she hid under all those layers of clothes she was so fond of.
And he found, just as the first time, he told her over and over who he really was. In ways he had never told another living soul.
That was her gift to him. She allowed him to be normal. To explore normal dreams and ambitions, to be a normal eighteen-year-old guy.
Jokingly, they had called each other Blond Boy and Blond Girl. She teased him unmercifully when his natural dark brown, nearly black hair began to grow out, giving him roots.
How quickly he had come to see her inner beauty, her sharp mind, her wonderful sense of humor, her huge capacity to be kind.
They had become the best of friends almost instantly. It was a relationship based, originally, on mutual respect for each other’s intelligence.
He knew he had to make it stay that way. He knew he could not allow himself to love her. But he sensed he had begun the fall that even the most powerful of men seemed powerless to stop.
Unless he was mistaken Owen Michael Penwyck, aka Ben Prince, was falling in love with Jordan Ashbury.
Without the press looking on, without a royal council vetting his choice, without her lineage being subjected to scathing scrutiny.
He was just a normal guy with a normal girl who had been given the gift of an extraordinary summer.
Respect deepened to admiration, words deepened to silence, eyes locking deepened to hands holding, liking deepened to love. Just like that.
Now, lying in a cell, contemplating the possibility his life was over, and thinking with a clarity that seemed illuminated from the heavens, Owen acknowledged his regret. His one mistake.
Unable to leave her at first, he had begged for and been given an extension on his stay. Two more weeks of exploring remote beaches, and remote places of the heart. Two more weeks of her hand in his, her lips on his eyelids, his hands allowed to go where no man’s had gone before his. But when that was gone, he had phoned home and begged again. This time he had been refused, so he had done what any eighteen-year-old boy in the throes of first passion would have done. He had refused to go home, and moved into Jordan’s tiny basement suite off campus.
He remembered the last night, when he could feel it coming to an end, knew his days were numbered.
“Tell me one thing about you that no one else in the world knows,” he had begged. “Your deepest secret.” Something of her that he could hold onto forever.
They had been in her tiny bed. Was there anything more wonderful than two people in a single bed? With her naked skin against him, and her hair, soft and fine as a baby’s spread over his chest, with her fingers tangled in his, she told him.
“I’m a closet romance nut.”
“What?”
“I know. Under all that sarcasm and biting intelligence that scares the boys away, I was dying to be loved, Ben Prince. Dying. Underneath my bed at home are three full boxes of romance novels. Historicals are my favorite.”
He had tightened his hold on her, kissed her temple, knew what she was really telling him was that she had been lonely. And he felt sick that she would be lonely again, soon.
She sighed against him. “It’s like two people live inside of me. The one who wants to be the first female mayor of Wintergreen, Connecticut. And the one who would love to be riding through the dark woods in a carriage, when from their mysterious depths comes a highwayman.”
They had made love after that, wild, passionate, completely unbridled.
“Thank you for making me so happy,” she had said sleepily, trustingly. And he had lain awake, knowing he had to tell her the truth about himself, and knowing at the same time he could not.
In the morning, he had gotten up before her. He walked down to their favorite oceanfront café to get her a croissant and one of those specialty coffees she adored. Filled with thoughts of waking her up with his lips on her cheek, he had walked into a trap.
Four members of the Royal Elite Team, apparently tipped off about his routine, were waiting for him there. They had been sent to escort him home. No more extensions.
“I just need to do one thing. Alone. I promise I’ll come right back. One hour.”
“We can escort you where you need to go, sir.”
But then they would know about her, and her life would be scrutinized and investigated and torn apart for no reason. The security team was the best, but what if there was a leak? What if the tabloids went after her?
“No, no escort.” He must have looked like he was going to make a dash for it, because he’d found himself in the center of a circle of big, intimidating men, who looked sympathetic but unmoving.
“Sir, please don’t make us do this the hard way.”
No goodbyes and no explanations. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe it would be better if she hated him, rather than held some hope in her heart.
He had made a vow, and he was now being asked to keep it.
Owen turned his back on that part of his life that would have made him insane had he allowed himself to dwell on it, to remember it.
He returned to Penwyck and threw himself into the role he had been born to play, the role he had agreed to play in exchange for one magical summer.
He tirelessly attended functions, raised funds for charities and worked on economic development projects for his country. He felt the adoration of the people and tried to be worthy of it. When the Penberne River did its annual flood, Prince Owen was filling sandbags, shoulder to shoulder with the citizens of Sterling. When the Lad and Lassies Clubs were having a fund-raiser he could be counted on to take a turn in the dunking booth, to buy the first pie at the raffle. He cut ribbons and gave speeches, danced the first dance of each and every charity ball.
The rift between he and his brother deepened—Dylan not understanding his brother wasn’t trying to win a crown—he was trying to outrun a broken heart.
It was only his mother that he knew he had failed to convince. Sometimes he caught her watching him, unveiled sadness in her eyes. But had he not always detected a faint sadness when his mother looked at him?
A sadness that was not present in her eyes when she looked at Dylan?
Even so, he knew it to be intensified now.
And really, his campaign who was leading him down the road to being king, and away from the road of being normal, had almost worked.
Had worked until the precise moment his bedroom door had blasted open in the middle of the night, a drug-saturated cloth had been forced over his face, and he had been kidnapped.
Now, ironically, in a cell where the prince had nothing, he had everything once more.
Her memory came to him. And brought him comfort. Once again he could smell her and taste the salt on her lips, feel the silk of her hair sliding through his hands.
“If I die,” he mumbled, “I will die happy if my last thoughts are of
