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Born Royal
ALEXANDRA SELLERS
Princess Julia will bend to my will! –Sheik Rashid Kamal, Crown PrinceAll of Tamir celebrated Sheik Rashid Kamal's heroic homecoming, but he would not rest until Princess Julia Sebastiani accepted his hand in marriage. During a forbidden night of desire, Rashid and Julia had surrendered to the ultimate temptation. And now that the radiant princess was pregnant with the sheik's heir, he knew their only recourse was to enter into a marriage bargain that would ensure their child's legacy–and unite their dueling kingdoms. Yet if truth were told, Rashid could not rationalize the surge of possessiveness he felt for a defiant Julia whenever her soft, yielding lips branded his heart and soul. What would it take for these tempestuous lovers to fulfill their royal destiny?
FIRSTBORN SONS
Dear Reader,
Happy (almost) New Year! The year is indeed ending, but here at Intimate Moments it’s going out with just the kind of bang you’d expect from a line where excitement is the order of the day. Maggie Shayne continues her newest miniseries, THE OKLAHOMA ALL-GIRL BRANDS, with Brand-New Heartache. This is prodigal daughter Edie’s story. She’s home from L.A. with a stalker on her trail, and only local one-time bad boy Wade Armstrong can keep her safe. Except for her heart, which is definitely at risk in his presence.
Our wonderful FIRSTBORN SONS continuity concludes with Born Royal. This is a sheik story from Alexandra Sellers, who’s made quite a name for herself writing about desert heroes, and this book will show you why. It’s a terrific marriage-of-convenience story, and it’s also a springboard for our twelve-book ROMANCING THE CROWN continuity, which starts next month. Kylie Brant’s Hard To Resist is the next in her CHARMED AND DANGEROUS miniseries, and this steamy writer never disappoints with her tales of irresistible attraction. Honky-Tonk Cinderella is the second in Karen Templeton’s HOW TO MARRY A MONARCH miniseries, and it’s enough to make any woman want to run away and be a waitress, seeing as this waitress gets to serve a real live prince. Finish the month with Mary McBride’s newest, Baby, Baby, Baby, a “No way am I letting my ex-wife go to a sperm bank” book, and reader favorite Lorna Michaels’s first Intimate Moments novel, The Truth About Elyssa.
See you again next year!
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Born Royal
Alexandra Sellers
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Michael Hunter Lewis Sellers Fairweather my incomparable, much-loved nephew and godson who is also a firstborn son
U donad, U donad, U donad—U!
(He knows, He knows, He knows—He!)
—from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Bound by the legacy of their fathers, six Firstborn Sons are about to discover the stuff true heroes—and true love—are made of….
Sheik Rashid Kamal: To bring peace and prosperity to Montebello and Tamir, Prince Rashid must unite the Kamal and Sebastiani kingdoms. First order of business—pull out all the stops to claim the pregnant Princess Julia as his enamored bride. Let the games begin!
Princess Julia Sebastiani: Sheik Rashid Kamal is a dangerously attractive enemy for whom she has already proven she has a fatal weakness. Now the high-handed prince has gone too far by making a public marriage declaration without her consent! This willful princess will wed for love—or not at all….
Sheik Ahmed Kamal: As he rejoices in his heroic son’s triumphant return home, he realizes it won’t be long before Rashid receives the throne. But for now, a peaceful trade treaty between Montebello and Tamir must be forged. And to further that agenda, the mysterious origin of their bitter animosity needs to be unraveled.
The Noble Men: Over the years, they have taken calculated risks and sacrificed their own personal happiness to achieve their global pursuits. Has the time finally come to pass their legacy on to their firstborn sons?
A note from beloved author Alexandra Sellers:
Dear Reader,
I was delighted to be invited to write the final book in the Intimate Moments FIRSTBORN SONS series. It’s the first continuity I’ve taken part in, and I found it both difficult and exciting. I have really enjoyed collaborating with the other writers in the series, especially Virginia Kantra. Virginia and I co-wrote scenes in each of our books between the two princess sisters, Julia and Christina. That was good fun.
Born Royal is my thirtieth novel for Harlequin/Silhouette, and my eleventh sheikh fantasy. Readers familiar with me know that my passion for all things Middle Eastern dates back to my early childhood, when, in the tiny prairie town where I spent a very difficult two years, I discovered a book called The Arabian Nights. I began to dream of flying carpets, handsome princes and genies in magic lamps. I’ve never stopped.
