Katy smiled gently and reached out to put her hand on Nicks.
Electricity shot up her arm, startling her into jerking her hand away. To cover up her reaction, she asked hastily, Is there any chance the army would let you live if they found out who you were?
He shook his head sharply. Not a chance. They have to kill me to solidify their hold on power. As long as Im alive, the loyalists will continue to fight. He shrugged, causing all those gorgeous muscles to ripple across his chest. The first battle may be finished, but the war is far from over.
Lovely. And here she was smack-dab in the middle of it.
She jumped when he grabbed her hand and held it tightly. For just a second desperation glistened in his eyes, then he let go of her fingers reluctantly, like a drowning man slipping into the abyss.
Please, Katy. Help me.
The Lost Prince
Cindy Dees
www.millsandboon.co.uk
CINDY DEES
started flying airplanes while sitting on her dads lap at the age of three and got a pilots license before she got a drivers license. At age fifteen she dropped out of high school and left the horse farm in Michigan where she grew up to attend the University of Michigan. After earning a degree in Russian and East European studies, she joined the U.S. Air Force and became the youngest female pilot in the history of the air force. She flew supersonic jets, VIP airlift and the C-5 Galaxy, the worlds largest airplane. She also worked part-time gathering intelligence. During her military career, she traveled to forty countries on five continents, was detained by the KGB and East German secret police, got shot at, flew in the first Gulf War, met her husband and amassed a lifetimes worth of war stories.
Her hobbies include professional Middle Eastern dancing, Japanese gardening and medieval reenacting. She started writing on a one-dollar bet with her mother and was thrilled to win that bet with the publication of her first book in 2001. She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted at www.cindydees.com.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Prologue
When youre a king, how you die is as important as how you live.
The unexpected thought distracted Nick long enough that he almost didnt dive for cover in time. An explosion rocked him nearly off his feet, momentarily lighting the throne rooms white marble floors and colonnaded walls a gaudy shade of orange.
Kaboom!
That didnt sound like another mortar. That sounded more like a shape charge in the vicinity of one of the ancient fortresss heavy wooden drawbridges.
Dying at the hands of an enraged mob of soldiers was not high on his list of things to do with his life, dammit. But then, neither was being a king. Yet here he was, king for barely a week and about to die because of it. How ironic. Oh, hed known his father was ill. But hed still been shocked when the call came to his London flat that his father had succumbed to one last massive heart attack, leaving Nick sole heir to all his familys titles and estates, including the principality of Baraq.
In retrospect, his impulsive decision to stay on in Baraq after his fathers funeral had been colossally stupid. But whod have guessed hed walk into a mess like this? What had he been thinking? It was one thing to be a fool. It was another thing entirely to die for it. Why were these guys so sure hed be a lousy king, anyway? How could these strangers hate him so much? Hed only been on the throne a few days.
Of course, hed just answered his own question. These Army officers kicking him off his throne were total strangers to him. Hed left Baraq with his mother when he was ten. Finished his schooling in England and only went homealthough he didnt even think of Baraq as thatwhen he absolutely had to. The last time hed been back here was six years ago on the fiftieth anniversary of his father becoming king.
Who would have ever guessed his perfect life would come to this? It was a hell of an end for the most eligible bachelor in all of Europe.
Flickering light danced off the ceiling, announcing that a fire blazed in the garden outside. Nick wasnt worried about the palace burning. Its stone walls were six feet thick and had withstood more than one assault by fire over the centuries.
An abrupt musical crash of breaking glass made him turn and look out from behind the massive throne. He saw several middle-aged men swing a priceless Louis XV chair and heave it out one of the rooms many tall windows, creating a jagged man-sized hole amidst a glittering shower of glass.
Indignant, he stepped out from behind the throne.
Nikolas Hassan Akeem el Ramsey, thirtieth ruler of the principality of Baraq, planted his fists on his hips and glared in disgust as his ministers jumped one by one out the window into the river below. They looked like so many rats abandoning a sinking ship.
Good riddance.
