I might die from the loneliness.

The thought had popped up like a jack-in-the-box, nearly making her flinch. Generally speaking, she liked living alone. Preferred it, in fact. Not once that she could recall had she ever felt lonely….

Until this very moment.

Alek was somehow standing in front of her—when had he closed the space between them?—his breath sweeping over her temple before he placed a soft kiss on her forehead. “And I’m not the sort of man,” he whispered, “to take a woman up on an offer she’ll undoubtedly regret.”

A real prince, she thought as she backed up and looked him right in the eye, even though her insides were shaking as badly as Flo navigating a country road. People would say she’d plumb lost her mind, and they’d be right. Whether what she suddenly, desperately wanted was right or wrong, whether her desire—such a puny word for what she was feeling—stemmed from wanting to stanch the gaping hole of longing inside him or her, she had no idea. But whatever this was, it had taken on a life of its own, as palpable and uncontrollable and unstoppable as the rain or the wind or the moonlight. “If you didn’t want to take me to bed, why’d you come back tonight?”

He studied her quite carefully for some time before he said, “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. I just…” His breath left his lungs in an exasperated sigh. “I just know I don’t want to hurt you.”

Well, she thought on that for a bit, and what she decided was that a man who had that much trouble putting the make on a girl could probably be trusted. So she lay her hand on his rough cheek, just the feel of him enough to send prickles of longing skedaddling through her blood.

“I am twenty-one years old,” Luanne said in a voice stronger than she felt. “I have lived on my own since I was seventeen. I survived my father’s abandonment when I was five and I took care of my mama for three years when she was sick. I have received two marriage proposals, neither of which I was inclined to accept, nor do I plan on marrying until I have completed my college education and begun my career as a school-teacher.”

She lowered her hand to his chest, feeling his heartbeat pick up the tempo underneath her trembling fingertips. “I do not consider myself an impetuous person, Alek. And I do not pretend to understand why I am so attracted to you. But I am of the considered opinion that I am perfectly capable of not only deciding whether or not to enter into a relationship, even a temporary one, but of handling any consequences that may arise from my decision….”

“Luanne? Are you all right?”

Rudely yanked back to the present, she whipped around to meet Alek’s gaze, eerily similar to what it had been that night in the past. Knotting her arms across her belly, she shook her head, as if trying to dislodge the memories.

It didn’t work.

“Just got to thinking, is all,” she said at last, offering a lame attempt at a smile. “My mind tends to wander these days.”

When he looked like he might reach out, she quickly moved to the refrigerator, plucking a can of orange juice from the freezer and swallowing past the lump in her throat. Maybe she’d been able to tuck her memories away in the very back of the bottom drawer of her consciousness, where they’d lain, undisturbed and unmissed, for more than ten years. But try as she might, there was no way to hide them completely, to pretend that things had happened differently. The fact was, she had prodded Alek into the affair, knowing full well nothing permanent could come of it. She hadn’t expected anything more. She hadn’t wanted anything more, not then. She’d said she’d deal with the consequences, and she’d meant it.

So she’d best be about dealing with them, hadn’t she?

Chapter 3

In a daze, Alek watched Luanne make up the frozen juice as he scanned the sunny, white kitchen, wondering again why she’d left Dallas. While the house was spotless—no surprise there—even a quick perusal revealed the chipped paint on the cabinets, the worn gold-flecked linoleum, the out-of-date appliances flanked by cookbooks and glass jars holding pasta and rice.

He self-consciously crossed to the aluminum-framed screen door to watch Chase half-heartedly toss a tennis ball for the dog in the weed-choked backyard. The scene he’d just witnessed between Luanne and Chase had nearly been his undoing, coagulating his emotions into an opaque mass at the base of his throat. If he’d had any doubts at all about Luanne’s feelings for Jeff, those had vanished like a puff of smoke on a windy day…only to replaced by something that felt suspiciously, and cruelly, like envy.

And an even stronger urge to bolt.

