by Dana Marton
A drop of wild honey still glistened on her lips.
Nobody was more surprised than he when he leaned in.
He barely brushed his lips across hers, but he felt the impact all the way to his toes.
For a moment so brief that he might have imagined it, she went with the flow. Then she was pushing against him. He pulled away, searching her stunned face, trying to gather his scattered thoughts.
And with the symbolic distance between them, whatever craziness had possessed him disappeared. He didn’t know where it had come from, but he did know one thing for sure: under no circumstances would he ever touch this woman again. She was nothing but trouble.
“We shouldn’t be doing this. You are—” She paused. “I am—” She made a soft noise of frustration. “We can’t do this again.”
His gaze strayed to those ruby lips that were pressed into a severe, angry line. Then, instead of agreeing, he flashed the woman his most wicked grin and said, “I think we’re definitely going to do this again.”
DANA MARTON
STRANDED WITH THE PRINCE
With many thanks to Allison Lyons
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dana Marton is the author of more than a dozen fast-paced, action-adventure romantic suspense novels and a winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence. She loves writing books of international intrigue, filled with dangerous plots that try her tough-as-nails heroes and the special women they fall in love with. Her books have been published in seven languages in eleven countries around the world. When not writing or reading, she loves to browse antiques shops and enjoys working in her sizable flower garden where she searches for “bad” bugs with the skills of a superspy and vanquishes them with the agility of a commando soldier. Every day in her garden is a thriller. To find more information on her books, please visit www.danamarton.com. She loves to hear from her readers and can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].
Books by Dana Marton
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
806—SHADOW SOLDIER
821—SECRET SOLDIER
859—THE SHEIK’S SAFETY
875—CAMOUFLAGE HEART
902—ROGUE SOLDIER
917—PROTECTIVE MEASURES
933—BRIDAL OP
962—UNDERCOVER SHEIK
985—SECRET CONTRACT*
991—IRONCLAD COVER*
1007—MY BODYGUARD*
1013—INTIMATE DETAILS*
1039—SHEIK SEDUCTION
1055—72 HOURS
1085—SHEIK PROTECTOR
1105—TALL, DARK AND LETHAL
1121—DESERT ICE DADDY
1136—SAVED BY THE MONARCH†
1142—ROYAL PROTOCOL†
1179—THE SOCIALITE AND THE BODYGUARD
1206—STRANDED WITH THE PRINCE†
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Lazlo Kerkay—The “rebel prince” is a successful entrepreneur and a ladies’ man. But he hasn’t seen trouble until he meets a determined matchmaker from the U.S. who is set on ending his freedom.
Milda Milas—The last in a long line of matchmakers, Milda is brought in from New York by the queen to help tame the wildest of the princes. Finding a match for Lazlo turns into the most difficult task she’s ever attempted.
Roberto—The leader of a small group of criminals from Bogotá. He is in Europe to penetrate the European drug market and to gain revenge for his brother’s death.
The Freedom Council—A secret group of prominent businessmen whose sole purpose is to destroy the royal family and break the country into small republics that they could each rule individually.
Arpad Kerkay—The crown prince is a colonel in the air force. Since the queen is ill, soon he will inherit the crown.
Miklos Kerkay—Second to the throne. He is an army major and a happily married man.
Janos Kerkay—Third in line to the throne. He is an economist and a superb yachtsman who also regularly wins golf championships.
Istvan Kerkay—The fourth prince in line to the throne is a cultural anthropologist who is obsessed with preserving the past of his country.
Benedek Kerkay—Lazlo’s twin. The youngest prince has two passions: architecture and his wife, Rayne Williams, the opera singing sensation.
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 One
Sagro Prison island, Italy
Boots slapped on the concrete floor, keeping a regular rhythm. The night security lights were on, enough to see the guard who was texting on his phone as he strode out of sight, a sly grin on his pockmarked face. A minute went by, then another. The steel door opened then closed at the end of the cell block.
The 2:00 a.m. check was complete. Nobody would be by again until morning.
Roberto, fully dressed, slid out of bed, making no more noise than his shadow as it moved across the floor. He laid his pillow lengthwise on the bare mattress then draped the bed with his blanket, creating a bulky form.
His sheets had been ripped, twisted into rope and wrapped around his waist before he’d gone to bed. Now he bent and squatted one more time to make sure the cumbersome arrangement wouldn’t limit his movement. He adjusted a tight strip under his left armpit before he stole to the door and pressed the top part of the lock hard.
Click. The sound was so soft even he barely heard it.
José had fixed the locks. The oldest of the team, José had been a locksmith before a drive-by took out his family in the godforsaken backstreets of Bogotá. With nothing to live for, he’d signed up for the rival gang. José understood revenge.
So did Roberto. It pushed him forward as he stole down the hallway, moving fast in a crouch. He listened to the snoring of the other inmates. A bed creaked now and then as someone turned over in his sleep. He listened for any indication that someone noticed him, not trusting—despite substantial bribes and dire threats—that they wouldn’t betray him and sound the alarm.
