setting Meg down on the carpet.
As she put pen to paper to sign for the order, she hesitated for a moment before remembering her name. Jenna Peters. She’d had the name for more than a year now; surely soon it would become second nature to use it?
But even as she signed the fake name and handed the form back, she knew the truth—she’d always be Princess Jensine Larsen, youngest of the five children of the reigning queen of Larsland. A princess who’d never put a foot wrong in her twenty-three years until she made one mistake big enough to obliterate that record.
She’d become pregnant out of wedlock.
At first the news hadn’t been too bad—she and Alexander were in love and had been planning to marry one day. They’d just have to move the date forward. And tell their families. Their relationship had been a secret—after a life lived in the public eye, she’d just wanted one thing that was hers alone. She grimaced. People always said to be careful what you wish for. Now her entire life was lived in secret.
They’d planned on telling their families when Alexander came home from his latest military deployment. But Alexander hadn’t come home. He’d been killed in the line of duty, leaving her grieving and pregnant, with no chance of salvaging her honor.
She hadn’t been able to tell her parents and face their disappointment. Perhaps worst of all, once the local press found out, it would have tarnished the reputation of the royal family, something she’d been brought up to avoid at all costs. A royal family that had, unlike many of its European neighbors, avoided any hint of scandal in its modern history. The situation would have dealt Larsland royalty its final blow in an age when people were questioning the need for royalty at all.
She’d only been able to see one way out. She’d fled the country and set up a new identity in Los Angeles with the aid of a childhood friend, Kristen, who now worked in the royal security patrol. Jenna had originally planned to run to the United Kingdom because she’d been there before and it had a population large enough to lose herself in, but Kristen had a friend in the United States who’d worked with her on an exchange program a couple of years ago and was now in a position to help. Kristen and her U.S. counterpart were now the only two people who knew both who she really was and precisely where she was. She was sure her parents would have used her passport’s trail to track her to the U.S., but it was a big country.
She’d been sending vague updates to her family through Kristen so they knew she was okay, and the press and citizens had been told she was overseas studying. In retrospect, the plan had several flaws, not least of which was that she couldn’t be “overseas studying” for the rest of her life. But she’d been panicking and grieving when she’d made the plan and couldn’t see a way out now it was in place.
She’d worried that she’d put Kristen’s job in jeopardy, but her friend had assured her that her job was probably the safest of anyone’s in the patrol. The queen needed Kristen right where she was in case Jenna needed specialized help, and to keep the updates coming.
As the truck turned a corner in the driveway and drove out of sight, she closed the door and picked Meg up.
“Shall we see what goodies were delivered for Bonnie?” she asked. Meg gurgled in reply and Jenna kissed the top of her head.
Liam came across the back patio, toed off his shoes at the door and waved to her through the open living areas that connected the front door to the back.
“Was that the baby supplies arriving?”
“Yes. They assembled the furniture so we just need to put it into position and bring the other pieces into the nurseries.”
“We can do that now if you want,” he said, resting his hands low on his hips.
“Bonnie’s still asleep in your room, so it would be good timing.”
They spent twenty minutes moving an extra chest of drawers into Meg’s nursery and a single bed out of Bonnie’s to make way for the new crib. Once they were done, they sat on the rug on the floor in Bonnie’s nursery, Meg playing with a stuffed velvet frog that had been in the delivery, Liam taking sheets, blankets and baby clothes out of their plastic packets and Jenna unpacking the baby creams and lotions and setting them up on the new changing table.
Liam’s deep voice broke the silence. “Is your accent Danish?”
She hesitated. Was telling him her true homeland risky? She’d been telling people she was Danish, just on the off chance they’d seen a photo of her before and the name of her country jogged their memory. But for some reason she didn’t want to lie to Liam Hawke any more than it was necessary. Perhaps because he was trusting her with his daughter—the ultimate act for a parent—she felt that she’d be betraying him somehow with a lie she could avoid.
“I’m from Larsland. It’s an archipelago of islands in the Baltic Sea. We’re not far from Denmark and people often get our accents mixed up.”
“I’ve heard of it. Lots of bears and otters.”
“That’s us,” she said, smiling.
He fixed his deep green gaze on her. “Are you going home soon, or are you going to put down roots in the U.S.?”
“I’m seeing a bit of the world, so I’ll probably move on at some point.” That wasn’t strictly true—she wasn’t traveling, but she didn’t yet know what the future held. Once she worked out how, she’d have to return to Larsland and face the music, and it was only fair Liam knew there was an element of uncertainty in her future. “But not until you and Bonnie are ready,” she said to reassure him she wasn’t flighty.
“This wasn’t a lifelong commitment,” he said. “As long as you give me notice, you’ll be free to move on and see more of the world any time you want.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Liam stood, drawing her eyes up his tall frame. “I was serious when I said I’d increase your salary by twenty percent over what Dylan was paying you. And if you have any conditions, let me know.”
“You don’t even know if I’ll be good at the job yet,” she said, pushing to her feet before she got a crick in her neck.
Liam crossed his arms over his broad chest and rocked back on his heels, and once again he looked like the multi-millionaire businessman that he was. “Dylan wouldn’t have kept you this long if you weren’t a good worker, and Bonnie has been happy with you so far. Besides,” he said with a lazy grin, “if it’s not working out, I’ll fire you and hire someone else.”
She knew that grin was meant to soften his words. Instead, as it spread across his face, it stole her breath away. Boys and then men had tried a lot of tricks over the years to get her attention, hoping to marry into the royal family, but she’d always seen through them and been far from impressed. Yet Liam Hawke threw one careless grin her way, and she was practically putty in his hands. She held back a groan. This was not a good start to a new job....
“In the meantime,” she said, bringing her focus back to their conversation, “you want me to be happy in my work conditions on the chance I am actually good at the job.”
He tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Exactly. A good businessman keeps his options open, utilizes the resources available and moves on when it’s no longer effective or profitable.”
Meg yawned again. “I’d better feed Meg and get her down for a nap because I think Bonnie will be awake soon.”
She ran a fingertip across her daughter’s button nose. Her eyes were getting heavy, so Jenna began softly humming an old Larsland lullaby that Meg liked.
Liam dug his hands into his pockets and turned to the door. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Without losing her place in the song or lifting her head, Jenna nodded. But once he was gone, she moved to the window so she could watch her new employer as he strode from the house toward the flower farm around back. And the question played over and over in her mind—why