The Only King to Claim Her--An Uplifting International Romance Read online

  “Annick, protocol never stops me from anything.”

  She studied him. “No. I expect not.”

  She had done so much reading about him. And she wondered which bits and pieces were true. She wondered if he was half so...wicked as the tabloids claimed.

  And then she wondered why she was quite so interested. Yes, she had been prepared to offer her body to him. The very idea made her warm now. What would she have been if she had been free? What foods would she have liked? Would she have had a score of lovers by now?

  She turned her focus back to the food, but she could feel his eyes on her.

  “You must realize, Annick, that your plan will not work.”

  She looked at him again. “What?”

  “Adviser. Guard. These are not official titles. It is not a statement. It is not strong.”

  “And you think you can do better than this plan?”

  “I know I can. It isn’t enough to have me by your side. You want ‘the king’? I will be the king, Annick. But you will be my wife.”

  Millie Adams has always loved books. She considers herself a mix of Anne Shirley (loquacious but charming and willing to break a slate over a boy’s head if need be) and Charlotte Doyle (a lady at heart but with the spirit to become a mutineer should the occasion arise). Millie lives in a small house on the edge of the woods, which she finds allows her to escape in the way she loves best—in the pages of a book. She loves intense alpha heroes and the women who dare to go toe-to-toe with them (or break a slate over their heads).

  Books by Millie Adams

  Harlequin Presents

  The Kings of California

  The Scandal Behind the Italian’s Wedding

  Stealing the Promised Princess

  Crowning His Innocent Assistant

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Millie Adams

  The Only King to Claim Her

  For all who need strength to tackle the next battle:

  “There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.”

  —C. S. Lewis

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM CINDERELLA’S DESERT BABY BOMBSHELL BY LYNNE GRAHAM

  CHAPTER ONE

  MAXIMUS KING LOOKED across the ballroom at Arianna Lopez, who up until tonight had been a disgraced starlet working her way back into the good graces of society. Optics were everything in this age of social media. Constant visibility.

  Arianna had made the terrible mistake of being beautiful, rich, and seeming selfish. And so, had fallen out of favor with the clambering masses on the internet who saw her as a property belonging to them.

  And rehabilitating image was his business. Tonight had been a sterling success. The charity event was sparkling, and perfect. And she now looked more Madonna than whore.

  His job was done.

  She was the same shallow, ridiculous creature she’d been when they’d met two weeks ago. But now the world had forgotten her tantrum about the roses she was given not being entirely white, and so it didn’t matter what was in her heart.

  Only what people saw.

  Optics, after all, were everything.

  With every aspect of a person’s life available for public consumption nowadays, it had to be so.

  Perhaps it was why he took such great, perverse delight in using optics as his cover.

  For no one, not even his family, knew the truth about Maximus King.

  He straightened his tie and turned, beginning to walk out of the room. He heard the click of high heels behind him.

  He paused. He knew that it was Arianna; he had noted the sound her shoes made against the marble floor. No one ever took him off guard.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I thought that we might...leave together. After all, our working relationship was so satisfactory. I thought we might be able to...transition it.” She put one delicate, manicured hand on his shoulder, and her touch left him cold.

  But he smiled. That charming grin of the playboy that all the world took him to be. “Not tonight.”

  “Not tonight?” Her eyes widened. “I was under the impression you’re up for it every night.”

  He gave her his best, most practiced grin. Nothing to see here, just a playboy. Not a care in the world. “There’s already a woman waiting in my bed, sweetheart.” He winked for good measure. “You have to book early.”

  He turned and continued to walk out of the ballroom. His car was there at the front of the hotel waiting for him. He scanned the street, a habit. Then got into the vehicle, maneuvering through the San Diego streets, making his way back to his glittering mansion in the hills. He had a spectacular view of the ocean from the front, and the protection of the mountains in the back.

  Lots of windows.

  With bulletproof glass.

  Again, part of the facade. An appearance of vulnerability, of openness. Without actually offering it.

  He parked his car in front of the house and got out, using the fingerprint sensor to allow him entry into the home.

  And the moment he stepped into the darkened room, he felt something was off.

  He paused and reached into his suit jacket. He had a small gun there with a silencer. He always carried it.

  As he walked deeper into the house, he heard nothing. Rather, he sensed a ripple of disturbance in the air. He had learned to listen to his gut. It was the difference between life and death. And he was still alive.

  “I would quite rather you did not shoot me.”

