A Prince at Last! Read online

  Praise for Cathie Linz

  “Ms. Linz has the rare gift of touching the ordinary with a quiet magic that always makes our day shine a little brighter.”

  —Romantic Times

  A familiar fire smoldered within him.

  It wasn’t the kind of flame that flared to life the instant he saw her, but it was the kind that grew in intensity each time he and Juliet were together. Instant lust Luc could deal with, but this overwhelmingly powerful attraction was something else entirely.

  “I should have worn black leather,” he heard her mutter and almost groaned aloud at the sexy fantasy of her dressed like a biker babe—her thighs barely covered by a short skirt, her breasts pushing against a tight T-shirt. His body responded to the hot images, forcing him to shift position on the motorcycle, which only made her thighs rub against his even more.

  When had his sweet innocent Juliet turned into such a sultry sex kitten?

  Dear Reader,

  Summer’s finally here! Whether you’ll be lounging poolside, at the beach, or simply in your home this season, we have great reads packed with everything you enjoy from Silhouette Romance—tenderness, emotion, fun and, of course, heart-pounding romance—plus some very special surprises.

  First, don’t miss the exciting conclusion to the thrilling ROYALLY WED: THE MISSING HEIR miniseries with Cathie Linz’s A Prince at Last! Then be swept off your feet—just like the heroine herself!—in Hayley Gardner’s Kidnapping His Bride.

  Romance favorite Raye Morgan is back with A Little Moonlighting, about a tycoon set way off track by his beguiling associate who wants a family to call her own. And in Debrah Morris’s That Maddening Man, can a traffic-stopping smile convince a career woman—and single mom—to slow down…?

  Then laugh, cry and fall in love all over again with two incredibly tender love stories. Vivienne Wallington’s Kindergarten Cupids is a very different, highly emotional story about scandal, survival and second chances. Then dive right into Jackie Braun’s True Love, Inc., about a professional matchmaker who’s challenged to find her very sexy, very cynical client his perfect woman. Can she convince him that she already has?

  Here’s to a wonderful, relaxing summer filled with happiness and romance. See you next month with more fun-in-the-sun selections.

  Happy reading!

  Mary-Theresa Hussey

  Senior Editor

  A Prince at Last!

  CATHIE LINZ

  For my senior editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, for inviting me to participate in this fun project, and for my editor, Allison Lyons, for wining and dining me in New Orleans but especially for being so easy to work with! Many thanks to you both!

  Books by Cathie Linz

  Silhouette Romance

  One of a Kind Marriage #1032

  *Daddy in Dress Blues #1470

  *Stranded with the Sergeant #1534

  *The Marine & the Princess #1561

  A Prince at Last! #1594

  Silhouette Books

  Montana Mavericks

  Baby Wanted

  Silhouette Desire

  Change of Heart #408

  A Friend in Need #443

  As Good as Gold #484

  Adam’s Way #519

  Smiles #575

  Handyman #616

  Smooth Sailing #665

  Flirting with Trouble #722

  Male Ordered Bride #761

  Escapades #804

  Midnight Ice #846

  Bridal Blues #894

  A Wife in Time #958

  †Michael’s Baby #1023

  †Seducing Hunter #1029

  †Abbie and the Cowboy #1036

  Husband Needed #1098

  CATHIE LINZ

  left her career in a university law library to become a USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romances. She is the recipient of the highly coveted Storyteller of the Year Award given by Romantic Times and was recently nominated for a Love and Laughter Career Achievement Award for the delightful humor in her books.

  Cathie often uses comic mishaps from her own trips as inspiration for her stories. After traveling, Cathie is always glad to get back home to her family, her two cats, her trusty word processor and her hidden cache of Oreo cookies!

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  “I’m having a bad heir day,” Luc Dumont announced with a growl as he walked into Juliet Beaudreau’s office.

  “What happened?” Juliet hastily shifted a pile of papers to clear a chair for her unexpected visitor.

  But Luc ignored the empty seat and paced instead, not easy to do in the tiny room that served as Juliet’s office in the lowest level of the tower in St. Michel’s de Bergeron Palace. Luc’s very presence made the room seem even smaller. He was the kind of man who made an impression.

  He’d certainly made an impression the first time Juliet had met him three years ago. Ever since then she always lit up inside whenever she saw him. Tall and lean, with thick brown hair and rakishly carved features, he had the most vivid blue eyes she’d ever seen. Instead of his usual work attire of a perfectly fitted black suit and light-blue shirt with a burgundy tie, he was wearing a black shirt and pants, which made her think he’d literally just returned to the palace from his most recent trip.

  He was a man of many facets, deeply serious at times, wryly humorous at others. There had always been something slightly smoldering about him, deep beneath his cultured exterior.

  At the moment he simply looked gorgeous…and upset.

  “What happened?” Luc repeated. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Certainly I would. Did you finally find the lost heir?” She knew that as head of the country’s Security Force, Luc had been assigned the mission of tracking down the missing heir to the throne of St. Michel.

