Her Cowboy Prince

by Madeline Ash

  Tipping her face down, she forced her hands into her lap. This was too real. Her skin stung. He was directly in front of her in a kind of earnest crouch, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever been asked to speak so honestly in her life.

  “And let’s be fair,” he added, a slight edge creeping into his voice. “I wasn’t the only one who left the bar with other people. You’d choose a stranger instead of me.”

  “Sometimes,” she said. But most of the time, she hadn’t invited those strangers upstairs. She’d just wanted Kris to drop the idea of her as anything more than a friend.

  “I hated watching you leave with another guy.”

  “I know.” God, the intensity of his stare across the bar on those nights. The hurt, the anger, the desire crackling in that blue gaze. “And I hated seeing you watching me leave.”

  “Then why—”

  “I’ve told you,” she snapped.

  “Because I’m your prince?” The question was coarse. “That doesn’t matter to me. Who the hell cares that you’re not high born? I’ve spent my life shoveling horse shit. I want to be with you, and I’m done pretending. If status is the only reason you’ve got, then get over it.”

  “Kris.” Gripping her hands together, she looked up. His temper flickered out and that cut the heart right out of her. “What are you really asking of me?”

  “Everything,” he said, soft and fierce.

  Oh, God. She might actually die from this.

  “In three months, you’re going to be King of Kiraly.”

  “Yes.” His features were severe, determined. “And when I recognized you in that laneway, you know what I thought? With you by my side, I might actually stand a chance of pulling this off.”

  And there it was—her weakest point.

  With you by my side.

  Everything strong inside her crumpled.

  “Stop,” she said, eyes pricking. “Just stop. Think. When you’re king, what will be expected of you?”

  Concern lined his features as he scanned her face.

  “And what expectation would that put on me?” she pressed.

  “I don’t expect anything from you.” He frowned. “You can still work for the royal guard.”

  “No. Kris. Please. You need to produce heirs.”

  Born with dignity and unquestionable descent.

  The blood left his face. “I need—”

  “And I’m never going to be the right person to help with that,” she said, words cracking.

  A seal broke inside her. Sorrow flooded to her edges, then rose rapidly to swallow her heart.

  “Oh,” he said.

  He stared at her, desolate, like a man with one second left on the clock, faced with an impossible puzzle that he’d have no hope of solving even with all the time in the world.

  “Oh,” he said again, quieter.

  They ate dinner in excruciating silence.

  Frankie pretended to sleep with her back to Kris. Her hands were sweating and she couldn’t stop shaking. That had been too close. This wasn’t about being common. If it was, she’d have unraveled at his reckless disregard of royal expectation.

  No. Frankie Cowan was not a rags-to-riches story the people would celebrate.

  Journalists knew how to dig into the past until they drew blood, and they would smear hers across headlines. How far back would they go? High school? Elementary school? Would they drain her upbringing dry until her own mother spoke out against her? Or worse. What if they found her father?

  It’d be the end of her.

  Queen Consort—or Queen of Cons?

  Frankie had been born in the squalid corner of her father’s crimes and raised to stay there. Her mother used to mutter that Frankie was just like him. Quick-minded, fiery, with a pretty face that disguised a leech’s mouth.

  And her father’s mouth was always open, sucking at the susceptibility of strangers.

  Kira City was his most loyal accomplice. For him, it attracted the global elite. It beckoned with a picturesque mountain-scape and glacial lake for swimming and boating, and shoreside parties; it gestured invitingly to high-end hotels and restaurants and boutique stores. A visiting millionaire or tycoon or socialite could enter the wealthy tourist precinct and find everything their privileged heart desired.

  Come and visit, the city sweet-talked. Play with me.

  Then her father played them.

  It was twisted, really, that some of the movies Frankie had watched to master her accent were Hollywood cons. Frivolous, inane bullshit—they glorified something that had filled her entire childhood with dread. Her father was charismatic, sure, but he was also truly frightening. The way his mind worked—the howling wasteland of his conscience. He never raised a hand against Frankie or her mother—but he’d never let them believe that he wouldn’t.

  She’d shuddered to be likened to him, yet had followed his every instruction.

  Summertime was peak con season. Her dad prowled like a cat in a field of flightless birds. At every turn, he pinned another mark with the badger game, or a dropped wallet scam, or swindled them during currency exchange. Add several long-con romance scams strategically spread across different hotels and it was a sun-drenched criminal frenzy.

  Like a good con man’s daughter, Frankie had perfected her roles. Every summer, they had become wealthy tourists from America, and in their tale of woe, his wife—Frankie’s mother—had either died the year before or abandoned them for another man. As a result, Frankie’s father had either been grieving or broken and betrayed, and could never quite believe how the single, late-forties, rich female target made his heart come alive again.

  Carefully selected targets. The stories and disguises were only part of the final act—the real play had been in the setup. He had taught Frankie how to sway the reluctant hand of digital privacy; how to stalk through data encryption and wave over her shoulder to broken firewalls. He’d browse upcoming hotel bookings like a man perusing prostitute listings, short-listing women who suited his perverted needs for wealth, single relationship status, and a tendency toward philanthropy.

