The Reluctant Queen

The Reluctant Queen
CAITLIN CREWS

Stolen away years ago, Princess Lara is offered an ultimatum by King Adel. Return to her kingdom as his Queen or pay back the bride price. Feisty Lara refuses, but remembers how Adel used to make her heart race…“The Reluctant Queen” by Crews is a tale for all the senses, filled with characters who will wow you, dialogue that takes you away and love scenes that sizzle. ” - RT BOOK Reviews

About the Author

CAITLIN CREWS discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouthwatering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her school social life. And so began her lifelong love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times.

Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City, and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has back-packed in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana, and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek Islands, Rome, Venice, and/or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving there.

She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.

Dear Reader,

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of an ordinary woman, going about her ordinary life, only to look up and find herself face to face with her destiny.

If it involves far-off kingdoms, thrones, and a dangerously compelling hero, all the better.

That was my premise for The Reluctant Queen. I wondered what my heroine would feel when she found herself caught up in a fate she’d thought was little more than a childhood dream. And I wondered what her long-lost betrothed would be like, so determined to win back the only woman who’d ever captured his heart—and who he must convince to marry him if he is to take the throne that was always meant to be his.

I hope you enjoy travelling to their distant kingdom, Alakkul, and falling in love with Lara and Adel. I loved telling their story!

Happy reading!

Caitlin

The Reluctant Queen

Caitlin Crews

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

“HELLO, Princess.”

It was a dark voice, low and deep, and echoed hard and deep in Lara Canon’s bones—making them sing out in recognition. She turned without conscious thought, as if compelled, searching for the man responsible, though some part of her knew at once who he must be. Her gaze flicked across the parking lot of the unremarkable supermarket in her Denver, Colorado, neighborhood, scanning out from the side of her car where she’d stopped still.

She found him at once, unerringly, as if he’d commanded it. Her heart began to beat wildly, even as her skin prickled.

He was even more compelling than his voice, tall and broad like a warrior, with jet-black hair and deep gray eyes above a hard, unsmiling mouth. He held himself with an ease she knew at once was deceptive—he was too watchful, too ready. He wore a black, tight shirt that strained against the tautly packed muscles of his broad chest and flat abdomen, and trousers in the same color that clung to powerful legs and lean hips. He was beautiful in the way that dangerous thunderstorms were beautiful, and Lara discovered that she was breathless.

He was the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen, for all that he was the most arresting. And more than that, she recognized him. She knew him.

She had thought she’d never see him again. She felt her pulse pound beneath her skin.

“I did not expect that you would grow to favor your father,” he said, those remote, storm-colored eyes seeming to see right through her, shocking her, looking straight into the past she’d long denied. The shopping bag in her arms slipped a few inches as her fingers lost feeling. As panic surged through her.

She realized two things, clutching at the brown paper bag before it fell to the asphalt at her feet. First, that he was not speaking English. And second, that she could understand the language he was speaking.

It made her think at once, of course, of Alakkul. Her father’s tiny, oft-contested country in the Eurasian, sometime-Soviet mountains, where his family had ruled with iron fists and an inflated sense of their own consequence for generations.

The country she and her mother had escaped from, in the dark of night, when she was sixteen years old. The country that she had been running from, in one way or another, ever since. And the last place she had seen this man, when he had still been more of a boy. When he had been far less beautiful, far less dangerous, and had still managed to break her teenaged heart.

Her stomach clenched into a thick, tight knot. She told herself it was panic—that it could not be that old, familiar desire she’d been so overwhelmed by as a girl. They were in a busy parking lot, filled with people on this bright June evening. He was standing far enough away that she didn’t think he could reach over and grab her—and anyway, she was twenty-eight years old. Her father could hardly attempt to regain custody now. There was no reason for him to be here. And therefore no reason for her to acknowledge their shared history.

“I’m sorry,” she said. In English. She shrugged to indicate her lack of comprehension and, hopefully, polite disinterest. It had been so long. Maybe she was seeing ghosts. Maybe it wasn’t him at all. “Can I help you with something?”