  “It looks as if I have.” Luc kept pacing.

  “You don’t appear to be very pleased with the outcome,” Juliet noted, coming around the solid oak table she used as a desk to perch on the front corner. While doing so, she briefly wished she was wearing something a little more attractive than a black top and skirt before refocusing her attention on Luc’s news. “Who is it? We already know it’s not Sebastian LeMarc. His claim proved to be false.”

  “That was his mother’s doing, not his. Mothers can be a deceiving lot sometimes.” Luc’s voice held such bitterness.

  Concerned, Juliet placed her hand on his arm, temporarily stopping his restless pacing. “Talk to me, Luc. Tell me what’s going on. You know you can trust me.”

  It stung slightly that he didn’t acknowledge her trustworthiness, but he did begin talking. “I just returned from visiting my father.”

  Which might explain his unsettled mood. Maybe it had to do with his family and not with the missing heir. “Did the visit go badly?”

  “Depends on who you ask,” Luc replied cryptically.

  “What happened?”

  “I have to fill you in on a bit of background first. My mother died when I was six,” he said curtly, “and my father remarried after that.”

  “And your new stepmother was awful,” Juliet continued. “And you were sent away to school in England, first to Eton and then to Cambridge.”

  Luc frowned. “How did you know that?”

  Uh-oh. Juliet tried to backpedal. “Didn’t you tell me?”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t talk abou
t my family life with anyone.”

  “All right,” she reluctantly admitted. “I checked out your resumé, okay? Before he died, King Philippe granted me unlimited access to the royal archives and records.”

  “To do your thesis on the history of St. Michel, not to go nosing around in my personnel files. And I’m sure they didn’t list anything about my stepmother being awful.”

  “I discerned that much for myself. Are you angry with me?” She gave him her most winning smile.

  He wearily shook his head. “No. I’ll let you off easy this time. Anyway, since I was sent off to school in England, my father and I haven’t spent much time together. Maybe if we had, the lies would have come out sooner.”

  “What lies?”

  “The lies about everything. About the man I thought was my father, the woman who was my mother, about the man I am today.” His voice was rough with emotion.

  Juliet had never seen Luc so upset. She didn’t know if it was due to his English schooling or his work with Interpol before coming to St. Michel, but Luc was always a man in control, a man with hidden depths, a man who maintained his cool and kept his distance.

  Juliet suspected it was because of his upbringing, that he had felt like an outsider in his own family once he was packed off to school. She knew the feeling well. As the late king’s stepdaughter, she’d never really felt like part of the royal family. Her stepsisters, once the royal princesses, had never deliberately made her feel like an outcast. But she was different. She was the dark-haired, shy, bookish one amid all the pretty and popular blondes.

  She’d always felt as if she didn’t really belong. The one person who had befriended her was Luc. He might be thirty-two to her twenty-two, but she was older than her years. And she felt a special kind of bond with Luc, a bond she’d never dared explore for fear of ruining what they already had.

  She knew Luc saw her only as a friend and that was fine, she’d take whatever she got. And she’d be the best darn friend Luc had ever had.

  “Whatever lies might involve your father or your mother, I can tell you one thing about the man you are today,” Juliet fiercely said. “You’re an honorable man.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like, finding out your entire life is based on a lie.”

  “And I’m not likely to know what it’s like if you don’t tell me exactly what happened.” Now her voice was tinged with a bit of exasperation.

  “I’m not making much sense am I?” he noted wryly.

  “No, but that’s okay. Why don’t you start at the beginning and go from there?”

  “Ah, the beginning. Well, that would be with Prince Philippe’s marriage to Katie, the one the young prince was told was invalid because Katie was underage at seventeen.”

  “Yes, but we know now that that wasn’t true,” Juliet reminded him. “The marriage was legal and valid. That’s why you’ve been searching for their child all these months.”

  “Yes, well, the search is over.”

  “And you’re having a bad heir day. That’s what you said when you came in. And I’m assuming that you were referring to the missing heir, not to a haircut gone wrong.”

  Luc had wonderfully thick brown hair. At the moment it had an unusually rumpled look about it, due to his shoving impatient fingers through it. “You assume correctly. I was referring to the missing heir.”

  “And you still haven’t told me who he is.”

  “I know. It’s just I’m finding this entire thing a little hard to accept.”

  “What entire thing?”

  “Well, finding out that my father isn’t really my father at all for one thing.”

  Her exasperation instantly melted away. “Oh, Luc.”

  He tried to shrug it off, but she could tell he was more disturbed than he was letting on.

  “My life is turning into one of those American soap operas,” he growled in disgust.

  “Did your father tell you this news while you were visiting him?”

  “No. I went to see him to get to the bottom of this mess.”

  She was confused. “What mess?”

  “I had reason to believe that Albert Dumont might not be my real father. He confirmed it. My mother was married before. And not just once, but twice.”

  “Did Albert know who your father is?”