  Her father had a suite of hotel managers in his pocket. Without ever being guests, he and Frankie had made use of the restaurants, lounges, and pools. As the cons had developed and the women fell for her father’s soft, hopeful heart, he’d start to send Frankie away to the hotel’s school holiday club—code for bugger off—and she’d go home to her mum and not know what to say. More than once Frankie had looked back to see him leading the woman to the hotel elevators, his hand already sliding over her ass. He’d con his way between their legs and into their trust, and once they’d made plans for the year ahead—discussed how it could work with Frankie’s schooling and his aggressive working hours—his trap would close.

  It had always been money for Frankie’s top-tier private-school fees. If her mother had been dead, a lucrative but poorly-timed investment had temporarily left him in the red. If he’d had a wicked ex-wife, she’d closed his accounts and his lawyers needed a couple of days to sort it out. And those school fees had always been due the next day.

  Funds transferred, the women had flown home and never heard from their gentle American lover again.

  Quicker games were his bread and butter. He’d coordinate extortion on rich married men and pull holiday rental scams using luxury apartments that he’d scouted as temporarily vacant. Somehow, despite it all, they had never seemed to get any richer.

  Frankie had been ten when her mother left for real. Everything had gotten worse. She had been trapped in thievery, making bad friends while he made worse enemies. He’d trained her good and proper, teaching her to read people, to play the right part, to misdirect their attention and move on.

  The summer she’d turned sixteen, he arranged her first long con. She’d prepared to age up a couple of years, but none of the trust-fund teens or cashed-up college boys even asked. A lifetime of masquerading among the wealthy had equipped her with the skills to pass, so she watched her tongue, crossed h
er legs at the ankle, and complained that her father wouldn’t top up her card until they landed in Portofino. She’d longingly pointed out designer sunglasses and handbags and soon, a mark fell for it, buying her little gifts, big gifts, and she was delighted, acting as if she wanted to kiss him but couldn’t quite work up the courage.

  The night before her mark was due to fly out, her father had loomed in Frankie’s bedroom doorway.

  “If he invites you upstairs tonight,” he’d said, “you go with him.”

  Sick with all the things wrong with that instruction, she’d been a full hour late to her date.

  The Burberry boy had invited her upstairs—and she’d gone with him. Afterward, he’d presented her with a diamond necklace and earring set in farewell and didn’t ask her to stay until morning. She’d thanked him, taken it, and never set foot in her father’s house again.

  Quite startling, the price losing her virginity had fetched at the right jeweler.

  The journalists wouldn’t share the rest of the story. That Frankie had stayed at the cheapest backpackers in Kiraly while she finished high school. That she’d sat alone atop The Scepter on the night she’d graduated, staring wet-eyed and hollow at the palace, and seen the spark of a better life twinkling in those grand windows.

  A position working in the palace—could that act as a pardon for her upbringing? The strict principles and integrity required to work for the royal family could reform her self-worth. She’d wanted to believe that she was capable of it, that she could become something good—and everything she’d done since that night had been working toward that goal.

  No, that wouldn’t interest the media. But standing at the king’s side after fooling him into friendship and convincing him to make her his queen?

  It would look like the greatest long con of her life.

  “Would you rather sleep for twelve hours solid every night, or sleep for six hours but wake up every hour and a half?” Kris’s question was quiet in the still, moonlit tent.

  He knew Frankie was awake. Her breathing hadn’t leveled since the lanterns had died.

  No response.

  Then, a slight repositioning on her bedroll. “Like, as a regular sleep cycle?”

  His fingers bunched. Her voice was hoarse, as if she’d been screaming.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Every night.”

  “How long do I wake up for in the second one?”

  “Ten minutes each time.” It took all his self-control to stay casual, because he hated that he hadn’t known what to say earlier. Hated that he hadn’t been prepared for it. Obviously, he’d be expected to produce heirs. Why hadn’t he braced himself and confronted that reality? He’d allowed himself to be distracted by training and meetings and royal murders instead of wrapping his head around what he’d really be asking of the woman who stood by his side.

  Heirs. Children. A family.

  Once his thoughts piled on the idea of that with Frankie, he couldn’t haul them off. God, the fiery-haired comets that would flare into their lives—

  But she either didn’t want or couldn’t have kids. The crack in her voice had betrayed it wasn’t a stance she held easily, but that was . . . well, it didn’t matter, did it? There was nowhere to go from there.

  “Ten minutes?” Frankie answered, still facing away. “Disrupted sleep can get—”

  “Please note, the twelve-hour sleep is impossible to disrupt.”

  “No alarm?” she asked.

  “No alarm.”

  He hated, hated, that it wouldn’t have been a game-changer back in Sage Haven, but here, now, he literally needed a life partner who would give him children. Mark had given up his sovereignty to ensure Darius and any children he and Ava had together would not be in line for the throne. Heirs were up to Kris. Goddamn it. It felt wrong to his core that his royal obligation meant he couldn’t grab hold of this woman now that she was within reach. Now that he knew she wanted him to hold her.

