1
The roaring speedboat smashed headlong through the white-capped waves of the Aegean, apparently deciding today was the day it would pick a fight with the open sea. Fran Simmons knew exactly how it felt.
“Isn’t thisgreat?” Beside her, Nicki Clark gripped the side of the boat, her bright red life jacket more a formality for her than any sort of needed protection. Nicki was part dolphin, part barracuda, and all adventure girl. “The island is even more gorgeous—you’ll see!”
“Great!” Fran echoed, glad the gale-force wind meant they didn’t have to carry on a conversation. She needed the time to think, to plan. To prepare for how she was going to get out of this most recent insanity to beset her and her three friends on what was supposed to have been a once-in-a-lifetime vacation through Europe.
Avacation! That’s how this journey had been described. She wouldn’t have agreed to it otherwise. A few weeks traveling through Europe, ending in Paris and starting with the tiny seaside country of Garronia, nestled between Greece and Turkey.
It’d seemed the perfect place to begin…and a chance to reconnect with the women who’d become Fran’s rock. Six years ago they’d helped Fran become the person she was today in more ways than they’d ever know. She’d lost a bit of that person over the past year. Her grad thesis work with traumatized soldiers had shown her exactly how much she could help others, but it had also revealed some cracks in her own hard-won self-concept. She needed to re-establish her base before she could launch herself into her next challenge: life after grad school.
But the relaxing girls’ trip through the tourist meccas of Europe had gotten derailed almost immediately upon setting foot in the idyllic seaside kingdom of Garronia. Practically before Fran could catch her breath, Emmaline had fallen in love with the newly-minted crown prince of Garronia, Lauren had taken out a whack-job of an ex-boyfriend with the help of a gorgeous captain of the Garronia National Security Force, and Nicki had set out on a grand rescue adventure with the royal family’s icy cool ambassador.
Now it apparently was Fran’s turn to get roped into the crazy, and she had to play it smart. The royal family wanted her help for very legitimate reason—and she’d give that help. But only on her terms. She couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.
Fran stared stolidly at the private island that was their destination and went over her story again. She was a grad student…true. She had a year of working with military personnel suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder under her belt, as part of a psychology thesis program for which she’d earned a scholarship…true. She’d met Lauren, Nicki and Emmaline during her undergrad years and they’d all struck up a friendship that had profoundly strengthened over the years…also true.
Her name was Francesca Simmons; she’d spent an idyllic childhood in suburbia; and she had a cozy middle-class blended family back in Michigan with her father, his wife and Fran’s two step-brothers, basic cable, hot dogs on the deck every summer weekend, and absolutely no run-ins with the law. False, false, and false again.
The engine cut abruptly, and Fran flinched back as a spray of water splashed over the deck of the speedboat. She also couldn’t swim worth a damn, so if she went over the side of the boat, her life jacket had better plan on doing its job.
“Man! We were flying.” Nicki beamed at her. “Hey, don’t be nervous. I’m telling you, there’s nothing serious you have to do here, other than, you know, help.”
“I can’t truly add value here, I told you that already.” Fran tried to take the sharpness out of her tone, but this wasn’t a lie at least. “I’m not anywhere close to being licensed to work with anyone, and from everything you’ve said, Ari—or Ryker or whoever the prince thinks he is—needs the care of a medical doctor. He’s the king and queen’s oldest son! Surely they can afford the best medical care in Europe.”
“He has plenty of doctors. And neurologists and shrink people too,” Nicki said, her grin not dimming a fraction. “But they’re all a hundred years old. The queen thought, you know, maybe having someone his ownagewho at least had somebackgroundin PTSD would be good. Someone who wasn’t a doctor. Or about to die.”
Fran quirked a glance at her. The idea sounded no less lame than when she’d first heard it. “She wants me to be his playmate.”
“Hiscompanion,” Nicki said. “And come on! You’ll be great at this. Ari has been through hell this past year, and you’ve worked with tons of guys like that. With this job you’re not seriously working. More like, you know, hanging out. How hard can it be?”
Fran grimaced. A hundred different faces slid through her mind…haunted faces, worn and weary and unbearably sad. Soldiers with expressions that seemed to have been taken carefully out of a box and worn like a mask until at last, these men and women could hide again from the real world, returning to the place inside that both soothed and tormented them.
Nevertheless, Francouldhelp Aristotle Andris, she suspected. If she’d learned nothing else from her study, it was that sometimes merely sitting with someone in silence, letting him know he wasn’t alone, was the best gift you could possibly give.
“You said he’d been a prisoner?” she asked finally, and Nicki bounced on her toes, her satisfaction at winning obvious.
“Yup!” Nicki said, glancing to the dock as the boat cruised in. When she spoke again, her words were lower, more hurried. “He took off from the municipal airstrip in Garronia one night last June, and crashed his plane in a storm off the coast of Turkey. He washed ashore, delirious, and he got caught in some kind of vagrant round-up and put into a work camp. He has no idea he’s the heir to the kingdom of Garronia, thinks he’s some pilot. But according the doctors, his prognosis is good. There’s nothing physically wrong with him. He’s simply sort of…forgotten who he was.”
Fran couldn’t help her half-choked laugh. “Sometimes that isn’t so bad,” she said wryly. “Though maybe not when you’re a prince.”
“Hey!” Nicki waved furiously at the men on the dock, and Fran pivoted as well, shielding her eyes from the brilliant Aegean sun. She recognized the Garronois ambassador Stefan Mihal, of course. He and Nicki had been charged with traveling to find the errant prince.
Fran didn’t like Stefan, but it wasn’t because of anything he’d done to her. The man was simply too smart. He’d run dossiers on all of them when Emmaline had been in the middle of her whirlwind courtship with Prince Kristos, Ari’s younger brother. Fran hadn’t been able to breathe for a few days until everything on her had checked out. She’d covered every base imaginable to create her new life, and it appeared that hard work was paying off.
She knew more than most, however, it could all be yanked away in a heartbeat. The faster she got out of Garronia and back in the rhythm of her own anonymous life, the better.
A second man caught one of the tie ropes at the prow of the boat, while the third grabbed the edge and stabilized it. With a delighted “thanks!” Nicki accepted the third man’s outstretched hand and mounted the short step halfway up the side of the speedboat. Then she leapt out of the boat, clearing the short distance to the dock like she’d been born to the sea.
Fran, on the other hand, widened her stance as the boat rocked, then gripped the back of the passenger seat to steady herself. The man turned toward her and she steeled her nerves.
“Easy there, it’s a short step,” he said with a thick Mediterranean accent. The boat tipped precariously again and Fran’s balance shifted, but she flashed him a grateful smile, focusing on the step in front of her as she lunged for his hand.
The moment his rough palm closed around her fingers, a zip of awareness rushed through Fran, sharp enough to make her forget her fear for a split second. She glanced up and found herself staring into the face of quite possibly the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen—which was saying something, since Garronia was chock-full of beautiful men. He was tall, broad-shouldered and intense, his dark hair streaked by the sun. He had a deep tan, dark chocolate eyes and high, sculpted cheekbones. His bearded face broke into a broad grin as she stared.
“You good?” Captain Hawtness asked as another wave rocked the boat.
She blinked, recalling herself. “I’m good, it’s just—”
