by Millie Adams
“I am here to collect payment.
And that payment is you.”
Prince Javier de la Cruz’s goal was simple. Tell heiress Violet King she’s promised in marriage to his brother. His first problem? She refuses. His second problem? Their instant, unwelcome and completely forbidden chemistry!
Makeup entrepreneur Violet prides herself on being thoroughly modern. Devastatingly handsome Javier is everything but! So when he steals her back to his kingdom, why does she decide to go willingly? And when this warrior prince could be innocent Violet’s biggest undoing, why can’t this unexpected princess resist playing with fire?
“It’s crazy, isn’t it? I shouldn’t feel anything for you. But you... I mean, look, I know it’s chemistry, or whatever, I know it’s not feelings. But...”
She bit her full lower lip and looked up at him from beneath her lashes, the expression both innocent and coquettish. “Don’t you think that maybe we should have a chance to taste it before I’m sold into marriage?”
She planted her hand on his chest. And Javier knew that she could feel it then. Feel his heart raging against the muscle and blood and bone there. Feel it raging against everything that was good and right and real.
She let out a shaking breath, and he could feel the heat of it brush his mouth, so close was she. So close was his destruction.
He was iron. He was rock. He had been forced to become so. A man of nothing more than allegiance to an ideal. Knowing with absolute certainty that if he should ever turn away from that, he might become lost. That corruption might take hold of him in the way that it had done his father. Because he considered himself immune to nothing.
And so, he had made himself immune to everything.
Except for this. Except for her.
Millie Adams has always loved books. She considers herself a mix of Anne Shirley (loquacious but charming and willing to break a slate over a boy’s head if need be) and Charlotte Doyle (a lady at heart, but with the spirit to become a mutineer should the occasion arise). Millie lives in a small house on the edge of the woods, which she finds allows her to escape in the way she loves best—in the pages of a book. She loves intense alpha heroes and the women who dare to go toe-to-toe with them (or break a slate over their heads).
Books by Millie Adams
Harlequin Presents
The Kings of California
The Scandal Behind the Italian’s Wedding
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
Millie Adams
Stealing the Promised Princess
For all the Harlequin Presents novels that came before this one. It is the other books, and the other authors, that brought me my love of romance. And it is why I’m writing them now.
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
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM HOUSEKEEPER IN THE HEADLINES BY CHANTELLE SHAW
CHAPTER ONE
“I HAVE A debt to collect, Violet King.”
Violet stared out the windows of her office, glass all around, providing a wonderful view of the Pacific Ocean directly across her desk, with a view of her staff behind her. There were no private walls in her office space. She preferred for the team to work collaboratively. Creatively.
Her forward-thinking approach to business, makeup and fashion was part of why she had become one of the youngest self-made billionaires in the world.
Though, self-made might be a bit of a stretch considering that her father, Robert King, had given her the initial injection of cash that she needed to get her business off the ground. Everyone worked with investors, she supposed. That hers was genetically related to her was not unheard-of nor, she supposed, did it fully exclude her from that self-made title. But she was conscious of it. Still, she had made that money back and then some.
And she did not have debt.
Which meant this man had nothing to say to her.
“You must have the wrong number,” she said.
“No. I don’t.”
The voice on the other end of the phone was rich and dark, faintly accented, though she couldn’t quite nail down what accent it was. Different to her family friend, now her sister’s husband, Dante, who was from Italy and had spent many years in the States since then. Spanish, perhaps, but with a hint of Brit that seemed to elongate his vowels.
“Very confident,” she said. “But I am in debt to no man.”
“Oh, perhaps I misspoke then. You are not in debt. You are the payment.”
Ice settled in her stomach. “How did you get this number?”
In this social media age where she was seemingly accessible at all hours, she guarded her private line with all the ferocity of a small mammal guarding its burrow. She—or her assistants—might be available twenty-four hours a day on the internet, but she could only be reached at this line by business associates, family or personal friends. This man was none of those, and yet somehow he was calling her. And saying the most outlandish things.
“How I got this number is not important to the conversation.”
She huffed. “To the contrary, it is extremely important.”
Suddenly, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and she turned around. The office building was empty, just as she thought it was. It was late in the day and everyone had gone home. Her employees often worked from home, or at the beach, wherever creativity struck them.
Her team wanted to be there, and she didn’t need to enforce long office hours for them to do their work. The glass walls of the building made it possible for her to see who was in residence at all times, again, not so she could check up on them, but so there was a sense of collaboration.