  “Well, twelve hours is useless.” Another shifting sound as she rolled onto her back. “I’d have to go to bed before dinner just to wake up in time for work.”

  He waited, sliding a hand under his head.

  “Six hours,” she decided. “But that was a sucky one.”

  He smiled. She’d cracked open earlier, empty as a hollow shell, but he could feel her resuming her form and coming back to him. “Would you rather only eat tacos or pizza?”

  “What?” She half sat up, sounding outraged. “What the hell impossible questions are these?”

  And she was back.

  “No answer?” He feigned innocence. “Your socks are about to get acquainted with my water bottle.”

  “Fine. Tacos. No. Pizza. Shit. Yes—tacos.”

  Kris grinned and rolled onto his side to face her, propping his head up in his hand.

  She did the same, without the grin, and their eyes met in the soft, silvery moonlight.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Her gaze dropped to the space between their bedrolls. “Hey.”

  “I’m sorry about earlier.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have another question. Not specific to you and me. About you in Sage Haven.”

  She didn’t turn away, but her hand rose to sit at the base of her throat. “Go ahead.”

  “You monitored our safety,” he said. “Was there—uh.” His heart rate jumped, and he could have sworn the air in the tent got hotter. Was he capable of angling for this subtly? “Were there any incidents behind the scenes?”

  Her brows dipped in a frown. “Not really. Sage Haven is a very low-key town.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Hmm.” She settled deeper onto her side, still wearing her jeans and a tank. He’d taken her lead and stayed fully dressed, minus his hat and boots. The only thing she’d taken off was her gun and holster, tucking them carefully beside her bedroll. “I guess there was Philip and his attempts to preserve the royal bloodline.” Kris stiffened, but her voice stayed casual, as if this wasn’t a critical wound between them. “He wanted your uncle Vinci to invite you boys to the palace where he could introduce you to suitable matches, curated to your tastes.”

  “Ew,” Kris said.

  Her lips slid upward. “He’d spoken to your father about the possibility, and apparently Erik had refused to put the idea to you three. I don’t know what Philip expected me to do about it, but I told him that even if he wrangled that invitation from Vinci, he could stuff it up his ass. You boys had zero need for curated matches. You lived in Montana—as far as I knew at the time, you’d always live there. He shouldn’t mess with your futures.”

  Kris smiled. “One conversation with you must take years off Philip’s life.”

  “You can talk.”

  Fair point. “Poor guy.”

  “He’s stronger than he looks,” she said. “I also did a spot of door knocking when I caught wind of close-minded muttering around town.” She paused. “You know, about Jones.”

  He sucked in a breath.

  “I didn’t catch them all,” she said more softly.

  Regret bit him at the guilt in her voice. “I shouldn’t have said that the other night. That you didn’t protect Tommy. That you should have stopped it from happening. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “No, you were right.” She frowned. “I wasn’t paying attention. I should’ve known those guys were in town. Should’ve noticed their gay-hate and aggression, and never let them out of my sight.”

  “Frankie,” he said, sitting up properly even as his lungs tightened. Was he really going to do this? Share the shame that had eaten him alive for three years? “You know that they came to the ranch before the attack.”

  Her frown shifted. “Yeah.”

  “I don’t—” Guilt lashed him for what he’d learned that night—for what he’d done. For the silence he’d kept since, refusing to distress his brothers and not knowing who else in the palace to trust. But he could trust Frankie. “They weren’t homophobes after Jona
h.”

  The air pressure in the tent seemed to drop. Frankie didn’t move, but her energy gathered, a storm rising, and his ears wanted to pop.

  “What does that mean?” she asked quietly.

  His throat was too dry to answer.

  She pushed herself up to sitting. “What are you saying?”

  “I—” He reached out and pulled her bedroll closer until it was flush against his. Voice low, he said, “I hate myself for what I’m about to tell you.”

  She looked startled. And close, very close. “Then spit it out.”

  “They didn’t ask me for Jonah’s address. They—” Self-loathing tried to silence him, but he barreled through it. “They had accents I didn’t recognize and asked about Erik Jaroka’s son.”

  Frankie swayed as shock hit her hard.

  “I lied. They clearly didn’t know Dad had triplets. I told them his name was Jonah and that he lived next door. Jonah was supposed to be working late at the bar. I thought it would give me time to call the sheriff, and get Mark from the stables and drive around there. But then—then . . .”

  Then Jonah hadn’t worked late—and Tommy had walked home with him. The group of men had caught up to them on the dark track between the ranch and Jonah’s property and beaten them both to within an inch of their lives.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” She was paler than moonlight. “Tell the sheriff?”

  “What could I say? Hey, fun fact: my brothers and I are princes from yonder, and I think that attack was intended for the three of us, not our friend? Not without blowing our identities and lives apart. The sheriff was all too happy to pass it off as a hate crime. Told me we should be thankful this was the first time.” Kris had wanted to throw the man’s desk against the wall and his bigoted skull along with it. “He said Tommy was in the wrong place at the wrong time—with the wrong kind of friend—and that Jonah should be more careful.”