Royal Weddings

The Reluctant Princess

CHRISTINE RIMMER

Princess Dottie

LUCY GORDON

The Royal MacAllister

JOAN ELLIOTT PICKART

MILLS & BOON

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The Reluctant Princess

CHRISTINE RIMMER

CHRISTINE RIMMER

came to her profession the long way around. Before settling down to write about the magic of romance, she’d been an actress, a sales assistant, a caretaker, a model, a phone sales representative, a teacher, a waitress, a playwright and an office manager. She insists she never had a problem keeping a job – she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Christine is grateful not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day’s work is through: a man she loves, who loves her right back, and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day to day. She lives with her family in Oklahoma, USA.

This one’s for you, Susan Mallery, because you

are not only a fabulous writer and most terrific

friend, you can also plot circles around the best

of them and you know when to give encouragement

and when to come out with the gentle

reminder that passion is everything.

Chapter One

A Viking was the last thing Elli Thorson expected to find in her living room on that sunny afternoon in early May.

At a few minutes after five that day, Elli parked her little silver BMW in her space behind her building and got her two bags of groceries out of the trunk. She’d had the checker bag her purchases in paper because she was short on paper bags. Possibly, if she’d gone ahead and taken plastic, everything would have turned out differently.

With plastic, she would have been carrying the bags low, by the handles. There’d have been nothing in the way of her vision. She’d have seen the Viking before she shut the door to the landing with both of them on the same side of it. Maybe, with the door standing open, there would have been at least a chance of escaping him.

When she got up the stairs to her apartment, she was carrying the bags high in her arms, with her purse looped over her left elbow and her key ready in her right hand. Maybe if she hadn’t been ready with the key—if she’d set the bags down, dug around in her purse, and opened the door before picking the bags up again…

But she didn’t set the bags down. She had her key ready. And on such small choices, the course of a life can depend.

Elli braced the right-hand bag against the door. That freed her hand just enough to work the top lock. Then, by bending her knees and twisting sideways a fraction, she was able to slip the key into the bottom lock and get it open, too. She pushed the door inward, juggling the bags back to where she had a firm grip on them from underneath.

Her apartment had a small entry area—a square of floor, really—between the living room and the kitchen. Elli spun over the threshold. A quick nudge of her heel as she turned to the right and the door swung shut and latched. Her cute little butcher-block kitchen table was right there. She slid the bags onto it.

“Ta-da!” With a flourish, she dropped her keys and purse beside the bags and spun back toward the living area.

That was when she saw him.

He stood in her living room. A man dressed all in black—black slacks, black boots, muscle-hugging black T-shirt. He was blond and scarred and stone-faced—and big. Very, very big.

Elli was no midget herself. She stood five-eleven in bare feet. But this man topped her by several inches. And all of him was broad and hard and thick with muscle. The sheer size of him was scary, even if he hadn’t been standing right there in the middle of her living room, uninvited, unexpected and unwelcome in the extreme.

The sight of him so shocked her that she jumped back and let out a shriek.

The man, gazing so calmly at her through piercing gray-blue eyes, fisted a hand and laid it on his chest, right over his heart. “Princess Elli, I bring greetings from your father, King Osrik of Gullandria.” His voice was deep and sonorous, his tone grave.

It was then, when he called her Princess Elli, that she realized he was, in reality, a Viking and not some buff burglar she’d just caught in the act. He was a Viking because that was what they were, essentially—the people of Gullandria.

Gullandria. Though Elli had been born there, the place had always seemed to her like something from a fairy tale, a barely remembered bedtime story told to her by her mother.

But Gullandria was real enough. It was an island shaped roughly like a heart that could be found between the Shetlands and Norway, in the Norwegian Sea—a tiny pocket of the world where the ways of the legendary Norsemen still held sway.

Elli’s mother, Ingrid Freyasdahl, had been eighteen when she married Osrik Thorson, who shortly thereafter became king of that land. Five years later, Ingrid left the king forever, taking her tiny triplet daughters and returning to California where she’d been born and raised. It had been a big scandal at the time—and now and then the old story still cropped up in tabloid magazines. In those magazines, her mother was always referred to as the Runaway Gullandrian Queen.

Elli’s heart was beating way too fast. So what if her father had sent this man? She had no memory of her father. She knew only what her mother had told her and what she’d read in those occasional absurd scandal-sheet exposés. Osrik Thorson seemed no more real to her than the mythical-sounding country where he ruled.

She demanded, “How did you get in here?”

The intruder opened his fist and extended his massive hand, palm out, in a salute. Tattooed in the heart of that hand was a gold-and-blue lightning bolt. “Hauk FitzWyborn, the king’s warrior, bloodsworn to your father, His Majesty, King Osrik of the House of Thor. I am at your service, Princess.”

