A Royal Temptation

by Charlene Sands

  Portia slipped her hand in Juan Carlos’s and they watched the scene play out. James had one child already and Bella was proving to be a fantastic stepmother to one-year-old Maisey. And now, their family was expanding. Juan Carlos was glad that Bella and James had settled in Alma and James was back playing professional soccer—football as they called it here—and winning games for the home team. Things had been rough there for a while between James and his father, oil tycoon Patrick Rowling. Patrick had picked James’s twin brother, Will, to marry Bella. The arranged marriage was an antiquated notion to say the least, and Bella was having none of it. James was the man for her. And then Will had also found love with Catalina Ibarra, his father’s maid. The whole thing had sent Patrick into a nosedive but he was finally coming around and softening to the idea that perhaps his sons could make up their own minds about their love life and beyond.

  “Now that we’re all here together, I have good news to share with all of you,” Juan Carlos said. He couldn’t help his ever-present smile from intensifying. He had his family’s attention now. “I’m told by Alex and the prime minister that Alma has never seen a better year. The country is well on its way to being financially solvent again. Thanks in part to our efforts here, I might add. With the discovery of the lost art treasure, tourism will climb, especially once we put those pieces on public display. We are working to that end. Since the state of Alma is now finally secure once again, a sizable portion of the Montoro fortune has been repatriated. It has been decided that the money will fund a new public school system named for my grandmother Isabella Salazar.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Bella said.

  Rafe and Gabe slapped him on the back with congratulations.

  “If it wasn’t for Tia Isabella’s determination to see the Montoros return to Alma in her lifetime—and those letters I discovered—none of this would even be possible,” Bella said.

  It was true. Juan Carlos wouldn’t be king, he would never have met Portia and who knew what would have happened among his other family members. “We owe my grandmother quite a bit.”

  They took a solemn moment to give thanks to Isabella.

  And then the orchestra music started up again.

  Couples paired off and moved onto the dance floor.

  Little Maisey Rowling had woken up from her nap. Wearing pink from head to toe, she was sitting on the front porch playing with the palace kittens alongside Portia’s maids in attendance, Jasmine and Maria Ramon.

  “I owe those two women a dance,” Juan Carlos said to Portia. “If not for them, you may never have come back to Alma. Actually, I owe them much more than that.”

  “Yes, but first, my love, I have a wedding gift for you. I hope it will match the one you gave me. I cannot wait another second to give it to you.”

  “Okay,” he said, eager to please her. “I’m yours.”

  She tugged him to the back of the house, to the garden area that was in full bloom, despite the late fall climate. Oh, the miracle of royalty that made all things possible. She sat him down on the white iron bench and then took a seat beside him.

  “Juan Carlos,” she began, taking his hands and holding them in her lap. “You have given me your love, a new family and a beautiful palace to live in.”

  “You deserve all those things, sweetheart.”

  “But there’s one thing missing. One thing I want and hope you want, too.”

  He had no clue where she was going with this. He had everything he wanted. “Have you found another brood of cats to adopt?”

  She shook her head and grinned, her eyes beaming with the same glow he’d seen in Bella’s. His heart stopped beating. He gathered his thoughts and came to the only conclusion he could.

  “You’re not?”

  She nodded now, bobbing her head up and down rapidly. “I am.”

  “We’re going to have a baby?”

  “Yes!”

  A glance at her belly gave him no indication. “When?”

  “Seven months from now.”

  Carefully, he pulled her onto his lap. “I’m...I’m...going to be a father.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  He curved his hand around her nape and brought his lips close to hers. “You’re going to be a mother.”

  “Yes.”

  The idea filled him with pride. His Portia would give him a child. It was the best gift in the world. His mouth touched hers reverently and he tasted the sweetness of her lips. “I couldn’t be happier, sweetheart.”

  “I’m glad. Our baby will grow up in a home filled with love. Neither one of us knew our parents for very long. But now, we will have a family of our own. It’s quite unexpected...”

  “It’s all I’ve ever wanted, Portia. For us to be a family.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. His throat constricted. His emotions had finally caught up to him today. His life had come full circle—the orphaned boy who would be king, married to his heart’s desire, was to have a family all his own now.

  There was no better kingdom on earth than for a man to share his life with the woman he loved.

  He and Portia were two of a kind.

  Almas Iguales.

  Equal souls.

  * * * * *

  DYNASTIES: THE MONTOROS

  One royal family must choose between love and destiny!

  Don’t miss a single story!

  MINDING HER BOSS’S BUSINESS

  by Janice Maynard

  CARRYING A KING’S CHILD

  by Katherine Garbera

  SEDUCED BY THE SPARE HEIR

  by Andrea Laurence

  THE PRINCESS AND THE PLAYER

  by Kat Cantrell

  MAID FOR A MAGNATE

  by Jules Bennett

  A ROYAL TEMPTATION

  by Charlene Sands

  If you’re on Twitter, tell us what you think of Harlequin Desire! #harlequindesire.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from FALLING FOR HER FAKE FIANCÉ by Sarah M. Anderson.

