From small-town waitress...

To royal bride!

Since leaving her cheating fiancé, sensible Maddie Nelson is back waiting tables in her hometown. When a gorgeous stranger needs a guide for a few days, she decides to throw caution to the wind, never expecting him to be Prince Edward Alexander of Havenhurst. And he’s in need of a convenient wife! Now Maddie must decide if their powerful connection is enough for her to swap her café...for a crown!

CARA COLTER shares her life in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, nine horses and one small Pomeranian with a large attitude. She loves to hear from readers, and you can learn more about her and contact her through Facebook.

Also by Cara Colter

Rescued by the Millionaire

The Millionaire’s Homecoming

Interview with a Tycoon

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

The Pregnancy Secret

Soldier, Hero…Husband?

Housekeeper Under the Mistletoe

The Wedding Planner’s Big Day

Swept into the Tycoon’s World

Snowbound with the Single Dad

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

His Convenient Royal Bride

Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09101-5

HIS CONVENIENT ROYAL BRIDE

© 2019 Cara Colter

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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To all my brave friends entering civic politics—Bill,

Debbie, Ellen, Karen—intent on changing the world

for the better in their own way, with their own gifts.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

“LOOK, MADDIE, IT’S THEM.”

“Sorry, who?” Maddie asked, distracted. The Black Kettle Café opened for the day in—her eyes flew to the clock—thirty minutes.

She checked inventory. The glass-encased shelves were lined with an abundance of scones, in six different flavors. The scones were her idea. She felt her stomach knot with familiar anxiety. What if it was too early to put out so many? Should she have waited for the weekend concert crowds? What if she had spent all that money on something that wouldn’t sell? Wouldn’t it have been better to chip away at some of the overdue bills?

And then there was the ever-present voice of self-doubt. What kind of an idiot thought scones could save a business? And deeper yet, Was there any point in saving a business in a town that was probably going to die, despite her best efforts?

“Those awesomely attractive men I told you about. A perfect ten on the ooh-la-la scale. Both of them. Don’t you think that’s unusual? Two perfect tens together?”

Maddie bit her lip in exasperation. The weight of the whole world felt as if it was resting on her not-big-enough shoulders, and her young helper was rating every male she saw on an ooh-la-la scale? Sophie probably wouldn’t be nearly as excited about the awesome attractiveness of the visitors, if she knew Maddie was worried about how the café was going to pay her wages!

It was Sophie’s first day working the coffee shop in the remote town of Mountain Bend, Oregon. Sophie, just out of high school, was the summer help and she was easily distracted and resisted direction. She had not wanted to put on an apron this morning, because it “hid her outfit.”

Though technically Maddie was the café manager, there were several problems with reprimanding her. Sophie was the owner’s niece. And she and Maddie had grown up practically next door to each other in the small village. Maddie felt almost as if they were sisters—older and younger.

“What men?” Maddie asked reluctantly.

“I told you! I saw them last night. They’re driving the sports car. A Lambo in Mountain Bend. Can you believe it?”

Maddie had no idea what a Lambo was and, unless it was fueled by scones, she didn’t really care.

“They’re jaw-dropping,” Sophie decided dreamily. “I like the big one. He’s got a certain formidable look about him, doesn’t he? Like he might be a cop. He wasn’t driving, though. The other one was driving. They’re right outside the door. For heaven’s sake, quit scowling at me and look!”

Against her better judgment, Maddie followed Sophie’s gaze out the large, plate glass window. The quaint main street—and all her troubles—faded into nothing. Maddie was not aware of the loveliness of overflowing flower baskets, or that the stone-fronted buildings were, like the house she had inherited, showing signs of disrepair.

Maddie was aware, suddenly and intensely, of only him. Some energy, some power, shivered around him, and it dimmed even the extraordinary morning light that lit the lush green forest that carpeted the steep hills that embraced Mountain Bend.

The day’s menu was posted, and two men were studying it. It was true, the bigger of them was memorable—large, muscled, redheaded, with a thick beard that matched his hair. The man was definitely a throwback to some kind of Gaelic warrior.

But regardless of his obvious power, he was not the one who had made the entire world fade into nothingness for Maddie.

It was the man who was with him. A full head shorter than his companion—which still would have made him just a hair under six feet tall—the other man radiated power and presence, a kind of rare self-confidence that said this man owned the earth and he knew it.

Tall and well built, he was stunningly gorgeous. His thick, neatly trimmed hair was as rich and chocolaty as devil’s food cake. He had high cheekbones, a straight nose, a chin with a faint—and delicious—hint of a cleft in it. He glanced away from the menu, through the window and straight at Maddie.

Her thought was to duck, as if when he saw her, he would know there was something weak melting within her, like an ice-cream cone that had toppled onto hot pavement. But she found herself unable to move, in the grip of a dark enchantment. All her sensations intensified as his gaze met hers. His eyes were deep blue, ocean water shot through with sapphires. A hint of pure fire sparked in their endless depths.

She was shocked by the reappearance of a demon within her. But there it was: pure, undiluted, primal attraction to a gorgeous man. Good grief! How many times did a woman have to learn life’s most unpleasant lessons?

There was no one riding in to the rescue.

Though maybe this was the sad truth: in times of stress, there was no drug more potent than an extraordinarily attractive man, the fantasy that someone would come along and provide respite from the onerous challenges of daily life.

And since there was no arguing the stressfulness of these times—Past Due notices stacking up like a deck of cards in the café office—Maddie indulged the feeling of unexpected magic whispering into her life.

Her eyes dropped to the full, sinfully sensual curl of a firm bottom lip, and she felt the most delightful shiver of, well, longing. To be transported to the place that a kiss from lips like those could take you.

That was not real. A place of weakness, she reminded herself, annoyed by her lapse. Fairy tales did not exist. She had found that out the hard way. Maddie gave herself a determined mental shake. It was the strain of her life that was making this small diversion seem so all encompassing.

If this was a test, she was as ready for it now as she would ever be.

“Go let them in,” she said to Sophie.

Sophie gave her a startled look—they never opened early—and then dashed for the door, divesting herself of that hated apron on the way, and pulling the ribbon from her hair. Sophie’s romantic schoolgirl notions could be forgiven—she was just a schoolgirl—but Maddie was twenty-four.

