Stranded with the Prince Read online

  Her gaze never wavered. “For one, as you pointed out, I get paid for it.”

  “I could pay you more to go away.”

  “I would never break my contract. You should be grateful. I’m here to help you. The Queen gave you six months to announce that you’ve chosen a bride. She wants to see you settled down. You must end the scandals.”

  “I still have another month.” In fact, he’d been counting on that last month of freedom rather desperately. “Exactly.”

  “Two weeks on this blasted island would waste half. Absolutely not. When that boat leaves in a few minutes, I’m leaving with it.”

  “And the ladies? Common courtesy—”

  “If you want to stay with the ladies, be my guest. Have a pajama party.” He ignored the intriguing picture that flashed into his mind and focused on her clenched jaw instead.

  But the next moment she was forcing a smile again. He hated how cheerful she always was while she tortured him.

  “Two weeks in this beautiful place is exactly what you need.” She sounded like she actually believed it. “By the time we come back for you, you will have made your choice. The Queen and the country will be happy.”

  “Dare I ask, what about me?”

  “Try to give these women a chance. Maybe you’ll fall in love with one of them.” Her eyes brightened at the mention of the L word.

  “In two weeks?” Was she for real? Sadly, she was. She had an unshakable, deep-seated belief in romance that annoyed the hell out of him. He gave her his most discouraging expression, the one he normally reserved for ambushing paparazzi.

  But her eyebrows stayed up, the corners of her lips tugged into that fake encouraging smile, her gaze steady on him. “Stranger things have happened.” A lot of strange things had happened to him lately, his mother hiring the pushiest woman in the world to force him to wed being one of them. But the chances of him falling in love were slim to none. For that to happen, he would have to believe in love to begin with.

  There was no point in further bickering with her. They were too different. They’d never understand each other. He glanced at the boat, ready to go, and realized that the two guards had disappeared, leaving the boxes of food on the bluff above the tide line. “Where did Ben and Vince go?”

  She worried her bead bracelet again for a brief, unguarded moment before she responded. “They’ll guard the island’s perimeter. They’ll be in radio contact with each other, but not with you. I can’t risk you bullying them with some fake emergency into coming to pick you up.”

  The woman boggled his mind. She was beyond all belief. “Good plan.” He couldn’t help a sneer. “And what would have happened if there’d been an emergency?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” she said, apparently still thinking that she could make him stay.

  He glanced toward his jacket, draped over the side of the boat, his cell phone in the pocket. He needed to pay closer attention to her. She wasn’t to be underestimated. With some luck, she could have stranded him. The thought was disturbing.

  He needed to make her see reason and quit this sordid business. “You really expected me to spend two weeks in the bush with a bunch of wilting lilies? I’m a racer, not a camper. And I bet your ladies haven’t seen more nature than what can be found at the palace gardens. What, exactly, did you think we would be doing out here?”

  She put that pert nose of hers into the air and flashed him a smug look. “Lady Lidia is an herbalist, Lady Szilvia is a survival specialist and Lady Adel is a doctor at your favorite ski resort.”

  He sure didn’t remember her. Which must have meant she wasn’t a looker. Then again, he preferred to sustain his injuries at the racetrack, so maybe he hadn’t been visited by the resort’s doctor in the past.

  “I’m to attend a race tomorrow evening.” It was to be the first time one of his cars was running with a modified engine, a major invention he needed to see in action. He needed to make manufacturing decisions based on tomorrow’s race. She was interfering with his business.

  “Prince Lazlo—”

  “Enough.” He was out of patience with her and her meddling. She’d been relentlessly after him for the past five months, since the Queen and Chancellor Egon had sicced her on him. “So you decided to parade the country cows.” He practically growled the words. “You need to understand, Milda, that I’m not some prize bull you can lead into the pasture for breeding.”