But his bolting days were over. All his adult life, Alek had shunned responsibility—personal, emotional, social—for reasons he’d never been able to define, any more than one can define one’s instinct for survival. But he’d also grown tired of feeling rudderless, of having no focus to his existence beyond the pursuit of a series of momentary gratifications. So, even before the accident, he’d begun the delayed—and not nearly as arduous as he would have thought—task of growing up. He’d all but given up the racing. And the women. In fact, he’d been celibate for longer than most men would readily admit, not a little surprised to find a certain…serenity in abstinence he wouldn’t have believed possible even a year ago. The throne would be his, sooner or later—not even his indomitable grandmother would live forever—and duty beckoned. Or, in his case, bellowed. Carpathia might be small, but his country’s stability in an area of the world subject to constant turmoil could not be underestimated, and the prince at last fully understood—and accepted—the importance of his role in years to come.

And that role included protecting those whose responsibility came under his care, whether he—or they—sought it or not.

“Here.” Alek turned to see Luanne holding out a glass of orange juice. Her hand was shaking. “Freshly reconstituted.”

He took the juice, starting slightly when Luanne suddenly flapped at his shirt. “Give that to me so I can wash out that stain before it sets.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Hand me the dang shirt, Alek.” When he still hesitated, she said, “I have to keep busy, keep moving or I’ll go out of my mind.”

So he set the juice down on the counter and stripped off the shirt, which she snatched from him, dunking it a moment later into a small basin of suds in the sink, her movements agitated, jerky.

Her son’s, however, were another story, Alek noticed as he returned his attention outside. Seated cross-legged in the browning grass underneath a quiescent sycamore, Chase’s anguish abraded a wound inside Alek still raw after all these years. His sister had been about Chase’s age when their parents died in that plane crash; he remembered watching her muddle through her grief, his own sense of loss rendering him virtually useless. And their grandmother had been heartbroken at the loss of her only child. So the three of them had spun in their own sad, separate orbits, unable to offer—or even accept, really—much in the way of solace. Alek was determined not to let history repeat itself, even if he hadn’t a clue how to go about it.

“Chase misses Jeff terribly, doesn’t he?”

Luanne’s silence behind him was excruciatingly eloquent. He turned, something inside him splintering into myriad white-hot shards at her ravaged expression. Then she averted her eyes, scrubbing the shirt so hard, he feared for the skin on her hands.

Alek closed the distance between them, aching to touch her again, knowing he would be rebuffed if he did. Pride churned through this woman’s veins where mere mortals had blood, coloring her actions—and perceptions—far more than her heartache. This time, however, he suspected she’d just about used up even her considerable resources for bouncing back. Despite her valiant attempts to sound on top of things, she couldn’t mask the sense of defeat that had obviously taken up bone-chilling residence in her soul.

“Luanne,” he said, choosing his words with care, “I have no intention of trying to replace Jeff. I won’t…come between the boy and the man he knew as his father.” Her back still to him, she nodded stiffly. Alek turned again to the doorway, willing his lungs to work. “I never meant to be the bad guy in all this.”

The refrigerator clicked on; outside, the dog yapped for Chase to toss him his ball. He heard Luanne wring out the shirt, plop it into something, then come up beside him. “Jeff got the mutt for Chase’s birthday,” she said quietly, swiping back her hair with her damp hand. “Since Blue finally died of honorable old age last winter. There are days I swear if it hadn’t been for that dog, one or both of us might not have made it.” Her gaze flicked to his, then away. “There aren’t any ‘bad guys’ in this, Alek. I made a series of decisions based on what I thought was best at the time. Lettin’ myself get all caught up in regrets now is not only pointless but a waste of energy.”

He didn’t believe her for a minute, but he nodded anyway, then took a sip of the juice, shoving all the things he could never say to the back of his brain. “What happened to the house in Dallas?”

“Sold it.” She shifted the plastic basin so it rested on one of her hips.

“Why?”

“Because it was too big. Too fancy. I hated Dallas. I’m a small-town gal. Big cities are okay to visit, but living in ’em gives me the willies. Besides, I want my children to have a normal life, y’know? I want ’em to go to public school and be able to hang out with their friends and go ride their bikes without having to be afraid they might get kidnapped or something.”

“You were afraid for Chase?”

“From time to time. Not that Jeff knew. But I always felt, in that big house, we were sitting ducks, especially with him being gone so much. I had no idea—” Her lower lip caught between her teeth for a moment. “I know this sounds real disloyal, but I honestly never dreamed Jeff’s career would take off the way it did. I figured, y’know, maybe he’d have a few races, grow out of it, come back home and settle down….”