It also made it easy to see now that she was alone here.
Of course she was. A person couldn’t simply walk into this building. Security was tight, and anyone wanting entrance would have to be buzzed in.
But then suddenly she saw a ripple of movement through the outermost layer of glass, motion as a door opened. A dark shape moved through each clear barrier, from room to room, like a shark gliding beneath the surface of clear water. As each door opened, the shape moved closer, revealing itself to be the figure of a man.
Her chest began to get tight. Fear gripped her, her heart beating faster, her palms damp.
“Are you here?” she whispered.
But the line went dead, and she was left standing frozen in her office, her eyes glued to the man steadily making his way deeper and deeper into the office building. The glass, however transparent, was bulletproof, so there was that.
There were so many weirdos in the world that an abundance of caution never went amiss. She had learned about that at a fairly early age. Her father being one of the wealthiest businessmen in California had put her in the public eye very young. The media had always been fascinated with their family; with her brother, who was incredibly successful in his own right; her mother, who was a great beauty. And then, with her for the same reason.
It had always felt so...unearned to her. This great and intense attention for doing nothing at all. It had never sat well with her.
Her father had told her to simply e
njoy it. That she was under no obligation to do anything, considering he’d done all the work already.
He’d always been bemused by her desire to get into business, but he’d helped her get started. He’d been humoring her, that much had been clear. But she’d been determined to prove to him that she was smart. That she could make it on her own.
Even now she had the feeling he regarded her billion-dollar empire as a hobby.
The only one of them who had seemingly escaped without massive amounts of attention was her younger sister, Minerva, who Violet had always thought might have been the smartest of them all. Minerva had made herself into the shape of something unremarkable so that she could live life on her own terms.
Violet had taken a different approach, and there were times when the lack of privacy grated and she regretted living the life that she had.
Sometimes she felt an ache for what might have been. She wondered why she had this life. Why she was blessed with money and a certain amount of success instead of being anonymous or impoverished.
Some of that was eased by the charity she ran with her sister, which made it feel like all of it did mean something. That she had been granted this for a reason. And it made the invasions of privacy bearable.
Though not so much now. She felt vulnerable, and far too visible, trapped in a glass bowl of her own making, only able to watch as a predator approached her, and she was unable to do anything but wait.
She tried to call the police, her fingers fumbling on the old-fashioned landline buttons. It wasn’t working. She had that landline for security. For privacy. And it was failing her on every level.
Of course she had her cell phone, but it was...
Sitting on the table just outside the office door.
And then suddenly he was there. Standing right on the other side of her office door. Tall, broad, clad all in black, wearing a suit that molded to his exquisitely hard-looking body, following every cut line from the breadth of his shoulders to his tapered waist, on down his long muscular legs. He turned around, and how he saw she was thinking of him in those terms she didn’t know. Only that he was a force. Like looking at a sheer rock face with no footholds.
Hard and imposing, looming before her.
His face was...
Like a fallen Angel. Beautiful, and a sharp, strange contrast to the rest of him.
There was one imperfection on that face. A slashed scar that ran from the top of his high cheekbone down to the corner of his mouth. A warning.
This man was dangerous.
Lethal.
“Shall we have a chat?”
The barrier of the glass between them made that deep, rich voice echo across the surface of it, and she could feel it reverberating inside of her.
She hated it.
“How did you get in here?”
“My darling, I have a key.”
She shrank back. “I’m not your darling.”
“True,” he said. “You are not. But you are my quarry. And I have found you.”
“I’m not very hard to find,” she said. She lifted her chin, trying to appear confident. “I’m one of the most famous women in the world.”
“So you are. And that has me questioning my brother’s sanity. But I am not here to do anything but follow orders.”
“If you’re here to follow orders, then perhaps you should follow one of mine. Leave.”
“I answer to only one man. To only one person. And it is not you.”
“A true regret,” she said tightly.
“Not for me.”
“What do you want?”
“I told you. I am here to collect payment. And that payment is you.”
* * *
She was beautiful. But he had been prepared for that. When his brother had told him that it was finally time for him to make good on a promise given to him by Robert King ten years ago, Prince Javier de la Cruz had held back a litany of questions for his lord and master. He wondered why his brother wished to collect the debt now. And why he wished to collect it at all, at least in the form of this woman.