Since then I have traveled to some of those places I dreamed of, and have been privileged to explore, a little, their languages and religion, history and wisdom. It is a world as deep, as rich and as many-layered as that magical book—which I still treasure—promised me it would be. I hope that in my own stories I am able to communicate to you some part of the fascination and wonder of the East that has enchanted me and enriched my life for so long.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Prologue
Prince Rashid ibn Ahmed Kamal stood on the broad balcony of the palace smiling and waving as the love-roar of the crowd swelled almost to pain level and broke over his head.
Below the balcony, the huge, leafy square writhed ecstatically in the burning sunshine as the people cheered, shouted, laughed, sang, danced and kissed each other.
He was home. Their handsome Crown Prince, whom they had mourned as lost forever, had returned. And better still, he had returned a hero. As the man who had organized and masterminded the downfall of that band of murderous terrorists, the one so fearful no one liked to say its full name, but only called them Al Ikhwan. The Brothers.
Now the people need not live in fear of the threatened chemical attack. It was said he had found the actual laboratory where the filthy poisons were being made, and that the entire store of the evil virus had been destroyed.
No one needed to be told where the first attack would have occurred. But a country storyteller, who had a sizable group entranced with his version of the prince’s great exploit, told them anyway.
“Of course they would have attacked here in the islands of Tamir first,” he asserted in a terrible voice, and his audience gasped and nodded. “Such monsters as these are drawn to destroy truth and nobility, for they know instinctively there is no co-existence between evil and good.
“And for a certainty they would have come here, to the big island—and to this city, Medina Tamir. Perhaps even in this very square they would have released their foul poison, hoping to destroy the Kamal family and put their own puppet in Ahmed’s place!”
His audience of mostly city dwellers shuddered in horrified delight. The country people had a point—this was much more entertaining than the dry facts in newspapers or on television.
“And only when we died would the world have been alerted and begun to take action,” the turbaned, white-bearded ancient said, conveniently omitting the fact that the mission Prince Rashid had headed had been a joint one involving many nations. “Too late for Tamir. But what need have we of the world, when we have a prince such as Rashid? Brave, intrepid…”
The cheers redoubled as Prince Rashid was joined on the balcony by the rest of his family. The silver-haired King Ahmed, lovely Queen Alima, handsome Prince Hassan and his sisters, the beautiful and headstrong Princess Nadia, gentle, smiling Samira, and Leila—the youngest and, some argued, the loveliest.
It was Nadia who stood closest to Rashid as the family took their places, smiling and waving to the delirious citizenry. She glanced down at the crowd around the storyteller in the square, and pointed him out to her brother.
“By the end of the week you’ll have done the deed single-handed,” she remarked in an ironic aside. “Flying on the back of a giant bird, the Natobird, no doubt, and with the sword of your ancestors—I suppose they’ll call it the Kalashnikov sword—raised high, you dispatched the monsters after a fight to the death and won your way to the coffers wherein lay the terrible poison. You threw magical powder on the poison to render it harmless.”
Rashid laughed, not because she wasn’t right in her analysis. Nadia had an instinctive understanding of people and events, and it was a pity his father didn’t consult her more often in matters of state.
“Well, and if my mythical powers win the people to my side when I’m proposing a shift in foreign policy, among other things, I won’t object.”
Nadia flicked him a look. He should have known she would be quick to pick up on that hint. “Other things? As for example?”
Rashid shook his head, turning to lift his hand again and smile. The sun was high in the blue sky, burnishing the thick black curls, enhancing the glint in his dark eyes and the white, even teeth. The crowd swayed with reaction.
There was no one, Nadia reflected, whom he did not, one way or another, seduce. He had much more charisma than their rather severe father. It was no wonder that the people had been brokenhearted when Rashid went missing.
As for her, it had been like losing a limb. The miracle of having her brother back from the dead had not worn off yet. Maybe it never would.
“‘Among other things,’” Nadia repeated musingly, sliding an arm through her brother’s. “Now, what else would you be proposing besides a shift in foreign policy?” He was silent. “So the baby really is yours? I wondered.”
