Her Cowboy Prince

by Madeline Ash

  He should be, playing two women like a stacked deck of cards.

  “Stop looking,” Frankie said quietly, pressing him with her knee.

  He swirled his glass, ice clinking. “Who is he?”

  “The woman he’s with is Isadora Moretti. Filthy rich, widowed, and missing her daughter who recently moved out of home to attend college at Cambridge. She’s a woman who can afford the penthouse suite at the most luxe lakefront hotel in Kiraly but wants to experience a taste of local life.”

  Hence her presence in an average bar on a Monday night.

  “Okay,” Kris said.

  “You see how endearing he is, how genuine,” she said, fingers moving in little starburst gestures, so anyone watching would see her animated conversation. Her stare, however, was focused on Kris’s chin and it occurred to him that she wasn’t blinking enough. “By the time she returns to Italy in another three weeks, she’ll find herself short several hundred thousand dollars. I’m not sure of his sob story, and a smart woman like her will probably take a night to sleep on his request, but she’ll transfer him the funds he needs. And she’ll never be able to track him or the money.”

  His brows rose. She dug fast. “How does he connect to—everything?”

  She laughed, airy and light. “The woman he was with earlier is Clare-Marie Bromley. She was a principal ballet dancer with The Australian Ballet for over ten years and is now artistic director. She will also return home to find the generosity she showed her international lover will never be repaid.”

  Incredulous, Kris leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table. “Wait a second.” He lowered his voice. “He’s a con man?”

  She seemed to reel, just a little, at his words. A hand rose to toy with the scarf above her ear. “Yes.”

  “Is this all he does?” He swirled his whiskey as casually as he could. “Romance scams?”

  “No,” she said, very quietly.

  “Has he ever been caught?”

  “Once.” Pausing, she raised her glass and sipped. Then sipped again. “About ten years ago. A minor swindle that saw him serve two months in prison. A disgrace, really, for a man of his skill to be caught like a gutter grifter.”

  “So he’s good?”

  Now he was sure she wasn’t blinking enough as she stared at the brim of his hat. “Very.”

  “Someone like that could have easily got into the palace.” It made sense. A master manipulator made an effective criminal. Why break in or sneak around when he could be invited in the front door? “If he’s played the right people, he could have accessed almost anything. Anyone.” A revolted kind of fascination had Kris sweeping another glance at the booth. The man was seated at the front window, shamelessly courting another woman in plain view. Or not shameless—rather, so sure of his plans and the people twisted around his finger, he knew the ballerina would not come this way. Knew he wouldn’t get caught. “Do we know how he feels about the monarchy?”

  After a beat, she nodded.

  Kris blew out a rough breath. “How did you find him?”

  “I’ll explain when he’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Urgency pushed him farther forward. “You’re just going to let him leave?”

  “I’d happily kick his ass on the way out, but yes, for now.” She picked up her wine—and finished it in several long swallows. Despite her sophisticated air, her nerves were starting to show. Did she suspect how this con man fit into the investigation but lacked enough evidence? When she set her glass down, Kris swiped up her hand and found it trembling.

  “You okay?” he asked, tracing a line along her wrist.

  Her eyes darted over his. “No.”

  “I still want you to talk to me after.” About why she thought she didn’t deserve to be part of the royal guard, or more importantly, with him. Her pulse skittered beneath his fingertips. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Oh.” Her eyelashes fanned over her cheeks as she looked down to where he held her. The curve of her mouth was shy, as if discussing his advances, but her voice was thin with vulnerability. “I don’t think we’ll need to go anywhere.”

  He frowned. Was she backing out? “If you’re nervous, don’t be,” he said. “Whatever you have to tell me, it won’t matter.”

  “Won’t matter?” A familiar expression darted across her face. Irritation. “You think my past doesn’t matter? What if I said that about you? If I said stop wearing those rancher clothes—your past doesn’t matter. Stop going out for rides and hikes. Stop thinking that your upbringing made you who you are—that it’s an integral part of your identity. You live in Kiraly now. This is who you are and all I need you to be. Forget everything that came before. It doesn’t matter.”

