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  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Copyright Page

  ‘The Tycoon’s Wager’ Excerpt

  Guide

  Contents

  Start of content

  The Runaway Queen

  Royal Hearts

  Sophie Rodger

  Avon, Massachusetts

  Dedicated to the ladies of the “Beautiful Man Appreciation Society”—you know who you are— and to Kat Kat, my sister-cousin, for all her help with the translations and making sure each day never has a dull moment!

  Chapter 1

  How had it come to this?

  Tia dropped her hands onto her hips. After everything, at twenty-six years of age and with three years at Oxford University studying computer sciences, she had been defeated by . . . a car engine.

  Smoke rose steadily from its depths, and she bit down on her lower lip. Now what? She shook her head, clearing the unhelpful thought. Get it together, Tia. This was a new car so it shouldn’t be having this problem, right? Okay. Logic. Engine off, tick; headlights on, tick. Should they be? She bit her lip again, eyeing them before looking over her shoulder at the surrounding empty fields.

  Empty was the operative word. Her fingers itched to retrieve the phone she knew she didn’t have. The phone she had left, along with the rest of her earthly trappings, back at the palace. She balled her hands into fists. It did not matter. She would show them! Her plan had to work. She’d learned to walk and run and jump with the best of them after the riding accident, hadn’t she? And she was the best, darn it. She was the future queen of Kephelai!

  She dropped her hands from her hips and ducked her head under the roof of the car, moving her fingers lightly over the cooling engine. Well, the first part of her plan had been a success. She smiled tightly. She had managed to leave the palace in disguise and her guards hadn’t followed her. Her next step of moonlighting as a gift shop attendee in Arios to find out what the country really thought of her family at the roots level of society- especially in light of the recent news of a rise in people who favoured a republic; while all the while finding out how popular her modernization was to the general public-would have to wait temporarily.

  Her parents’ voices rang in her head as if they were right beside her. The life of a princess, Christiana Athena Louise Helios, is to serve her people through charitable works . . . They love us . . . What is wrong with our way of life? It is modern enough . . . Your harebrained plan will not make us any more popular . . . Georgios would not have dreamed of doing anything like this . . .

  Okay, so maybe she added that last part herself. Her older brother’s laugh echoed in her ear like a church bell that had already emptied out its congregation. It had been ten years since the riding accident and ten years since her carefree existence at sixteen had been shattered.

  Why had she and Sebastian been the ones to be spared but not their older brother, Georgios? It was a question she had asked herself more than once. She imagined it was the same one her parents had asked themselves too.

  “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Tia jerked up at the sharp voice behind her, and pain throbbed through her skull as it made contact with the car bonnet. Damn! And double damn for using that word. She spun around and winced as the unexpected movement took its toll on her hip. Even after all this time, the pain from the riding accident still plagued her at the most inconvenient times—like now.

  The sunrays had bathed the fields in a dusky pink as they kissed it good night. The evening had seemed peaceful. She narrowed her eyes at the man who had spoiled the calmness. His hair was cropped so close to his head she wouldn’t have been able to determine the exact color if it wasn’t for the dark stubble that covered his face. He looked . . . dangerous wasn’t the word. Menacing? No, not that, either. Regardless, either way, his looks were a far cry from those of the men she knew, like her blond-haired twin brother or her ex-fiancé, Antoine, and his glossy brown hair.

  Tia smoothed down the wig she had purchased the week before and winced as her fingers made contact with the small bump she could feel forming on her skull. Great! Just great. Now, on top of everything else, she was to suffer a concussion too.

  Her breath caught in her throat as the man stepped closer. She pulled herself up to her full five-foot, ten-inch height, becoming pitifully aware by his indolent smile that it wasn't having the same impact it normally did. Curses! The man must be at least six foot four at a minimum.

  Alarm bells rang through her at the ill-concealed anger in his eyes. She couldn’t show any weakness. He could be one of the rebels she warned her father about—one of the reasons she had put herself on this mission in the first place.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “My friends call me Tia.” She mentally self-fived at her quick thinking. Okay, so only her family called her that, but it was an untraceable nickname.

  He tilted his head to one side and away from the beam of the car’s headlights, casting dark, ominous shadows over his eyes. “I am not your friend. Are you hurt?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be if you had not snuck up on me,” she scolded, folding her hands in front of her.

  “Snuck up on you? This is my land.” His boots scraped against the dry mud as he shuffled forward, and Tia stepped back, the car’s number plate cold against the back of her trousers. Sweat tickled her scalp, and she curled her fingers into her palm to resist the urge to itch under the wig. “You catch more flies with honey” had always been one of her tutor’s favorite phrases. Now was maybe the time to try it.

  “My apologies, but I did not know that, and as you can see, my car has broken down, Mr. . . . ” She forced her lips up into a tight smile, even as her heart hammered heavily in her chest at his slow steps back into the beam of the car’s headlights, and she narrowed her eyes. It couldn’t be, could it? No, surely not.