  “He didn’t know at the time, no. All he knew was that my mother was unhappy with Robert Johnson, her previous husband, and that she divorced him. Apparently the lout cheated on her. Albert did business with the corporation Robert Johnson worked for, and he met my mother at some official function. Albert was also divorced and once my mother was free, the two of them married and settled down in France. I was all of two or three at the time. I know my mother’s father died shortly thereafter, leaving her with no relatives in America.”

  “So Albert thought that you were this Robert Johnson’s child?”

  “Well, apparently not. Apparently Albert knew that my mother was pregnant with another man’s child when she married Robert. She asked Albert to let me believe Albert was my father, even going so far as to arrange for a fake French birth certificate for Luc Dumont, listing Albert as my father and Katherine as my mother.”

  Juliet could see why he felt betrayed. The man he thought was his father turned out not to be his father after all. So many lies.

  His voice was harsh. “Luc Dumont doesn’t really exist.”

  “Of course you do. I’m looking at you, pacing my office like a caged lion.”

  “Why did you have to set up shop down here anyway?” He dropped onto the empty chair and fixed her with an aggravated glare. “We could have found you a bigger office in the north wing.”

  “I love it here.” She waved a hand at her small but cozy surroundings. The grey stone walls dated back to the 16th century, their irregular surface still showing the marks where they’d been chiseled by hand. Aside from the oak table she’d retrieved from the royal storage room, she had a pair of mismatched Chippendale chairs, a mahogany bookcase and a lady’s Victorian chintz armchair all squeezed into the tiny space. A tattered Oriental rug covered the stone floor. “You can see the gardens right outside my window.”

  She paused a second to enjoy the climbing pink roses that grew along the tower walls, framing her view of brilliant-colored flowering shrubs beyond, including luscious rhododendron and some late-blooming azaleas, graced by a trio of white butterflies dancing in the air. In the distance were the beds of sweet-smelling peonies and vibrant poppies and irises in colors ranging from deep purple to palest white.

  She never tired of looking outside and drinking in the natural beauty. It fed her soul. Not that she’d ever tell anyone that. They already thought she was a little strange, a bookish oddity.

  “The tower is one of the oldest parts of the palace,” she continued. “Since I’m researching the history of St. Michel for my postgraduate work, this is the perfect place for me.”

  “Close enough to the boiler room that you can hear the pipes clang in the winter.”

  “True, but it’s spring now. And you’re trying to sidetrack me.” She returned her gaze to him. “It won’t work, you know. I have a one-track mind. It’s why I’m so good with research. Once I get an idea into my head, I carry it through. So let’s get back to you and your family. You said earlier that it all started with Prince Philippe’s wedding to Katie. How so? Did Katie know your mother?”

  “You don’t understand. Katie was my mother.”

  Juliet was stunned. “But…but…” she sputtered. “That would make you…”

  “The missing heir.” Luc nodded. “Bingo. Now you see why I said I was having a bad heir day. Here I’ve been chasing all over Europe and America and it turns out I’m the missing heir. How ironic is that?”

  She didn’t know about ironic, but it was certainly freaking her out. She could only imagine how Luc must feel.

  When he’d said that his father wasn’t really his father, she’d never made the connection between his royal se
arch and his family life. Luc had always been like her—an outsider to the inner circle of royalty, someone with regular rather than royal blood.

  But not anymore. Now even that link between them was being broken.

  “You’re the missing heir,” she repeated slowly. “Your father was…”

  “King Philippe, who, when he was still a prince, married my mother Katherine, whom he called Katie. I should have made the connection.” He was on his feet and pacing again. “I’m a trained investigator, for heaven’s sake. But it never even occurred to me. She died when I was so young, I don’t remember much about her. The only thing I have is a book on St. Michel she used to read to me. I kept it for sentimental value.”

  “Who else knows about this?”

  “Sometimes it feels like everyone knew but me.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “How should I know? I’m still trying to absorb it all.”

  “Queen Celeste will not be pleased.” Celeste was King Philippe’s fourth and most recent wife, now widow. When King Philippe had died of a heart attack, the country had grieved, but those in power had panicked.

  For one thing, according to ancient St. Michel law, the throne couldn’t be passed to a female. And when the dowager queen had made her startling declaration that the king had married secretly at the age of eighteen and that a child had resulted…well, the palace had been turned upside down.

  “Celeste is still maintaining that the child she’s carrying is a boy,” Juliet said.

  “And I suppose she’s still refusing to have an ultrasound to determine the baby’s sex, right?” Luc asked.

  Juliet nodded. “Correct.”

  “What a mess.”

  “You’re the heir,” she repeated. “The oldest male. The future king of St. Michel. I’m going to have to practice curtsying.”

  “You do and I won’t speak to you,” he warned her.

  “But it’s protocol to curtsy to the king.”

  “What do I know about being a king?”

  “Well, for one thing, you’re very good at giving orders,” she pointed out with a grin.