She rubbed her cheek with her shoulder, swallowed. “I’ve spent the past ten years of my life bein’ scared, holding my breath every time Jeff left for another race, every time Chase went out to play. Don’t get me wrong—I miss that man more than I ever thought I could miss another human being. But in a way, now that we’re back home, I finally feel like maybe I can breathe again.”

She looked at him, tears glinting in her eyes. “Then you showed up.”

The screen door slammed behind her as she waddled out and down the steps to hang up the shirt on the clothesline outside.

And Alek stared after her, his hand tightly fisted around the glass, once again thrown back into the past….

The screen door slammed shut behind Alek as he followed Luanne and the dog into the stifling trailer. She hurried to open all the windows to let in the cooling breezes, muttering something about popping into the shower to get the godawful cigarette smoke out of her hair, she wouldn’t be but a minute.

Damn. If he’d possessed even a grain of sense, he would have driven away and not looked back. That she trusted him not to leave—that she trusted him, period—he found little short of stunning.

When was the last time he’d been this conflicted about sleeping with a woman? Bloody hell—he’d never expected her to come on to him, to do this…this about-face just when he’d decided nothing was going to happen. Or that he should suddenly have an attack of conscience about the whole thing.

Alek heard the shower go on; he let out an enormous sigh, swiftly followed by a groan. All right—so he wanted Luanne Evans more than he’d ever wanted another woman, a realization he found at once frightening, exhilarating and incredibly perplexing. But he’d always, always, been the master of his emotions when it came to his relationships. A state of affairs that had been blown entirely out of the water by the mixture of vulnerability and honesty and goodness now standing naked on the other side of a very thin wall.

Oh, dear God.

Alek dropped onto the futon sofa in the minuscule living room, on some subliminal level taking in the bright pillows and framed prints by assorted Impressionists—Luanne’s attempt, he supposed, to bring cheer to the dark, paneled walls and worn furniture.

Then he noticed the books. Thousands of them, it seemed, neatly corralled in several cheap bookcases. Intrigued, and momentarily distracted from the problem at hand, he got up to inspect the case nearest to him. A hodgepodge, to be sure—everything from history to science to religion to novels of every conceivable genre, mostly paperbacks, but some hardbacks as well…

“Mama always said people are more inclined to take a person seriously who is widely read.”

Alek looked up to see Luanne towel-drying her hair, her figure hidden underneath what looked like a man’s shirt worn over white shorts. As he suspected, she was just as beautiful without her makeup. But what knocked him for a loop was the graciousness she exuded, a sense of being completely comfortable with who she was.

Willing his hammering heart to calm down, Alek glanced back at the bookshelf, tugging out a copy of Hugo’s Les Misérables. In French. “In…more than one language, I take it?”

She shifted the towel to another section of hair, shrugged. “Mama was part Cajun, so I learned French early on. Or her version of it, leastways. Took four years of it in high school, too.”

One eyebrow lifted. “Are you fluent?”

“Pretty much. Although I have the world’s worst accent, which you can imagine,” she said on a laugh, which immediately dimmed to a soft smile. “At one time I thought I might even apply for one of those student exchange programs, y’know? Except then Mama got sick…”

Her eyes lowered; she rubbed harder at her hair. Ignoring the prick to his heart, Alek leaned one elbow against the bookcase. “And was your mother right? About people taking you more seriously?”

That got another laugh. Her garnet-red nails glistened as she skimmed them through her hair. “To be honest—” she frowned, gathered up the ends of her hair in the towel again “—I can’t say as I’ve found folks around here have been all that impressed, no. I think they see me as some kind of misfit, if you wanna know the truth. Heck—” She tossed the towel over her shoulder and tramped over to the refrigerator. “One of the advantages of livin’ way out here—” she yanked open the refrigerator “—is that I can play my classical music loud as I want, nobody’s gonna say boo. Oh, shoot—I forgot to make tea before I left.”

She grabbed a tray of ice from the freezer, then a pair of purple plastic tumblers from a cupboard. Clunking several pieces of ice into the tumblers, she nodded toward an unopened bottle of Coke sitting on the counter. “This okay?”

Alek nodded, feeling slightly as though he were caught in a whirlwind, then asked, “So what do you like to read most?”