  He let go of her hand. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “It is,” she said, lowered voice crisp with the Frankie he knew, even as her expression returned to soft and serene. “You can’t stand the idea that there’s something insurmountable between us. You want to ignore it. Deny it. And it’ll be easier to do that if you tell me it doesn’t matter before you even know what it is. But the thing is . . .” She trailed off to stun him with a seductive smile, so provocative and ready that it quickened his blood, slipped over his skin, and despite knowing it wasn’t real, he felt himself begin to stir. “It does matter.” She reached out, her fingers brushing the inside of his forearm in small circles, and the maddening friction only made him harder. “You’re going to need to accept that.”

  “Hey.” He shifted, sitting straighter to conceal his arousal. “What are you doing?”

  Her smile vanished as she withdrew her hand. “You’ll see.”

  “You’ve never toyed with me before.”

  “I’m not toying with you now,” she said. “I’m showing you.”

  Before he could ask what, exactly, that sex-hot smile had showed him, the man in the window booth laughed. It was louder this time, and he spoke to his partner through his amusement, voice booming above the general noise of the bar. As he listened, a strange chill passed down Kris’s spine, and his attention slid to the con man.

  “That accent . . .”

  It was American, but that was like saying Frankie’s skin had just turned white. There was endless variation in color, just as there was in accents. Dialect, pronunciation, cadence. The man sounded generically West American, but with a slight flatness to the vowels. Nothing significant or unusual, especially if it was assumed the speaker had spent considerable time living elsewhere, subconsciously picking up variances, mimicking the locals—basically what Kris had always believed about Frankie’s accent until very recently.

  Except that she . . .

  In the end, she hadn’t grown up in America at all.

  Her accent had been false, an act to fool him.

  The world around Kris ground to a halt as the man continued talking. His blood pulsed thick in his ears. The man’s accent was—it was . . .

  “It’s exactly like yours.”

  Frankie sat like he’d flicked her off at the switch, expression lifeless with dread.

  Heart thumping in confusion, he scanned her features. Then he eyed the man with ginger hair that might have once been rust red. With a smile that was soft and seductive and quite possibly nothing like his true grin. With a false accent learned and practiced in a country too far from the source.

  The chill settled in his gut when he realized she hadn’t answered his question.

  Kris curled his fingers. “Who is he?”

  But he knew. He knew.

  Frankie’s lips were dry beneath her lipstick; her face was the grey-white of smoke. I’m not toying with you. The deception she’d so skillfully demonstrated for him slipped as tears gathered in her eyes. I’m showing you.

  “He’s my father.”

  Frankie’s head spun as she relinquished her truth in three whispered words. She felt weightless in a bad way, as if someone had been holding her back all her life and they’d abruptly let her go inside her own chest. Her p
ulse staggered, unstable—she didn’t know how to catch herself.

  She forced herself to look at Kris.

  He wouldn’t help set her right.

  His blue eyes were raging, his jaw set like iron. His hands were fisted so tightly on the tabletop, his forearms bulged. He was furious.

  His attention was cutting between her and her father. She wanted to ask him to stop—not to give them away, but he looked one lapse away from flipping the table and her throat was too swollen from pain to speak.

  Finally, he leaned forward, and in a voice so rough it sounded half-solid, he said, “He did this to you.”

  His anger shredded her thoughts. She could hardly piece together what he’d said; what he meant. “He taught me.” Mostly breath, but still she added, “And I did it.”

  “He taught you,” he repeated, eyes sparking with rage. “And you did it.”

  Kris had been raised on honesty. The value of trust. She had no defense against a man with integrity, because she’d known it was wrong. Her father hadn’t brainwashed her. She’d known, in her gut and in her soul, until the day she’d turned her back on him, that what they did was wrong. And she hadn’t resisted or rebelled or found a way to get out sooner.

