The Lost Princes: Darius, Cassius and Monte. Raye Morgan

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СКАЧАТЬ was hidden by a mass of wiry curls, though one tiny, shell-like ear peeked through, and she’d wrapped her torso up tightly in a thick brown sweater. She wasn’t really all that young, but her casual pose made her seem that way and something about her was endearing at first glance. There was an appeal to the woman that might have made him smile under other circumstances.

      But he frowned instead and his gaze snapped back to stare at that gorgeous little ear. It was decorated with a penny-sized earring that seemed familiar. As he looked more closely, he could see it was molded in the form of the old Ambrian coat of arms—the coat of arms of the deposed royal family he belonged to.

      As adrenaline shot through his system, his heart began to thump in his chest and he wished he’d picked up the weapon he usually carried at night. Only a very select set of people in the world knew about his connection to Ambria, and his life depended on it being kept a secret.

      Who the hell was this?

      He was pretty sure he was about to find out.

      “Hey. Wake up.”

      Ayme Negri Sommers snuggled down deeper into her place on the couch and tried to ignore the hand shaking her shoulder. Every molecule of her body was resisting the wake-up call. After the last two days she’d had, sleep was the only thing that would save her.

      “Come on,” the shaker said gruffly. “I’ve got some questions that need some answers.”

      “Later,” she muttered, hoping he’d go away. “Please, later.”

      “Now.” He shook her shoulder again. “Are you listening to me?”

      Ayme heard him just fine, but her eyes wouldn’t open. Scrunching up her face, she groaned. “Is it morning yet?” she asked plaintively.

      “Who are you?” the man demanded, ignoring her question. “What are you doing here?”

      He wasn’t going away. She would have to talk to him and she dreaded it. Her eyelids felt like sandpaper and she wasn’t even sure they would open when she asked them to. But somehow she managed. Wincing at the light shafting in through the open door, she peered up through her wild hair at the angry-looking man standing over her.

      “If you could give me just one more hour of sleep, we might be able to discuss this in a rational manner,” she proposed hopefully, her speech slightly slurred. “I’m so tired, I’m hardly human at the moment.”

      Of course, that was a lie. She was human alright, and despite how rotten she felt, she was having a reaction to this man that was not only typically human, it was also definitely feminine. Bottom line, she was responding to the fact that he was ridiculously attractive. She took in the dark, silky hair that fell in an engaging screen over his forehead, the piercing blue eyes, the wide shoulders and the bare chest with its chiseled muscles, and she pulled in a quick little gasp of a breath.

      Wow.

      She’d seen him earlier, but from a distance and more fully clothed. Up close and half-naked was better. She recommended it, and under other circumstances she would have been smiling by now.

      But this wasn’t a smiling situation. She was going to have to explain to him what she was doing here and that wasn’t going to be easy. She did try to sit up and made an unconvincing attempt at controlling her unruly hair with both hands. And all the while she was trying to think of a good way to broach the subject that she’d come for. She had a feeling it wouldn’t be a popular topic. She would have to introduce it just right and hope for the best.

      “You can do all the sleeping you want once we get you to wherever it is that you belong,” he was saying icily. “And that sure as hell isn’t here.”

      “That’s where you’re wrong,” she said sadly. “I’m here for a reason. Unfortunately.”

      Little baby Cici murmured in her sleep and they both froze, staring at her for a moment, full of dread. But she sank back into deep slumber and Ayme sighed with relief.

      “If you wake the baby up, you’re going to have to take care of her,” she warned him in a hushed voice. “I’m in a zombie trance.”

      He was sputtering. At least that was what it sounded like to her, but she wasn’t in good judging form at the moment. He could have been swearing under his breath. Yes, that was probably it. At any rate, he wasn’t pleased.

      She sighed, shoulders sagging. “Look, I know you’re not in the best shape yourself. I saw you when we first got here. You had obviously been enjoying your party a little too much. That’s why I didn’t bother to try to talk to you at the time. You know very well that you could use more sleep as much as I could.” She scrunched up her nose and looked at him hopefully. “Let’s call a truce for now and…”

      “No.”

      She sighed, letting her head fall back. “No?”

      “No.”

      She made a face. “Oh, all right. If you insist. But I warn you, I can barely put a sentence together. I’m incoherent. I haven’t had any real sleep for days.”

      He was unrelenting, standing over her with strong hands set on his very tight and slender hips. The worn jeans rode low on them, exposing a flat, muscular stomach and the sexiest belly button she’d ever seen. She stared at it, hoping to deflect his impatience.

      It didn’t work.

      “Your sleep habits are none of my concern,” he said coldly. “I’m not interested. I just want you out of here and on your way back to wherever you came from.”

      “Sorry.” She shook her head, still groggy. “That’s impossible. The flight we came on left for Zurich ages ago.” She glanced at the baby, sleeping peacefully in the drawer. “She cried almost the whole trip. All the way from Texas.” She looked up at him, expecting sympathy but not finding much. She made a face and searched his eyes, hoping for a little compassion at the very least. “Do you understand what that means?”

      He was frowning like someone trying to figure all this out. “You flew here straight from Texas?”

      “Well, not exactly. We did change planes in New York.”

      “Texas?” he repeated softly, as though he couldn’t quite believe it.

      “Texas,” she repeated slowly, in case he was having trouble with the word itself. “You know, the Lone Star state. The big one, down by Mexico.”

      “I know where Texas is,” he said impatiently.

      “Good. We’re a little touchy about that down home.”

      He shook his head, still puzzling over her. “You sound very much like an American,” he said.

      She shrugged and looked up with a genuine innocence. “Sure. What else would I be?”

      He was staring at her earrings. She reached up and touched one of them, not sure what his interest was. They were all she had left from her birth mother and she wore them all the time. She knew her original parents had come from the tiny island country of Ambria. So had her adoptive family, but that was years ago and far away. Ambria and its problems had only been minimally relevant to her life as yet.

      But СКАЧАТЬ