Dear Reader,
Happy (almost) New Year! The year is indeed ending, but here at Intimate Moments it’s going out with just the kind of bang you’d expect from a line where excitement is the order of the day. Maggie Shayne continues her newest miniseries, THE OKLAHOMA ALL-GIRL BRANDS, with Brand-New Heartache. This is prodigal daughter Edie’s story. She’s home from L.A. with a stalker on her trail, and only local one-time bad boy Wade Armstrong can keep her safe. Except for her heart, which is definitely at risk in his presence.
Our wonderful FIRSTBORN SONS continuity concludes with Born Royal. This is a sheik story from Alexandra Sellers, who’s made quite a name for herself writing about desert heroes, and this book will show you why. It’s a terrific marriage-of-convenience story, and it’s also a springboard for our twelve-book ROMANCING THE CROWN continuity, which starts next month. Kylie Brant’s Hard To Resist is the next in her CHARMED AND DANGEROUS miniseries, and this steamy writer never disappoints with her tales of irresistible attraction. Honky-Tonk Cinderella is the second in Karen Templeton’s HOW TO MARRY A MONARCH miniseries, and it’s enough to make any woman want to run away and be a waitress, seeing as this waitress gets to serve a real live prince. Finish the month with Mary McBride’s newest, Baby, Baby, Baby, a “No way am I letting my ex-wife go to a sperm bank” book, and reader favorite Lorna Michaels’s first Intimate Moments novel, The Truth About Elyssa.
See you again next year!
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Born Royal
Alexandra Sellers
For Michael Hunter Lewis Sellers Fairweather my incomparable, much-loved nephew and godson who is also a firstborn son
U donad, U donad, U donad—U!
(He knows, He knows, He knows—He!)
—from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Bound by the legacy of their fathers, six Firstborn Sons are about to discover the stuff true heroes—and true love—are made of….
Sheik Rashid Kamal: To bring peace and prosperity to Montebello and Tamir, Prince Rashid must unite the Kamal and Sebastiani kingdoms. First order of business—pull out all the stops to claim the pregnant Princess Julia as his enamored bride. Let the games begin!
Princess Julia Sebastiani: Sheik Rashid Kamal is a dangerously attractive enemy for whom she has already proven she has a fatal weakness. Now the high-handed prince has gone too far by making a public marriage declaration without her consent! This willful princess will wed for love—or not at all….
Sheik Ahmed Kamal: As he rejoices in his heroic son’s triumphant return home, he realizes it won’t be long before Rashid receives the throne. But for now, a peaceful trade treaty between Montebello and Tamir must be forged. And to further that agenda, the mysterious origin of their bitter animosity needs to be unraveled.
The Noble Men: Over the years, they have taken calculated risks and sacrificed their own personal happiness to achieve their global pursuits. Has the time finally come to pass their legacy on to their firstborn sons?
A note from beloved author Alexandra Sellers:
Dear Reader,
I was delighted to be invited to write the final book in the Intimate Moments FIRSTBORN SONS series. It’s the first continuity I’ve taken part in, and I found it both difficult and exciting. I have really enjoyed collaborating with the other writers in the series, especially Virginia Kantra. Virginia and I co-wrote scenes in each of our books between the two princess sisters, Julia and Christina. That was good fun.
Born Royal is my thirtieth novel for Harlequin/Silhouette, and my eleventh sheikh fantasy. Readers familiar with me know that my passion for all things Middle Eastern dates back to my early childhood, when, in the tiny prairie town where I spent a very difficult two years, I discovered a book called The Arabian Nights. I began to dream of flying carpets, handsome princes and genies in magic lamps. I’ve never stopped.
Since then I have traveled to some of those places I dreamed of, and have been privileged to explore, a little, their languages and religion, history and wisdom. It is a world as deep, as rich and as many-layered as that magical book—which I still treasure—promised me it would be. I hope that in my own stories I am able to communicate to you some part of the fascination and wonder of the East that has enchanted me and enriched my life for so long.
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Prologue
Prince Rashid ibn Ahmed Kamal stood on the broad balcony of the palace smiling and waving as the love-roar of the crowd swelled almost to pain level and broke over his head.
Below the balcony, the huge, leafy square writhed ecstatically in the burning sunshine as the people cheered, shouted, laughed, sang, danced and kissed each other.
He was home. Their handsome Crown Prince, whom they had mourned as lost forever, had returned. And better still, he had returned a hero. As the man who had organized and masterminded the downfall of that band of murderous terrorists, the one so fearful no one liked to say its full name, but only called them Al Ikhwan. The Brothers.
Now the people need not live in fear of the threatened chemical attack. It was said he had found the actual laboratory where the filthy poisons were being made, and that the entire store of the evil virus had been destroyed.
No one needed to be told where the first attack would have occurred. But a country storyteller, who had a sizable group entranced with his version of the prince’s great exploit, told them anyway.
“Of course they would have attacked here in the islands of Tamir first,” he asserted in a terrible voice, and his audience gasped and nodded. “Such monsters as these are drawn to destroy truth and nobility, for they know instinctively there is no co-existence between evil and good.
“And for a certainty they would have come here, to the big island—and to this city, Medina Tamir. Perhaps even in this very square they would have released their foul poison, hoping to destroy the Kamal family and put their own puppet in Ahmed’s place!”
His audience of mostly city dwellers shuddered in horrified delight. The country people had a point—this was much more entertaining than the dry facts in newspapers or on television.
“And only when we died would the world have been alerted and begun to take action,” the turbaned, white-bearded ancient said, conveniently omitting the fact that the mission Prince Rashid had headed had been a joint one involving many nations. “Too late for Tamir. But what need have we of