  “I worked with him until I was sixteen.” Not once, or occasionally, or for a year or two. She’d scammed and stolen for her entire upbringing.

  “A con man’s daughter.” He practically spat her title from his mouth.

  “Yes.” There was no point in trying to hide from it now. “I conned in my own right. It’s—” A part of me. In my blood. “I was very good at it.”

  His disgust threatened to strike her from his life.

  “This is why,” she forced herself to whisper, “you can’t be with me. We can’t be—anything. I was never caught, but that doesn’t change my criminal history. My dad was caught. It’d be a simple thread to tug. I can never be trusted. A farm boy’s family wouldn’t want me around, let alone a country protective of its king.”

  He didn’t speak, but she felt his fury swell.

  “I’ll go,” she said, and somehow stood despite her heart still stumbling. Turning, she caught movement at her father’s booth—he was also rising to his feet. The sight sickened her. She’d scarcely been able to look at him since he’d emerged from the hotel in designer clothes and his gentlest mask. It made her skin crawl, full-body bumps despite the warm evening. But her disgust fell away beneath a flood of horror at the possibility of him recognizing her.

  Fright shoved her back around to Kris. She swayed, legs almost buckling beneath her. “He can’t see me.”

  Kris moved fast, sliding his chair to one side of the table before reaching out, grabbing her hips, and dragging her onto his lap.

  Startled, her breath caught. A quick embrace wouldn’t be enough. If her father had glanced over, having noticed her stand only to sit again, she couldn’t afford to hold his interest by looking rigid and uncomfortable. Cursing under her breath and letting it double as a soft exhale, she relaxed, sinking down to straddle him, her ass resting back on Kris’s knees. Her own knees lowered as she leaned forward, her chest not quite touching his, her back arching as if she yearned for the contact.

  In the seconds of stillness that followed, she fixed her gaze on Kris’s top button. His face wasn’t safe, nor was the rest of him beneath her. Thighs built like steel. Chest broad and breathing deep inches from hers. Hands wide and unrelenting, his thumbs pressing into the soft join where her thigh met hip. The last thing she needed was a lust-flare, but her body didn’t care about his disgust—just his tight grip and biceps beneath her palms, and his woody scent rushing in to take out every form of resistance in its path.

  Her breath out shuddered, betraying her as she looked up.

  Kris’s eyes glittered at her beneath his cap.

  “What’s he doing?” she made herself ask.

  Tucking his bottom lip between his teeth—sexiness in bite form—Kris lifted a hand and traced the back of his index finger down the side of her neck. He angled his head as if to admire the curve of her shoulder and was granted a clear view behind her. “Heading to the bar, wallet out.”

  She shivered at his touch. “He won’t pay.”

  Kris moved his face a little closer to her neck. Memories of the night before crackled between them and she felt his desire bloom inside his anger. “He is paying,” he said quietly. “He’s pulled out a big note.”

  “Way too big for the total cost.” She could practically watch the scene play out. “He’ll take the change. Then hand some back, asking for smaller notes. Then he’ll laugh, tell the bartender not to worry, it’s too much effort, and ask for the original large note back. Then he’ll hand over the bartender’s own smaller money to pay for his drinks and pocket the rest.”

  Kris kept stroking her neck as he watched. It happened fast—the key to change-raising was not giving the cashier time to feel something was amiss. A flustered or confused mark meant they’d stop and count everything out, and that’d be the end of it.

  “What—I don’t even know what I just saw.” Kris’s attention slid back to her. “Can you do that?”

  Her shame churned. “Yes.”

  “That good?”

  She swallowed. “A bit better.”

  He huffed, but nothing about him felt amused.

  “I know you must hate me,” she murmured.

  His lips curled, anger flashing in his eyes. Then his hands tightened around her, tugging her slightly higher up his lap, and he said, “I hate him, my love.”