“Oh, heavens—if it’s got words, I’ll read it. Started when I was four, haven’t been able to get my fill yet.” She plucked the large bottle off the counter, bracing it against her midsection. “I’ve been to all sorts of places, just from reading, that most folk don’t even know about. Like Carpathia—”

She gave the bottle top a sharp twist…then let out a yelp as the warm soda geysered four feet into the air, instantly drenching everything.

While Luanne shrieked with laughter, they both fumbled for several seconds to get the top back on the still-spewing bottle. At last, the eruption contained, they stood in shock, staring at the streaks of soda meandering down walls and refrigerator, dripping off counters, collecting in puddles on the floor, which the dog was valiantly cleaning up. Then they looked at each other. Luanne collapsed against the counter, howling, as Alek snatched a paper towel off the holder over the counter, swiping a stream of cola off his cheek.

“Is this how you treat all the guys?”

“Only the ones I really, really like,” she got out, and something warm and giddy and as bubbly as the soda erupted inside him, and somehow or other, she was in his arms and her mouth was under his….

For a second or two, at least.

With a wistful little sigh, she backed away. “I cannot tell you how this pains me—” she squatted to get a small plastic bucket and a sponge from underneath the sink “—but if we leave this, the ants’ll have a field day.”

And the fizzies inside Alek’s brain deflated enough for him to realize what he’d done. But until he figured out how to gracefully extricate himself from his own idiocy, he took the now-filled bucket from Luanne and started cleaning the refrigerator.

“Now, that is amazing,” she said behind him.

“What is?”

“I do not believe I have ever seen a man clean anything that didn’t have an engine and wheels.”

Their eyes met for an instant before she grabbed another sponge from below the sink and started in on the lower cabinets, which the dog was precleaning for her. For several seconds Alek just watched her, listening to her chatter to the dog, whose tail was going as fast as his tongue. Perhaps sensing she was being observed, she twisted to look up at him, her smile fading when she caught his expression. On a heavy sigh, she sat back on her heels, staring at the cabinet in front of her. “Don’t say it.”

He dropped the sponge into the pail and squatted beside her, brushing an errant curl off her face, wondering if she had any idea how potent her innocence was. “You can’t really think our sleeping together is a good idea?”

Her mouth quirked into a shaky grin. “Was it something I sprayed?”

He laughed in spite of the heaviness gnawing at him. “Hardly. But you’re just not the type of woman I usually—”

Her head jerked around, hurt flaring in her eyes. Alek swiped his damp hand on his jeans, then cupped her face in his hands, linking their gazes. The scent of her, the feel of her, winnowed past barriers he’d long thought impenetrable, soothing and exhilarating and terrifying him all at once. “That’s not what I meant,” he said in a fierce whisper. “You’re worth a dozen of those other women, do you know that?”

Amusement flickered across her face. “A dozen? My, my…you do get around, don’t you?”

“I wasn’t bragging.”

She jerked out of his grasp, blinking rapidly as she looked away. “But you don’t want me, either.”

Again his hand sought out her face, his eyes, hers. “If anything, I’m saying no because I do want you. But you deserve something better. Something real.”

Her expression at once guileless and provocative, she stared at him for several moments, then got up to wring out her sponge. Alek rose, as well, feeling more than a little lost.

After tossing the sponge onto the back of the sink, Luanne braced her hands against it. “Did you not hear a thing I said outside, Alek? I am not looking for permanent. In fact, I don’t want it, not now, and especially not with anyone from around here. But it’s not like I can just…” Color flooded her cheeks. “Shoot, between my background, living out here all by myself and working at Ed’s…well, thank you for your compliment, but to most folks, I’m just plain old trailer trash, the daughter of a wife-beating drunk and a uneducated waitress. So I’ve sort of made it a mission of mine not to live up to their expectations, you know? But Lord Almighty,” she said quietly, “it’s been a long time since anyone’s held me.”

Alek stilled, as an unnamed monster suddenly loomed up out of that void inside him, one he’d desperately tried to stay one step ahead of his entire life. In the distance, thunder rumbled. Luanne looked toward the window. “Another storm’s coming…” The words seemed to catch in her throat; he could see unshed tears pooling at the corners of her eyes. And he wondered just what it had cost that staunch little pride of hers to ask of him what she just had?

And with that thought, he was lost.

“Are you really sure you want your first time to be with a stranger?”

