LITMIR.BIZ

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to the master bedroom. Its furnishings didn’t comfort her as they usually did. She’d picked them out upon leaving the family mansion and moving to the apartment in a bid for independence shortly after agreeing to work at the family business.

      Well, she’d needed a job. The dot-com where she’d started right out of college had made it four years before crashing. She’d learned a lot about computer systems during that time, so she was a valuable employee.

      Not that anyone else thought so. Her fellow analysts thought she was a pretty face who’d gotten her position due to family connections. That much was true, in that her sister had pressured her to come into the company.

      Ivy had gladly taken on the job of bringing Lantanya’s educational facilities into the twenty-first century when no one else had wanted the time-consuming task, which had included long flights across the Atlantic to Rome. She’d then had to take a puddle jumper, as some called the small jet, to Lantanya, which lay off the eastern coast of Italy in the Adriatic Sea, which was really an arm of the Mediterranean.

      On the latest trip, she’d stayed in the tiny country for two months, then on her last night she’d met Max. Her own Prince Charming.

      The royal liar, she dubbed him, seizing anger as a means to control the hurt she didn’t want to recognize.

      Going into the bathroom, she closed the door and locked it behind her. Which was ridiculous since there was no one in the apartment but her.

      Really, it was a tad late to be locking herself into bathrooms to ensure that she was alone. She should have done that six weeks and four days ago, in the middle of July when she was in Lantanya instead of the first Tuesday in September, back at her apartment in Portland, Oregon.

      In reality, she should have returned home before she gave in to the madness that had danced through her like bubbles from the finest champagne. She frowned and opened the pregnancy kit.

      A few minutes later she emerged, shaken and chastened. She studied the results again. There was no mistake. She was expecting a child, a royal baby…and heir to the House of von Husden.

      Well, probably not. Illegitimate children didn’t inherit anything. She sighed shakily. As long as she kept the father a secret people might wonder about the sire, but her child wouldn’t be made to feel he or she had been rejected. She would see to that. She would love her child so much, he or she would never notice the lack of a father’s care.

      Going out on the balcony, intending to think the situation through and come to a decision, she stared at the hills and thought of another place and another time….

      “What do you think?” an amused male voice had asked.

      Ivy had turned from the painting she’d been studying to the source of the question. A tall man, probably six feet or so, a good seven or eight inches taller than she was at any rate, stood a couple of feet behind her.

      He had black hair and deep-brown eyes. His skin was tanned, making his smile brilliant. His face was lean, all hard planes and angles, but put together so the whole was very handsome. There was a hint of silver at his temples, lending a distinguished air to his appearance. In spite of that, she judged his age to be in the midthirties at most.

      “I’m not sure what to think,” she admitted, turning back to the painting so she wouldn’t stare at the alluring stranger. “I’m sure the artist has a point, but I don’t think I get it.”

      “Same here,” her fellow museum visitor agreed. “I like faces in the ordinary arrangement. Which can sometimes be quite lovely.”

      He gazed at her appreciatively.

      A slight disappointment rose in her. Just another Lothario, she deduced. “Yes,” she said coolly, as if speaking of the picture, and walked on to the next gilt-framed oil.

      “I’ve offended you. I’m sorry. You are quite lovely, you know, but I’ll try to refrain from mentioning it again.”

      His candor surprised her, causing her to meet his eyes. His smile was so engaging, she had to return it.

      “There’s a wing on this side that I think you might enjoy more,” he said, gesturing to a wide, elaborately framed wooden archway and bowing in a brief but stately manner. He didn’t try to guide her or touch her in any way.

      “Ah,” she murmured at the doorway.

      A huge painting of flowers, done in the loveliest hues imaginable, was the focal point at the end of the gallery.

      “It’s like stepping into a garden, isn’t it?” he said softly. “You can almost feel the warmth of the sunshine striking the treetops, then the coolness of the shade as you walk into the shadow of the leaf canopy.”

      The oddest thing was that she could. She looked at him in amazement. His smile…oh, his smile. It knew everything she was thinking….

      Returning to the present, Ivy stared at the colors of the sunset lightly grazing the maple trees on the lawn and the alders closer to the creek that separated the residential complex from the golf course. The creek flowed into the Columbia River that had awed Lewis and Clark on their expedition. A much smaller river ran from the Lantanya mountains where the resort was perched down to the wine-colored sea where St. Ansellmo, the capital city of the island kingdom, lay against the shore.

      She and the man who introduced himself as Max Hughes had wandered through the rest of the museum and taken tea in the garden there. They’d had the place to themselves. It had seemed as if they were the only people in the world as they talked. He’d admitted he liked to sketch the odd scene now and then, even to paint if he had time.

      “Like Churchill,” she’d said, “something to relax you.”

      “What do you do in your spare time?” he’d asked.

      “Read. Go on long walks. Work on computer programs.”

      That was when he’d questioned her about her work. She’d told him about Crosby Systems and her job in Lantanya. He’d been keenly interested and had asked a thousand questions. When she’d asked, he said he was in business, too, mostly as a consultant. His manner had been sardonic as he admitted that last one.

      Consultant? Yes, if one stretched the definition of king. Maybe he was more of a figurehead than a ruler, though.

      Not that it mattered to her. He’d walked her partway back to the resort, then had to leave for a meeting. She’d been disappointed as she wound her way up the steep slope to the castle-like building on a rocky promontory.

      “I’ll see you again,” he’d promised, briefly lifting her hand to his lips.

      And he had.

      Hearing music from a car passing on the street, Ivy was thrust back into the recent past and that magic night….

      A cool breeze blew off the sea and music that filled her soul wafted over her as she’d stood on the patio and observed the very last of the colors in the sunset sink into the sea. She’d been alone.

      “Let’s not waste the music,” an amused voice said from the shadows.

      A man, tall, with dark hair and eyes and a brilliant smile, stepped into view. Max held his hands out and she stepped into them as if they’d done this a thousand times before. The music rose and throbbed and they dipped and swayed to the notes, wrapped in the magic of it all.

      When it stopped, they did, too. They dropped their arms, but didn’t move away.

      “That was enchanting,” he murmured, his gaze warm and filled with laughter as he studied her.

      “I feel like an enchanted princess,” she said, then looked at him quickly to see if she’d been too bold.

      “And I, your devoted knight,” he murmured, a devilish light in his eyes. He executed a smart little bow.

      On impulse she nodded regally, her mouth curling with laughter at their acting. And the fact that he’d returned.

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