She had lost both her parents. She had lived and worked in New York City. She had suffered a heartbreaking betrayal from a man she had thought she would marry. She had come home to find the café and her town struggling. Really, all these events—the awareness that life could turn bad on a hair—should be more than enough to make her jaundiced forever.

Despite being jaundiced forever, Maddie found her hand going to her hair, light brown and short, with the faintest regret. She had cut it in the interest of being practical, particularly now that her dreams were all business based, but still it shocked her every time she looked in the mirror. The shorter cut had encouraged waves to tighten into corkscrews. Coupled with her small frame, instead of achieving the practical professional look she had aimed for, Maddie felt she looked as if she was auditioning for the part of a waif in a musical.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Sophie sang as she opened the door.

Maddie felt a hint of envy at Sophie’s easy vivaciousness, her delight in the potential for excitement. She could warn her, of course, that the path was fraught with danger and betrayal, but Sophie wouldn’t listen. Who believed, in the flush of youthful enthusiasm, such things could happen to them?

Hadn’t she known, in her heart, her parents would not have approved of the supersuave Derek? Hadn’t people tried to tell Maddie that her fiancé might not be worthy of her? Including the friend who had—

“Welcome to the Black Kettle, the coffee shop that won the People’s Choice award for Mountain Bend.”

This was news to Maddie, but Sophie had decided she would take marketing when she saved up enough money for college. She obviously was testing her skills and looked pleased with the result.

Because the men, if they had been debating whether to stop in, suddenly had no choice.

“Thank you,” the darker, younger one said, moving by Sophie first.

His voice was deep and velvet edged, as confident as everything else about him. In those two words, Maddie detected a delightful accent. Maddie felt the air change in the room as soon as he entered, something electrical and charged coming through the door with him.

Electricity is dangerous, she told herself primly. Not to mention expensive.

“Good morning,” Sophie said, beaming at his larger companion and batting her thick lashes at him. The man barely glanced at Sophie.

Instead, he surveyed the coffee shop, tension in his body and the set of his jaw, as if he was scanning for danger.

In a just-opening coffee shop in Mountain Bend?

For a reason, she could not put her finger on, Maddie thought that the men did not quite seem equals, the younger man effortlessly the leader between them.

“We aren’t usually open yet,” Sophie said to the bigger man’s back. “But you looked like a couple of hungry guys.”

“Thank you,” the other said, his pleasantness making up for his friend’s remoteness. “That’s very kind. We are hungry. It would be dinnertime where we are from.”

That accent, Maddie decided, could melt bones. Plus, there was something about him, a deep graciousness, that went with beautifully manicured hands, the perfect haircut, the fresh-shaven face. Despite the khakis and sport shirt, this was not your ordinary let’s check out the hiking and fishing type of man who spent a week with his guy friends in the mountainous Oregon village.

“Have a seat anywhere,” Sophie invited them. “We don’t offer dinner—we’re just a day café. We close at three o’clock. But we have a great breakfast. I’ll bring menus. Unless you want to look at the display case?”

“Menus, thank you.” Again, it was the younger one who spoke.

Sophie nearly tripped over herself in her eagerness to get the men menus as they took a table by the window. Maddie ordered herself to get busy. Still, even as she filled cream pitchers, she was aware of that man, reluctantly feeling as if she had been given an irresistible reprieve from the worries that crowded her waking moments.

“So, in what exciting part of the world is it dinnertime right now?” Sophie was back. She hugged the menus to herself instead of giving them out.

The big man looked at her, irritated at Sophie’s question. His look clearly said, Mind your own business.

“Scotland,” the other said, flashing Sophie an easy smile.

Maddie felt her heart dip at, not just the perfect teeth, but the natural sexiness in that smile, a heat that continued to his eyes, making the sapphire in them more intense.

“I thought so,” Sophie said sagely, as if she was a world expert on dialects. “I detected a certain Braveheart in the accent. Your car is dreamy. I’m Sophie. And you are?”

Maddie put down the cream. “Sophie, if I could see you?” Obviously, she was going to have to give a lecture on being a little more professional. Dreamy car and introductions, indeed.

“In a sec,” Sophie called.

“I’m Ward,” the younger man, the one with the amazing presence, said easily.

The other said nothing.

“Lancaster,” Ward filled in for him, giving him a look that might have suggested he be friendlier.

“Lancaster, are you by chance a policeman?”

Both men’s eyebrows shot up.

Really, Maddie needed to step in, to stop this inquisition of customers, to take this opportunity to brief Sophie on professionalism, yes, even here in Mountain Bend. But if Sophie found out what Lancaster did, wouldn’t it follow that Ward might volunteer what he did, as well?

There was something about him that was so intriguing, some power and mystery in the way he carried and conducted himself, that he had made Maddie aware there was a whole world out there that did not involve baking scones, fretting about bills, or watching helplessly as your world fell apart and your hometown declined around you.

Ridiculous to feel as if hope shimmered in the air around a complete stranger.

Because wasn’t hope, after all, the most dangerous thing of all?

That, Maddie told herself, was the only thing she needed to know about the man who had entered the little main street coffee shop.

Not that he was a reprieve from a life that had gone heavy with worries.

No, that he was the exact opposite. That all her worries would intensify if she followed this lilting melody humming to life in the base of her being—the one that coincided with his appearance—to where it wanted to go.

She touched the gold chain on her neck. It was a pendant made with a gold nugget that her father had found a long time ago and given to her mother. Touching the pendant usually had the effect of grounding her. Sometimes, Maddie even imagined her father’s voice when she touched it.

What would he say, right now, if he were here and saw her in such a ridiculous state over a man she had only just laid eyes on, to whom she had not even spoken a single word?

Something, she was sure, practical and homespun. Whoa, girl, go easy.

But she did not hear her father’s voice, not even in her imagination. Instead, the pendant seemed to glow warm under her fingertips.

CHAPTER TWO

“LANCASTER DOES HAVE a military background, to be sure. What would you recommend from the menu?” It was Ward who spoke, his tone easy, but for the first time it seemed he would like to close the conversation with the young waitress

“Does Scotland have an army?” Sophie asked, nonplussed. “I wouldn’t have thought—”

“Sophie, would you please give those gentlemen their menus, and then I need to talk to you for a minute?”

