Holy Scoundrel (34 page)

Then found a chair in which to take down her hair, and examined the kitchen, aglow from a fire in the old stone hearth.

Sunnyledge—a haven—someday perhaps, a home.

*

The hell of it was, Reed Gilbride thought, rubbing the back of his neck, looking up at Sunnyledge, the house was so damned big, he could search for years and never find the truth of his birth. As for secrets, the place fairly reeked of them.

Even the cryptic note he had received added to Sunnyledge’s aura of mystery—a note that roused an anger, tempered oddly by hope. Such anger, he usually reserved for the people who gave him life and threw him away. And the hope? Well, that just made him madder ... until Sennett killed expectation by saying the note must be a hoax. The solicitor said he’d seen more than one, worded exactly the same way. He also suggested that a Barrington by-blow had no claim, here.

Still, Reed could not give up. As a child, he would have settled for knowing who his parents might have been. Now he bloody well wanted to know why he had not been good enough for them to keep. Who gave a helpless babe to the Gilbrides, of all people?

He led his horse around back to find it shelter.

Why did the woman who raised him—if you could call it that—refuse to talk about Sunnyledge? Why act as if the devil would swallow her whole, if she did? Could this place hold the key to his past? Him, the Earl of Barrington, as the note suggested?

Reed mocked himself with a chuckle, raised his collar against a cold drizzle, settled Stealth in a rickety old stable, returned and picked up his satchel.

He might be a bastard in more ways than one, but with or without Sennett’s approval, he needed to find out.

Now that Boney had been defeated, and he’d retired from the Guards, Reed looked forward to a life of peace and quiet, and the occasional willing woman. But first he must search for his roots, this being the place to start.

“Damn, it’s cold.” As if fate heard, a blast of wind and rain smacked him in the face and opened the door with a flourish—the thunderous crack of it hitting the wall loud enough to wake the Sunnyledge ghost herself.

Reed saluted and stepped inside, a sense of inevitability filling him, as if he had arrived after a thirty-year sojourn, turned an invisible corner, and could not return the way he had come.

What was more, he did not want to.

In the kitchen, Chastity jumped at the thunderous sound, and shot to her feet. After a frozen heart-pounding beat, arms and legs prickling, she located a meat cleaver in a kitchen drawer and closed her trembling fingers around its smooth bone handle.

EXCERPT

By

Sandra Marton

His name was Khan ibn Zain al Hassad.

That was what he called himself though, in truth, his name was much longer and more elaborate.

In private, he winced at the sound of it. What man of the 21
st
century wanted to be known as His Royal Highness, Sheikh Khan ibn Zain al Hassad, Crown Prince of Altara, Defender of its Ancient and Honorable Throne, Protector of His People, Leopard of the Finarian Hills?

All those antiquated titles…

Yes, he was proud of them. The blood of kings and warriors ran within his veins. It was just that the titles often preceded him. People bowed and scraped before they knew if he was worth the bowing or scraping.

Not that any man was worth that.

His father had always frowned and said his attitude came of having had an American mother. Worse, he'd attended an American college, an American university. Two American universities, to be accurate.

In a sense, the old man had been right. Being half North American, Khan understood the need to move forward. Being half Altaran, he understood the importance of tradition.

Both parts of him knew that titles could be intimidating.

They could also make people fawn over him.

People who wanted to sell him things he didn't need or desire, who wanted to borrow money and, worst of all, people who wanted to bask in what they saw as his reflected glory.

Added to that were the all women who thought it was original to gaze at him from under lowered lashes and whisper
,
And are you a leopard in bed, my lord?

At eighteen, the question had been a challenge he'd been more than eager to prove, but he was thirty now, his father was dead, and his life was one of responsibility and discipline. He was a king, even if he still preferred to call himself a prince.

Khan's green eyes narrowed.

And there were fools out there who called him only a fantastically rich playboy.

It infuriated him.

He was the leader of his people.

Maybe rock stars enjoyed being sought after for their celebrity. All right, maybe he'd enjoyed it, too, years back, but he was older and wiser. Still, the gossip blogs an
d
Page Si
x
an
d
Peopl
e
and half a dozen other gushing magazines loved to send photographers after him, to write lies about him, and to call him…

The damned word set his teeth on edge.

They called hi
m
gorgeou
s
. Such a lurid word, one you might use to describe a sunset or a mountain vista but to ascribe it to a man…

His looks were meaningless.

In truth, they had nothing to do with him.

Take a father of a certain height, a certain body type, a man descended from conquerors. Combine his DNA with that of a stunning supermodel.

Unless something went very wrong, you'd end up with a man who looked like him.

Six foot two. Leanly muscled body. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs. Thick-lashed eyes the color of emeralds, square jaw, high cheekbones…

Add in all those anachronistic titles…

Khan's jaw tightened.

The only thing about him that was his, entirely his, was his fortune.

Forbe
s
called him one of the ten richest men in the world. He suspected it was true but the only reason it mattered was because, unlike his looks and his titles, he had earned that fortune on his own.

Well, he thought, smiling a little as he stood on the terrace of the Texas mansion calle
d
El Sueñ
o
, well, not exactly.