Her gaze whipped to his. “Don’t tease me,” she whispered.

He took a step toward her, close enough to skim a knuckle down her cheek, keeping her gaze hooked in his as the caress continued southward. Her breathing quickened as his fingers danced over her throat, her collarbone, the sweet swell of one breast. “I’m not,” he whispered back, willing the beast back into its hiding place. Willing himself not to look at it.

“Well, then.” Pupils already dilated, her eyes bored into his. “You have shown more concern for my feelings in the past few hours than all the men I have ever known put together. So I’m willing to take a chance that your considerateness and attention to detail extends past the bedroom door.”

On a sigh that was equal parts longing and frustration, he gathered her into his arms, burying his face in her still-damp hair as a thousand thoughts darted this way and that inside his head like a school of fish, pros and cons and maybes and a good many are-you-out-of-your-minds all but pulverizing what little remained of his resolve. He lifted a hand to her face, stroking one finger down her sticky, child-soft cheek, wondering even then if she was a blessing or a curse. Or whether he really cared which.

Rain began thrumming against the trailer’s roof as he lowered his mouth to hers, his conscience all but drowning in a wave of need….

Chase’s yelling something at the pup shook him out of his reverie. And not a moment too soon, Alek decided on a strained sigh, creaking open the door. Luanne turned, her expression unreadable as she watched him walk out onto the back porch. The sun bit into his bare shoulders; his gaze drifted first to his shirt, quivering on a clothesline in the airless breeze, only to dart to Luanne’s swollen middle—a brittle reminder that the child she now carried was Jeff’s, not his. Which alone should have been sufficient to halt the memories.

But like lovemaking carried to the point of no return, images of that one night slipped past the brink of his tenuous control and now pulsated through him—images of soft sighs and uninhibited laughter, of a pair of blue eyes wide with startled delight, of soul-searing cries of fulfillment.

Of the mixture of awe and terror that had ripped through him afterward.

He’d been careful, or so he’d thought. Careful to protect her, both from getting pregnant and from getting hurt. Careful to protect himself from feelings he knew he couldn’t deal with.

Or so he’d thought.

The last thing he’d expected to discover, when he finally got around to putting together his racing team more than a year and a half later, was that Jeff Henderson had married Luanne, that they’d had a baby boy. No, that wasn’t quite true: the last thing he’d expected, even though he knew he was acting like a child who bristles at the sight of another child playing with a rejected gift, was the senseless, pointless jealousy that had pricked and tormented him like a hairshirt. And until today, he hadn’t believed the chafing could possibly get any worse.

Once again, his gaze swept over Luanne’s rounded belly, then up to those eyes teeming with sorrow, confusion, bitterness. And a fathomless weariness that called to something inside him that was nearly atrophied from disuse. Several feet behind her, Chase looked up, noticed Alek. The child chucked the ball as though it harbored some infectious disease, then took off around the side of the house. A second later the television blared on.

Dear God—what now?

Alek came down the steps, crossing the surprisingly large expanse of yard to where Luanne stood, motionless, the sunlight harshly delineating her fragility.

“Can Chase hear us out here?” he asked.

She shook her head, apprehension hovering in her eyes.

“You look ready to drop.”

Her mouth thinned. “I’ll manage.”

“Can you afford to get in some help?”

“I said, I’ll manage.”

They stared each other down for another second or two before Alek said, “If you’d been able to reach me, back then, would you have told me you were pregnant?”

“No.” She snatched the plastic bowl from the wooden picnic table nearby before taking off across the yard, obviously hoping he’d leave things there.

“Why on earth not?”

She halted, facing away, worrying the rim of the bowl with her fingertips for several moments before she finally turned. Her gaze glanced off his bare chest, then back up to his eyes. “For pity’s sake, Alek,” she said on a mirthless laugh, “you tore out of my house after that night like the very demons from hell were on your heels. So why would I have put myself in the position of makin’ you feel obligated to marry me, or take on a responsibility you never wanted to begin with, simply because fate played a nasty trick on us?”

“Aren’t you being just a trifle presumptuous?”