She resisted the urge to shrink back from that giant hand and boldly taunted, “Was that my question? I don’t think that was my question.”

The huge man looked somewhat pained. “It seemed wiser, Your Highness, to be waiting for you inside.”

“Wiser than knocking on my door like any normal, civilized human being?”

In answer to that, she got a fractional nod of his big blond head.

“Here in America, what you did is called breaking and entering. What’s wise about that?”

This time the fractional move was a shrug.

Elli’s mind raced. She felt threatened, boxed in—and at the same time determined that this oversize interloper would not see her fear.

She looked at him sideways. “You said you were at my service.”

“I am bloodsworn to your father. That means I serve you, as well.”

“Great. To serve me best, you can get out of my apartment.”

He had those bulging, tendon-ridged arms crossed over that enormous chest and he didn’t look as if he was going anywhere. He said, “Your father wishes your presence at court. He wishes to see you, to speak with you. He has…important matters to discuss with you.”

This was all so insulting. Elli felt her cheeks burning. “My father has made zero effort over the years to get in touch with me. What is so important that I have to drop everything and rush to see him now?”

“Allow me to take you to him. His Majesty will explain all.”

“Listen. Listen very carefully.” Elli employed the same patient, firm tone she often used on stubborn five-year-olds in her class of kindergartners. “I want you to return to Gullandria. When you get there, you can tell my father that if he suddenly just has to speak with me, he can pick up the phone and call me. Once he’s told me what’s going on, I’ll decide whether I’m willing to go see him or not.”

The Viking’s frown deepened. Evidently, he found the disparity between her wishes and his orders vaguely troubling. But not troubling enough to get him to give up and go. “You will pack now, Princess,” he intoned. “Necessities only. All your needs will be provided for at Isenhalla.”

Isenhalla. Ice hall. The silver-slate palace of Gullandrian kings….

Truly, truly weird. A Viking in her living room. A Viking who thought he was taking her to her father’s palace. “I guess you haven’t been listening. I said, I am going nowhere with you and you are trespassing. I want you to leave.”

“You will pack now, please.” Those flinty eyes seemed to see right through her and that amazingly square jaw looked set in granite.

Elli repeated, more strongly than the first time, “I said, I want you to leave.”

“And once you are packed, I will do as you say. We will leave together.”

There was a silence—a loaded one. She glared at him and he stared, unblinking, back at her. From outside, she heard ordinary, everyday sounds: birds singing, the honk of a horn, a leaf blower starting up, a siren somewhere far off in the distance.

Those sounds had the strangest effect on her. They made her want to burst into tears. Though they were right outside her door, those sounds, all at once, seemed lost to her.

Lost…

The word made her think of the brothers she had never known. There had been two of them, Kylan and Valbrand. Kylan had died as a young child. But Valbrand had grown up in Gullandria with their father, the king. Over the years, she and her sisters had talked about what it might be like to meet their surviving brother someday, to get to know him.

But that would never happen now.

Valbrand was dead, too. Like Kylan.

And were her brothers the key to what was happening here? Her father had no sons anymore. And without a son, maybe his thrown-away daughters had value to him now—whether they wanted anything to do with him, or not.

Yes. She supposed that made sense—or it would make sense if she could even be certain that this Viking had been sent by her father in the first place.

Maybe this was a trick. Maybe this man had been sent by an enemy of her father’s. Or maybe he was simply a criminal, as she’d assumed at first. But instead of robbing her apartment, he was here to take her hostage. He’d haul her out of here and hold her prisoner and her mother would be getting a ransom note….

Oh, she didn’t know. How could she know? This was all so confusing.

And whatever the reasons for the Viking in her living room, there could be no more denials. Elli could see it, shining there, in those unwavering pale eyes. Hauk FitzWyborn—who called himself the king’s warrior, who said he was blood-something-or-other to her father—might be at her service, but only if her desires didn’t conflict with whatever orders he’d been given. He intended to take her…somewhere. And wherever that somewhere actually was, he meant to take her today—whether she agreed to go or not.

The bottom line: this was a kidnapping and Elli was the kidnappee.

Oh, what was she thinking—to have stood here and argued with him? She should have hit the door running at the sight of him.

Maybe she could still escape—if she moved fast enough.

She spun for the door.

And she made it. She had the doorknob in her hand.

But she never got a chance to turn it.

With stunning speed for such a big man, he was upon her, wrapping those bulging, scarred arms around her. It was like being engulfed by a warm boulder. She cried out—once. And then a massive hand covered her mouth and nose.

That hand held a soft cloth, a cloth that smelled sharp and bitter.

Drugged. He had drugged her….

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” she heard him whisper.

And the world went black.

Chapter Two

Hauk looked down at the princess in his arms.

