Crown Jewels (Off-Limits Romance #1)(87)

Then I hear a door open, and their voices are loud enough to let me know they’re in my room.

“Oh, there he is. Come here, kitty. Come to mummy.”

Hard arms pick me up. I hear a chuckle as I’m thrown over a painfully hard shoulder.

“Playing possum, are we?”

I don’t speak or move.

“We’ve got a new idea for you.” I’m feeling hopeful, praying that they’re taking me somewhere more public than a room inside a house.

That is—until I hear the ocean. Feel the rough floor of what smells just like a boat.





THIRTY-THREE Liam





Gone—without a word.

I can’t say I blame her.

She must have been upset, because although she took her cat and most of her belongings, she left several things, as if she rushed off without thinking.

The first thing I do when I realize is text Heath. I have to find her.

‘I’m on it, bro.’ That’s what he texts me back.

Heath tells Ain, and Ain comes back from vacation a few hours after I notice that she’s left. He checks on me, tells me he’s proud of me—apparently his sense of smell was better than I knew—and goes into his office to track down her rental car and flight plans.

Meanwhile, I miss two calls from Drucilla.

I know I should answer, but I feel like shit, and I don’t want to go meet her right now. If they tell the press, so be it. I already told the one person whose opinion matters. What’s the rest of the world?

At some point, the story will get out: I’m not a prince. My mother cheated on my father with a longtime family friend, my father’s friend, one Ronald Gibson, who at this point is a leader in our country’s parliament. He and his daughter, Drucilla, my secret half sister and childhood playmate, have been blackmailing me for more than half a year now, threatening to have my bio father, Ronald, take a DNA test proving he’s my sire and go to the press with it.

Why, I asked Dru long ago.

She smiled and said, “Why not?”

Dru and I hooked up one time when we were younger, and instead of being disgusted like I am now that I know who she really is, she seems to love our perverse history.

I hate her more than I have ever hated anyone except my biological father, Ronald. Which is saying something, given how King Gregory began to treat me after my mother and sister died.

I’ve spent a lot of time considering my options, one of which has always been to simply have Dru and Ronald killed. I know it’s what a lot of people in my position would do, if not in modern times, certainly in centuries past. And at least a time or two I’ve wished I could. That I could just remove my conscience, set it on a shelf and let it collect dust.

I never could. And so I’ve made my peace now. Soon, people will know. I’ll lose Haugr Castle, Pirate Island, all the other places where I made my childhood memories.

I tell myself, as I sit behind my desk and guzzle lemon water, that it will be okay. Everything will be okay once I find Lucy and apologize.





The call comes at a little after midnight. I’m asleep at my desk, weighted by the smallish dose of Librium I’m still taking for the next two days and drooling on my elbow.

My phone’s screen says HEATH.

“Hey, man. Bad news. We tracked Lucy’s rental to that strip of public beach a couple miles away.”

My mind buzzes. “And?”

“The cat is in there going nuts.”

“And?”

“She’s not there. Ain’s had people looking for an hour—you missed calls from him; he’s down there now—but no one has found her. Liam…it looks like she may have had a boat strapped to the top of her vehicle.”

“A boat? What do you mean?”

“Some kind of canoe, based on the way the rope is tied.”

“What rope?”

“There’s rope around the rack on top of her Range Rover.”

I close my eyes, rubbing them hard. “What are you talking about, Heath? That doesn’t make a fucking bit of sense.”

“I’m not saying that it does, man. I just wanted to see if I could wake you with a phone call. I was going to call Mora if not, have her go get you up.”

“Do you have the cat?” I ask him.

“What?”

I sit up. “Did you get her cat out of the car? You can’t leave cats in cars.”

“I don’t know. I’m not there.”

“Where are you?”

“Ain and I are going to the guard. To report her missing.”

“Is her car unlocked?”

“I don’t think so,” he says.

I grab my tool kit and on my way out of the castle, holding it in one hand while I blow up Lucy’s phone with my other.

When I get to the beach Heath described, I feel ill. That’s her car. It doesn’t take me long to fuck a window up and get inside. I pull the cat into my lap.

“Where is she, kitty? Where’d your mum go?”

Grey paws my shoulder, then nuzzles my cheek. And I smell it: Chanel Grand Extrait. I fucking hate that scent. I’d know it anywhere. Even in hell, where it seems I now may be.





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