Ward turned and smiled at her and his smile was charismatic and sympathetic, as if he entirely got that training young employees was a little like trying to train an overly enthusiastic puppy.

Sophie surrendered the menus in slow motion. “What brings you to Mountain Bend?”

“We’ve come from a few days’ holiday in California,” Ward answered. “We’re finishing up our stay in America with the Ritz concert.”

The Ritz were a world-renowned band. Kettle’s nephew, Sophie’s cousin, was the drummer. It had been Kettle’s idea for the band to officially open the summer season with a huge outdoor concert tomorrow night.

The hope was, once they had sampled the pristine charms of Mountain Bend, the throngs of people who had purchased tickets for the concert would return. Plan vacations here. Buy some of the empty miner’s houses for summer cottages. Spend money on coffee and groceries and gas. Save the town.

It was a long shot, at best, but Maddie baked a back supply of scones, and printed off dozens of business cards, just in case.

“Well, the locals know the best sights,” Sophie declared. “I’d be happy to show you around.”

“Sophie!”

“After work,” Sophie amended reluctantly.

Lancaster handed her his menu and folded his massive arms over his chest. “I’ll have the Bend-in-the-Road.”

“I think you’d prefer the Mountain Man,” Sophie said sweetly.

“Could I see you for a moment?” Maddie called sternly and urgently.

Sophie ignored her. “Or maybe a few scones? That would make you feel right at home, wouldn’t it?”

“If I wanted to feel at home,” Lancaster said coolly, “I would have stayed there. And it’s pronounced scone, as in gone, not scone, as in cone.”

“I love a man who knows his scones,” Sophie said, not insulted.

“I want the Bend-in-the-Road. I’m pretty sure I cannot get an edible scone in Mountain Bend, Oregon.”

Maddie was pretty sure he was given a little nudge under the table with the other’s foot.

“They happen to be the most delicious scones in the world,” Sophie said loyally. “Maddie could have had a shop in New York someday, but—”

This was going seriously off the rails!

“Sophie!” Maddie called again, before it developed into an argument or a tell-all about Maddie’s broken dreams and bad boyfriend.

Still, she could not help but be annoyed. You couldn’t get a good scone in Mountain Bend? That was a challenge if she had ever heard one!

Sophie gave her a disgruntled look, and the customers a reluctant one. “Sorry,” she said. “Duty calls.”

But then, before duty asked too much of Sophie, she leaned both elbows on the table, put her chin on her hands and blinked at Lancaster.

“So, do you ever wear a kilt?” she purred.

The big man looked stunned. After an initial moment of shocked silence, Ward threw back his head and laughed. If he’d been gorgeous before, it was now evident that had just been the warm-up. His laughter was pure, exquisitely masculine, entirely sexy.

Danger, Maddie reminded herself firmly.

Before Lancaster could answer, Sophie giggled, straightened up from the table and headed over to Maddie.

“What do you think?” she asked in a happy undertone. “Match, game and set to me?”

What she thought was that she envied Sophie’s relative innocence. The younger woman thought you could play at this game with no one getting hurt. Both those men had a masculine potency about them that spoke of experience.

No doubt both of them had a string of broken hearts in their pasts. She didn’t care if the assessment was completely unfair. It was better safe than sorry, and Sophie was a naive small-town girl.

Just as she herself had been when she met Derek. Maddie felt, again, protective of the younger woman.

“This is not how you interact with customers,” she said, firmly. “You do not flirt with them. These shenanigans will end now.”

“Shenanigans?” Sophie asked.

“A kilt?” Maddie demanded in an undertone.

“Don’t say you don’t want to know the answer,” Sophie said, grinning impishly, unintimidated by the neighbor she had known her whole life.

Maddie made to deny it. Her mouth opened. But her gaze, of its own accord, slid back to Ward. His strong, tanned legs were tucked under the table. A kilt? Good grief! She could feel herself beginning to blush!

Sophie laughed knowingly.

“Look,” Maddie said, pulling herself together, “you’re being way too inquisitive. They’re customers. They’re here for breakfast, not to exchange life stories. And they’re not Americans. They won’t appreciate your friendliness.”

Sophie pursed her lips together, miffed at the reprimand, as Maddie had known she would be.

“Or apparently your scones,” she said, pronouncing it as gone rather than cone as Maddie always had. Then she flounced through the swinging doors into the kitchen and gave Kettle the order.

“We ain’t open yet.” This declaration was followed by a string of cusswords used creatively and representing a long military history. “I don’t make exceptions. And that includes the apron. And tie your hair back. We have standards.” He put enough curse words between have and standards to impress a sailor.

Sure enough, Kettle himself stomped through the kitchen door. Despite the scowl on his grizzled face, Maddie felt a rush of affection.

Kettle had been her father’s best friend, there for her and her mother when her father had been killed in a logging accident. He’d been there for her again as her mother, heartbroken, had followed on her father’s heels way too quickly, leaving Maddie an orphan at eighteen.

Maddie’s fiancé, Derek, had not gotten it when she had felt compelled to return to Mountain Bend after Kettle’s accident, to manage the café. This was the code she had been raised with: you did right by the people who had done right by you.

So Kettle’s stomp was a good thing. He was nearly back to his normal self after he had fallen off the restaurant roof while shoveling snow in the winter and had a complicated break to his hip that had required several surgeries.

Kettle had spent a military career he would not talk about with Delta Force before returning to Mountain Bend. Now he skidded to a halt, surveyed the two men with a certain bemused expression, and then turned back to the kitchen in time to intercept Sophie, who was coming out behind him.

“Maddie,” he said gruffly, “you handle them customers. Sophie, you can help me in the kitchen for now.”

Sophie looked as if she planned to protest, but she knew better than to argue with her uncle, especially her first day of working for him. She cast one last longing look at the table before reluctantly obeying and going back into the kitchen.

“I trust you to be sensible,” Kettle told Maddie in an undertone. In other words, he trusted she’d outgrown the kind of shenanigans that got small-town girls, like her and Sophie, in all kinds of trouble.