The truth was, his old friend Travis Wilde had earned it for him.

The only credit he could take was for having been smart enough to have handed Travis the relatively modest inheritance his mother had left him a decade ago.

"Do something with it," he'd said.

Travis had glanced at the check, then at him.

"Something safe?" he'd said, with a grin. "Or something risky?"

Khan had laughed.

"Have I ever done anything that was safe?"

Back then, he had not.

He'd lived for risk. For the adrenaline high that came of skydiving, of kayaking rapids nobody sane would go near, of jumping out of hovering helicopter into virgin snow and schussing down from what was surely the edge of the world.

But that had changed.

Two years ago, his father had become ill. Very ill. Within six months, he was gone. Running the kingdom of Altara had fallen to Khan.

His Council of Ministers had told him not to worry. They would take care of things.

Khan's mouth thinned.

And they had—with near-disastrous results.

His father had ruled as if it were still the 19
th
century. The ministers, not content with that, had ruled as if it were the 15
th
century.

Khan was a prince, accustomed to a life of pleasure, but he was not a fool. His country and his people were inexorably part of him.

He'd waited a year. Then, with determination and commitment his ministers had not expected, he had assumed control.

His life had changed, of course, but in his heart, he'd always known this was kismet, his destiny.

Under his guidance, Altara was moving forward, embracing science, technology, and a new infrastructure. Roads. Hospitals. Schools, all funded by the money his father had left, a multibillion-dollar cache the old man had amassed from the kingdom's oil and mineral resources. His father had treated the money as if it were his own, an ancient custom followed by most of the kingdoms in the so-called Black Gold triangle along the Sapphire Sea.

Not anymore.

Khan held a view some of his ministers saw as quaint, even radical.

He believed that Altara's wealth belonged to Altara.

A New Beginning for an Ancient Kingdo
m,
Th
e
New York Time
s
had trumpeted. It was the first time he'd smiled at a headline that involved him.

But there were still those who preferred to see him as a stereotype, a libertine prince with too much money and too few morals.

He came across them all the time.

Tonight, for instance.

Dammit!

He was back to that. The woman. The brunette in the house behind him.

A vein in his temple throbbed.

Ridiculous, that he should permit such an incident to anger him, especially this evening, when he had important business to conduct in Dallas as well as here at the Wilde ranch.

A sea of oil lay under the endless sands of Altara but much of the drilling equipment was old and outdated. His engineers had tried to convince Khan's father to invest in new techniques, but the older man had been deaf to their pleas.

Khan had listened.

He understood the benefits of looking beyond the Black Gold triangle for new environmental and ecological drilling techniques, and he knew that there were men in Texas who understood such things.

Men like the Wilde brothers.

They were his oldest friends, and for years, they had been among his most trusted advisors.

Jacob was the one to consult about the horses Khan bred on ranches in Brazil and in Altara. Caleb handled all his stateside legal affairs. Travis was the reason he had become almost embarrassingly rich even before he'd ascended the throne.

The four of them had met as undergrads at Columbia University. They'd been acquaintances.

Then, one memorable night, they'd become friends. The memory eased him, and made him smile.

Somehow, they'd ended up going out together after they'd all survived tough finals. The night had been a long journey through pleasure.

They'd ended it in a tough bar off
Amsterdam Avenue.

A bunch of punks had decided the three guys with the funny Southern drawls and the guy with the definitely un-American accent would be easy to take.

Wrong.

A couple of bloody noses later, the punks stumbled out into the night. Khan and the Wildes had grinned at each other, and then ordered a round of Buds for the crowd of admirers who'd stood back and watched the brawl.

As the night wore on, they'd talked about the future. Jake wanted to fly combat helicopters. Travis, already a pilot, wanted to fly jets and do in the bad guys. Caleb was talking with a recruiter for a hush-hush government agency.

"I'd tell you all about it," he'd said solemnly, "but then I'd have to kill you."

Everybody laughed. Then Caleb looked at Khan.

"So," he'd said, "what's it like to be a prince?"

By then, the heady combination of wine, women and a bar fight had loosened Khan's tongue.

"Actually," he'd said, "it sucks."

The Wildes had looked at each other.

"Such princely talk," Caleb had said.

"You wanted the truth. Well, that's the truth." The downside of too much of any indulgence was reality, and Khan had plummeted into a lake of it. "Men should not be judged by such arcane nonsense as titles."

Silence. Then Jake had raised his eyebrows.

"Arcane," he'd said, solemnly.

"Arcane," Travis had echoed.

Caleb had nodded.

"Easy for you to say," he'd muttered,
"even if nobody's sure what the hell it really means—unless you're complaining about that title pulling in more babes than any one man can handle."

It was the truth, but nobody had ever dared be that blunt about it. Nobody was ever blunt, when they dealt with a prince.

In a heartbeat, his mood had soared from zero to ten.

"Oh, I can handle them," Khan he'd said, modestly, "but if you guys play your cards right, I might just direct the overflow in your direction."

The Wildes, good-looking and rich and known for the ease with which they attracted women, had burst out laughing. Khan had, too, and after that, there were no barriers between them. In fact, once they knew how he felt about his string of titles, they only used them when things got slow and they wanted to piss him off.