  “You don't know my name? Phillipe must be getting desperate if . . . ” He clamped his lips shut and crossed his arms over his chest, forcing the fabric of the black jumper to strain. Who was Phillipe? The only Phillipe she knew was her father’s friend and the man who would have been her future father-in-law. This stranger surely couldn’t mean him.

  The heat of the fading sun kissed her cheeks, and the sound of the hummingbirds that Kephelai was famous for sung in her ears as she pictured Phillipe’s face. In the strange glow of the head lights, this man’s face did kind of remind her of Phillipe.

  Nuts! Now she couldn’t help thinking of Antoine. Reliable, diligent Antoine who was Georgios’s best friend and now her ex-fiancé.

  “If . . . ?” she probed further.

  “If nothing. Why don’t you just call for help?” he snapped back.

  Ha, good question. Now, how to tell him she left most of her things back at the palace, phone included? “I do not have a phone.” There, a simple, uncomplicated answer.

  His eyebrows rose quickly.
“You don’t have a phone?” he enunciated slowly.

  Jeez, when he put it like that, she knew exactly how she sounded the first time she had broached the subject with her father about his getting a phone. Patronizing and annoying. When she got back to the palace, she should apologize.

  “Yes, as strange as that may seem, and God knows I know how strange that seems, but it is getting late and”—she swung her arm across the top of the smoking engine—“I really do need some help. Please.”

  What more did the man want? Short of batting her eyelashes like she had seen women do at various balls over the years and which went against every feminist instinct she possessed, her options were slowly dwindling like a bucket of water with a hole in it.

  Oh hells bells.

  • • •

  Damon narrowed his eyes as the woman who called herself Tia shifted from one foot to the other. Despite the strange baggy trousers and oversized T-shirt, she moved delicately, like he imagined a ballet dancer might move, and yet . . . something wasn’t quite right.

  He ground his feet into the dirt, forcing himself to stay where he was and not to go turn off those stupid headlights so he could get a good look at who was intruding on his land. He was no mechanic, but he suspected the headlights shouldn’t even be on. That, and they were going to scare his horse.

  “I need to get to Arios. How far is it from here?”

  It was a stupid thought, but her voice reminded him of a crystal cool stream, clear and defined as it rolled gently over the smooth pebbles beneath it. It didn’t seem to match the unusual disarrayed brown bob hairstyle. He leaned closer. No, he still couldn’t see her eye colour, but the voice definitely didn’t match the external picture.

  The hairs lifted on the back of his neck. Phillipe couldn’t have, could he? Damn his father and damn all the royals!

  “I am sorry, but I did not catch that?” Her voice broke through the black haze surrounding his thoughts.

  “Arios? It’s halfway across the island. It will take you at least three hours.” It was as good an explanation as any, and if she didn’t have a navigation system, then that was her problem, not his.

  Her eyes widened at his words. “On foot?”

  His sudden bubble of laughter burst out in a short, sharp sound, surprising them both. How long had it been since he laughed? Too long, clearly.

  She wasn’t laughing with him. There wasn’t even a twitch of her lips to indicate that she shared his joke.

  “By car.”

  “You are joking, aren’t you?” Her lips drooped, and his gaze dropped to them. Warmth flooded through him, and he forced his eyes to look the other way. What was wrong with him? Yes, they were attractive, but at thirty-one, he should know better than to be attracted to a cupid’s bow mouth, especially when it was on someone who “happened” to break down on his land the day after a letter from his father’s solicitor came through the door with yet more empty threats. Unless this time . . .

  Oh hell no! He curled his hands into his palms. He wouldn’t be drawn into Phillipe’s tricks, king or not. Phillipe would learn that titles and their privileges didn’t work on him and neither did sending in this apparent honey trap. “What did you say your name was again?” He’d seen enough black-and-white 1930s detective movies with his grandfather, and the femme fatale was always the predicable plotline.

  “Tia. My name is Tia.” Her defeated exhale filled the air. It reminded him of a similar sound he had heard in another time and place—a place he thought he had forgotten.

  It reminded him of his mother.

  Damon shook his head and dragged his hand down his face. What was he thinking? He wasn’t! He was being sentimental, and look where that got people. In his experience, they were walked over, then discarded like a used tissue.

  “Look, Tia . . . ” He stopped at the alien sound of her name on his tongue. Why did it roll off so easily and not feel as bitter as it should? “I will ride home and call you a tow truck. The job I had to do and the reason for coming out will have to wait,” he added quickly. The last thing he wanted her to think was that she was the main reason for him being here. Even if she kind of was because his ride to clear his head had turned into a rescue mission when he had seen her car.

  “You’re going to leave me alone—in the middle of a field, in the dark?”