Yes, she thought with a sigh, she was the sensible one now.

“I’m sure you won’t be imagining anyone in kilts, or any other romantic nonsense, either.”

So, he had heard something of that. She hoped she wasn’t blushing, again, but Kettle wasn’t looking at her, but watching their first guests of the day with narrowed eyes.

“What did they say they’re doing here?” he asked quietly.

“The Ritz concert.”

“The big one’s security. Written all over him. Maybe doing an assessment before the band arrives.”

“What about the other one?” Maddie asked, keeping her tone casual.

“Well, that’s the odd part.”

“In what way?”

“He looks like the principal, to me.”

“The what?”

“Never mind. My old life creeps up on me, sometimes. I’m sure they are exactly what they say they are.”

But he didn’t sound sure at all.

“Like a school principal?” Maddie asked, unwilling, for some reason, to let it go.

Kettle snorted. “Does he look like a school principal to you?”

Maddie looked at him one more time, that subtle aura of power and confidence. “No,” she admitted.

“Exactly. Someone who travels with a close protection specialist. Interesting.”

Interesting enough to make Kettle stop from tossing them out before regular opening hours. He had definitely recognized something that had automatically given them his respect—generally hard earned—but that had also made him cautious about exposing his man-crazy niece to them.

“A close protection specialist?”

“A bodyguard in civilian terms. Never mind. I’m being silly.” Kettle shook his head and went back to the kitchen muttering, “Ah, once a warrior.”

The ancient coffeemaker let out a loud hiss, announcing the coffee was ready, and Maddie went and grabbed the pot.

She popped her head in the kitchen door. “Sophie, can you hand me some mugs from the dishwasher?”

Sophie brought over the mugs. “I know what their car looks like,” she said in a hushed tone as she handed Maddie two thick crockery-style coffee mugs. “I’ll bet they’re staying at the Cottages. I’m going to go look as soon as I’m done with work.”

She already was planning to thwart Kettle’s plan to protect her!

“You will not,” Maddie said.

Feeling uncomfortably in the middle of something, Maddie started to take the mugs and the pot over to the window table. Then she paused and picked up two scones from the display and set them on a plate.

“Coffee?” she asked. She set down the scones. “Complimentary. The grill isn’t quite heated yet. Breakfast will be a few minutes.”

While Lancaster eyed the scones with deep suspicion, and even prodded one with his finger, it was Ward who answered, and again she had a sense of him being in a leadership position.

Did he do something that warranted a bodyguard? It seemed a little far-fetched for Mountain Bend. Poor Kettle just hadn’t been himself since he fell off that roof.

“Thank you. I’m Ward and this is Lancaster. And you are?”

She actually blushed, but kept her tone deliberately cool. “It’s Sophie’s first day. I hope she didn’t give you the impression it’s some kind of American tradition for staff at restaurants to introduce themselves to customers.”

“It isn’t? Lancaster, didn’t we have that happen before? In Los Angeles? That fellow. Franklin! He definitely introduced himself. Hi, I’m Franklin, and I’ll be your server tonight.”

“You’re right,” she conceded. “It is protocol at some of the big chains. But here in Mountain Bend, not so much.”

“Thank you for clarifying that,” Ward said. “I find learning another country’s customs a bit like learning a new language. There’s lots of room for innocent error. But now you have us at a disadvantage. You know our names, but we are none the wiser.”

She frowned. She was aware of needing to keep distance between her and this powerfully attractive sample of manliness. Still, she could not see a way out of it. Asking him to call her Miss Nelson would be way too stilted.

“Madeline,” she said, and it sounded stilted anyway and somehow unfriendly. “Maddie,” she amended in an attempt to soften it a bit.

“Maddie.”

Just as she had feared, her name coming off his lips in that sensual accent was as if he had touched the nape of her neck with his fingertips.

“I can’t help but notice your pendant. It’s extraordinary.” He reached up, and for a moment they both froze, anticipation in the air between them.

Then he touched it, ever so lightly. The pendant suddenly felt hot, almost as though there would be a scorch mark on her neck where it rested.

Maddie shivered, from the bottom of her toes to the top of her head.

CHAPTER THREE

“BEAUTIFUL,” WARD SAID SOFTLY. He withdrew his hand, his amazing sapphire eyes intent on her face.

The pronouncement could mean the pendant. But it could also mean—

“A gold nugget?” he asked her.

Obviously, he meant the pendant! Maddie had to pull herself together! Good grief. She felt as though she was trembling.

“Y-y-yes, my father found it and had it made into this piece.”

“Lovely,” he said, and again, it felt as if he might be commenting on more than the pendant. “My name’s a diminutive, too. Short for Edward.”

Did Lancaster shake his head, ever so slightly?

Ward changed tack so effortlessly that Maddie wondered if she had imagined that slight shake of head.

“Do you live up to it?” Ward asked in that sexy brogue. He took a sip of the freshly poured coffee and his laughing eyes met hers over the rim of the cup.

“Excuse me?”

“Your name? Are you mad?”

She wondered if, in her attempts to remain professional, she had ended up looking cranky! That was the thing to remember about men like this. Even simple things were complicated around them. She tried to relax her features as she realized he was deliberately trying to tease some of the stiffness from her.

She remembered Kettle’s confidence that she would be sensible. But not stiff and uninviting, even if it was self-protective. And suddenly she didn’t feel like living up to Kettle’s stodgy expectation of her.

“Mad, angry or mad, crazy?” Maddie asked him, returning his smile tentatively. It was an indicator of how serious everything in her life had become that she considered engaging in this banter and returning his smile living dangerously.

“Obviously, neither,” he said, saluting her with his coffee cup.

Was he flirting? With her? That certainly upped the chances of the mad, crazy. Especially if she engaged with him. Of course, she wouldn’t engage!

Or any other romantic nonsense. Though she suddenly felt a need not just to defy Kettle’s impressions of her, but to have a moment of lightness.

“And do you live up to your name?” she asked him.

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Do you ward?”

“Ward, protect?” he asked her. “Or ward, admit to the hospital?”

They shared a small ripple of laughter, that appreciation that comes when you come across someone who thinks somewhat the same way you do. Their eyes met, and a spark, like an ember escaped from a bonfire, leaped between them.

