Honky-Tonk Cinderella. Karen Templeton

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      “Wow.”

      Luanne whirled around to the source of the compliment, only to feel her heart about to explode out of her chest at the sight of Alek in a white dinner jacket and black bow tie, looking like something out of a James Bond movie.

      Then she swallowed, wishing she had something to grab on to. Like her sanity. She watched as Alek came up to her and said, “I come bearing gifts.”

      She froze. “Alek. I—”

      “—would be honored to wear your mother’s necklace tonight,” he murmured as he lifted a strand of perfectly matched pearls spaced with small, brilliant diamonds, which he smoothly draped around her neck.

      “Alek, I can’t accept this.”

      “You’re the mother of my child,” he whispered against her temple. “If I want to give you an occasional gift, that’s my prerogative.”

      She shook her head. “I can’t be bought, Alek.”

      His smile didn’t even waver as he leaned over, placed a soft kiss on her forehead. “Which makes the challenge all the sweeter,” he whispered.

      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

      Honky-Tonk Cinderella

      Karen Templeton

      MILLS & BOON

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      KAREN TEMPLETON,

      a Waldenbooks bestselling author, is the mother of five sons and living proof that romance and dirty diapers are not mutually exclusive terms. An Easterner transplanted to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she spends far too much time trying to coax her garden to yield roses and produce something resembling a lawn, all the while fantasizing about a weekend alone with her husband. Or at least an uninterrupted conversation.

      She loves to hear from readers, who may reach her by writing c/o Silhouette Books, 300 E. 42nd St., New York, NY 10017, or online at www.karentempleton.com.

      To our own little Chase, who was clearly a royal child in some other life, and to his four nearly grown big brothers, of whom we couldn’t be more proud if they had been.

      Contents

      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

      Epilogue

      Chapter 1

      He felt like an insect being scorched under a magnifying glass.

      Barely nine in the morning, and already the west-Texas sun seared through Alek’s knit shirt as he walked down the dust-filmed, airless street. Even on shaded porches, petunias drooped in their baskets, commiserating with the patches of bleached grass infecting otherwise tidy lawns, while dogs sprawled like dead things under whatever shelter they could find, dreaming, not of steak or rabbits, Alek imagined, but of cooling breezes.

      Hottest August on record, according to the woman at the quaint little bed and breakfast where he was staying. Just might be something to this global warmin’ business after all, she’d said, then told him the street he was looking for wasn’t but four blocks away, he couldn’t miss it. He walked slowly, squinting up through his sunglasses at hazed house numbers, uncomfortably aware of his loafers scuffing against the root-buckled pavement.

      No one had recognized him. Thank God. True, he was more filled out, his hair both darker and shorter than it had been during his twenty-four-hour sojourn in Sandy Springs more than eleven years before. But unlike his hitherto reclusive sister, Sophie, Prince Aleksander Vlastos of Carpathia wasn’t exactly unknown to the press. Not these days, at any rate. And Jeff Henderson had been the town’s fair-haired boy, especially with his string of Grand Prix wins last year—

      Up the street, a screen door slapped open. He stilled as a very pregnant woman, her dark, curly hair clipped up off her neck, came out onto the porch of a modest yellow-and-white two-story house huddled underneath a pair of ungainly mulberry trees. She paused to let out a half-grown, straw-colored pup too young to know how hot it was, then made her cumbersome, barefoot way down the gray steps. The dog tumbled down in front of her, nearly tripping her as she crossed to a hose neatly coiled by the outside spigot.

      He said her name, softly. Prayed for the strength to get through this.

      A sandwich of some sort clamped in one hand, she twisted on the water, then dragged the hose across the yard to a small flower bed, bending awkwardly to lay it among the wilted plants. Alek was still far enough away, his presence apparently camouflaged by the comfortless shade of a struggling cottonwood, that she hadn’t noticed him. His wrist, only recently sprung from a cast, complained; absently, he rubbed it.

      And watched.

      Too-thin arms protruded from a sleeveless white T-shirt underneath a pair of baggy, thigh-length overalls tenting over her bulging middle. Scraps of hair floated around