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      MILLS & BOON

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      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      TAMMY was up a tree when royalty arrived.

      Royalty might be unusual, but being up a tree wasn’t. Tamsin Dexter spent half her life up trees. She was one of Australia’s youngest and brightest tree surgeons, and Tammy’s passion was propagating, treating or, as a last resort, felling trees and planting new ones to take their place.

      Employed by the Australian National Parks Service, Tammy was as usual, working in the remote bushland that she loved so much. She was part of a team, but today she was working happily and successfully alone.

      She had nothing to do with royalty.

      But someone was under her tree right now and he certainly looked like royalty. Or maybe he was a duke. Or maybe he wasn’t royalty. Could he be an admiral or something?

      Maybe she didn’t know, she conceded. Tammy’s working knowledge of royalty, dukes and admirals was strictly limited. Were admirals as young as this? Maybe not.

      What the stranger was wearing probably wasn’t an admiral’s uniform, she decided as she checked him out more closely. He was dressed in a sleek, expensively cut suit, embellished with rows of braid, medals and tassels. He’d arrived in a gleaming limousine, which was now parked under the tree she was working on, and a uniformed chauffeur remained in the driving seat.

      Someone else was climbing out of the car now. The second man was older, and wore no braid or medals, but he still looked like some sort of official.

      Which of the pair looked more out of place? Tammy couldn’t decide. Royalty or official? It didn’t matter, but she knew who looked the most interesting.

      Royalty. Definitely royalty.

      The man she’d decided was royalty was tall. He was well over six feet, she thought, though it was tricky to judge from so far above him. He was immaculately groomed with jet black hair, thickly waved and raked back. His hair looked carefully arranged to suit the official status of his uniform, but perhaps ungroomed it would be the sort of tousled thatch that Tammy infinitely preferred in her men.

      Her men?

      She grinned at the direction her thoughts were taking. That was a laugh. Her men. Her men were a figment of her imagination.

      Figment or not, this man looked great. Wonderful. He was strongly built and had a sort of chiselled look about him: like one of Rodin’s statues. His bone structure was superb—intensely, wonderfully masculine.

      What else? Some things were obvious. He certainly wasn’t the sort who lived in the bush. Even without the royal regalia, he looked the type who’d be at home drinking café latte, or sipping wine in trendy city bars, with a sleek little Lamborghini parked nearby.

      She knew the type, and it wasn’t her type at all. Cheap tea boiled on a campfire with a few eucalyptus leaves thrown in for flavour was more Tammy’s style.

      So, what on earth were these two men and their chauffeur doing here? She swung lazily back in her harness and considered.

      The bureaucrat was about fifty—twenty years or so older than the royalty-type—and he was podgy. He was wearing a dark suit and his shirt had a too-tight collar. In comparison the younger man looked smooth, intelligent and sophisticated.

      What a pair! In combination they looked almost absurd. Here they were, in the middle of the Australian bush, and they were dressed as if they were expecting a royal reception. And to receive them there was only Tammy, swinging thirty feet above their heads.

      What did they want?

      ‘Miss Dexter?’ the bureaucrat called, and Tammy frowned. Miss Dexter? That was her. What were this lot doing looking for her?

      ‘This is ridiculous,’ the royalty guy was saying. ‘The sort of woman I’m looking for wouldn’t be working in a place like this.’

      Tammy thought about that and agreed wholeheartedly. How many Miss Dexters were there in the world? Thousands, she decided. These guys had wandered off a movie set and needed directions to find their way home.

      ‘Miss Dexter?’ the bureaucrat called again, this time more urgently.

      But still Tammy didn’t respond. She stared down at the men below, and as she did she felt her insides give an unfamiliar lurch. Maybe it was a premonition. Maybe they weren’t in the wrong place at all.

      Maybe they spelled trouble.

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