Maddie reminded herself that one spark, even that small, could burn down a whole forest. She’d had her moment, Maddie told herself, clinging to the sensibility Kettle was relying on her for.

“Ward off pesky waitresses, I hope,” Lancaster said darkly, and then before she could take it personally, “Where’s your friend?”

“Her uncle needed her in the kitchen.”

“Locked her up,” Lancaster muttered with approval. He took a scone off the plate and scowled at it. “Is this a flavor?”

“Yes, it has a hint of orange in it.”

“There’s no flavors in scones,” Lancaster said firmly. “Do you have cream?”

“Cream? For the coffee? Of course. I’ll go get it.”

“No, for the scones. Cornish cream?”

“Sorry, I—”

“Too much to hope for.” He took a gigantic bite. And then, to Maddie’s satisfaction, he sighed and closed his eyes. “That’s good. Even without cream. Try it,” he insisted to Ward.

Ward picked up the other scone and took a bite. Even that small gesture spoke of refinement. There was that ultrasexy smile again. “You owe somebody an apology,” he told Lancaster. “Not only edible, but possibly the best scone this side of the Atlantic.”

“Any side of the Atlantic.” Lancaster finished the scone in two bites and eyed Ward’s hungrily.

“Who made these?” Ward asked, polishing it off.

“I did.”

“You did not. You’ve got to have a Celt hiding in that kitchen.” Again, Ward was teasing her, as if he sensed she took life altogether too seriously.

Maybe it was weakness to engage, and to want to engage, but what the heck? The men would eat their breakfast and be gone. They might come back, or she might see them in the street and wave, but it was hardly posting banns at the local church. After the concert tomorrow night, they would disappear, never to be seen again.

Unless they bought one of the old miner’s cottages. Unless they fell in love with Mountain Bend.

She did not want to be thinking of falling in love, in any of its many guises, anywhere in the vicinity of the very appealing Ward!

“It’s an old family recipe,” Maddie supplied. “My grandmother was English. And she pronounced it scone, as in cone.”

“Two strikes,” Lancaster muttered.

“Both entirely forgivable,” Ward said. “Do you think I could bother you for another for my hungry friend?”

Maddie brought back a plate of scones and Ward asked, “So it was you who was going to have a shop in New York City?”

“If I was, it was a long way in the future. Anyway, New York City is in my past now.” She needed to move on. She had just lectured Sophie about professionalism. There was no fraternizing with the customers!

She stood there, paralyzed.

“We visited briefly, before we went to California,” Ward volunteered. “This seems preferable to me, the little piece of America everyone knows exists, but that is hard to find. I work in community-based economies. I’d be interested to learn more about your town.”

She cocked her head at him. His intelligence and genuine interest was pulling at her. He was definitely a man she would love to sit down and have a conversation with.

And of course she was not going to give in to that temptation!

“I’d love to talk to you,” she said, and unfortunately, she meant it. “Maybe we’ll get together sometime.”

That part she did not mean at all!

“Can I get you something else?” she said quickly, a reminder to all involved what kind of relationship this was.

“Tea would be wonderful.”

She brought tea and more scones to their table, but thankfully it was opening time, so she could not linger. There was a surprising number of people coming into the café. The town appeared to be benefiting already from people arriving for tomorrow’s concert.

Was it possible this was going to work?

She didn’t have time to contemplate it for long. Her life became a whirlwind as Sophie remained in the kitchen. Kettle delivered the two men breakfast, but Maddie did not interact with them again until it was time to take their money at the till.

“You know how to make tea, too,” Ward said. “That’s a rare gift in this country!”

A small thing, not worthy of a blush, and yet there she was, blushing over tea! Or maybe it was the fact that his hand had brushed hers, and she had felt the jolt of his pure presence, the same way she had when his finger had rested, ever so briefly, on the pendant at her neck.

“That English granny again,” she said.

“Somehow the last thing I think of when I look at you is an English granny,” he said, his voice a sexy rasp. Then he looked faintly taken aback, as if he had said something wildly inappropriate. He recovered quickly, though.

“I hope we do have a chance to talk about your town’s transition,” Ward said. He said it as if he was talking to someone whose opinion he would respect. She glanced at him. Small talk.

“Me, too,” she said with bright insincerity. “Enjoy your stay here.”

Then she snapped the cash register shut and whirled away from them, feeling somehow as if she had escaped some unknowable danger.

Why would such a feeling, the feeling of a near miss on a road named Catastrophe, be tinged with regret?

* * *

“That was a good breakfast,” Lancaster said, as they exited the coffee shop. “You’ve got to give it to Yanks. They know how to eat. The scones were a surprise of the best possible sort.”

“Are you saying barracks food doesn’t appeal?”

“No, Your Highness.”

Both men looked around, but no one was within hearing.

“Sorry, sir, lifetime habits are hard to break.”

They came to the car and Ward regarded it appreciatively. “Do you want to drive, Major Lancaster?” He glanced around. “You’re right about lifetime habits.”

“I was hoping for an opportunity. Where to?”

“I feel, after California and New York, I just need to stretch my legs and have some space. What about those hot pools we heard about?”

“The hotel clerk told us they were in the middle of the wilderness,” Lancaster said, appalled.

“That part of America interests me.”

“I think this is bear country,” Lancaster said doubtfully, the quandary written on his face. How to keep the Prince safest?

“I’m prepared to live dangerously.”

“I was afraid of that.” Lancaster looked less than pleased, for he was a man born into the station of guarding the royal family of the Isle of Havenhurst, and he sniffed out—and avoided—situations that might place the Prince in danger, but he also knew an order when he heard it.

“The cover story went well,” Ward said as they left Mountain Bend and took a rough road that began to twist up the mountain through thick forest.

Lancaster was silent.

“Didn’t you think so?”

“The old guy didn’t buy it.”

“What old guy?”

“He came out of the kitchen for a minute and gave us a good look over. Limping. Ex-military.”

“How can you tell that?”

Lancaster shrugged. “There are ways to tell. But it works both ways. I think he could tell a bit about us, too.”

