Victoria Parker - Princess In The Iron Mask

‘You barge into my life and proceed to conduct some sort of military operation. And now you’re going on like an interfering dictatorial knave!’

Suddenly Lucas stopped and turned on his heels to face her. ‘Do you have an aversion to authority, Claudia? Is that what this is? You don’t like being told what to do?’

The grey silken weave of his sartorial suit began to turn black as the rain seeped through his clothing. His over-long hair was already dripping and plastered to his smooth forehead and the high slash of his cheekbones. And, the sight of him, wet and dishevelled flooded her with heat. Like this he was far more powerful and dangerous to her equilibrium. He looked gloriously untamed.

‘No actually I don’t. Do you think it’s right to force someone against there every wish? To blackmail in order to do your job?’ Something dark flashed in his eyes but she was too far gone to care. ‘And because I dare to put up some sort of fight, you deem me as selfish and irresponsible. Do you have any feelings?’

‘I am not paid to feel,’ he ground out, taking a step closer toward her.

‘It’s a good job, ‘cos you’d be broke,’ she replied, taking a step back.

Lucas pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. ‘You’re the most provoking woman I have ever met.’

VICTORIA PARKER’s first love was a dashing, heroic fox named Robin Hood. Then came the powerful, suave Mr Darcy, Lady Chatterley’s rugged lover…and the list goes on. Thinking she must be an unfaithful sort of girl, but ever the optimist, she relentlessly pursued her Mr Literary Right and eventually found him lying between the cool, crisp sheets of a Mills & Boon ®. Her obsession was born.

If only real life was just as easy…

Alas, against the advice of her beloved English teacher to cultivate her writer’s muse, she chased the corporate dream and acquired various uninspiring job titles and a flesh-and-blood hero before she surrendered to that persistent voice and penned her first romance. It turns out creating havoc for feisty heroines and devilish heroes truly is the best job in the world.

Victoria now lives out her own happy-ever-after in the north-east of England, with her alpha exec and their two children—a masterly charmer in the making and, apparently, the next Disney Princess. Believing sleep is highly overrated, she often writes until three a.m., ignores the housework (much to her husband’s dismay), and still loves nothing more than getting cosy with a romance novel. In her spare time she enjoys dabbling with interior design, discovering far-flung destinations and getting into mischief with her rather wonderful extended family.

This is Victoria’s stunning debut— we hope you love it as much as we do!

Did you know this is also available as an eBook? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Many thanks to my good friend Vicky, for all her patience and generosity in answering my questions about her son’s fight against JDMS and how the rare adolescent skin condition has affected their lives. Together, they were a huge inspiration—not only for this book, but for the way in which the power of love can protect and heal, inside and out.

For Nina and my family—thank you for sharing the smiles and hugging away the blues on my path to publication. Without your love and enduring support reaching for the stars would still be light years away. I hope you enjoy my debut.

And finally I dedicate this book to the amazingly talented Michelle Styles. You taught me to have faith in my writing voice and inspired me to believe. Without your unwavering conviction Lucas and Claudia’s love story would never have been told. So this, my dear friend, is for you…

‘LUCAS, MY FRIEND, I have a favour to ask of you.’

Favour?

Lucas Garcia had survived some of the worst conditions known to man, therefore a favour in his eyes involved hand grenades, automatic rifles or the calming of troubled waters on an international scale. What it unequivocally did not suggest was flying to London to retrieve a wayward snit of a girl, who disrespected the wishes of her father and showed no concern for her family or the country she’d been born to!

Anger blended with a tinge of discomfort in his gut as he took shelter beneath the green-striped awning of a coffee shop on Regent Square. Although summer approached, rain fell in heavy sheets, pooling at his designer-clad feet. Cold and inhospitable, the damp seeped through the wool of his Savile Row attire to lick at his skin.

‘Dios , this city is miserable,’ he muttered, scanning the wide glass entrance of ChemTech, London’s foremost biomedical research centre, as he awaited the arrival of his current mission.

Claudia Thyssen.

‘Bring her home, Lucas. Only you can succeed where others have failed.’

He was honoured by such high regard, and during his three years as Head of National Security for Arunthia he had successfully executed every order without question, standing by his moral code to honour, protect and obey. But this…

‘I write. I appeal. Yet she ignores my every plea.’

Lucas flexed his neck to relieve the coil that had been tightening there ever since he’d left the office of his crowned employer two days ago.

What kind of person turned her back on her heritage, her birthright? Who would give up the luxurious warmth and beautiful lush landscape of Arunthia for a perilous city built of glass and thriving on iniquity?

As soon as the thought formed the answer came stumbling out of a traditional black London cab, weighed down with enough paperwork to make a significant dent in the Amazonian rainforest. Smothered in a long grey Mac, with her slender feet encased in nondescript black pumps, she blended into the dour backdrop seamlessly. Yet his avid gaze lingered on the wide belt cinching her small waist, enhancing the full curve of her breasts. Her dark hair was scraped back, gathered at her nape in a large lump, yet Lucas could almost feel it lustrously thick and heavy in his hands. Hideous spectacles covered a vast proportion of her oval face. But that didn’t stop his imagination roaming with the possible colour of her eyes.

Princess Claudine Marysse Thyssen Verbault.

Hunched under the punishing thrash of rain, with the elegant sweep of her nape exposed, she seemed…vulnerable. Swallowing hard, he could almost taste her flurried panic as she grappled with her purse, fighting against the clock to be on time for a meeting he’d ensured would never take place.

Lucas ground his heels into the cement— stand down, Garcia —and stemmed the impulse to rush to her aid, erase her panicked expression. Instead he called upon years of training, focused on doing his job and concluded that her appearance was neither his care nor his concern.