She was slim, but not small, with long, graceful bones and surprisingly large, ripe-looking breasts, the kind of breasts that would serve equally to please a man and nourish the children he gave her. Her mouth was full-lipped—and silent, at the moment. Silent and lax.

The compliant one, his lord had called her. And compliant she was—now. The drug had made her so. But Hauk had looked deep into those fjord-blue eyes. He’d seen the steel at the core. If his lord hoped this one might be yielding when conscious, he was in for an unpleasant surprise.

“Bring her to me,” Hauk’s lord had instructed. “Tell her that her father would like to see her, to speak with her. Say that her father has many things to say to her and will explain all as soon as he can talk to her. Try to coax her to come with you willingly. My spies tell me that of the three, she is by far the most compliant.”

Hauk had sworn to do as his lord commanded. “And if she should refuse, in the end, to accompany me?”

There had been a silence. A silence that spoke volumes. Finally his lord had said quietly, “Her refusal is not an option. I wish you to bring her. But please. Treat her gently.”

Shaking his head, Hauk carried the woman to the couch against the inner wall. Coaxing was for courtiers, he thought as he carefully laid her down. He tucked a bright-colored pillow beneath her head so her neck would not be strained into an uncomfortable position. Then he slipped off her low-heeled shoes and smoothed her skirt modestly over those pretty knees.

He stood back and stared down at her, considering. The drug would wear off shortly. She would not be pleased when she woke, and she would make her displeasure known. He should disable her now.

But he hated to do it. She looked so sweet and peaceful, lying there.

With some regret, he went for the duffel bag he’d left behind the chair across the room. From it, he took lengths of soft, strong rope and a kerchief-sized gag.

Carefully, he turned the princess on her side, so she was facing the wall.

He was good with knots. It took only a few minutes to bind her wrists behind her, to tie her knees together, and her slim ankles, as well. He ran an extra length of rope down her back, connecting the ropes at wrist and ankle, bending her knees slightly, drawing her feet up and back.

Perhaps the final rope, which would gradually pull tighter with resistance, was overkill. But he couldn’t afford to take any chances. She would be angry when she woke and ready for a fight, ready to do anything in her power to escape. It was his job to see that she had no power. He tied the gag firmly in place, taking care to smooth the softly curling wheat-colored hair out of her face so none of the strands were caught in her eyes or her mouth.

The binding accomplished, he stood back from her again.

It was not for him to wonder—and yet, he did wonder. If his liege wanted this woman effectively coaxed, why in the name of the frozen towers of Hel had he sent a soldier to do it?

The soles of her feet, turned out to him because of his perhaps too-cautious binding, seemed to reproach him. He bent, gently scooped her up and turned her so that she was facing the room again. Bound was bound and she wouldn’t like it, but at least in her current position, when she woke, she could see what went on around her.

He noted a flicker of movement in his side vision, tensed, and then relaxed again. It was only those two cats he’d spotted earlier, when he’d entered the apartment. One was big and white, the other sleek and black. They were sitting side by side beneath the table in the kitchen area, watching him.

“Freyja’s eyes,” he muttered, and then smiled to himself. The oath was fitting. Freyja was the goddess of love and war. Her chariot was drawn by cats.

Hauk had more to accomplish before the darkness fell. He turned for the room where the princess slept.

Elli groaned and opened her eyes. She was lying on her side on her own couch, a rumbling ball of white fur in front of her face and a pillow cradling her head.

And speaking of her head—it ached. Her stomach felt queasy and her mouth…

She had a gag in her mouth! The gag was firmly tied and held her mouth open, so that her lips pressed back hard over her teeth. Her jaw hurt and her throat was dry and scratchy, the gag itself soggy with saliva.

And that wasn’t all. Her arms and legs were tied, too.

“Rrreow?” The sound came from the white ball of purring fur in front of her face. Doodles put his damp kitty nose to her cheek and asked again, “Rreow?” Then he jumped to the carpet and trotted off toward the kitchen, fat white tail held high, no doubt hoping she would take the hint and get out there and dish up his dinner.

Elli groaned and yanked at the ropes that bound her. It didn’t help. If anything, her struggling seemed to pull them tighter.

“It is best not to struggle, Your Highness,” said a deep, calm voice from across the room. It was him—the Viking. He sat in the easy chair opposite her. With Doodles in the way, she hadn’t seen him at first.

“Struggling only pulls the long rope tighter.” His kindly tone made her yearn for something long and sharp to drive straight into his heart.

One of her suitcases waited upright beside his chair. Evidently, he’d done her packing for her.

“We’ll be on our way soon, Princess. We’re only waiting for darkness.”

Waiting for darkness…

Well, of course they were waiting for darkness. Dragging a bound-and-gagged woman down a flight of stairs and out to a waiting vehicle wasn’t something he’d be likely to get away with in the bright light of day.