He smiled, and it was far more disturbing than his voice, or his hard, shocking beauty. It made his gray eyes warm slightly, with a flash of what looked like sympathy. It confused Lara even as it set off a tiny trail of flickering flames across her skin, licking up and down her limbs. Reminding her. Making her yearn for things she dared not name.

“You are the only one who can help me,” he said, in his perfect, exotically accented English. His mouth crooked. “You must marry me. As you promised to do twelve years ago.”

She laughed, of course. What else could she do? She laughed, even as old memories chased through her head—long-buried images of crystal-clear mountain lakes, snow-capped peaks jutting in the distance, the spires of an ancient castle hewn from the very rock of the steep hills. A lean, feral young man with dark gray eyes, looking down at her with a fierce expression while her heart beat too fast and the white-cloaked priests murmured archaic, improbable words through the haze of incense and ritual. His head bent close to hers to whisper secrets in the middle of a great festival dinner, making her shiver. His smile, his occasional laughter, that fire in his stormy eyes when he gazed at her …

How long had she told herself those images were part of a dream? That they could not be anything but a dream? Yet the man who stood before her was undeniably, inarguably real.

And worse, she knew him. Her body knew him—and was reacting exactly as it had then, when she had been so young. She’d spent a long time convincing herself that all that fire had been no more than a young girl’s fantasy. That he could not possibly do these things to her. That she had embellished, exaggerated, as young girls did.

“Thank you for the offer,” she said, as if she was placating him. As if she did not, in fact, remember him. “But I’m afraid I have a personal policy against marrying strange men who approach me in parking lots.”

“I am Adel Qaderi,” he said, in that calm yet implacable voice, his gray eyes on hers, that name sounding within her like a gong. Her breath tangled in her throat. “I am no stranger to you. I am your betrothed, as you know very well.”

It was such an odd, old word. Lara concentrated on that—pushing away the fluttering of her pulse, the constriction in her throat. The onslaught of too many memories she’d thought forgotten long ago.

“I’m sorry,” she said, dismissing him. If she didn’t accept this was happening, it didn’t have to happen, did it? “I’m late for a—”

“You are the Crown Princess of Alakkul,” Adel said in that low, commanding voice, somehow making it impossible for Lara to turn and get into her car as she knew she should. “The last of an ancient bloodline, warriors and kings throughout history. The only child of the great King Azat, may he rest in peace.”

She felt the blood drain from her face. Her knees wobbled beneath her.

“May he …?” she echoed. She shook her head, trying to clear it. What could this mean? How could it be true? Her father was the monster under her bed, the nightmare that lay in wait when she closed her eyes. Hadn’t her mother always told her so? “He’s … dead?”

“At least you do not deny your own father,” Adel said, his expression stern. He moved closer to her but then stopped, as if he felt called to an action he chose not to take. Still, somehow, she knew he grieved for her father in all the ways she could not. It made a headache bloom to life in her temples. “Perhaps we can dispense with the rest of this game of pretend now.”

“You approached me in a parking lot, like a vagrant,” Lara hissed. Unwilling to face what he’d just told her. Unwilling to imagine what it might mean. “What did you think my reaction would be?”

“I did so deliberately.” His gaze was cool. Assessing. Dangerous. “I assumed you would feel more at ease in a public place. After all, you have spent most of your life running away at the slightest hint of your homeland.”

Lara shifted the bag in her arms, and wished her head would stop spinning. How was she supposed to act? Feel? She had not heard from her autocratic father directly in twelve years. She had not wanted to hear from him. If asked even five minutes before, she would have announced without a qualm that she hated the man.

But that did not mean she’d wanted him dead.

“I need to inform my mother …” she began, her temples pounding, wondering how fragile, prone-to-hysteria Marlena would be likely to take such news. Wondering, too, what her mother would center her life around now there was no more King Azat to hate and fear and blame. But perhaps that was unkind.

“Your mother is being notified even now,” Adel replied coolly.

Lara found herself staring at the play of muscle in his strong arms, his hard abdomen. She felt her body’s treacherous heat, its instant response to the very sight of him, despite her emotions.

“I am afraid your business is with me, Princess. I cannot allow you the necessary time to grieve.” Was his tone ironic? Or did she only imagine his judgment? Was that guilt she felt, pooling inside of her? “We must wed immediately.”