  We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Desire story.

  You want to leave behind the everyday! Harlequin Desire stories feature sexy, romantic heroes who have it all: wealth, status, incredible good looks...everything but the right woman. Add some secrets, maybe a scandal, and start turning pages!

  Enjoy six new stories from Harlequin Desire every month!

  Connect with us on Harlequin.com for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!

  Other ways to keep in touch:

  Harlequin.com/newsletters

  Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks

  Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks

  HarlequinBlog.com

  http://www.harlequin.com/harlequinexperience

  Falling for Her Fake Fiancé

  by Sarah M. Anderson

  One

  “Mis-ter Logan,” the old-fashioned intercom rasped on Ethan’s desk.

  He scowled at the thing and at the way his current secretary insisted on hissing his name. “Yes, Delores?” He’d never been in an office that required an intercom. It felt as if he’d walked into the 1970s.

  Of course, that was probably how old the intercom was. After all, Ethan was sitting in the headquarters of the Beaumont Brewery. This room—complete with hand-carved everything—probably hadn’t been redecorated since, well...

  A very long time ago. The Beaumont Brewery was 160 years old, after all.

  “Mis-ter Logan,” Delores rasped again, her dislike for him palatable. “We’re going to have to stop production on the Mountain Cold and Mountain Cold Light lines.”

  “What? Why?” Logan demanded. The last thing he could afford was another shutdown.

  Ethan had
been running this company for almost three months now. His firm, Corporate Restructuring Services, had beat out some heavy hitters for the right to handle the reorganization of the Beaumont Brewery, and Ethan had to make this count. If he—and, by extension, CRS—could turn this aging, antique company into a modern-day business, their reputation in the business world would be cemented.

  Ethan had expected some resistance. It was only natural. He’d restructured thirteen companies before taking the helm of Beaumont Brewery. Each company had emerged from the reorganization process leaner, meaner and more competitive in a global economy. Everyone won when that happened.

  Yes, thirteen success stories.

  Yet nothing had prepared him for the Beaumont Brewery.

  “There’s a flu going around,” Delores said. “Sixty-five workers are home sick, the poor dears.”

  A flu. Wasn’t that just a laugh and a half? Last week, it’d been a cold that had knocked out forty-seven employees. And the week before, after a mass food poisoning, fifty-four people hadn’t been able to make it in.

  Ethan was no idiot. He’d cut the employees a little slack the first two times, trying to earn their trust. But now it was time to lay down the law.

  “Fire every single person who called in sick today.”

  There was a satisfying pause on the other end of the intercom, and, for a moment, Ethan felt a surge of victory.

  The victorious surge was short-lived, however.

  “Mis-ter Logan,” Delores began. “Regretfully, it seems that the HR personnel in charge of processing terminations are out sick today.”

  “Of course they are,” he snapped. He fought the urge to throw the intercom across the room, but that was an impulsive, juvenile thing to do, and Ethan was not impulsive or juvenile. Not anymore.

  So, as unsatisfying as it was, he merely shut off the intercom and glared at his office door.

  He needed a better plan.

  He always had a plan when he went into a business. His method was proven. He could turn a flailing business around in as little as six months.

  But this? The Beaumont freaking Brewery?

  That was the problem, he decided. Everyone—the press, the public, their customers and especially the employees—still thought of this as the Beaumont Brewery. Sure, the business had been under Beaumont management for a good century and a half. That was the reason AllBev, the conglomerate that had hired CRS to handle this reorganization, had chosen to keep the Beaumont name a part of the Brewery—the name-recognition value was through the roof.

  But it wasn’t the Beaumont family’s brewery anymore. They had been forced out months ago. And the sooner the employees realized that, the better.

  He looked around the office. It was beautiful, heavy with history and power.

  He’d heard that the conference table had been custom-made. It was so big and heavy that it’d been built in the actual office—they might have to take a wall out to remove it. Tucked in the far corner by a large coffee table was a grouping of two leather club chairs and a matching leather love seat. The coffee table was supposedly made of one of the original wagon wheels that Phillipe Beaumont had used when he’d crossed the Great Plains with a team of Percheron draft horses back in the 1880s.

  The only signs of the current decade were the flat-screen television that hung over the sitting area and the electronics on the desk, which had been made to match the conference table.

  The entire room screamed Beaumont so loudly he was practically deafened by it.

  He flipped on the hated intercom again. “Delores.”

  “Yes, Mis—”

  He cut her off before she could mangle his name again. “I want to redo the office. I want all this stuff gone. The curtains, the woodwork—and the conference table. All of it.” Some of these pieces—hand carved and well cared for, like the bar—would probably fetch a pretty penny. “Sell it off.”

  There was another satisfying pause.

