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      To Peter, for telling me I can and learning to cook

      Chapter One

      ‘LET me get this straight.’

      Luke was looking at her as though he expected her to produce a punchline.

      ‘You’re some sort of…’ he paused for dramatic effect, pushing his floppy blond fringe from his eyes before adding with a half-smile ‘…princess? Princess Evie…?’

      He chuckled.

      Eva did not join him, but she had some sympathy for his skepticism. She had taken some convincing herself when on her mother’s death the previous year a family she had not known existed had materialised—and not just any family!

      She hooked her fingers into the belt loops of her jeans, stuck out her chin haughtily and tossed her plait over her shoulder before asking in a hurt voice, ‘Are you saying I don’t look regal?’

      Luke Prentice could think of many terms, including gorgeous and sexy to describe the daughter of a woman who had been, in the small world of academia at least, a legend in her own lifetime.

      He had no idea if Eva knew her mother had seduced him when he had been an eighteen-year-old student taking one of her classes to broaden his horizons—she had definitely broadened them—but he did know he stood no chance with the daughter, a situation Luke was philosophical about. Though he was something of a novice when it came to platonic relationships with women, he did find Eva’s company kind of relaxing.

      ‘I can’t say I’ve ever associated freckles and red hair with Middle Eastern royalty before.’

      Eva expelled a deep sigh and admitted, ‘Me, neither.’

      Even now it all seemed a little surreal. Her mother—her lovely, academically brilliant mother—had not been the single parent Eva had always believed, but the estranged wife of an Arab prince. Not a prince high in the pecking order, admittedly. The King, her grandfather—King, now that was still seriously weird—had produced nine sons and her father had been the youngest.

      But he had been a prince and, as her uncle Hamid had explained when he had arrived at the funeral in his big black limousine with its bullet-proof windows, she was a princess, and he had produced the documentation to prove it.

      Despite the fact her mother had always preached independence to her daughter, in a secret corner of her heart Eva had longed for a family, and now she had one. It had felt like fate when at the most terrible moment in her life and feeling utterly, totally alone she had found herself drawn into the heart of a large and exotic family.

      Now of course she was learning there were drawbacks and a price for being part of this family. Still, she remained confident she could steer a course through this new obstacle diplomatically and maintain the relationship she valued with her grandfather.

      ‘Princess Eva…? What is this really about, Evie?’

      Eva struggled to contain her impatience. ‘I’ve already told you.’ Luke, the youngest professor of Economics in the history of the college, was not normally so slow on the uptake.

      ‘But your mum wasn’t married. Not that she was lacking male company…’ He flashed Eva an apologetic look. ‘No offence intended.’

      ‘None taken,’ Eva promised. Her mother had never attempted to hide her lovers, many considerably younger than herself. The relationships, or ‘throwaway lovers’ as her mother had termed them, had never lasted long, but unlike the rest, Luke had remained a friend.

      It often struck Eva as ironic that her sexually liberated mother, who had discussed such matters with painful—for Eva at least—frankness, had produced a daughter who was still a virgin at twenty-three…Perhaps this was her own personal rebellion? On the other hand it was possible she just had a low sex drive—a depressing thought.

      ‘It turns out she was, but she had a big bust-up with my dad.’ A wistful expression drifted into Eva’s eyes; she really wished she had had the opportunity to know him.

      She had studied photos of him and the portrait that hung beside those of his brothers in the palace and could see no trace of him in her own features, but then there was little of her mother’s classical beauty to be seen in her face, either.

      Maybe she was a changeling? Though according to her mother Eva had inherited her fair skin, freckles and red hair from her own grandmother, who had been Irish.

      ‘So they got divorced?’

      Eva shook her head. ‘No, he died in a boating accident before they could make the separation legal.’

      Luke carried on looking astounded and not quite sure this was not part of some elaborate joke. ‘And you didn’t know any of this until your mum died?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘And now you want me to shack up with you?’

      Eva frowned and snorted. ‘In your dreams.’

      This drew a grin from Luke, who shrugged and mused with a leer, ‘How well you know me, Evie.’

      ‘My grandfather thinks it’s his duty to marry me off and before you say anything I know this is the twenty-first century, but that’s the way he thinks. It’s been instilled in him since birth that a woman needs the protection of her family or a husband. I think in time he’ll see that I’m more than capable of looking after myself, but I’m his only granddaughter.