He was silent, watching her, his expression implacable. She watched him right back, fury curling through her, banishing the thickheaded grogginess left over from the drug he’d used on her.

As a rule, Elli was good-natured and easygoing, not as ambitious as her older sister, Liv, not as brave and adventurous as Brit, the baby. Elli had always thought of herself as the ordinary one of the three of them, the one who wanted meaningful work that didn’t eat up her life, a nice home to fill with love and, eventually, a good man to go through life beside her. They used to joke among themselves that Liv would run the world and Brit would thoroughly explore it. It would be up to Elli to settle down, get married and provide the world with the next generation.

Right now, though, looking at the man in the chair across from her, Elli didn’t feel especially reasonable or easygoing or good-natured. She felt angry.

No. Anger was too mild a word. She felt a burning, growing rage.

How dare he? What gave him the right—to break into her home, to give her orders, to knock her out, to tie her up?

Her father?

So the Viking said.

And what gave her father the right? Her father had no rights when it came to her. He’d given them up twenty-plus years ago.

And even if her father still had some claim on her, no claim in the world made kidnapping acceptable. This was an outrage, a crime against basic human decency.

Elli wanted the ropes untied and the gag removed. And she wanted—had a right—to be untied now. She grunted and squirmed in her rage and fury.

And as her Viking captor had promised, the rope that bound her wrists to her ankles pulled tighter, until her heels met her hands and her body bowed outward beyond the outer edge of the couch cushions. Her right thigh cramped up. It was excruciatingly painful.

She let out a small, anguished moan and lay still, forcing herself to breathe slowly and deeply, to relax as best she could with her heels yanked up and pressed against her palms. Sweat broke out on her brow. She shut her eyes, concentrated on pulling her breath in and sending it out, willing the cramp in her thigh to let go.

The pain seemed to ease a little. She opened her eyes to find the Viking standing over her. She let out a muffled shriek as she saw the jet-black knife handle.

With an evil snicking sound, the slim, deadly blade sprang out. The Viking bent close—and cut the rope that held her hands and ankles together.

The relief was a fine and shining thing. She straightened her legs, the cramp in her thigh subsiding completely. And then, though she knew it was foolish in the extreme, she flung out her bound feet and tried to kick him.

He simply stepped to the side, collapsing the knife and kneeling in a smooth, swift motion to stow it in his boot. Then he stood to his height again.

“I am sorry to have bound you, Princess.” He actually managed to sound regretful. “But your father’s instructions are to bring you to him, whether you are willing or not. I can’t have you trying to run away all the time—or shouting for help.”

She made a series of urgent grunting sounds, shaking her head with each one.

He got the message. Reluctantly, he suggested, “You wish me to remove the gag.”

“Umn, uhgh, umngh.” She nodded madly.

“If I remove the gag, you must swear on your honor as a descendant of kings not to cry out or make any loud sounds.”

She nodded again—that time sharply and firmly.

He was silent, regarding her. She stared right back at him, unmoving now, willing him with her eyes to take off the gag.

At last, he spoke. “You are a princess of the House of Thor. To you, honor should be all.” His doubting expression was distinctly unflattering. “But you have been raised in…this.” He gestured toward the glass door that led out to her small balcony. The sun was lowering now. A massive oak grew beyond the balcony and the sunlight shone through its branches, creating enchanting patterns of shadow and light.

The Viking sneered. “This California is an easy, warm place, far from the hard snows and misty fjords of our island home. You know nothing of the endless nights of winter. The frost giants, harbingers of Ragnarok, do not stalk your dreams. Perhaps you do not hold your honor precious above all else as you should.”

Elli knew the Norse myths. She understood his references. Still, what he said sounded like something out of Lord of the Rings. She should have found such talk ridiculous. But she didn’t. His meaning was crystal clear. He believed she wouldn’t keep her word, that she’d scream her head off the second he took the gag away.

A minute ago, she had planned to do exactly that. But not anymore. Now, she would not scream if her life depended on it. Now, she was madder, even, than a minute ago. She was utterly, bone-shatteringly furious—which was thoroughly unreasonable, as he only suspected what she had planned to do.

But this was far from a reasonable situation. And Elli Thorson boiled with rage. She didn’t move, she didn’t breathe. She simply stared at him, her gaze burning through him, wishing she could sear him to a cinder where he stood.

Evidently, the hot fury in her eyes was the answer he sought. He stepped in front of her once more and knelt opposite her head. They shared another long look. And then he reached out and untied the gag. “Forgive me, Your Highness. I want you to be comfortable, but I must know that I can trust you.”

“I don’t forgive you,” she muttered in a dry croak. “So stop asking me to.” Elli pressed her lips together, ran her tongue over her dried-out teeth and swallowed repeatedly to soothe her parched throat. Finally, she said in a low voice, “Water. Please.”