Kathryn Jensen - The Secret Prince

Dan’s wide hand shot out. He seized Elly by the arm and marched her firmly toward the door.

Elly had only enough time to swipe her purse from the coffee table and grab her coat from the back of her chair before he ushered her out of the room.

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, and I don’t care. You’re leaving, lady.”

“But don’t you want to—”

Before she could get out the rest of her sentence, she found herself standing alone in the cold ocean mist on Madge’s lemon-bright porch. After the door slammed behind her, she could still feel the pressure of Dan’s strong fingers on her arm and his palm on her backside. The nerve of the man. He’d thrown her out!

Then the implication of what had just happened hit her. A triumphant grin spread slowly across her lips.

She had found her missing prince!

Dear Reader,

Celebrate the rites of spring with six new passionate, powerful and provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire!

Reader favorite Anne Marie Winston’s Billionaire Bachelors: Stone, our March MAN OF THE MONTH, is a classic marriage-of-convenience story, in which an overpowering attraction threatens a platonic arrangement. And don’t miss the third title in Desire’s glamorous in-line continuity DYNASTIES: THE CONNELLYS, The Sheikh Takes a Bride by Caroline Cross, as sparks fly between a sexy-as-sin sheikh and a feisty princess.

In Wild About a Texan by Jan Hudson, the heroine falls for a playboy millionaire with a dark secret. Her Lone Star Protector by Peggy Moreland continues the TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB: THE LAST BACHELOR series, as an unlikely love blossoms between a florist and a jaded private eye.

A night of passion produces major complications for a doctor and the social worker now carrying his child in Dr. Destiny, the final title in Kristi Gold’s miniseries MARRYING AN M.D. And an ex-marine who discovers he’s heir to a royal throne must choose between his kingdom and the woman he loves in Kathryn Jensen’s The Secret Prince.

Kick back, relax and treat yourself to all six of these sexy new Desire romances!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

www.millsandboon.co.uk

has written many novels for young readers as well as for adults. She speed walks, works out with weights and enjoys ballroom dancing for exercise, stress reduction and pleasure. Her children are now grown. She lives in Maryland with her writing companion—Sunny, a lovable terrier-mix adopted from a shelter.

Having worked as a hospital switchboard operator, department store sales associate, bank clerk and elementary school teacher, Kathryn now splits her days between writing her own books and teaching fiction writing at two local colleges and through a correspondence course. She enjoys helping new writers get a start and speaks “at the drop of a hat” at writers’ conferences, libraries and schools across the country.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

“You’re mine, lady.” Daniel Eastwood tossed his jeans on top of the sweatshirt already in the sand and fixed his dark eyes on her. “Giving me the cold shoulder won’t keep me away.”

She was even more beautiful this morning than she’d been the day before…or the one before that. The muscles angling across his taut stomach and lean thighs tensed, primed for action. He rolled his wide shoulders in anticipation.

Three long running strides, and he dove into the chill waves of the Atlantic. She yielded, as always, to his fierce strokes. Her cool fingers supported him, beckoned him to deeper waters, challenged him. He could feel her strength in each liquid gray-green surge. He swam exactly half a mile along the deserted beach before flip-kicking around to slice back through the icy foam, back toward where he had started, directly below the pastel bungalows of the Haven.

Dan had sustained an intimate relationship with the sea since the first day he had seen her. The school field trip to Ocean City had carried him a good three hours by bus from the grim streets of south Baltimore, a world away. Never had he forgotten the sense of awe, respect, and fascination he felt that day—a city kid, standing on that endless stretch of pale sand, so much water all in one place. Water that seemed to breathe with its own movement and the motions of living things hidden beneath it. And all that clean air hitting him in the face, filling his lungs, it made him feel strong and new inside. Although he had to return to the city with his classmates that day, he had never forgotten the ocean’s beauty or wanted to live anywhere but beside her.

As soon as he was old enough, he had returned to take a summer job as a lifeguard. And each June after that, with the exception of those four he had spent with the marines, he had been drawn back to her as surely as the tide is pulled by the moon. He never lost sight of her capricious temperament, though. The unpredictable squalls. Sudden drops just off shore that hadn’t been there days before. Riptides that could seize a strong swimmer, drag him out to frigid depths, and rob him of his will to ever breathe again. He loved her beauty and power, despite her faults.

As he turned his head to draw a final breath that would carry him the last four strokes of his morning regime, he glimpsed a woman standing beside his clothes, her hand held delicately above her eyes to shade them from the early-morning sun. She gave the impression of having come for him, not just someone idly watching a lone swimmer brave fifty-degree water.

“What the devil,” he muttered, swallowing a mouthful of salt water in his distraction. His people knew not to disturb him at this time of day. That is, if any of them were in the office this early. Setting his feet down, he stood in chest-deep water, the sand sucking and scraping beneath the pads of his feet as he studied her.

Not a local. He would have recognized her this time of year with all the tourists gone. She was tall for a woman, maybe up to his chin, which would make her about five-nine. Her hair was russet streaked with pink-gold highlights from the dawn sky, pulled back in a prim knot at the nape of her neck. Her dark-green business suit seemed absurd beachwear. Tan leather pumps dangled from one crooked finger. Her mouth was pulled into an annoyed pout. The tiny grains of sand sifting between the threads of her pantyhose probably weren’t helping her mood.

But as soon as he started up the slope out of the water, her expression changed. The water line crept teasingly down his chest, not yet revealing the presence or lack of a bathing suit. Her eyes widened with alarm. He smiled, kept on coming, and soon the upper edge of his flesh-molding Speedo showed above the white spume.

Immediately, her lips lifted in a weak smile of relief.

Dan chuckled to himself. What he would have given to have been swimming in the buff that morning, just to watch the shock in her pretty eyes.

A nippy breeze off the water hit him, and the sudden cold took his breath away. “Throw me that towel!” he called to her.

She scowled as if she hadn’t at first heard him over the grating, gurgling rush of the waves against the sand. Looking around, she focused on a generous pile of terrycloth near his clothing and scooped it up. “Isn’t November a little extreme for swimming in Maryland?”