A strand of hair caught in her lashes; she yanked it free. “Practical, is more like it. My father got my mother pregnant when they weren’t but kids themselves. They ‘had’ to get married. Daddy stuck around for a few years, sure, except he was as miserable as an animal caught in a trap and he made good and sure we all knew it. He took it out on Mama, mostly, but I felt his frustration, too, and don’t think I didn’t. And finally he took off, leaving us in a worse state than if we’d had to fend for ourselves from the get-go. Except Mama didn’t have to worry anymore about how to explain the bruises.”

Every muscle in Alek’s face tensed with the effort not to explode. “I might have been a jerk for leaving the way I did, Luanne, but I’ve never hit a woman in my life, I don’t get drunk, and I would have taken responsibility for my child! For God’s sake—you trusted me enough to let me be the first man to make love to you, but you didn’t trust me enough to know I’d never have abandoned you?”

“But that’s exactly what you did! I didn’t expect forever, Alek, and I know I was the pushy one that night, when it came right down to it—”

“Oh, for the love of God—”

Her hand shot up. “—but I thought I was at least worth a little common courtesy. This is a pointless conversation, Alek. If you were so all-fired intent on taking responsibility, you might’ve left me some way of getting in touch with you. Or bothered to tell me who you really were. But you didn’t, did you?”

The undulating drone of a cicada pierced the silence. Alek twisted away, breathing hard, until Luanne’s sigh behind him made him face her again. “Oh, Alek—you were a stranger passin’ through. I knew it, you knew it. Neither of us was looking for anything permanent. And happily-ever-afters don’t come from one-night stands. Besides, even if I didn’t know you were a prince, I sure as heck knew you were way out of my league, that we had no more in common than a sparrow and a peacock.” Her head tilted to one side. “But none of that’s here nor there because I didn’t know who or where you were, and by the time I found all that out, I’d been married for nearly eighteen months and…”

Alek frowned. “What?”

Luanne fidgeted with the bowl a moment, then walked over to the picnic table, banging the bowl back onto its top before settling carefully onto the bench.

Alek joined her. And waited.

Several more seconds passed before she said, “When you’re twenty-one and pregnant and an inch away from panic, a White Knight can look pretty dang good, let me tell you. My world, such as it was, had crumbled right out from under me. I hadn’t finished my education, I wasn’t gonna be able to work for much longer, and had no one to fall back on. Not a single, solitary soul.”

Her brow knotted, she swatted at an insect in front of her face. “I was out behind Ed’s one night, trying to get ahold of myself—I had no sickness to speak of, but my hormones were just all over the place and I cried, like, every ten minutes—when Jeff suddenly showed up out of nowhere, and before I knew what I was doing…I told him. He offered to marry me on the spot.”

I’d do anything for that gal….

Alek’s stomach clenched; he waited out the slight surge of nausea. “And he never asked who the father was?”

“Sure he did. First question out of his mouth. I told him it didn’t make any difference, sort of indicating it happened around the time of the Simmons wedding, that it was a one-time thing….” Her mouth stretched taut. “He never questioned me after that. All he wanted was my assurance that, if he took me and the baby on, there was no chance of the father’s comin’ back and making things complicated. I told him we were probably safe on that score…but he made me swear to never tell. Since I didn’t figure there’d ever be a problem, I agreed.”

Alek swore softly. Luanne crossed her arms.

“Even so, I didn’t think it was fair to Jeff, and I told him so, but he finally convinced me it was a blessed sight better than goin’ on public assistance when I couldn’t work anymore, that this way, I’d be able to get my degree like I’d planned. And we’d always been friends, good friends, so it wasn’t like we didn’t get along. And I trusted him, Alek. More than I’d ever trusted another man.” He caught the blush stealing across her cheeks, said nothing. She cleared her throat, looked straight ahead. “Marrying him was strictly a practical decision on my part. The last thing I expected was to…”

She glanced away, tucked an escaped curl behind her ear. “I’d never had a man be so good to me. Not for the long haul. Or to stand up for me the way he did. His parents were dead set against the marriage, but he refused to buckle to their objections. And after Jeff’s daddy died, right before Chase was born, his mama came around, treated me like gold until her own passing a couple years back. I remember waking up one morning, I guess when Chase was about six months old or so, and realizing, for the first time in my life, everything was going right for a change. I was gonna go back to school, I had a beautiful, healthy baby and a husband who adored me.”