  “Prince Laz—”

  “No.” He raised a hand, palm out. “I don’t care what these women want from me—title, money or their children in the line of succession. They need to find another way of getting it. So you collected a homely bunch of ambitious—” he swallowed the word that a prince wouldn’t utter “—ladies. Read my lips. I don’t want any of them.” He pushed by her to stride toward the boat.

  “Prince Lazlo!”

  “Goodbye, Milda.”

  But something in her voice as she called his name again stopped him. He turned to give her a piece of his mind, in case she still harbored some doubts regarding how he felt about the evil job she’d been hired to do.

  And he saw the three ladies.

  They had come out of the wild olive grove. From the look on their faces, they’d been standing within hearing range when he’d made that country cow comment. Blast it, he thought.

  By God, he was tired of this. He liked the chase between the sexes, another sport to him. But, call him old-fashioned, he liked to be the one to do the chasing. He inclined his head, his jaw so tight he could barely push out the single word. “Ladies.”

  They looked vaguely familiar—and were pretty, to be fair—but he couldn’t place them. No big surprise there. He’d run into a lot of women over the years.

  “Your Highness.” They curtsied, but if looks could kill…

  Which was surprising. The women he regularly saw at court were more of the simpering kind—lots of eyelash batting and that sort of thing. He hated simpering. But maybe these three were different. Maybe Milda had done her homework.

  He still didn’t care. He wasn’t going to be forced into marriage.

  What a crazy, absolutely insane idea this has been—him on a deserted island with three proper young ladies. Ridiculous, really. For two weeks!

  He gave them an apologetic smile he had to force. They’d been inconvenienced as much as he had. “I’m sorry you’ve been misled. Why don’t you wait in the boat? I’ll take you back to the mainland in a minute.”

  The boat could only seat four. Which meant Milda and the two bodyguards would have to wait until someone returned for them. Now there was a happy thought. With some luck, the pickup would take a long time. For a moment, he even toyed with the thought of not sending his boat back. Two weeks of freedom without her hounding him… The idea held considerable merit.

  “See what you’ve done?” he asked, once the ladies were out of earshot, as they marched toward the boat. Obedient they were, he couldn’t help noticing. After dealing with Milda for the past five challenging months, he was beginning to appreciate obedience more and more in a woman. “You managed to further damage my reputation. You should quit and go home to New York. You’re a PR liability.”

  No evidence of her infamous smile now. Her face was turning red. Her delicate nostrils flared. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke coming out of her dainty ears.

  “I damaged your reputation?” She put her hands on her slim hips. The movement stretched her shirt over her breasts. They were one of her very best features, made the endless hours she spent lecturing him bearable. “I damaged your reputation?” She was sputtering.

  “You can think of ways to make it up to me while you wait for someone to come for you.” He smirked as he stepped away from her, ready to saunter across the beach.

  “I’m fighting for my business,” she warned him. “My livelihood and my heritage. I will not give up. I will not give in.”

  “And I’m fighting for my freedom. Something I most cherish,” he told h
er…and heard the motor start.

  He spun around in time to see the boat pull away, steered by Lady Adel.

  “Wait!” Sand flew up around him as he broke into a sprint. His busted knee slowed him. And the boat was too far, pulling away rapidly.

  They couldn’t leave him, dammit. Not here, not with Milda. “Wait!” He dashed into the surf after them to no avail. But he refused to give up. He swam like he never swam before. Like his life depended on it.

  One of the ladies gave him a smug little wave.

  The distance between them was growing.

  And growing.

  His lungs burned from the effort he put into propelling his body through the water. Then he stopped completely, at last accepting the unacceptable. He swore an unprincely streak and let himself sink for a moment, let the waves wash over his head before he pushed up to the surface again. He treaded water for another few seconds, too stunned to think. Then, as outrage took over, he turned to swim for the shore.

  He strode back onto dry land, fuming and dripping. “You!” He bore down on the woman of his nightmares. “Get on your cell phone and get another boat out here.”