  The voice coming from the darkness was feminine, accented and sweet.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  He heard a rustle of movement, coming from inside the living room, and then he saw a figure, dressed in white, moving toward him. She stepped into a shaft of moonlight that filtered in from the windows that faced the sea. Small, with long blond hair and a round, pale face, he could not make her features out in the dim light.

  “I am Princess Annick, formerly of the lower dungeon. Lately of the palace proper.”

  Something echoed inside of him.

  “Annick,” he repeated.

  He knew the name Annick. Princess Annick.

  “Who sent you?”

  “I sent me,” she said. “A perk, I suppose, of being free. And I am free.” She made a small sound that might’ve been a laugh. “Peculiar, that. I am not accustomed to it.”

  “You’re the Princess of Aillette, correct?” He knew.

  He didn’t need her to confirm. He’d taken an assignment there only a year ago. That meant he’d learned the history of the country and he would not forget it. He took his work seriously, and that meant he didn’t go in and perform the task unless he was quite clear on what was being done.

  As far as the US government was concerned, there was no Maximus King enlisted in their ranks. His work, and any trail that could be traced back to him, was so coded it w
ould take a mastermind to track him down.

  Granted, he had always known it was possible. Hence the bulletproof glass.

  But he still could not quite figure out how this woman was here, now, and with full knowledge of both his lives.

  “Oui,” she said. “It is me.”

  “I have already done a service for your country, Annick. I’m not certain why you are here.”

  “Oh, it is in regard to that service, Mr. King.”

  “I don’t do follow-up visits.”

  “Ah, but you see, you have created a problem.”

  “Removing dictators from power is the solution. Not the problem.”

  “What of the vacuum that is left behind?”

  “Not my responsibility.”

  “Eh,” she said. “Then what is?”

  “Just as I said. I receive orders from military intelligence. I gather a team, or simply myself, depending on the situation. I carry out orders. I leave. I assume that the government sends a crew in after to handle the rest.”

  “Ha! Lip service at best,” she said. “Three months of transitional assistance and then what? Gone. I am left with few resources, and little path to rule a country that still scarcely believes I am mentally well enough to rule. Though I believe I have been perfectly wonderful in the year since I have begun to rule.”

  “You claim to have few resources, and yet here you are.”

  “I am very sneaky,” she said. “And that comes from many years of imprisonment and secret plotting for how I might make amends when I was released.”

  “Were you not complicit in the regime?”

  “I was certainly not. As I said, I was primarily ensconced in the lower dungeon. I was trotted out as a figurehead on rare occasions. Proof of life and all. And I confess, if I have one weakness it is that I do care a bit for my life. I did not wish to be dead.”

  “A common wish,” he said.

  “Quite.”

  “So what is it you want, Annick? Other than to not be dead.”

  She looked up at him, and for a moment, he thought he saw her falter. For a moment, he saw vulnerability. “I would like for you to come back to Aillette with me.”

  “No.”

  “You have not even heard my proposition.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “You should hear my proposition, I think.”

  “You are perhaps overrating your proposition. I have so much here,” he said, indicating the mansion that he did not care about at all. He was dead inside. And when you were dead inside, you did not fear death, not overmuch. But Annick did not need to know that. Annick only needed to know what the rest of the world knew about him. Though she did know a few things, which he found disturbing. She knew that he was responsible for the death of the dictator of Aillette.

  Annick had joined his two lives together.

  A problem.

  But he was not in the business of dispatching small women.

  It was only ever those who deserved it. Only ever those who had committed great and terrible atrocities. He did not consider himself to be a good man, but he was a man looking for a way to balance the scales in the world.

  To try and fix what he had not managed to fix all those many years ago.

  And nothing would bring Stella back.

  He remained, she was gone and it did not fix itself, no matter how many deserving people he took out of the world. But he considered it his payment.

  A way to try and at least put some sort of balance out into the universe.

  Annick looked at him and lifted a shoulder. “I require a small thing. I need you to return to my country with me. To act as my guard.”

  * * *

  She had successfully silenced the brute.

  She had done a decent amount of research into Maximus King before stealing away to San Diego to confront him. He was a fascinating character. She found she was not frightened of him, though she perhaps should be. But she was not easily frightened.

  For her entire family had been lost to her as a child, and she had been trotted in and out of the dungeon ever since. Educated, made to appear somewhat civilized.

  They thought she had been made loyal.

  But she had been lying, for all her life, out of a sense of self-preservation. And now she finally had a chance to make up for it all. Now she had a chance to finally make a difference. To make the years of farce worthwhile.

