‘So what are your specifications then?’ Rafe asked after a stretch of time, highly charged and breathless, that could have been a moment or an hour. ‘For the perfect husband?’

      ‘He must be very, very wealthy, and happy to share it,’ Angel said at once. ‘That’s the main thing, and is, of course, non-negotiable.’ She bit her lip as if ticking off items in a list in her head. ‘And it would be lovely if he were good-looking, too.’

      ‘A pity,’ he said softly, that menace in his tone again, and written across his destroyed face, though his eyes seemed darker then, and his gaze sharper. Her stomach clenched in reaction. ‘You’re wasting your time with me. Or have you blocked out my scars from the sheer horror of looking at them too long?’

      ‘I am remarkably rich,’ he said, that deep, aristocratic voice a posh drawl now, pure male confidence in every syllable. It was a dare, she thought, though she could not have said, looking at that deliberately expressionless, dangerous face of his, why she thought so.

      ‘Is that an offer?’ she asked, flirting with him. With this whole crazy idea that seemed less and less impossible by the second. A fairy tale by design, on demand. Why not? She was already standing in a palace, wasn’t she?

      THE

       SANTINA CROWN

       Royalty has never been so scandalous!

       STOP PRESS—Crown Prince in shock marriage

       The tabloid headlines …

      When HRH Crown Prince Alessandro of Santina proposes to paparazzi favourite Allegra Jackson it promises to be the social event of the decade —outrageous headlines guaranteed!

       The salacious gossip …

      Mills & Boon invites you to rub shoulders with royalty, sheikhs and glamorous socialites. Step into the decadent playground of the world’s rich and famous …

       THE SANTINA CROWN

      THE PRICE OF ROYAL DUTY – Penny Jordan

      THE SHEIKH’S HEIR – Sharon Kendrick

      THE SCANDALOUS PRINCESS – Kate Hewitt

      THE MAN BEHIND THE SCARS – Caitlin Crews

      DEFYING THE PRINCE – Sarah Morgan

      PRINCESS FROM THE SHADOWS – Maisey Yates

      THE GIRL NOBODY WANTED – Lynn Raye Harris

      PLAYING THE ROYAL GAME – Carol Marinelli

      About the Author

      CAITLIN CREWS discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouthwatering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her middle-school social life. And so began her life-long love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times.

      Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England, and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has back-packed in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana, and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek islands, Rome, Venice, and/or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving there.

      She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.

      The

       Santina Crown

       The Man Behind The Scars

       Caitlin Crews

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To Josh Moon, who explained construction to me

       in very detailed terms that he will be sure I didn’t

       use at all in this book. But I did!

      CHAPTER ONE

      IT WAS one thing to boldly decide that you were going to capture a rich husband to save you from your life, and more to the point from the desperate financial situation you’d discovered you were in through no fault of your own, Angel Tilson thought a bit wildly as she stared around the glittering ballroom, but quite another thing to do it.

      She didn’t know what her problem was. She was standing knee-deep in a sea of wealthy, titled people. Everywhere she looked she saw money, nobility and actual royalty, filling the sparkling ballroom of the Palazzo Santina and threatening to outshine the massive chandeliers that hung dramatically overhead. She could feel the wealth saturating the very air, like an exclusive scent.

      The whole island seemed to be bursting at the seams with this prince, that sheikh and any number of flash European nobles, their ancient titles and inherited ranks hanging from their elegant limbs like the kind of fine accessories Angel herself could never afford. It was the first time in Angel’s twenty-eight years that she’d ever found herself in a room—a palace ballroom, to be sure, but it was still, technically, a room—with a selection of princes. As in, princes plural.

      She should have been overjoyed. She told herself she was. She’d come all the way from her questionable neighborhood in London to beautiful Santina, this little jewel of an island kingdom in the Mediterranean, in order to personally celebrate her favorite stepsister’s surprising engagement to a real, live prince. And she was happy for Allegra and her lovely Prince Alessandro—of course she was. Thrilled, in fact. But if sweet, sensible Allegra could bag herself the Crown Prince of Santina, Angel didn’t see why she couldn’t find herself a wealthy husband of her own here in this prosperous, red-roofed little island paradise, where rich men seemed to be as thick on the ground as Mediterranean weeds.

      He didn’t even have to be royal, she thought generously, eyeing the assorted male plumage before her from her position near one of the grand pillars that lined the great room—all Angel needed was a nice, big, healthy bank account.

      She wanted to pretend it was all a game—but it wasn’t. Not to put too fine a point on it, but she was desperate.

      She felt herself frown then, and made a conscious effort to smooth her expression away into something more enticing. Or at least something vaguely pleasant. Scowling was hardly likely to appeal to anyone, much less inspire sudden marriage proposals from the sort of men who could buy all the smiles they liked, the way common folk like Angel bought milk and eggs.

      “You can just as easily smile as frown, love,” her mother had always said in that low, purring way of hers, usually punctuated with one of Chantelle’s trademark sexy smirks or bawdy laughs. That and “why not marry a rich one if you must marry one at all” constituted the bulk of the maternal advice Chantelle—never Mum, always Chantelle, no age ever mentioned in public, thank you—had offered. But thinking about her conniving, thoughtless mother did not help. Not now, while she was standing knee-deep in another one of Chantelle’s messes.

      Hurt and fury and incomprehension boiled inside of her all over again as she thought of the fifty thousand quid her mother had run up on a credit card she’d “accidentally” taken out in Angel’s name. Angel had discovered the horrifying bill on her doormat one day, so seemingly innocuous at a casual glance that