José was waiting for him at the water block, along with Marco, the third member of the team.
“Any trouble?” Roberto kept his voice to a low whisper.
Marco shook his head. He was young and sullen, still not over the fact that they’d been imprisoned. That here, on the other side of the ocean, the boss couldn’t protect them. He was ready to go, but didn’t think it fair that they had to orchestrate the escape themselves. He’d griped and whined through the preparations. Which better stop right now, right here. Roberto flashed him a sharp look that warned him to be on his best behavior.
The young thugs coming out of the slums these days were too hotheaded, only after the glory, and rarely willing to put enough effort into a job to get it done right. They wanted the fastest car and the biggest gun, wanted to build reputations overnight, which led to too much senseless killing.
“All’s according to plan,” José was saying.
Exactly what Roberto wanted to hear. His sticker, a spoon handle sharpened into a knife, waited stashed inside a showerhead. He retrieved the makeshift tool then went to work on removing a wall panel.
A hundred years ago, Sagro Prison had been the hunting castle of some Italian king. When they’d rebuilt it into a prison in the fifties, they changed just about everything. Security had been upgraded several times since, but the prison’s waste and sewer system still connected to the old castle’s cistern.
All Roberto and his men had had to do over the endless months th
at they’d been locked up here was dig through the wall. The cistern’s ducts, carved from stone, were plenty wide to accommodate a man.
José squeezed in first, then Marco, Roberto going last, pulling the wall panel into place behind him. By morning they’d be free men. His to-do list was simple: get food, finish the boss’s business in Trieste, then get the hell out of Italy.
But he wouldn’t go back to Bogotá, not straightaway. He had personal business in the area which he meant to see handled. He was going to Valtria, the small kingdom to the north, to gain retribution for his brother’s death.
An eye for an eye, a life for a life. He might have been too old-school to condone all the senseless killing the new gangs did these days, but revenge was part of a man’s honor. And he did believe in that. He certainly did.
Island of Morka, Nature Preserve, Valtria
SHE WAS THE SCOURGE of his life, a relentless thorn under his royal skin. Prince Lazlo of Valtria watched Milda Milas bear down on him and knew what it felt like to be hunted.
A professional matchmaker from New York. He loved his mother as much as all his brothers did, but the Queen had gone too far this time. One of her ladies-in-waiting had a cousin in New York who’d been Milda’s client. Apparently, a recommendation had been made. He didn’t like the idea of his mother discussing his personal life with her ladies-in-waiting. Shouldn’t they have been talking about the royal gardens or copying antique tapestries and the like when they retired to the Queen’s private quarters?
Despite the calming, balmy breeze that streamed from the endless azure water, Lazlo’s sense of peace was fast disappearing. He’d been looking forward to spending the day away from the palace, away from Milda’s harping. He should have known she wouldn’t let a perfectly good day go by without doing her best to ruin it. A dull throb started up in the knee he’d once injured in a crash. Maybe his subconscious was beginning to associate her with pain.
“And there I was, thinking I could hide from you here,” he said when she reached him.
He liked the island of Morka, fifty miles off the Italian coast, an inhabited chunk of land in the Mediterranean Sea, owned by the Valtrian royal family and set up as a nature preserve. With its wild olive and orange groves, the place was a veritable paradise—but for Milda Milas’s unfortunate presence.
“Your Highness.” She stopped in front of him with that ra-ra-hurra look that hardly left her face whenever she dealt with him. She seemed to think that if she smiled wide enough and pretended that what she was doing to him was normal—wonderful, even—somehow he could be tricked into agreeing with her.
“I don’t know how you got here. Never mind that.” He reconsidered and cut to the point. “You should leave,” he told her firmly. “I’m not playing your games today. I’ve made other plans.”
Since the top of her head only came up to his shoulders, she usually rose to the tips of her toes when she wanted to browbeat him into yet another one of her crazy plans. She was stretching up so hard at the moment that she looked like a ballet dancer. The wind whipped her long, reddish-brown hair around her slim face. Her eyes, the exact dusky blue of his first race car, narrowed as she dropped the smile, recognizing smartly that it wasn’t going to work today.
“You should face your responsibilities, Your Highness. Don’t you think all this endless evasion is childish?”
She had his gander up in thirty seconds flat. A new record. She knew she was annoying him, but she didn’t care. She had the Queen’s protection. She’d been given free reign, God help him.
“I’m childish?” He drew up an eyebrow slowly, regally, and regarded her with a chilly expression he’d learned early on in life from his mother. “You torture me for money. What does that make you?”
She dropped back on her heels and stuck her chin out, her eyes and lips narrowing. “To be honest, I’d torture you for free. If that makes you feel better.”