They were the idiots whod run his ailing fathers country into this mess in the first place. It had taken him a matter of hours listening to their blathering and bickering to know why Baraq hovered on the edge of collapse. If only hed had more time. Maybe he could have set the once peaceful and prosperous country to rights. But now it was too late. He was going to die a stupid, senseless death that hed walked right into without ever getting a chance to lead Baraq into a better future.
Anger swirled through him sickeningly. Why hadnt his father seen this crisis coming and done something to avert it? Why didnt I come home from London sooner and see it myself?
Hed been so busy investing several large cash deposits in the Ramsey bank accounts in London, it hadnt even occurred to him to go home to visit his ailing father. Hell, hed even passed on visiting his mother at her palatial home in Barbados this winter.
Well, he was home now.
Kareem Hadar, his fathers oldest friend and only counselor with a speck of sense, moved toward him, apparently having opted not to join the rats in their midnight swim. The older man flinched every few steps at the bursts of gunfire now echoing from within the ancient stone walls of the fortress.
Your Highness, you must leave, Kareem urged.
Nick glared at him. That had been his exact thought moments ago, but hearing it said aloud inexplicably irritated him. I will not! I swore at my coronation that I would stand by Baraq and defend it from its enemies.
Kareem replied urgently, Your father is dead and this nights battle is lost. If the war is to be won, you must survive. You are the only living Ramsey.
Nick snorted. Not for long. The rebels are inside the palace. Theyll find me in a few minutes, and you know as well as I do theyll kill me on sight.
Both men ducked as a deafening blast shook the room. An enormous chandelier plunged to the floor, shattering into a million pieces and throwing a rainbow of broken crystals across the marble tiles. The huge double doors at the far end of the long hall crashed open, and a phalanx of palace guards backed into the room, hard pressed in hand-to-hand fighting. The line slowly buckled, and Nick glimpsed the distinctive green camouflage of the Army rebels pushing inexorably forward through the light-brown khaki of the Baraqi royal guards.
Resolutely he turned around and walked up the shallow steps to his fathers throne. My throne, dammit. He pivoted deliberately and sat down. Time to die like a king.
From his excellent vantage point, he watched the fight, mesmerized by the slow-motion collapse of the last line of defense standing between him and death. He was startled out of his reverie when Kareem grabbed his arm with surprising strength and bodily dragged him off the throne.
Nick shouted over the din, What are you doing? If I must die, Im going to die on my throne!
The older man put his mouth to Nicks ear and shouted over the screams of soldiers, machine-gun fire and clash of bayonets, Your Highness, there may be a way to avoid such a fate.
Chapter 1
Katy McMann ached from head to foot. But then, twelve hours and counting in an airplane seat had a way of doing that. Thankfully this was the last leg of her journey from Washington, D.C. to North Africa and a postage-stamp kingdom called Baraq. Near Morocco somewhere.
Shed tried to sleep on the flight from D.C. to London, but her nerves pretty much shot that plan. This was her first mission as a humanitarian relief worker with InterAid, and she was terrified that she was going to blow it. Every newbie to the organization probably felt that way. But not every newbie lived with paparazzi camped on her doorstep, ready and waiting to catch the tiniest screwup on her part and splash it across the tabloid headlines.
It wasnt that shed ever done anything the slightest bit newsworthy in her twenty-six years to date. But her brothers had. The McMann clan had burst onto the legal scene a few years back as the spectacularly successful lawyers to the rich and guilty. And ever since, the press had been laying in wait for them, sniffing like bloodhounds after any morsel of dirt to smear on her brothers namesincluding the private life of their little sister.
The InterAid team leader, Don Ford, a marathon runner and all-around intense personality, stood up in front of the clustered team with a clipboard in hand, effectively distracting her from disparaging thoughts of her brothers and their lack of moral spine.
Ford read off a list of assignments for when they arrived in the country. She would be working on prisoner interviews with a guy named Larry Grayson. Shed met him briefly last night. He was a barrel-chested man with short, gray crew-cut hair, a fleshy face, small eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses and no lips to speak of. Rather, a white line of habitually compressed flesh marked his mouth. Hed struck her as a pompous ass who could probably quote large chunks of the Geneva Convention from memory and who took as his personal responsibility enforcing it down to the last t crossed and i dotted.
