She let Josh lead her through the dining room and into the big old kitchen. Golden light streamed through windows on two sides, as well as through the screen door that led to the backyard. White-painted cabinets reflected and amplified the light, while yellow curtains, tied back at the sides of the windows, fluttered in the breezes created by the attic fan. It was Mandy’s favorite room and the room where their extended family always seemed to congregate.
Standing beside the white enamel gas stove, Mandy’s mother looked up from taking pieces of chicken out of the pan and laying them on a platter. There could be no mistaking the anxiety in her face, and Mandy’s stomach clenched. Was her grandmother ill? Had something happened to the baby her sister-in-law was carrying?
As if drawn by a powerful magnet, her gaze moved to the rectangular oak table that filled one side of the room. A stranger rose from the chair between her sister Stacy and their grandmother.
It was hot in the room, even with the attic fan pulling in shade-cooled air, but the sober expressions on all the faces sent a chill down Mandy’s spine.
“Mandy, we have a guest.” Her mother’s voice was tight, as if it would explode should she relax her grip on it.
Mandy looked more closely at the tall, elegant stranger. He was movie-star handsome with a square jaw and chiseled features. His hair was black like the summer sky just before dawn and his eyes were as blue as that same sky would be an hour later. For a flickering instant those eyes seemed as deep and as filled with tantalizing promises as that morning sky, but it must have been a trick of the bright light. In the next instant his gaze was glacial and distant, more like a January day when the winter stretched behind and ahead with no end in sight
Mandy was both drawn to the man and disturbed by him.
His expression was set in stoic, controlled lines, his posture erect with a bearing that went beyond military—as if it were a part of him, something in his blood. His demeanor fit perfectly with his dark suit, white shirt and conservative tie.
No one dressed like that in late June in Texas.
Mandy’s mother turned off the flame under the empty skillet and ran her hands down the front of her apron. “Mandy, this is Stephan Reynard. Mr. Reynard, my daughter, Mandy.”
Stephan Reynard, Prince of Castile.
Her adopted son’s biological uncle.
The smell of fried chicken became cloying and stuffy. The room blurred, with only Stephan Reynard’s face in blindingly sharp focus.
She picked up Josh and held him tightly against her.
She should have recognized the resemblance to his brother immediately. Their features were similar, and he had the same stiff demeanor. But Lawrence Reynard’s eyes had been gentle and sad, the eyes of a poet and a dreamer. Stephan was obviously neither.
“Hello, Ms. Crawford.” His accent was the same...vaguely British with an underlying hint of something earthier, Scottish or Irish maybe.
“What do you want?”
Her sixteen-year-old sister stood and held out her arms. “Hey, Josh, why don’t you come with Aunt Stacy? We can go outside and play with Prince for a little while.”
Josh reached for his aunt, and Mandy reluctantly let him go.
Reynard arched a dark eyebrow. “Prince?”
“Our dog,” Mandy said smugly. “He’s the royalty around here.”
“I see.”
The screen door slammed behind Josh and Stacy.
“All right, what do you want?” Mandy repeated, more insistently this time.
“Mandy,” her mother said sternly. “Where are your manners? Mr. Reynard is our guest.”
“That’s quite all right, Mrs. Crawford,” the stranger said. “This isn’t a social call.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
“Perhaps we could go somewhere private to discuss this matter.”
Mandy folded her arms across her chest. “This is as private as it gets. In fact, we really ought to wait until my dad and my brother, Darryl, and his wife, Lynda, get here, sort of a meeting of the entire royal assembly. Here in America the family is the ruling class, in case you haven’t heard.”
“Mandy,” Rita Crawford said, moving over to wrap one arm around her daughter’s shoulders, “why don’t you take Mr. Reynard into the living room? It’s much cooler in there.”
Mandy shook her head. “No. This affects all of us. Doesn’t it, Mr. Reynard?”
He inclined his head slightly and indicated an unoccupied seat across the table from him. “Very well. Then perhaps you’d care to take your seat in the ‘royal assembly.’”
Mandy lifted an eyebrow. “Mother, why don’t you go ahead and sit down. I’ll remain standing. Isn’t that appropriate in the presence of royalty?”
Reynard crossed his arms in imitation of her, but she doubted that she had that same haughty air that enhanced his gesture and made it something more than a brave front. One corner of his mouth quirked upward in a movement that could have been the beginning of a smile on a face less stoic, and for the first time Mandy had a glimmering of understanding of the strong, inexplicable attraction Alena, her friend from childhood, must have felt for Lawrence. There was something compelling and dynamic about this man in spite of the circumstances.
“Only a moment ago you held the heir to the throne in your arms,” he said. “I think we’ve gotten past formalities.”
The heir to the throne. She’d known what was coming from the moment her mother announced this man’s name, but hearing it put into words caused her stomach to clench into a hard, cold knot and her heartbeat to skip erratically.
It’s all right, she tried to reassure herself. Everything about the adoption was legal, every i dotted, every t crossed.
But Lawrence had warned her that the island of Castile lived by the rules of its country, not by anyone else’s, like the stupid decree that would make an illegitimate son heir to the throne if no legitimate heir existed.
But that wouldn’t apply here.
“Lawrence did his duty. He went back home after Alena’s death and married that Lady Barbara. They’ll produce a legitimate heir. Give them a little time and leave Josh alone.”
“You haven’t heard about Lawrence’s death?”
Lawrence’s death? Mandy felt the blood drain from her face.
“Ms. Crawford? Are you all right?” The voice seemed to come from far away, part of the whirlwind of fear and confusion that spun through Mandy’s head. If Lawrence was dead without leaving a legitimate son, that meant—
Stephan silently cursed his lack of tact as he hastily crossed the space separating him from Mandy and reached to catch her before she fainted.
As he grasped her slim shoulders, however, the color shot back into her pale cheeks. She took a deep breath, straightened and glared at him from eyes that were the same deep, glistening shade of green as the trees and grass they’d flown over on the last leg of the flight to Dallas.
He dropped his hands. “Are you all right?” he repeated, and was shocked to realize that he half wished she would say no, would give him an excuse to touch her, to support her and hold her willowy body in his arms, to lift that wild tangle of copper hair off her neck, run his fingers through the curls and see if they were truly composed of fire. The combination of jet lag and Texas heat was having a most peculiar effect on him.
“I’m fine.” She moved away from him, over to the table to sit in the chair he’d indicated.
Just as well. He had more important things to do than lust after an