Ward contemplated the fact he had not registered the man coming out of the kitchen. Of course, it was Lancaster’s job to notice who was around them, and Ward was confident Lancaster was probably better at his job than just about anybody in the world. But still, Ward suspected the woman, Maddie, had something to do with the fact he had not noticed the man come out of the kitchen.

There was something about her that engaged him, especially after coming from California, where the women he met all seemed very outgoing, very tall, very tanned, wrinkle-free and white-blond.

In contrast he had found Maddie’s beauty was understated and natural, as refreshing as a cool breeze on a warm day. She was lovely, with those kissed-by-the-sun curls springing around her head, her delicate features, the perfect bow of puffy lips, hazel eyes that looked green one moment and doe brown the next. Despite the faintest hint of freckles, unlike her California counterparts, her skin had been porcelain pale, as if, despite being surrounded by the outdoors, she did not get outside much. And there had been faint shadows of what—weariness? worry?—under those remarkable eyes.

In their short encounter Ward had found her both delightfully interesting and intriguingly attractive, and at the same time a painful reminder of the kind of woman and kind of life he would never have.

“I’m not concerned. Yet,” Lancaster said. “But I wouldn’t be telling anyone else your name is Edward.”

“Havenhurst is probably the least known kingdom in the entire North Atlantic, a little speck in the ocean, two hundred kilometers from the North Channel. Even the Scots, who are the most culturally linked to us, barely know who we are. So, few people know who I am.”

Ward’s publicity-averse family employed a small army to fend off the pursuit of royalty-crazed tabloids, and though the odd picture or story about him emerged, he was mostly an unknown.

Lancaster looked unconvinced.

“I’m off the radar,” Ward assured him.

“Best to keep it that way. I think your California friend, Miss O’Brian, would have loved to have milked your status for a bit of publicity.”

Ward gave Lancaster a look. “Did you give her a talking-to?”

Lancaster lifted a huge shoulder. “Laid out a few ground rules, aye.”

The road had ended. Lancaster turned off the car, and they got out. They removed day packs from the trunk and hoisted them onto shoulders.

Hours later, they returned to the car. They had hiked all day, but they had not succeeded in finding the hot pool.

“The more we didn’t find them, the more I was homesick for a dip,” Ward said. “Maybe we should take that young waitress up on her offer to show us the sights, after all.”

“Huh. With a chaperone, maybe.”

“Perhaps Maddie could join us, too.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Lancaster offered.

Ward shot Lancaster a look. Had he guessed there was something about the gamine scone enchantress that had piqued his interest? But no, the scowl said something else entirely.

“Because the young Sophie may have been a bit smitten with you?”

Lancaster scowled. “Emphasis on young. There’s bound to be a slipup. Questions asked that can’t be answered. The cover story won’t stand up to close scrutiny.”

Ward reminded himself it was Lancaster’s job to think like this, to be on the alert for potential threats and possible dangers, real and imagined.

But he realized wanting Maddie and Sophie to join them wasn’t just about finding the hot pools. Maddie, with her curls and her tentative smile, had made him long for something he knew he could not have. Or maybe he could, not forever, but for a few moments in time. Maybe these last few final days of anonymity could give him one chance to see what it was like to have fun with an ordinary girl in an ordinary world. He felt a need to articulate it.

“Please don’t deprive me of this opportunity to do a few normal things, Lancaster. Yes, I want to drive a car like this one. But I want to laugh with a pretty lass. Dance at a concert. This may be the only opportunity I ever get to experience a normal life.”

A normal life. They got back in the car and Ward took the driver’s seat this time. Their small island home did not lend itself to a vehicle like this. In truth, he rarely drove himself anywhere. He put the car in gear and enjoyed the surge of power as he pressed down the gas. Lancaster made an unflattering grab for a bar above his door, but Edward soon found his groove and drove the car as quickly as the poor road would allow.

“I understand, Your Highness,” Lancaster said. “This is really your only taste of freedom. In a few weeks you’ll be a married man.”

“I’ve never had freedom,” Ward said quietly, “married or not. Just the same, I’ve reached a decision. I’ve decided not to marry Princess Aida.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“BUT...BUT YOUR marriage is expected,” Lancaster stammered, after a long silence.

“I’ve always understood that service comes before self, and that certain sacrifices would be expected of me.”

“Princess Aida is a beautiful woman, sir, hardly a sacrifice.”

“She doesn’t love me.”

“Love?” Lancaster shot him a distressed look. “What does that have to do with it?”

Love. Ward had never had an expectation of it in his life. His father, the King, had not loved his mother, nor she him. Their public lives had been orchestrated to be civil; privately they had been cold and distant to one another.

Ward himself had been sent away to a private school when he was six. So love was a nebulous thing to him. He had not experienced it, nor had any expectation of it.

Edward thought of Aida with affection, like one would think of a little sister. When she had come to him and told him she loved someone else, he had felt a shocking sense of envy for what was shining in her eyes.

And he’d felt the difficulty of what he needed to do. His nation wanted one thing. His family demanded one thing. His conscience commanded another. He could not be the one to kill the light that had shone from Aida when she talked about Drew Mooretown, the man on her personal guard that she now loved.

“The sacrifice would have been hers, if we married,” Edward said slowly. “I’ve no notions of love. We’ve both known, since we were children, what was expected of us and what the benefit to both of our nations is. Like me, she’ll do what’s required of her, but, Lancaster, she loves another. I cannot do this to her.”

“You’re a good man,” Lancaster said with a sigh, and Prince Edward Alexander the Fourth knew he had been paid the highest of compliments from one who rarely gave them. He could only hope it was true. “But it’s not going to be as easy to get out of it as you think. Your father—”

“Would force it, I know.”

“I don’t relish the thought of marching you down the aisle with a sword at your back.” Lancaster was only partly kidding. “What are you going to do? I’ve known this whole trip something was deeply troubling you. It seems impossible to get out of it. Unless you’re thinking of not going back?”

“Rest easy, Lancaster. You don’t have to feel a divided loyalty between your duty to your King and your duty to me. There will be no having to think of a way to wrestle me back to my kingdom. I have always known my destiny is there, and I embrace that. I love my work on economic development, bringing the island new ideas and prosperity, acting as a liaison with the people. I love listening to their ideas and concerns, involving them in the future of our island. I love Havenhurst.”