She caught a few smirks around her. Yup, shed been stuck with Grayson intentionally. Note to self: Don Ford wasnt above putting the notorious rookie in her place. She sighed.
Prisoner interviews, eh? She pulled out her training manual and reviewed what it had to say on the subject. The job mostly involved verifying identities, ascertaining the prisoners state of health, examining living conditions, delivering letters and care packages to prisoners and making sure no illegal interrogation methods were being employed. None of it sounded too hard.
A flight attendant came around to collect the last trash and check that everyones seats and trays were in their upright and locked positions. Katys ears popped gently as the plane began its descent into Baraq. She looked out the window at the barren mountains below, brick red beneath a beige layer of haze. A few pockets of green dotted the rocky landscape, but for the most part the forbidding terrain looked startlingly like Mars. And human beings lived in that? Ugh.
The plane planted itself hard on terra firma at Baraq International Airport and taxied up to a modern glass-and-chrome terminal. The ramp was conspicuously deserted. Theirs was the only plane visible on the entire field, in fact. Not exactly a teeming metropolis of activity. Of course, a coup détat no doubt put a severe cramp on travel-related activity.
A commotion outside caught Katys attention. She leaned forward to look out her window and saw a line of soldiers run up, surrounding the airplane. They all had machine guns at the ready, pointed at the plane. Whoa. Dorothy, were not in Kansas anymore.
What sort of idiot escaped an enemy by putting himself into that very enemys hands? An idiot with no other options, apparently. Kareems plan was audacious. Certainly unexpected. Arguably insane. Doomed to failure. And here Nick was, going along with it like a lamb to the slaughter. Even his natural optimism was stretched to the breaking point on this one. For the first time in his life his familys money, power, prestige and sheer fame werent going to buy him out of this mess. He was utterly without defenses or resources other than his own brains and guts. Lord, he felt naked.
Nick hitched up his bloodied khaki pants and took the machine gun Kareem handed him. Okay. Lets do it.
The advisor nodded solemnly and started to move forward but then froze, looking over Nicks shoulder. Nick registered some sort of commotion behind him. Not good. Their plan wasnt in place yet. He opened his mouth to urge Kareem to hurry.
He never saw the blow coming. One moment he was looking into the eyes of his fathers friend and the next pain exploded in his head like a starburst. The marble floor rushed up to slam into him, and then his world went black.
Their plane sat on the ramp with no one entering or leaving it for long enough that Katy finally dozed off. How long she slept, she didnt know. But it was morning when she woke up to the sounds of a commotion. A portable staircase had arrived and the front door of the jet had just opened.
A scowling soldier boarded the aircraft as if he owned it. Everybody out! he shouted.
The team disembarked onto the tarmac while machine guns followed their every movement. Surely this wasnt a typical welcome for relief agencies! She glanced around, and even the teams veterans had their shoulders up around their ears and looked tense. Not good.
They were herded down the stairs and into a tight group, with soldiers pressing in on them from all sides with those darned weapons. Katy didnt know about anybody else, but she was intimidated.
And then they stood there and waited some more. The tension built like a Beethoven symphony, rising higher and higher until she felt as if it might explode any second. If her brothers had been here orchestrating this confrontation, shed accuse them of intentionally creating a crisis atmosphere in order to throw their opponents off balance.
Something incongruous struck her as she stood there. The smell of orange blossoms. It hung in the air, light and sweet, perfuming every breath she drew. And then something else struck her. The blinding blue of the sky overhead. This was actually a lovely little corner of the world. The sun already shone with an equatorial intensity that promised to burn her fair skin when it got a little higher in the sky. She sincerely hoped she lived long enough for that to be a problem.
When the standoff had reached the breaking point, a Baraqi Army officer strolled out to the tarmac and perused them scornfully. In Arabic he gave his troops a short order to stand down. At least thats what Katy, with her rusty college grasp of that tongue, thought he said.
The machine guns finally rose up and away. Along with the whole InterAid team, she sighed in profound relief.