Taming the Prince. Elizabeth Bevarly

country because her queen commanded it. Favor equaled duty when it came to Her Majesty.

      Nevertheless, locating the man was going to be a bit of a task since Sara had been given only a sketchy description of him to go by: brown hair, blue eyes, six-foot-two, one hundred eighty pounds. So she had been able to deduce that he was a largish man, though certainly that wasn’t so unique for this vast country of America. Most men here seemed to be big and boisterous and very nearly overwhelming, she had noticed during her four-plus-year stay. Oh, and Shane Cordello was supposed to be rather good-looking, too—according to his brother, at any rate—which ought to make him oh so easy to spot here in Los Angeles where everyone seemed to be beautiful.

      Not much to go on, Sara thought, not for the first time since receiving the queen’s phone call this morning. This morning, she marveled again, thinking about how much her circumstances had changed in scarcely twelve hours’ time. Sara had barely had time to explain the situation to her professors, assuring them she’d return to her classes five days hence, bright and early Monday morning, and would they be so kind as to give her her assignments in advance so that she wouldn’t lose too much time.

      Now, armed with both her homework and what few belongings she would need for a long weekend in her homeland, Sara waited patiently to meet her destiny. Or, at the very least, to meet Shane Cordello. She was also armed with a handy visual aid, a big white sign, hand-lettered with the word Cordello, to help her in finding that destiny. Or, at the very least, in finding that man. At present, she held the sign waist-high before her, obscuring the simple, camel-colored straight skirt she had coupled with her white blouse and pink cardigan. She boosted the sign a bit higher, at chest height now, hoping that Mr. Cordello wasn’t one of those handsome, but not-too-bright males whom one met so frequently in this city.

      Not that Sara had spent much time with any men, bright or dim, during her four-and-a-half-year sojourn in this country. College courses did rather limit one’s social life, after all, particularly when one was pursuing her master’s degree… At least they did if one was serious.

      She checked her watch again. Heavens, five minutes had passed this time between glances. She must be vastly enjoying herself now.

      “Miss Wallington?”

      Sara glanced up at the summons—rather a long way up, too, she couldn’t help noticing, which, she supposed, shouldn’t surprise her, since she scarcely topped five-foot-two herself—into the face of the man who had just petitioned her. And she immediately realized that brown hair and blue eyes and rather good-looking was a description that didn’t do the man justice. His hair was, in fact, the color of rich, velvety espresso, and his eyes were an incisive cobalt-blue, reminding her of the darkest depths of the ocean. As for good-looking… Oh, my. That phrase did more than a mere injustice to a man who was, in fact, quite extraordinarily, splendidly, unspeakably, dazzlingly, breathtakingly… She sighed deeply in spite of herself.

      Magnificent. That was what Shane Cordello was. In his snug blue jeans and white V-neck T-shirt beneath a faded denim jacket, his low-heeled books scraping over the floor as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the man made every system Sara had—and some she hadn’t been aware of possessing until this very moment—go on absolute red alert. Never in her life had she encountered a man who made her mouth water. But as she watched his mouth hook into a crooked, wicked little smile, parts of her now—and not just her mouth, either—were feeling very…ah, liquid, indeed.

      And when Sara noticed all those changes—in both her body and her very psyche—and when she understood how Mr. Cordello’s mere physical presence in her general vicinity had turned her so readily and thoroughly into a volcano about to burst, the relief she had felt initially upon his arrival suddenly evaporated into… Well, into something else entirely. Something damp and steamy and hot, and altogether inappropriate for a woman who had been asked to perform a favor for her queen. And it simply would not do to experience a cumbersome sort of lust for the man one had been instructed to return to the queen unharassed. Lust, after all, was the one thing that prospective members of the Royal Intelligence Institute did not feel for their charges. It could only—would only—lead to trouble.

      “Mr. Cordello,” Sara greeted him with as much courtesy—and as little lust—as she could manage. “How delightful to finally make your acquaintance. Queen Marissa has told me much about you.”

      His expression, which had been rather open and affable before, suddenly changed then, to one of obvious wariness. “She told you about me, huh?” he asked.

      Sara nodded. “She said you were quite charming.”

      Actually, what Her Majesty had said was that Shane Cordello was a man who didn’t suffer fools lightly, but one might certainly translate that into charming—if one were frightfully generous about such things, and Sara did pride herself on being a generous person.

      “She said that?” Shane Cordello replied dubiously.

      “She did indeed,” Sara assured him, trying to quell the hot shudder that wound through her whenever he spoke in that rich, rhythmical baritone that very nearly hypnotized her into a narcotic stupor. American accents were so, ah, delightful.

      Oh, dear. She really must put a stop to these strange goings-on inside her this instant. “Now, then,” she continued in as stalwart a fashion as she could manage. Stalwart, she had always told herself, was a very good thing to be. Even if stalwartness wasn’t exactly the most potent boy-magnet in the world, it was still quite the virtue. One should never underestimate the power of a stalwart woman. Ever.

      “The jet has been made ready for our takeoff,” she said. “Shall we board? Queen Marissa couldn’t spare the official royal jet, of course, but she has sent one of the smaller jets. Our sixteen-hour flight to Penwyck will be ever so much more comfortable this way.”

      Of course, had Her Majesty sent the much larger royal jet, that flight time would have been cut nearly in half, and it would only be approximately ten hours that Sara would be forced to spend with Mr. Very Handsome, Very Interesting Cordello. Providing the larger vessel would have also made it possible for them to arrive in Penwyck at a decent hour, local time. But no. Sixteen hours it would be then, and local arrival time would be approximately… Oh, let her think for a moment… Add eight hours’ time difference…plus sixteen…carry the one… Eleven p.m. tomorrow, she finally calculated. Which wouldn’t be too frightfully indecent an hour, she supposed, if it weren’t for the fact that they were both bound to be exhausted from their sixteen-hour flight and wanting desperately to fall into bed.

      Fall into separate beds, she hastily qualified. Alone. Naturally, part of their flight time would be spent on the ground refueling and such, but she and Mr. Cordello would be confined to the very small jet even then. She didn’t want to risk losing him now that she had him by allowing him to wander around an airport for any length of time.

      Not that she had him, Sara quickly corrected herself. Not like…that. Not the way a woman traditionally thought of having a man. It wasn’t as if the man belonged to her, after all. Nor did she want him, she quickly reminded herself. Or any other man for that matter. But she did so want to keep Mr. Cordello within eyeshot, because if she lost the man who might be king, it would most definitely look bad on any potential résumé she might want to put together. And it went without saying that she would have to put together a résumé should she lose Mr. Cordello. Because there was no way the Royal Intelligence Institute would take her on if she bungled an assignment as simple as this.

      Sixteen hours, she marveled again, unable to look away from his—oh dear…very interested, she could tell—gaze. Sixteen hours on a nonstop—save brief stops for refueling—course across a continent and an ocean, when each of them clearly found the other…interesting. She was going to be trapped in extremely close confines with this extremely interesting man for sixteen hours.

      Of course, they wouldn’t be alone during that time, she reminded herself. There would be two pilots and two flight attendants aboard, as well. And the crew’s presence would go a long way toward keeping her in line and preventing her from doing anything rash. Something like, oh, say…leaping across the aisle and straddling Mr. Cordello’s