She was conspicuous. And she was everything his brother was not. Modern. Painfully so in contrast with the near medieval landscape of Monte Blanco. Yes, the kingdom had come a long way under his brother’s rule during the last two years, but there was still a long way to go to bring it out of the Dark Ages their father had preferred. If a woman such as Violet King would be something so foreign to their people, then imagining her his queen was impossible.
But then, on some level, Javier imagined that was his brother’s aim. Still, it was not Javier’s position to question. Javier was as he had ever been. The greatest weapon Monte Blanco possessed. For years, he had undermined his father, kept the nation from going to war, kept his people safe. Had freed prisoners when they were wrongfully withheld. Had done all that he could to ensure that his father’s impact on their people was as minimal as possible. And he had done so all under the oversight of his older brother, who—when he had taken control—had immediately begun to revive the country, using the money that he had earned with his business acumen. The Tycoon King, he was called.
And this—this deal with Robert King—had been one of those bargains he’d struck in secret. Apparently this deal had been made long ago, over drinks in a casino in Monte Carlo. A bet the other man had lost.
Javier was surprised his brother would hold a man to a drunken bargain.
And yet, here he was.
But Matteo was not a thoroughly modern man, whatever moves he was making to reform the country, and this sort of medieval bargain was just the type he knew his brother might favor.
Still...
Looking at her now, Javier could not imagine it.
She was wearing a white suit. A crisp jacket and loose-fitting pants. Her makeup was like a mask in his estimation. Eyelashes that seemed impossibly long, full lips played up by the gloss that she wore on her mouth. A severe sort of contour created in her cheeks by whatever color she had brushed onto them.
Her dark hair was in a low ponytail, sleek and held back away from her face.
She was stunningly beautiful. And very young. The direct opposite of their poor mother, who had been so pale and defeated by the end of her life. And perhaps that was the point.
Still, forcing a woman into marriage was possibly not the best way to go about proving your modernity.
But again. He was not in a position to argue.
What mattered most was his brother’s vision for the country, and he would see it done.
He was a blunt instrument. Not a strategist.
Something he was comfortable with. There was an honesty to it. His brother had to feign diplomacy. Had to hide his agenda to make the world comfortable.
Javier had to do no such thing.
“I don’t know who you are. And I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
He made his way over to the door, entered in the code and it unlocked.
Her father had given him all that information. Because he knew that there was no other choice.
She backed against her desk, her eyes wide with fear.
“What are you doing?”
“This is growing tiresome. I’m Prince Javier de la Cruz, of Monte Blanco. And you, Violet King, are my brother’s chosen bride.”
“What?” She did something he did not expect at all. She guffawed. It was the most unladylike sound he had ever heard. “I am nobody’s chosen bride.”
“You are. Your father owes my brother a debt. Apparently, he ran out of capital at a gambling table and was quite...in his cups, so to speak. He offered you. And I have come to collect you.”
“My father would not do such a thing. He would not...gamble me away. My brother, on the other hand, might play a prank on me that was this ridiculous. Are there cameras somewhere? A
m I on camera?”
“You are not on camera,” he said.
She laughed again. “I must be. If this is your attempt to get a viral video or something, you better try again. My father is one of the most modern men that I have ever known. He would never, ever sell one of his daughters into marriage. You know my sister came home from studying abroad with a baby, and he didn’t even ask where the baby came from. He just kind of let her bring it into his house. He does not treat his daughters like commodities, and he does not act like he can sell us to the highest bidder.”
“Well, then perhaps you need to speak to him.”
“I don’t need to speak to him, because this is ridiculous.”
“If you say so.”
And so he closed the distance between them, lifted her up off the ground and threw her over his shoulder. He was running low on time and patience, and he didn’t have time to stand around being laughed at by some silly girl. That earned him a yelp and a sharp kick to his chest. Followed by another one, and then another.
Pain was only pain. It did not bother him.
He ignored her.
He ignored her until he had successfully transported her out of the building, which was conveniently empty, and down to the parking lot where his limo was waiting. Only then, when he had her inside with the doors closed and locked, did she actually stare at him with fear. Did she actually look like she might believe him?
“Violet King, I am taking you back to my country. Where you are to be Queen.”
CHAPTER TWO
SHE DIDN’T HAVE her phone. She might as well have had her right hand amputated. She had no way to reach anybody. She was an undisputed queen of social media. And here she was, sentenced to silence, told she was going to be Queen of a nation, which was something else entirely.
But this guy was clearly sick in the head, so whatever was happening...
She looked around the limousine. He might be sick in the head, but he also had someone bankrolling his crazy fantasy.