  Her stricken look stopped him. They were practically nose to nose anyway, only inches separating them from each other. Her big blue eyes went impossibly wide. She smelled like spring, the perfume the Queen’s own parfumerie had created for her, a scent that lately haunted him, even in his sleep.

  “I want another boat. Pronto. As in yesterday.” He barked the words at her.

  She was very quiet all of a sudden.

  He didn’t have the patience for this. “Speak.”

  “My organizer fell into the water on the way here with the ladies.” She winced. “I’m a bad swimmer. I always get nervous around water. I should have—”

  “I don’t care about your organizer.” The damn thing was her ever-present companion. Her nefarious plans for his life were no doubt in it. He’d been so disconcerted by her sudden appearance on the island that he hadn’t even noticed it was missing. “Good riddance.”

  “My cell phone was tucked in the front.”

  He walked away from her before he said something he regretted. But called back, after a moment, “Will the guards be checking on us?”

  “No.” Her voice was small. A first. “They’re supposed to avoid contact at all costs. They’re to stay out of sight at all times. They won’t be following you or anything. We, um, wanted to give you and the ladies privacy. The guards are only here to prevent the paparazzi from getting on the island if they get wind of your trip. For all intents and purposes, we’re alone on an uninhabited island. That’s the feel I was going for to foster a certain sense of…”

  He glared, daring her to say the word “romance.” That and true love were her favorite things. He’d tried to tell her in vain that there came a time when a grown woman should stop believing in fairy tales.

  She closed her mouth without finishing the sentence, but she didn’t fool him. She was hopeless. He turned from her again, to survey the shore. There had to be a way off…. He thought of something suddenly. She was very methodical about ruining his life. She was definitely the type to plan for contingencies.

  He turned back to her. “What was the emergency plan? If I broke an arm, how would I have called for help?” He was a royal person. There was always a backup plan for unforeseen contingencies.

  She was studying her feet, her sandals half sunk into the soft sand. “The Lady Adel had an emergency radio in her medical bag,” she muttered.

  “The red bag on her shoulder?” He distinctly remembered the bag. It was the one the doctor walked to the boat with.

  Milda nodded weakly. “They’ll send someone back for us as soon as they land.” She looked after them, biting her bottom lip. The women and his speedboat were a dot over endless blue waves. “We’ll be back at the palace before nightfall, I’m sure.”

  He wouldn’t bet on it. “So basically, we could be stranded here for two whole weeks.”

  She still avoided his gaze. “I wanted to give you sufficient time to get comfortable with each other. I wanted to give the ladies enough time for their true colors to start showing. I only meant the best for you. For everybody.”

  A minute or so passed in uncomfortable silence, as they both contemplated the absurdity of the situation.

  Then she finally looked him in the eye. “Have you camped before?”

  He shook his head. “You?”

  Her face looked pinched. “I have a demanding business that I run all by myself. I don’t usually leave the city.”

  ROBERTO PUT ONE HAND above the other as he climbed the guard tower soundlessly. Below him, Sagro Prison was clouded in darkness, the island quiet. He gripped his sole weapon, the sharpened handle of a spoon, between his teeth. When he reached the top, he vaulted over and cut the guard’s throat before the man could raise the alarm.

  Had to be done.

  There was no way around it. He lowered the body to the wooden boards, wiped the warm blood off his fingers and took the rifle, waited.

  No siren sounded. He hadn’t been detected. The small Italian prison island was well guarded, but it was no high-security facility.

  He lowered himself to the ground where José and Marco crouched in the shadows. He was the boss of the small team, though they were all hired hands, working for a new Colombian drug lord who was trying to break into the European market via Italy, among other places. Except that they’d been caught on this trip.

  But he wouldn’t rot in a dank cell, he thought as they crawled their way to the fence where the hole they’d painstakingly prepared and covered awaited. He wouldn’t end up like his brother, Miguel, trapped in a Valtrian prison, then knifed by some local hotshot, dead two weeks before his release.