“Then what?”

“I have to set Aida free. And I think there’s only one way to do that where unbearable pressure wouldn’t be brought on her.”

“Which is?”

“I have to marry someone else. Before we return.”

“Within days, in other words?”

“Yes.”

“A kind of pretend marriage?”

“Yes, just long enough to enable Aida to go off and marry her chap without the indignation of two kingdoms being heaped on her.”

“Being heaped on you, instead.”

“I have broad shoulders. After it has all died down, a quiet annulment could be arranged.”

Lancaster was silent but then spoke. “But you would have to marry genuinely, eventually. Marriage is expected.”

Yes, it was expected that Edward would marry, and that out of that marriage would come that all-important heir to the royal legacy.

Not expected: that he would ever know the kind of love he had seen shining in Aida’s face when she had confessed to him that she had met another.

Not expected: a longing for this thing his position would probably keep him from ever knowing.

Not expected: that a man the world would see as having absolutely everything—wealth and power beyond the dreams of most mortals—would feel this odd emptiness. A sense of missing something that had increased every day they had explored America, been normal, been free of Havenhurst.

“Perhaps I won’t marry at all.”

“That sounds a lonely life.”

“Will you marry again, Lancaster?” Ward asked softly, remembering the man Lancaster used to be, a man who had radiated a kind of faith in the goodness of life.

“I don’t think so,” Lancaster said, looking off into the distance. “A man’s heart can only take so much.”

Lancaster’s wife and young baby had been killed in a cottage fire. Lancaster had been away at a training program off-island when it had happened. The whole island had mourned the loss of his family, and five years later, Lancaster still carried an aura of deep mourning about him.

Mourning, mingled with a kind of steadfast, put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other strength.

“No, I won’t marry again,” he said. “Not while there are streams that need fishing. But you...you’ll be expected to find a wife.”

There was the weight of all those expectations again.

“My position makes it more difficult to find a partner, not less.”

Lancaster snorted. “Once you are seen as available, women will be throwing themselves at you, Your Highness.”

“Not at me,” Ward said, and could hear the weariness in his own voice. “At the fantasy of being a princess. At the role they think I play. At their impossible romantic ideas. The reality is so different. The obligations that go with the title would place an unfair burden on someone not brought up in it.”

“There is the little issue of an heir,” Lancaster reminded him. “You will be King.”

“My sister is married, and they have dear, sweet Anne. Perhaps one day she will reign.”

“She’s a girl!”

“The times are changing, Lancaster.”

Lancaster looked dubious about that, at least in the context of Havenhurst. “You’ve given this some thought.”

“I have, indeed.”

“How do you find someone to play the role of a pretend princess? It’s not as if you can put an ad in the personal section of the newspaper. Prince in search of bride.”

“I’ve asked Sea O’Brian.”

They had just spent several days with Sea at her villa in California. Ward had met the actress at a party, a long time ago, on a yacht in the Mediterranean. He had not developed a taste for such things, but he and the famous actress had kept in touch.

Lancaster was silent.

“You don’t approve?”

“It’s not my place to approve or disapprove of your choices, sir.”

“My thought was that she was an actress already. She could play it like a role. And the publicity would certainly benefit her career. I’d like whoever takes this on to benefit in some way. I think the deception of a nation—not to mention my father and mother—is a great deal to ask of an individual.”

Again, Lancaster was silent, but his brows had lowered and he was looking straight ahead with such fierce concentration that it could only mean disapproval. They had known each other so long and spent so much time together there was an unbreakable bond between them, almost as if they were brothers.

“I’m interested in your thoughts.”

Lancaster took a deep breath. “As you say, sir, she’s an actress. There always seems to be lots of drama unfolding around her. I overheard her talking to her press secretary about alerting a tabloid to your presence at her villa and had to head her off.”

Ward had not been aware of any of this, an indication of how well Lancaster did his job, and how seriously he took it.

“I don’t imagine Sea O’Brian is easy to head off,” he said mildly.

“Correct,” Lancaster said.

“How did you manage it?”

“I took her cell phone hostage,” Lancaster admitted reluctantly. “Her life, as she told me. She’d been snapping pictures of you when you weren’t aware. Anyway, all this leads me to believe that trying to extricate yourself from the situation could get very complicated.”

“True,” Ward conceded.

“The people won’t like her,” Lancaster said, his voice low. “They’ll see her as glib and superficial. She’s not of the earth.”

This was a highest form of praise in Havenhurst: he or she is of the earth.

There was a grave silence between the two men, and when Lancaster spoke, his tone was faintly lighter.

“Perhaps you could consider that lass from the café this morning. Think of the scones!” Lancaster crowed. Now that they were alone, he pronounced it skoons in the language of their island kingdom.

Both men laughed.

“I think there is far less danger of damage hiring an actress to play the role of my wife than to involve an ordinary girl living her ordinary life,” Ward said firmly.

He had found a way to save Aida, without hurting anyone else, or his island kingdom. He was satisfied with his choice. The truth was a woman like Maddie, from the little time he had spent with her, deserved things he could not give.

Love, for one.

That was a topic he knew nothing about. Nothing. Love would be for him, as it had been for his parents, the great unknown. His parents had done precisely what he would do—they had sacrificed any chance of personal happiness for what they saw as the good of Havenhurst.

And he would do the same. Love was not part of his duty, nor his destiny, and he had known those truths forever. He had made a decision to save Aida from this same lonely fate, and that was good enough.

Even though Ward had decided the scone enchantress was not marriage material—she might already be married for all he knew—he had a feeling that if he wanted to glimpse normal, to feel it and be it for these few days of freedom remaining to him, she could show him that. It would be even better if she had a husband or a boyfriend. They could give him a glimpse of that tantalizing thing called normal together.

“Why don’t we go see if Maddie and Sophie are willing to show us the pool?” Ward suggested after a moment.

“I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Maddie might even have—what do they call it here? A significant other! Who could come with us.”

Lancaster cast him a long look and finally, reluctantly, nodded.

* * *

“We’re just getting ready to close,” Maddie said when the bell rang over the door. She was exhausted. The day had been frantically busy, visitors already thronging the town for tomorrow’s concert. She would not be attending the concert. She preferred a warm bath and a good book.