She got awkwardly to her feet, waddled over to the clothesline, felt the shirt. “Then this contract arrives in the mail.” She unclipped the shirt from the line, handed it to Alek. “Here—stuff dries real fast in this heat.”

Silently, he got up, as well, took the still-damp shirt and slipped it on, all the while watching the gutsy, exhausted woman in front of him fight to keep her emotions in check.

“So what would you have done,” she said after a moment, “if you’d’ve been in my shoes?” Anguished eyes turned to his. “Would you have risked destroying the family you never thought you’d have by tellin’ the truth? Would you have found it in yourself to break a promise to the only person with the guts to stand by you when nobody else would, who loved your baby more than your own father ever loved you?”

“Oh, Luanne—”

But she cut him off, even though her nerves were clearly at the breaking point. “So I prayed, and prayed, and prayed until my knees were sore, asking the good Lord what I should do, what was the best in a field of bad choices. And it came to me the only practical thing was to keep my promise. Might’ve pulled it off, too, if it hadn’t been for those blamed tenth-birthday photos.” Her gaze slid to his nose. “Didn’t take much for Jeff to figure things out after that—”

“There you are!” called a raspy voice from the back steps. Alek looked up to see sunlight flash off a pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched on a shiny brown face underneath a cap of white curls. A shapeless dress in an innocuous print hugged an equally shapeless body held up by a pair of scrawny legs. “That boy of yours said you were out here. I don’t suppose you meant to leave the hose runnin’, so I shut it off, hope that was okay—” The woman lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “Oh, I’m sorry! Didn’t know you had company! I just this minute took some biscuits outta the oven, thought maybe you and Chase might like some, you know, and then he told me to go on back…” The woman’s words drifted into an ether of curiosity and embarrassment.

Beside him, Luanne took several deep breaths to regain her control, then struggled to stand; instinctively, Alek rose at the same time, bracing his palm around one of her elbows to help her up. She darted a surprised, wary glance at him, but said nothing.

When they got closer to the house, Luanne introduced them. “Odella Stillwater, Alek Vlastos. An old friend of Jeff’s,” she added, a forced calm to her voice that put Alek on immediate alert. “Odella’s my neighbor to the east.”

Alek took Odella’s softly wrinkled hand in his. “Pleased to meet you.”

Clasping her other hand on top of his, the old woman squinted for a moment, as if trying to place him. Then, on a soft gasp, she gently squeezed his hand between both of hers. “Oh, land—you’re that prince fella, ain’tcha? That used to race with Jeff a while back?” A wealth of understanding—and compassion, Alek thought—seemed to flood her words.

He nodded.

Odella scrutinized him for another few seconds before at last releasing his hand, then ushered them all back inside as if the house were hers, not Luanne’s, insisting they get to those biscuits before they went stone cold.

One glance at Luanne’s strained features told Alek she was obviously no more in the mood for a chitchat over a plate of biscuits than he was. But neither would she have hurt Odella’s feeling for the world. When she went to call Chase into the kitchen from the living room, however, and the boy flat-out refused to come, Alek saw her cheeks blaze.

Perhaps Alek had had little experience with kids, and perhaps—no, probably—he was about to screw up yet again, but he refused to let the kid get away with treating his mother with less respect than he did the dog. Calmly, and before Luanne had a chance to react, Alek walked out to the living room where the boy was sprawled on the floor on his stomach, chin propped in hands, watching something on TV. Knowing full well how the child—not to mention the mother—were likely to react, Alek grabbed the remote from the table beside the sofa and clicked the off button.

“Hey!” Chase whipped around just as Luanne breathed “Alek!” sharply behind him.

Alek carefully replaced the remote on the table. “I believe your mother called you?”

“Geez! I said, in a minute!” The child lunged for the remote; Alek snatched it out of his reach. “Give that back! I was right in the middle of a program!”

“Alek, I can handle this,” Luanne said, obviously fighting for control. Over herself, the situation or her child, he wasn’t sure which. Maybe all of the above.

He turned to her. “For once,” he said softly, “you don’t have to.”

She ignored him. “Chase, there is no cause for your being rude like that. None. Not to me, not to Alek and certainly not to Odella who made those biscuits especially for you.”

“Like I give a damn.”

Shock drained what little color was left from Luanne’s face. She opened her mouth, but only to say, “Oh, Chase,” in the saddest voice Alek had ever heard, then quickly walked out of the room.