  Her heart whimpered.

  “Your scummy fuck of a father could never make me hate you.” Kris’s voice was uneven with temper. “When he taught you to do this shit, he taught you to hate yourself. Your morals are good, Frankie, and that’s because of who you are.” His attention was set behind her. “But you’re trapped inside your own conscience, judging and blaming yourself for the way he made you behave.”

  Her guilt held firm. “I chose to do it.”

  Kris pulled back, searching her eyes. “He gave you a choice?”

  “I could’ve said no, refused to—”

  “You’re telling me he’d have respected your decision?”

  Her father had never respected anything about her. She shook her head, more in helplessness than in answer. “Has he left?”

  Kris leaned in, and this time, his lips grazed her neck. Her spine tingled and her eyes grew hot. What kind of man kissed a woman minutes after finding out she’d been raised crooked? Held her tighter, closer?

  My love.

  “They’re both leaving now,” he said.

  She waited, lips pressed together, staring at the wall.

  “Okay, he’s gone.” Kris ran a hand up and down her spine, firm, reassuring. “He didn’t see you.”

  She lowered her face, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. His hand kept moving over her back. What would her father have done if he’d noticed her? Come straight over or taken time to rehearse? He wouldn’t have ignored her. It wasn’t in his nature to let someone get away with besting him. And she’d trounced him when she’d run away from home, armed with knowledge of his associates, schedules, routes, and habits that he hadn’t even realized were habits. She’d ensured he’d never seen her again. The one risk had been him showing up at her school, but that would’ve meant admitting he had no other way to find her, and in the end, the prick had been too proud.

  She knew one thing. If he’d recognized her across the bar—the daughter he’d trained in the family business, the daughter who’d snipped her strings and slipped off his stage—he’d want to get even.

  “Frankie.”

  She kept her face on his shoulder as Kris spoke. It felt safe. He’d always felt safe.

  “All you’ve ever told me about your parents is that your mom left when you were ten and your dad’s an asshole. You didn’t admire him. And judging by your reaction when he almost saw you, I get the feeling he didn’t give a shit whether or no
t you wanted to work with him. Hot or cold?”

  She lifted her head warily as she said, “Hot.”

  “Then it’s not a reflection of who you are.” His tone was sharp, and despite his soothing hand strokes, irritation continued to radiate from him. “And it’s not a reason you can’t be with me.”

  “It’s the definition of—”

  “I have a lot of questions.” He cut her off as his hands dropped to her hips. “But this isn’t the place.”

  “We can go.” Her father wouldn’t have lingered.

  “Actually, can we—” He slid her a little higher up his lap. “Stay for a second?”

  The sensitive skin of her inner thighs ached at the movement. If those strong hands moved her any higher, she’d be flush against his crotch.

  “There really isn’t room for you to do that again.” Her voice was thick and throaty with arousal.

  “Do what?” he asked, and tugged her again. She lost a breath as she lodged against his unmistakable hard-on, and he hummed a base note of approval, dark and hungry.

  “Stop that,” she muttered, if only because she should.

  His grip loosened, as if to say, if that’s what you really want.

  She didn’t move. Didn’t dare, in case she gave in to the hot plea between her thighs and rubbed herself all over him.

  “My problem is that if we leave now,” he said, his gaze on her mouth, “I’ll lay into him with my fists.”

  And she wouldn’t stop him.

  “Thirty seconds,” she relented quietly.

  He flicked her a blue-eyed glance that looked dangerously like challenge accepted. Then his forehead brushed against hers and she pushed into the contact, angling her head down, a bull locking horns in order to keep her mouth out of range. He gave a slanted half-smile before his hands spread across her back and his elbows tucked against her sides. His biceps tensed, caging her in, and she dug her fingers into the solid muscle—not sure if she was threatening him with resistance or preparing to hold him in place if he dared to pull away.