She glanced up and froze.

It was the two men from this morning, Ward and Lancaster.

“Are there scones left?” Lancaster asked without preamble.

“Is that panic I hear in your voice?” Ward asked. He smiled at Maddie. “It takes a lot to panic him. Please tell him you have scones left. Hello, by the way. Nice to see you again.”

He said it as if he really meant it.

“You, too,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t, because she really meant it, too, only she probably really meant it way more than he really meant it.

“If we’ve dispensed with the social niceties?” Lancaster prodded.

Exactly! Social niceties. Meaningless. Not that she wanted them to have meaning. She was done with that kind of thing. The thrill of a handsome man. The excitement of getting to know someone. The feeling of being close. The tingle of hands touching. That incredible sensation of being alive.

She was done with it—but she was aware she longed for it, too. She had told herself she remained in Mountain Bend, after Derek’s betrayal, because she was needed here.

But couldn’t that be a way of hiding?

And now, what she was hiding from appeared to have found her. It was like a chocolate addict giving up bonbons. It was all well and good until someone waved one under your nose.

“Do any scones remain?” Lancaster asked plaintively.

See? She was already drifting off, contemplating the many missed pleasures of bonbons. She drew herself up short.

“Unfortunately, no,” she said. “We’ve had crowds. Once I added the Cornish cream, I couldn’t keep up with the demand.”

“You said you didn’t have any!”

“You’re making the poor man swoon,” Ward pointed out good-naturedly.

She dared not look at him. If he was smiling, and she knew he was—she could tell by the added lilt in his voice—she might be the one swooning!

“I looked up some recipes. It’s really just whipped cream, but done until it’s very nearly butter, yes?”

“Will you marry me?” Lancaster asked. “And if not me, him?”

Despite her vow not to look, she cast a startled glance at Ward, thinking he would be laughing uproariously. Why did Ward not seem to think that was funny?

“Anyway, we sold out, but I have some in the freezer I could get for you.”

“Perhaps a dozen? And as much cream as you’re willing to part with.”

“You’ll get fat,” a voice behind him said. “They’re made with pure butter. And then whipped cream, too? Your arteries won’t thank you. It’s a disgraceful way to treat a beautiful body.”

Lancaster whirled and glared at Sophie. “I’ll thank you not to comment on my arteries. My body is not your business, either.”

“We could change that,” Sophie purred.

“We couldn’t,” Lancaster snapped firmly, much to Maddie’s relief. What was Sophie doing, talking to a virtual stranger like that?

“Mountain Bend is a beautiful place,” Ward said conversationally to Maddie as she returned with frozen scones and packed them in a box. “Our part of the world has some beautiful places, to be sure, but nothing quite this untamed. Sophie mentioned the best sights were known by the locals. Would you say that’s true?”

Maddie nodded, feeling oddly wary.

“Do you think maybe you could show us some? When you’re all wrapped up here? You and the delightful Miss Sophie?”

Maddie felt herself freeze. Did Ward like Sophie? Well, who could blame him? And why did she care? It felt like this treacherous attraction she felt for him had to be quelled immediately. But still, Maddie looked over her shoulder at him, and he was smirking at Lancaster with a certain devilment in his smile. He turned back to her and winked.

Winked!

Immediately, she ordered herself to say no to this. She was not up to a man who could make such a simple thing as a playful wink seem sexy. But somehow that simple word stuck in her throat and would not come out.

“Lancaster and I spent the day trying to find a hot pool,” Ward said, “and despite having a map we did not turn it up.”

“Honeymoon Hot Springs,” Sophie said, excited as a puppy who had been shown a toy. “How did you hear about those? It’s Mountain Bend’s best-kept secret.”

“Someone at our hotel told us.”

That was unusual, but he was charming. He probably just had to smile to get poor old Adele, who worked the front desk at the Cottages, to want immediately to impress him with all the secrets the locals guarded from outsiders. Even now, when they were desperately trying to attract tourists, Honeymoon Hot Springs was rarely mentioned. The name said it all—it was so special to people here. A favorite place for wedding proposals, romantic interludes, honeymoon nights. It was a place couples went for privacy. It was absolutely the wrong place to go with a man you felt the slightest attraction to!

“Naturally, we’d want your, uh, significant other, to come, as well,” Ward said.

“She doesn’t have one!” Sophie said, like someone in possession of a piece of juicy gossip they couldn’t wait to share. “Her fiancé was the world’s biggest jerk.”

Maddie gave Sophie a look that could kill.

“Well, he was,” Sophie said, somehow missing the look entirely. “She came home to look after Kettle, and guess what he did? With her best friend?”

Maddie was mortified. She stared at Sophie in shocked horror. They all stood there in embarrassed distress. Too late, Sophie became aware of her gaffe. She turned stricken eyes to Maddie. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Not to worry,” Maddie said brightly. “I’m sorry, no. Local people don’t like outsiders going there. I have things to do. Thank you for your interest, but I can’t. I—”

“Of course, we’ll show you,” Sophie said, stubbornly, recovering way too quickly from divulging other people’s private lives. She was obviously as thrilled by the men’s interest in that secret place with its reputation for romantic enchantment, as Maddie was not.

“Sophie,” she said. “It’s—”

But Sophie cut her off with a toss of her thick black hair. “I will, if she won’t.”

There! Sophie had managed to make her sound like a terrible stick-in-the-mud. Had she become a terrible stick-in-the-mud? A person thrown over for another who could not get over it? She thought of her life since she’d returned to Mountain Bend. Work and worry.

She turned stiffly and handed the box of scones to Lancaster. “If there’s anything else?” Yes, she recognized it. The voice of a stick-in-the-mud, a woman whose broken heart would no doubt lead her to spinsterhood.

It was what Kettle loved about her, she reminded herself!

But then, ever so naturally, Ward laid his hand across Maddie’s wrist. His hand was warm and dry and his touch was firm. But more, his touch transmitted something of his power. She could feel the jolt of his substantial and seductive energy surge up the whole length of her arm.

It occurred to Maddie he was not a man accustomed to people saying no to him, which made it all the more imperative that she do exactly that!

“Please say yes,” Ward said softly.

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