His gaze turning inward, Prince Rashid absently waved and smiled. The crowd cheered. He thought of Julia’s soft cry when his hands were on her, when what was going to happen was inevitable. Rashid, I’m—I’m a virgin….
He had not believed her. Other women had said it to him at such a moment; he had never understood why. Hoping to make his passion hotter, perhaps.
But it was true. When he realized it, too late, it had struck him a blow like nothing else he had experienced. A virgin. After all this time, she was a virgin.
“Yes, it’s mine,” he said.
He thought of the way she had melted at his touch, saw her face in his mind’s eye, those full lips stretched with desire. He had lost control.
“It will put an end to the feud, won’t it?” Nadia commented. “If marriage is what’s in your mind.”
Had it been his unconscious mind understanding that the one unanswerable way to bind them together was a child? Was that the reason such powerful desire had swept him, blinding him to every other consideration? His one chance offered, and he had taken it.
“The question is, what’s the best way of getting Father over the hump?” Rashid murmured. “He’s not going to like it, is he?”
Nadia laughed outright at the understatement. “The feud is what keeps him going, you know that.”
There was another round of cheers from below as their father and mother turned back inside the palace.
“I don’t want a war with him. But I have to do what I know to be right. If I could find a way to make him accept it—” He shrugged and waved to the crowds again as his sisters and brother left.
“Want some advice, big brother?”
Now there were only Nadia and Rashid. They waved a last farewell as the crowds went crazy with cheering.
“Yes, I want advice.”
“Play it the same way you played your last enterprise.” Nadia smiled and flicked her raised hand at him. “Surprise him.”
Chapter 1
Princess Julia Sebastiani twitched awake, her heart pounding, sweat on her forehead. She lay without moving, wondering where she was, as the memory of pleasure subsided in her blood. After a moment she sighed. She was in her bedroom at the palace. Alone.
The clock across the room read 6:30. Well, that was more sleep than she usually got when she dreamt of Rashid Kamal. She struggled to a sitting position and dropped her face in her hands. It was no use to try to get back to sleep; she had learned that through experience.
She slipped off the bed, crossed the room to the windows that looked southeast, and stood there, gazing out at the sun rising in splendour out of the Mediterranean Sea. It was a view she had loved all her life, but even in childhood her pleasure had been coloured by the knowledge that in that direction, over the horizon, out of sight, lay Tamir.
He was home. He was alive. Her child had a father—who was the son of her own father’s sworn enemy.
She had never known whether to think him alive or dead. Sometimes she had wondered if it had all been a plot to cast doubt on the Sebastianis—if Rashid Kamal had set it all up, the unexpected meeting, the surprised passion, and then his disappearance, so that the Sebastianis would be suspected in his disappearance just as the Kamals were suspected in the loss of her brother, Lucas. Other times she had despaired, sure that he was dead and that her son would all his life bear the stigma of belonging to a family suspected of killing his father.
He must know by now that she was pregnant. She wondered if he accepted that he was the father of her child. There was so much accusation and counter-accusation between the Kamals and the Sebastianis that it would hardly be surprising if he did not.
Julia and Prince Rashid to Marry!
A Montebello Messenger World Exclusive!
Crown Prince Rashid of Tamir and Princess Julia will marry “as soon as it can be arranged,” the Montebello Messenger has learned. In an exclusive interview with this reporter, the heir to the throne of Tamir, whose family has maintained a long-standing and well-publicized feud with Montebello’s own royal family, said that he felt the ill feeling between the two families was “a thing of the past” which should be forgotten.
“A man and woman cannot carry on an ancient feud when they are about to have a child together,” he said. “My interest is not in the past, but in the future. It is time to look ahead, to a time of peace between our two countries.”
The prince confirmed unequivocally that he is the father of Princess Julia’s child, a question about which there has been intense media speculation since his unexpected return from the dead early this week.
The palace here in Montebello has not so far responded to Rashid’s claims that a wedding between the Crown Prince and Princess Julia is in the offing.
“Damn you! Damn you!” Julia flung the Montebello Messenger to the floor with a cry of disbelief.
“Ma—madame?” a voice trembled behind her.
In the mirror her hairdresser’s face looked startled and wary.
“Oh—Micheline! Not you! Sorry!” she said, forcing a smile. She had never felt less like smiling in her life.