  “One, you’re on my farm so you’re completely safe. There are no trespassers . . . ” He paused and ran his tongue across his lips over the futility of this statement. She was here, wasn’t she? “Let me rephrase that last bit. There aren’t often trespassers on my land, and you’re not exactly in the dark. The car lights—” He stopped again as the lights dimmed quickly before switching off, leaving only the dying sun’s rays to highlight them both, and the sun was setting quickly.

  For the love of God. Not this as well. Damon dragged his hand over his head, and the bristles scratched his palm. He needed to shave his hair again. The last thing he wanted was it growing back. It was too much hassle, and it had always been his mother’s pride and joy. Of course, it was only when he had seen a picture of Phillipe that he knew why. It was yet another reason to shave it. “Hell! Well, this doesn’t change anything, I will go back, and you will have to stay here. That is, unless you’re scared of the dark?”

  Her feet were moving slowly in the dirt like someone who wanted to run but was trapped, and his stomach sank at the motion of them. It was a feeling he knew well. He blinked against the tear-inducing sharpness of the setting sun. If he squinted just so, he could make out her features more clearly. Her eyes were large and hazel, at least in this light, and were locked on to him like the eyes of a baby owl that had fallen from a tree.

  “I am not scared.” The quiver in her voice appeared to belie that statement.

  “Good because—”

  “But, I can come with you. I mean, it seems pointless staying here when—”

  “No,” Damon cut in sharply.

  “No? That is it? Just no?”

  She sounded perplexed, like someone who was not used to being disobeyed, and he rubbed the familiar ache in his jaw. You can’t solve anything by grinding your teeth, Damon. It had been his mother’s favourite phrase—when she had been alive.

  No. He couldn’t have this woman, Tia, in his home. Who was she? Why would Phillipe send her?

  His research, which was scattered across the table in his spare room, had found that Phillipe’s kingdom of Montcroix was one of the few elective monarchies in the world, and it was his plan to use that to his advantage when the time came. His throat tightened as he pictured the headlines in his head: Royal Bastard vs. King Phillipe of Montcroix. It wasn’t what his mother would have wanted. In fact, it was the very opposite of the promise he made to her about not hating Phillipe and exposing him for who he really was. But Phillipe had struck the first match with his threat to discredit him in front of the racing world if he did not return the letters Phillipe had written to his mother, letters that even now made his stomach dip at their overly intimate comments. Sure, they weren’t his letters but they weren’t Phillipe’s either and like hell would he let Phillipe’s threats scare him. Now the fire was raging. He’d find the money for the lawyers. He wouldn’t let Phillipe destroy him, like the man did to his mother.

  Childhood jibes about his lack of a father floated through his mind, and he rubbed his hand across his jaw again.

  “Now, be reasonable, Mr. . . . ”

  “Anastos. Damon Anastos.” It was pointless pretending to be someone else, not when she knew who he was anyway.

  “Well, Damon Anastos, I am Tia . . . ” Her voice stalled, and his lips flattened together. Just as he suspected. “Liakos. Tia Liakos. Brilliant, now we’ve had the proper introductions. That kind of makes me a guest, and it would not be polite to leave one’s guest in a field in the dark now, would it?”

  If she thought she had him fooled by the saccharine sweetness in her voice, then she was wrong. He knew the difference between a request and a
n order when he heard it. That, combined with the gentle pout of her lips as they rose into a small smile and acted like a kick in the solar plexus, probably worked wonders on those around her. Well, not him, no matter how hard the kick.

  • • •

  Did the man have a heart of stone or ice?

  Tia wrapped her arms around her and pushed back the shiver threatening to make her wobble. Why hadn’t she thought to bring a jacket or at least a wrap? Not that any of her wraps would have been appropriate with this borrowed outfit from her brother’s cupboard. Her stomach dipped at the thought of Sebastian. He was her twin, younger by mere minutes, and they shared everything. Everything except her plan to run to Arios. Would her parents blame him, like they did for their older brother’s death?

  She bit her lip. She couldn’t think about that right now. When she had succeeded with her plan, things would get back to normal—better even. It was her role now as the eldest and next in line to the throne to see that they did. It was a plan even Georgios would not have attempted with his overly cautious ways. But she wasn’t Geo; she was Tia and she would make her plan work.

  “But you’re not a guest. You’re an intruder.” His husky tone slid over her skin like a warm blanket; goose pimples ran across her arms, and she rubbed them away quickly, stopping instantly as his gaze followed the movement.

  “Intruder is a bit strong. Lost, broken-down traveler who accidentally found your farm is a better description, wouldn’t you say?” she bit out, clamping her lips together as the last word came out on a small shake.

  Hells bells! If he could not see she was cold, then he could hear it. Weak. That was how she sounded. Geo would never have sounded weak. But then, Geo would never have broken down in a field like this.

  Her heart thumped loudly as the stranger moved closer, and the sound of his feet hitting the dirt made each thump louder than the last. Sweat broke out across her forehead, and she pushed herself farther against the car. Now she knew how a rabbit felt caught in headlights. Ironic, considering she was pressed against headlights that were now off.