He was taken aback for a moment. He was used to more respect as a prince. Although not from her, admittedly.
“You know what I think?” she asked with a smirk, losing the last of her polite veneer.
He allowed a subtle sneer. “A better question is, mademoiselle, do I care?”
“I think you’re afraid that you couldn’t hold an intelligent woman’s attention over the long term. That’s why you engage only in nightlong, scandalous affairs with those twits.” Her tone turned to lecturing. “Your conduct is embarrassing the monarchy and the Queen. You were caught on tape in a compromising situation, for love’s sake.” She rolled her dusky blue eyes in a way that told him exactly what she thought of that.
Not that until now he’d been forced to guess. She had expressed her opinion a number of times since the unfortunate incident.
He tried to put this latest scandal out of his mind. No chance of that with her around. She was going to lecture him on his duties as a prince? His blood pressure inched up. He drew a long, slow breath.
“You know what I think?” he asked, and kept going, without giving her a chance to pipe up. “I think American kamikaze nuptial consultants should stay in their own country.”
He was pleased with himself for resisting the urge to raise his voice. He was not going to lose control because of her. He was a prince. He was certainly up to the challenge of ignoring a troublesome matchmaker. “Where are my brothers?”
He was supposed to be on the island with them, and only them, on a day hike. Miklos’s idea. Since the failed rebel attacks of the past two years, the six royal brothers hardly got to spend time together anymore. If he didn’t like Miklos’s and Benedek’s wives so much, he would have blamed it on them, but Princess Judi and Princess Rayne were too lovely to fault for anything. He couldn’t truly blame his brothers for not wanting to leave home, even if he never understood what had possessed them to rush into marriage.
Single life suited him just fine. Being a prince, he already had more expectations and regulations, more rules governing his every move than he cared to think about. Marriage would have been just another prison.
Which Milda refused to understand.
“Your brothers aren’t coming.” Her slim fingers worried the colorful bead bracelet on her left wrist.
Why couldn’t they just call, instead of sending a message with her, of all people, when— Lazlo froze, a terrible premonition holding him speechless for a moment before he could ask, “This is another one of your traps, isn’t it?”
So help him God—
“You’ll be going hiking with the Lady Lidia, the Lady Szilvia and the Lady Adel.” Her “this will be fun, you’ll see” smile returned.
He swore in a way that should have been beneath him as a prince. “My brothers helped you set me up?” A new low. Incomprehensible, really. The sense of betrayal was overwhelming.
And her guilty look confirmed everything.
His brothers probably thought it was a grand joke. “I’m going to murder them,” he muttered.
History was full of princes who killed their own brothers to get closer to the throne. He didn’t care about the throne. But he might be driven to murder by Milda Milas yet. Except, then centuries from now historians would speculate that maybe he’d been secretly in love with her, and the act had been motivated by jealousy or some such nonsense. That would be intolerable. She was already messing up his life; he wasn’t going to let her sully his legacy.
“How dare you?” He stepped toward her, ready to take her to task, but caught sight of a sizable pile of duffel bags farther up the beach. He’d thought them a pile of rocks earlier, with the sun in his eyes, but now that a small cloud blocked some of the brilliant rays, he could see that he’d been mistaken. “What is that?”
They couldn’t have needed all that equipment for one day. His own guards were in the process of unloading his speedboat, removing the two boxes that contained the food and drink he and his brothers would have needed until they returned to the palace this evening.
“A two-week hike?” she squeake
d, cleared her throat, went back up on her tiptoes then said again, in a deeper tone of self-confidence she must have practiced in the mirror, “A two-week hike with the ladies.” Her damned smile was in full bloom.
He glanced around but didn’t see any desperate women ready to drag him to the altar. Excellent. He had plenty of time to run for the boat. “Have you lost your mind?”
She drew her slim shoulders up, looking like some sort of exotic bird taking up defensive position. Or getting ready to attack. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was about to be pecked to death.
“The ladies went to see the Painted Rocks. They should be back shortly. You need to spend time with intelligent, self-sufficient women, and stay away from your empty-headed beauties for a few days,” she stated.
So she admitted that the three ladies in question weren’t beauties. Not that he could bring that up without proving himself to be shallow—of which she accused him endlessly.
The impatient growl that escaped him didn’t seem to alarm her in the least. “Once you calm down, Your Highness, you’ll see this was a good idea.” She didn’t back away. She never backed down from him, one of her many annoying qualities. “By tonight, I promise you’ll feel a lot better about all this.”
The only thing that would have made him feel better would have been tossing her into the sea. Sadly, being a prince, he’d been raised better than to threaten bodily harm to a woman. Not even a woman who was dead set on ruining his life.
She wasn’t going to quit until she saw him married. She was the type to see that the job got done. No matter what. In anyone else, he could have appreciated the drive. He could appreciate little in her. They’d been doing battle for months now.
A wave of weariness hit him. “Why are you doing this to me?”
