Romancing The Crown: Lorenzo and Anna: The Man Who Would Be King / The Princess And The Mercenary. Marilyn Pappano
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evening would have been a date. She was horrified to discover that she’d never wanted anything more. “No!” she said quickly when he tossed down a twenty to pay the entire tab. “I’ll pay for mine.”
She watched his eyes narrow and knew he knew exactly what she was doing, but he didn’t argue. “That’s fine. We can go dutch.” And picking up his twenty, he exchanged it for a ten.
Eliza added her own ten, then followed him outside. Her heart thundering, she half expected him to insist on walking her to her motel room door, but she could just imagine what would happen if he did. He’d open the door for her, check inside to make sure her room was safe, and somehow or other, they’d end up in each other’s arms.
Just the thought of him touching her, kissing her, left her weak at the knees. How long had she wanted him to kiss her without even knowing it? she thought, stunned.
“…if that’s okay with you.”
Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t realize he’d spoken until he looked at her expectantly. Brought back to their surroundings with a blink, she wanted to crawl in a hole. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’ll watch you from here,” he said, coming to a stop in the parking lot midway between their two rooms, “to make sure you make it to your room without any problems. If that’s okay with you.”
“Oh, no…I mean, yes! That’ll be fine.” Disappointed, she forced a smile and was thankful he couldn’t see her blush in the poorly lit parking lot. “Then I guess I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”
She could feel his eyes on her all the way to her room, but Eliza never looked back. She didn’t dare. Her key clutched in her hand, she slipped inside and quietly shut the door. A split second later, she called Simon. They might argue like cats and dogs, but when she needed advice, whether it was business or personal, she could always trust him to say the right thing.
“This better be good, Red,” he growled the second he came on the line and recognized her voice. “I was really sawing wood.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, stalling for time. Because she needed to think of some excuse why she had been too distracted to call in. She couldn’t very well tell her boss she was in over her head with a certain devastatingly handsome duke.
Slouched on her couch and feeling sorry for herself because her boyfriend, Derek, had dumped her for no reason, Ursula Chambers stared at the TV with a jaundiced eye and paid little attention to the local news anchor, who read the lead story with an irritating nasal drawl. So what if some missing prince was believed to be alive, she thought sourly. She missed Derek. And she still didn’t know why he’d walked out. They were good together, dammit! If he’d resented it when she joked around with his buddies, he should have told her he didn’t like it, and she would have stopped. She wasn’t a mind reader. But had he opened his mouth? Hell, no! He’d shut up like a clam and hadn’t talked to her for days, then the next thing she knew, he was packing his things. It wasn’t fair!
Frustrated and starting to get angry, she grabbed the phone and was just about to punch in Derek’s number to give him a piece of her mind when her eyes fell on the TV screen and a picture of the missing prince that flashed there. Confused, she frowned. What the devil was the reporter talking about? The man in the picture wasn’t a prince. He was her sister’s ranch hand, Joe.
“Prince Lucas has been missing since his plane crashed in the mountains near Boulder last winter,” the reporter said. “New evidence, however, has been recovered that leads authorities to believe the prince may be alive. The investigation has been reopened, and a search is expected to be underway shortly.”
Confused, Ursula told herself she shouldn’t have had that second drink after dinner. Her eyes were playing tricks on her. But even as she tried to convince herself she was seeing things, pictures didn’t lie. Unless Prince Lucas of Montebello had an identical twin brother, he and Joe, the ranch hand her sister had been all lovey-dovey with a couple of weeks ago when Ursula had dropped in to see her, were one and the same.
Unable to take her eyes off the television screen until long after the news anchor had gone on to the next story, Ursula just sat there, stunned. Then it hit her. Her big break had arrived.
“My God! My sister’s hiding a prince—at my family ranch no less. This is it! I’m going to be rich!”
Laughing, she jumped up from the chair and danced a jig. She could see it now…her picture all over the papers and flashing on every TV screen in America. And the headlines—oh, they were going to be beautiful! Struggling Actress Finds Prince! She’d be a hero! Every producer in Hollywood would be kicking himself for not recognizing her talent when he’d had the chance. And she’d make them pay for that when they finally came knocking on her door, she promised herself smugly. Oh, yes, they’d pay.
And so would the king and queen of Montebello. What would they pay to have their only son back? They had to have billions. Just thinking about how grateful they would be made her weak at the knees. She would be invited to the palace, to balls and parties and fancy soirees. Hell, they might even ask her to move to Montebello and live with them! If she played her cards right, she could be sitting pretty for the rest of her life.
Oh, this was going to be good, she thought, purring in delight. Everyone who’d ever slammed a door in her face was going to regret it—she’d make sure of it—starting with Derek. The jerk! She’d loved him—and trusted him to make her a star. Then he’d walked out on her, and she’d lost her lover and manager at one and the same time. She’d been devastated, but had he cared? Hell, no! He’d laughed in her face and told her she would never be anybody. He was going to regret that.
Then there was the family. Oh, she supposed Jessica was sympathetic enough, but everyone else had snickered at her dreams of being a famous actress and made fun of her behind her back. And she’d hated them for that. For as long as she could remember, she’d been sick of being poor, sick of trying to get ahead and getting nowhere. She’d left home at eighteen because she couldn’t stand it anymore, because Hollywood was the dream factory of the world, and she wanted the life that Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan had. She could act as well as they could—she knew she could!
But she never got the chance. Her parents had died before she could even land her first part—small though it was. Without an agent, the only steady job open to her was waiting tables. Then she’d met Derek and he’d promised her he would make all her dreams come true. But the only part he ever got her was a bit in a porno flick, and what good was that when she couldn’t even brag about it to anyone, least of all her goody-goody sister?
He’d failed her and so had everyone else, and when she was finally forced to return to Colorado and her hometown of Shady Rock because she didn’t have a dime to her name, she’d been so bitter and disillusioned that she hadn’t come out of her apartment for days. That was weeks ago, and nothing had changed. All she’d been able to see ahead of her were days and weeks and months of blandness and poverty for the rest of her life.
Until now. Now she was going to have the last laugh.
Anticipation glinting in her blue eyes, she whirled around, looking around her messy apartment for her purse. She had to go to Jessica’s, had to see for herself that Joe and the prince were one and the same man. She didn’t understand what the prince was doing hanging around her sister—or why he didn’t seem to want to be found—but she didn’t care. As soon as she verified he was her man, she was calling King Marcus of Montebello. By the time she got through talking to him, she was going to be richer than Cleopatra!
Already spending the money in her mind, she had just found her purse and was in the process of digging for her car keys when there was a knock at her door. “Damn!” she swore. If that was old lady Baker from next door, there to complain because her TV was too loud again, she was going to tell her off. Let her go to the apartment manager—she didn’t care if they threw her out on her ear. She was about to come into money!
Prepared to tell the old goat exactly what she thought of her, she stormed across to the door and jerked