  “Yes, sir.” For a moment, he thought she sounded subdued—cowed. As if she couldn’t believe he would really dismantle the heart of the Beaumont Brewery. But then she added, “I know just the appraiser to call,” in a tone that sounded...smug?

  He ignored her and went back to his computer. Two lines shut down was not acceptable. If either line didn’t pull double shifts tomorrow, he wouldn’t wait for HR to terminate employees. He’d do it himself.

  After all, he was the boss here. What he said went.

  And that included the furniture.

  * * *

  Frances Beaumont slammed her bedroom door behind her and flopped down on her bed. Another rejection—she couldn’t fall much lower.

  She was tired of this. She’d been forced to move back into the Beaumont mansion after her last project had failed so spectacularly that she’d had to give up her luxury condo in downtown Denver. She’d even been forced to sell most of her designer wardrobe.

  The idea—digital art ownership and crowdsourcing art patronage online by having buyers buy stock in digital art—had been fundamentally sound. Art might be timeless, but art production and collection had to evolve. She’d sunk a considerable portion of her fortune into Art Digitale, as well as every single penny she’d gotten from the sale of the Beaumont Brewery.

  What an epic, crushing mistake. After months of delays and false starts—and huge bills—Art Digitale had been live for three weeks before the funds ran out. Not a single transaction had taken place on the website. In her gilded life, she’d never experienced such complete failure. How could she? She was a Beaumont.

  Her business failure was bad enough. But worse? She couldn’t get a job. It was as if being a Beaumont suddenly counted for nothing. Her first employer, the owner of Galerie Solaria, hadn’t exactly jumped at the chance to have Frances come back, even though Frances knew how to flatter the wealthy, art-focused patrons and massage the delicate egos of artists. She knew how to sell art—didn’t that count for something?

  Plus, she was a Beaumont. A few years ago, people would have jumped at the chance to be associated with one of the founding families of Denver. Frances had been an in-demand woman.

  “Where did I go wrong?” she asked her ceiling.

  Unsurprisingly, it didn’t have an answer.

  She’d just turned thirty. She was broke and had moved back in with her family—her brother Chadwick and his family, plus assorted Beaumonts from her father’s other marriages.

  She shuddered in horror.

  When the family still owned the Brewery, the Beaumont name had meant something. Frances had meant something. But ever since that part of her life had been sold, she’d been...adrift.

  If only there was some way to go back, to put the Brewery under the family’s control again.

  Yes, she thought bitterly, that was definitely an option. Her older brothers Chadwick and Matthew had walked away and started their own brewery, Percheron Drafts. Phillip, her favorite older brother, the one who had gotten her into parties and helped her build her reputation as the Cool Girl of Denver high society, had ensconced himself out on the Beaumont Farm and gotten sober. No more parties with him. And her twin brother, Byron, was starting a new restaurant.

  Everyone else was moving forward, pairing off. And Frances was stuck back in her childhood room, alone.

  Not that she believed a man would solve any of her problems. She’d grown up watching her father burn through marriage after unhappy marriage. No, she knew love didn’t exist. Or if it did, it w
asn’t in the cards for her.

  She was on her own here.

  She opened up a message from her friend Becky and stared at the picture of a shuttered storefront. She and Becky had worked together at Galerie Solaria. Becky had no famous last name and no social connections, but she knew art and had a snarky sense of humor that cut through the bull. More to the point, Becky treated Frances like she was a real person, not just a special Beaumont snowflake. They had been friends ever since.

  Becky had a proposition. She wanted to open a new gallery, one that would merge the new-media art forms with the standard classics that wealthy patrons preferred. It wasn’t as avant-garde as Frances’s digital art business had been, but it was a good bridge between the two worlds.

  The only problem was Frances did not have the money to invest. She wished to God she did. She could co-own and comanage the gallery. It wouldn’t bring in big bucks, but it could get her out of the mansion. It could get her back to being a somebody. And not just any somebody. She could go back to being Frances Beaumont—popular, respected, envied.

  She dropped her phone onto the bed in defeat. Right. Another fortune was just going to fall into her lap and she’d be in demand. Sure. And she would also sprout wings.

  True despair was sinking in when her phone rang. She answered it without even looking at the screen. “Hello?” she said morosely.

  “Frances? Frannie,” the woman said. “I know you may not remember me—I’m Delores Hahn. I used to work in accounting at—”

  The name rang a bell, an older woman who wore her hair in a tight bun. “Oh! Delores! Yes, you were at the Brewery. How are you?”

  The only people besides her siblings who called her Frannie were the longtime employees of the Beaumont Brewery. They were her second family—or at least, they had been.

  “We’ve been better,” Delores said. “Listen, I have a proposal for you. I know you’ve got those fancy art degrees.”

  In the safety of her room, Frances blushed. After today’s rejections, she didn’t feel particularly fancy. “What kind of proposal?” Maybe her luck was about to change. Maybe this proposal would come with a paycheck.