  She just had to convince this playboy, who she was given to believe was a secret assassin, to become her protector.

  She needed a man by her side. This was the problem.

  Annick was a realist. You could not live ten years as a prisoner without being a realist. The world was harsh. And nobody cared if you were a child. Nobody cared when there was power to be had.

  Annick had been forced to play the part of silent figurehead to a country that she loved, to stand beside men who made her burn with hatred and smile. So that for all the world to see, Aillette was a functioning government.

  It was not.

  Her people were badly treated.

  Reform. Revolution.

  Those had been the rallying cries of the men who had stormed the palace and destroyed her family.

  It had been none of those things.

  And now that she was back in power she would see that her people were never harmed again. She needed his protection. For her people, not so much for her.

  Dangerous men did not scare her.

  She had made a bargain with herself when dealing with such men for many years now. Making a bargain with a man such as this bothered her not at all.

  “You wish me to return to Aillette with you?”

  “I more than wish it. I command it.”

  “Or?”

  “I will think nothing of exposing your identity.”

  “You see, in order for that to concern me,” he said, his voice hard, “I would have to care a great deal more for my life than I do.”

  He was bluffing. At least, she was counting on this being a bluff. If it was not, then she might have a little trouble.

  But he was. Surely.

  This was the part she’d known she must steel herself for. Threats made her stomach shake. She did not wish to issue them. But she would do what she must.

  “Your sister Violet? Who is a Princess, I believe, in Monte Blanco. What would become of her and her country, of her husband, if the world found out that her brother was an assassin?”

  His eyes went sharp. Good. “You are playing a dangerous game, Annick.”

  “Life is a dangerous game, is it not? And what of Minerva. Your sweet sister and her lovely children. Her husband. Your mother and father. What of them? If your identity was known, then their safety would be at risk.”

  “You dare threaten my family?”

  “They are not threats.” She shook her head. “I am merely presenting you with a piece of reality. It is not a threat—it is just true.”

  “The end result of your truth is that innocent people, innocent children, may die.”

  “Innocent people, innocent children, have died in my country already,” she said. “And if I cannot successfully wrest control here, do I not risk another revolution? An invasion from my neighbors? Yes, I think I do. I know I do. I am not open to such risk-taking.”

  “And yet you have taken a risk coming here.” He reached into his pocket and took a device out, and with a flick of his wrist, the lights came on.

  She blinked against the invasive brightness. She had seen pictures of him, but they did not do him justice. He was a very large man, broad, with dark brown hair.

  His face was handsome. Uncommonly so. She had never seen a man with quite such a competent scaffolding. A strange thing, human beauty. For it was just an arrangement of features and skin placed over bone in a particular
fashion.

  Yet his was quite striking.

  And it made a sensation stir low in her belly. One that was foreign to her. It reminded her a great deal of fear, but it was not that. She was not afraid. Then she noticed that in one of his hands he still held the gun. The light revealed the weapon she had known was there all along.

  Though she had the sense just then that the true weapon was the man himself.

  “Please do not shoot me.”

  “I’ve no desire to shoot you. Therefore, to please us both—you and your desire to not be dead, me and my desire to not shoot a woman—I suggest you leave, and forget this conversation ever occurred.”

  “I cannot. I cannot, because it is what must be done for my people. I have been over many solutions. Many. Are you a man who desires power? As my guard, as my...my right-hand man, you would be very powerful.”

  “No. If I desired power, don’t you think I would have filled one of the vacant positions I left behind already?”

  “And that is a strange thing,” she said. “Because most men do desire power, do they not?”

  “I suppose, to an extent. But then, I often wonder if such men have ever been up close to it.”

  “Yes, a good observation, I think. For power does not entice me, personally. It is only that I must take it, as is my responsibility. My birthright. All my family are dead.”

  “I’m sorry. But you have presented a scenario wherein my family might all be dead.”

  “It is not what I want, Maximus King. I hope you understand. What I want is for the safety of my country to be secured. What I want is for you to help steady the situation that you have created.”

  “Again, the situation was not mine.”

  “Whose?”

  “Your neighbors to the east, in Lackland. I believe they thought it better to depose the despot in power for their own reasons.”

  “Yes, for reasons likely of taking over. Which I do not want either. So, you can see the situation I find myself in. I need money. Would you not like to have this power?”

  “As I said, I am not overly enamored of power.”

  “Then why do you do it? Why do you do this...this insipid job you pretend to do? What is it, repairing the reputations of Hollywood stars? And you kill people for money.”