LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      THE LEATHER CAR seat creaked slightly as Crown Prince Hugo DeLeon shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position. There wasn’t one. He’d only been out of the hospital for twenty-four hours, and the pain in his left shoulder was normal. It would subside in a day or so, and he knew that impatience wasn’t going to make him heal any faster.

      All the same, he was impatient. And if his father thought that he was helping Hugo to get back to normal, then he wasn’t.

      There wasn’t a great deal of choice in the matter, though. The King of Montarino was accustomed to being obeyed, and when he had visited his only son in the discreet private ward of the hospital, he’d made it clear that he was taking no arguments. He’d smiled at Hugo, in much the same way as any father would, and told him that his duty to his country was clear and very simple. He had to get better.

      In order to make sure that his son’s recovery went smoothly, the King had recruited a doctor who would stay with him at all times over the next month or so. Hugo had still been drowsy from the anaesthetic and his back hurt from having lain still while the pacemaker had been inserted into his chest, but he had got the message. His father didn’t trust Hugo to look after himself, and so he was appointing a minder to do it.

      He hadn’t told Hugo much about this minder, other than that she was a woman, eminently qualified, and that she was due to fly out from London today. The last detail was another smart move on his father’s part, because Hugo knew most of the doctors in the small principality of Montarino, particularly those who were well qualified in cardiology. He might well have been able to wriggle out of the arrangement with any one of them, but this woman was an unknown quantity.

      He wondered briefly whether she’d come equipped with tranquillisers and physical restraints. And, more to the point, whether she’d been briefed about the requirement for discretion. Hugo assumed that she had, because discretion was one of the codes that his family lived by, and his father never let anyone forget it.

      ‘That’ll be her...’ His bodyguard sat in the front seat of the car, and had the advantage of an unobscured view. Hugo squinted through the tinted windows, and saw the chauffeur walking across the forecourt towards the airport’s short-stay car park. Beside him was a young woman with mid-brown hair and a supple sway to her walk, which made the short hairs at the back of Hugo’s neck prickle slightly.

      Probably another one of his father’s carefully reasoned choices. Hugo had to admit that he wasn’t known for saying no to beautiful women, but unusually the King had misjudged the situation this time. A career woman, particularly a doctor, wasn’t someone that he could contemplate giving any part of his heart to.

      ‘She doesn’t look too formidable.’ Ted spoke in English, turning slightly in his seat to display the hint of a smile.

      ‘I wouldn’t bank on looks. She’s managed to keep hold of her suitcase, and I imagine that Jean-Pierre did everything he could to wrestle it away from her.’ Hugo turned the corners of his mouth down. The first thing his father’s chauffeur would have done was to try to relieve their guest of her luggage and wheel her suitcase for her.

      ‘I must be getting slow, I missed that.’ Ted had done nothing of the sort; he just hadn’t seen fit to mention it. In the five years that he’d been with Hugo, since his retirement from the British police force, the two men had learned to read each other’s thoughts and trust what they saw. It had been Ted who had

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