  The drug lord they both worked for was trying to wiggle his way into the European market at multiple points of entry. Roberto had a cousin with a small team in Romania. He wondered how the bastard was faring. Hopefully better than this.

  He was the first to reach the unfinished tunnel and head into the darkness. What little they’d left for tonight could be done in an hour. He dug with the flat rock they’d used to get this far, sweated, swore, but never stopped working. When at long last he’d reached the opening, only just clearing the fence, he tossed the stone aside then brushed the dirt from his eyes.

  “Hurry,” he said, speaking for the first time. This far out, nobody should be able to hear them.

  He came up into a crouch, suddenly dizzy from hunger. All three of them were starving. Over the past few weeks, they’d had to bribe too many inmates with food to get what they needed for the escape. They could have just as easily beaten the bastards into obedience, but fights drew the guards’ attention, and their small team needed to fly below the radar. They had to remain invisible. Then and now.

  “Keep low to the ground,” he said as they crossed the narrow slice of flat plateau. Then they unraveled their makeshift ropes, tied them together and lowered themselves down the rock face.

  Roberto reached the beach first. When they were all down, they gathered as much driftwood as they could find, then they used the ropes to tie a raft together. Marco was the fastest with the knots, the son of a fisherman, pulling his weight for the first time. They swam out beyond the breakers before climbing on, then paddled with their shoes as best they could—which wasn’t easy at all, as the waves were getting angry.

  Real paddles would have helped, but they’d had no place to steal them from and no time to make them. Using their shoes required too much effort for too little result. The three were weak and exhausted, but they would work until their last breath.

  They’d all sworn not to go back behind bars. They would either escape today or die trying.

  “Get your ass moving.” Roberto snarled at Marco when he slowed. The other apparently thought that having worked on the raft, he was now entitled to a break.

  José shook his head and spit into the waves.

  Ma
rco got back to the paddling sullenly.

  More trouble than he was worth. But they weren’t out of danger yet. Roberto still needed him.

  They needed to take the current to the mainland, land in an out-of-the-way spot and disappear deep into the country by morning, when their breakout would be discovered and law enforcement would start their coastal search.

  But a storm was coming in and the waves didn’t cooperate. The current seemed to be changing, taking them in another direction entirely.

  Chapter Two

  In hindsight, they shouldn’t have wasted so much of the daylight on fighting.

  Milda wrestled with the tent she’d dragged into the olive grove. She could see Prince Lazlo’s outline a few hundred yards from her. She hadn’t gone too far—was kind of scared of the darkness of the grove, the trees throwing shadows in the moonlight. The island was a nature preserve. Which meant wild animals for sure. She didn’t want to think about that.

  “I don’t think that’s how it goes,” the prince called across the distance that separated them. He hadn’t bothered bringing the second tent up from the beach.

  “I got it,” she answered over her shoulder. Don’t come over. Please, don’t come over.

  If he helped her set up her tent, he would probably expect to sleep in it. With her. She couldn’t handle that.

  She glanced toward him. He rested—probably thinking dark, murderous thoughts about her—sitting up, his back against a tree, his shoulders outlined in the dim light. His body was lithe and powerful. He wasn’t her favorite person in the world, but even she had to admit that he was incredibly handsome, with that debonair, devil-may-care attitude.

  And beyond his good looks, he was intelligent as well. And a prince. At first, she’d been foolish enough to think that marrying him off would be easy. He’d certainly taught her better since.

  She couldn’t pin the man down, not for a second. Like seawater through a fishnet, he ran through her fingers over and over again. He could have made it all work. He had incredible focus when he chose. He owned one of the best speed car factories in Europe, built it himself from nothing but a dream. When he wanted something, he applied himself to the task until he achieved his goal. He could have made her job easy. Instead, he was doing the opposite. He didn’t want anything to do with the Queen’s plans, so he resisted Milda at every step.