there to give any hint of who Rik was, yet something tugged at the edge of her memory, just out of reach. She moved to the bedside table and sat on the edge of the bed, holding the letter to the light. The paper was thinner than regular office paper, expensive, and the logo caught the light. Not a logo after all but an heraldic crest, a dragon framed by climbing roses. The memory nudged harder. She’d seen it before, and recently.
Think, think.
The mayor’s waiting room! She’d spent the better part of the afternoon staring at this shield, only it had been in full colour, above the obligatory portrait of the governor hanging on the wall. It was the emblem of Westerwald, the nation that owned this southern Caribbean archipelago.
The same nation that had been in the tabloids a great deal lately.
Fredrik and Maximilian … she slapped her forehead. She’d never have recognised him with the beard and overlong hair, but it had to be … She had a prince on the sofa in her hotel room! A disinherited prince, to be sure, but that hardly mattered.
A missing disinherited prince. She wondered what the tabloids would pay for news of his whereabouts. Nope, not going there. There was no amount of money in the world that would induce her to throw someone into that rapacious spotlight. Been there, done that, and burned the tee shirt.
She perched on the edge of her bed and considered the letter. Just last week she’d sat in the Soho production office and flicked through a magazine article on the recently announced royal nuptials in Westerwald. There’d been a great deal made about the guest list for the upcoming engagement party, a party Rik was clearly expected to attend.
How she’d love to have been a fly on the wall during that confrontation!
No wonder Rik had drunk himself comatose. The thought of going back to the country that had thrown him out, to face the brother who’d succeeded him, perhaps even the mother who’d passed him off as another man’s child, all under the glare of the paparazzi cameras… she’d have got drunk too.
Kenzie set the letter down and took a hard look at him.
Prince Fredrik von Waldburg of Westerwald.
There’d been a picture of him with the article. She remembered it clearly, since she’d stopped for a long look. He’d been dressed in a suit and tie, clean-shaven and conservative, but there’d been a suggestion of ruggedness that had appealed to her even then.
He’d had a glossy blonde on his arm in the picture, a girlfriend with a title to match the perfect looks and catwalk evening gown. What had happened to her? She’d probably gone the way of his inheritance.
Kenzie set the letter down on the bed and stared at her unwelcome visitor. At least he hadn’t lied about being able to introduce her to the mayor. Even disinherited, he probably had the kind of connections that could open a lot of doors for her.
Her heart skittered with excitement. She’d known she was on the verge of something big. Neil had sent her here to fail. But with Rik’s help, she could get the job done and prove to him, and to herself, that she was more than just the poor choices she’d made a decade ago.
You see. Things always work out in the end.
Rik lay on his stomach, one leg over the arm of the sofa, the other trailing on the floor. One arm hung at an odd angle and his face was crushed into the cushions. He was going to have an interesting pattern on his face when he woke.
Oh heavens – when he woke … !
What the hell was she going to say? Good morning, your highness, would you like your pillows fluffed?
Stuff that. She’d had enough of that with the second in her long line of exes. Charlie had expected her to bow to his every whim because he had money and a title, and she’d been so awed by the world he’d introduced her to that she’d done it. She’d gone along with every stupid, hare-brained scheme of his, until she’d been hung out to dry in full public view. The memory rose like bile in her throat. Never again!
It seemed all these rich boys were the same; too much money and nothing better to do with their time than party and get wasted. Though to be fair, those with very little money still had the same tendency, as Brett had proved.
It had all seemed so glam when she’d been in her heady twenties, young and impressionable, but she was older and wiser now. There was nothing glamorous about having a man passed out on one’s sofa, no matter who he was.
Tomorrow she’d pretend she knew nothing more than what Rik had told her. He could carry on playing Mystery Man, for all she cared. She wasn’t going to bow and scrape, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to let herself be seduced. She was just one bad relationship away from getting thirty cats and calling it quits with men.
She folded up the letter and crossed the room to slide it back into his pocket. Which was definitely not as easy as pulling it out had been.
Job done, she surveyed the sleeping beauty on her sofa. There was a hint of vulnerability in his face that definitely wasn’t there when he was awake. It tugged at something inside her, and she swallowed hard. No, she wasn’t going to try to fix this one. She had to have learned that lesson by now, right?
But she couldn’t in good conscience leave a prince to sleep like a pretzel on the sofa, no matter how much of a pain in the butt he was, or how much he deserved it.
The first and easiest thing she could do for him was to remove his shoes. She unlaced his trainers, braced her knees on the edge of the sofa, and pulled. His shoe slid off, quicker than she expected, the momentum driving her straight onto him, with her knee in his groin.
“Ooph.” Rik’s eyes fluttered, and her heart stopped beating.
His eyelids settled, and she laid a hand over her heart and started to breathe again. He was seriously out of it not to be woken by that.
With much more care, she removed his other trainer, then stood back to survey the scene.
She’d move him to the bed, and she’d take the sofa. She had more chance of fitting on it anyway. Who knew there’d be a perk to being only five foot three?
But getting him onto the bed was an altogether different matter. It had taken two grown men to get him to her room, so how the hell was she going to get him from the sofa to the bed on her own?
She started by wrestling the sofa closer to the bed.
Deep breath in and shove. Deep breath in and shove.
Sweat beaded on her forehead as the sofa inched slowly forwards until, with a jolt, it connected with the side of the bed.
Great. Now what?
She had to climb over the back of the sofa to roll Rik onto the bed. Except he didn’t want to roll. He snuggled back into the sofa cushions.
“Give me a break!”
Since she’d come this far, there was no going back. She wrapped her arms around his torso and heaved. He wasn’t a small man and in sleep he was damned heavy and uncooperative. He was also rather buff. She couldn’t help but notice the firmness of muscle beneath that long black tee. She’d bet anything he had a fine six-pack. For half a second she was tempted to strip off his shirt for a peek. Surely the vow she and Lee had sworn didn’t preclude looking?
No, a promise was a promise.
Besides, she was now hot and sweaty, in spite of the air-con, and wrestling him out of his clothes just wasn’t worth the effort, so she discarded the idea as quickly as it formed. She’d have to be satisfied with having copped a feel.
Rik now lay on the very edge of the bed. She climbed over him to kneel on his other side. One last heave and he’d be safe and comfortable and she could get to sleep herself.
She wrapped her arms around him, and he moaned. Not the same sound he’d made before, but a satisfied purr. Oh heaven help her! If he woke now, there was no way she could explain why she had him in her