Alek was over to the child in a heartbeat, grabbing him by the back of his T-shirt and hauling him to his feet.

“Hey—!”

He began marching him toward the kitchen. Or rather, dragging, since the child was not in the least bit interested in cooperating. “You will apologize to your mother and Odella both—”

“No!” the kid yelled, wriggling in Alek’s grasp like a just-caught fish. “Not fair! Everybody’s always tellin’ me what to do! When’s somebody gonna ask me what I want? Let go of me—”

With that, he kicked out, grazing Alek’s shin with the toe of one of those oversize cowboy boots. Alek dodged the second kick, grasping the child by the shoulders and squatting just enough to lock their gazes. “Kick me again, buster,” he said, “and those boots are history!”

Furious tears welled in the bright-blue eyes. “You can’t do that! They’re my daddy’s boots!”

Alek’s heart cramped in empathy, but he refused to let it derail him. “Then I suggest you give serious consideration to not using them as deadly weapons.”

The child stilled, but he looked away, his brows nearly meeting in a tight frown. “Chase,” Alek went on, more gently, “nobody is ever asked if they want to lose someone they love. But that doesn’t give you the right to act as if you’re the only person in the world who’s ever been hurt.” His heart twinged again at the single tear that streaked down the boy’s cheek. “Your mother didn’t take your father away, but you bloody well are acting as if she did. And how do you think that makes her feel?”

After a good five seconds, Chase said, very quietly and with more venom than Alek could have believed possible from a ten-year-old child, “Go to hell.”

Alek’s first reaction was anger. Hot, vicious anger that literally made him see red. Until the haze cleared long enough for him to see reflected in his son’s eyes a sixteen-year-old boy too old for tears, yet too young to handle overwhelming feelings he neither understood nor wanted.

“I have a better idea,” he said, straightening. “How about you go to your room instead?”

The blue gaze narrowed. “You’re not my—”

“I agree, Chase,” came from behind them. Alek turned to see Luanne standing in the doorway, clinging to the tatters of her composure like a beggar his threadbare cloak. “Go on to your room until you’ve done some good, hard thinking about your behavior.”

“I’m sorry—” he began, but Luanne shook her head.

“Go on.”

After a moment’s glare, equally lobbed at the two of them, the child stomped out of the room and up the stairs. Luanne sagged against the wide door frame to the living room, staring down the hall.

Alek wasn’t sure which was more clear: that she was in way over her head, or that she would cut off a limb before she’d admit it. Then, slamming right up against those first two thoughts with a breathless oomph came an idea of just how he might be able to rescue the woman without her realizing that’s what he was doing.

“Can you imagine him running around a palace?” Luanne suddenly said, startling him. He turned to catch her wry, sad smile. “He’d just charm the pants right off everybody, wouldn’t he?”

Swallowing his irritation at the self-censure in her voice, he said, “About as much as I did at that age, I imagine.”

“You sayin’ you were a handful?”

“According to my grandmother, I was a holy terror.”

A little of that humor that had at once time stolen his breath sparked in her eyes. “And I’m supposed to find that reassuring?” she said, then let out a weighted sigh, as worry once again creased her brow. “He wasn’t always like this.” He saw her swallow and look away, rubbing her belly. “Everything just seems to have gotten away from me.”

The urge to hold her—and the terror of what the feel of her softness in his arms would do to him—was so strong Alek shook with it. Barely five feet separated them, a space he could cover in two strides…a space that spelled the difference between sanity and folly. But dear God—the only other time he’d ever heard her admit to needing something beyond herself was the night they’d made the child currently having a sulk-fest in his room. The night Alek had run from the very things now staring him in the face and demanding his attention.

Whether or not he was now any better equipped to deal with any of it, he had no idea. And there was the very real chance that his clumsy attempts to atone for his youthful cowardice could well make things worse. But what choice did he have? All his life Alek had gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid letting another human being lean on him. Now, in one breath-stealing, epiphanous flash, he realized what a precious thing it was to earn someone’s trust enough to be considered worthy of being leaned on.

Especially the trust of a woman who would choke on her own pride before she admitted she needed help.

Be that as it may, the fact was that too many people had turned their backs on Luanne Evans Henderson. The least Alek could do was reverse the trend.

“I have an idea,” he said.

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