The Prince: The Young Royals 1 Read online

  About The Prince: The Young Royals 1

  Caitlin is an ordinary American girl, living a life she hopes will one day be extraordinary. Little does she know that she’s about to meet the most extraordinary person of all …

  Prince David is enjoying his years of freedom while his father, King James, reigns and his older sister, Alexandra, performs her duties as heir to the throne. Temporarily relocated to Manhattan, David spends his time dating a succession of attractive young women, none of whom are suitable to be his wife.

  But soon the day will come when the Prince has to settle on a purpose, and find a woman who can help him fulfill it. David has no idea where he’ll find her—he only knows that he must.

  When Caitlin and David meet by chance, their attraction to each other is obvious. But royal life is not as glamorous as it seems, and Caitlin will have to decide what she values more: her love or control over her own destiny.

  The Prince may lose his princess before he even knows he has her …

  Contents

  About The Prince: The Young Royals 1

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  About The Queen: The Young Royals 2

  Acknowledgments

  About S.A. Gordon

  Copyright

  For Prince Harry

  CHAPTER ONE

  The young man’s aquiline nose and full lips gently touched the swell of the woman’s tanned belly. She sighed and squirmed as the tip of his tongue traveled from her belly button down to the top of her lacy underpants. His tongue tugged at them, unsuccessfully, and he let them stay in place as he continued his journey down. He could do what he needed to to even if they stayed in place.

  “Ahh!” she sighed, taking one hand to the thicket of wavy chocolate-brown hair on his head. “As much as I love that,” she panted, “I really want you up here.”

  He looked up and raised an eyebrow.

  “Do you?” he said, his tones modulated and soft, of the highly educated, wealthy, English variety.

  “Uh-huh,” came the American-accented reply, accompanied by the young woman’s dreamy smile.

  “Just there?” His eyebrow stayed raised.

  She frowned. “Whaddya mean?”

  “You want me only at your head? Not anywhere else?”

  “Ohh,” she said knowingly, closing her eyes and rolling her head to the side. “I get it.”

  He smirked.

  “I’d like your mouth up here,” she said, looking back at him and grinning.

  “Really? You don’t like it down there instead?” He was amused.

  “Can’t I have both?” she said, her lips parting.

  “Well …” He shrugged. “I only have one mouth, I’m afraid. So a decision must be made.”

  “Ohh … I get it,” she said again, and the handsome young man smiled obliquely.

  “I’m sure you do,” he said, watching her, his eyelids dropping. He liked this girl, but that was the extent of it: like. She was a good distraction, for now.

  “Kiss me first.”

  “Really?” he murmured. “That’s a controversial choice.”

  “Huh?” she said, seeming distracted.

  “Never mind,” he said, crawling up so that he was poised above her, enjoying his view. “What’s the magic word?”

  “Please,” she said teasingly.

  He lowered his head. “I’m not sure you want it enough,” he whispered.

  “Pretty please,” she whispered in return.

  “That’s what I wanted to hear,” he said and he kissed her—the action slow, almost tender, at first. He kissed her all over as she squealed, gasped, panted, grabbed at him, begged him to stop, to keep going, to never stop.

  Later, their sweat marking the sheets, he pulled up his pants, gazing fondly at her while she slept. His polo shirt—which he still wore—was unrumpled, he noted, after a quick check. He was good to go.

  Striding over to a chair near the door, he picked up his wallet and keys, and a large book. He always kept a book with him—one never knew when one would need to fill in some time.

  After making sure his cell phone was still in his back pocket, he and his expensive Italian loafers walked out the hotel room door and he didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Caitlin Meadows tried not to let the handsome young man see that she was checking him out. He wasn’t in her direct line of sight—he was seated nearby, but almost to her side, so she had to turn her head to see him. Had to turn it all the way to the right, in fact. But she couldn’t not check him out. He was breathtaking. And subdued—he seemed to be the strong, silent type. She liked the strong, silent type. Not that she’d ever met one; she just knew she liked the type. Girls were meant to like that type, weren’t they? At any rate, she’d noticed him as soon as he’d walked in and silently, strongly taken a seat, opening what looked like a very fat novel and quietly ordering a drink.

  She swallowed and adjusted her position so that her body was half facing his direction. That way it wouldn’t look so obvious if she happened to turn her head more toward him. Her body was already turned so … it was logical her head would follow, right?

  Swallowing again, Caitlin leaned her left elbow on the bar and propped up her head with her hand. Now she had a legitimate excuse to turn her eyes toward him—she couldn’t help it, because resting her head in her left hand meant her eyes had to turn to the right.

  Slowly, she let her gaze travel over to him. Now she could see what he was reading: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. It was one of her favorites, but it gave her pause: why would a handsome, strong, silent young man be reading it? Maybe he was gay? She had known a few gay guys at college and they had all been a lot more cultured than straight men. Damn it—he had to be gay. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t check him out—it just meant that he wasn’t going to check her out in return. She didn’t mind that, though. Really, she’d just like to be able to keep watching him—he was that handsome.

  Caitlin sighed loudly, unconsciously, and a little dreamily. Her sigh was loud enough to make the young man’s head lift. Caitlin breathed in sharply as his large, brown eyes met hers, which widened as her mouth opened slightly and all the breath in her body left her. He grinned at her. Her belly suddenly felt like it had dropped to the floor.

  This young man wasn’t gay—she knew that for a fact now. And she knew because she recognized him: he was Prince David, second in line to the throne of the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth. The most famous young man in the world, and the most eligible, which he seemed to prove by being photographed with a different woman practically every week—all of them gorgeous, many of them professionally so. Models—he liked models, or so the magazines said. David was also one of the wealthiest young men in the world. Just the most, generally. An
d completely, utterly, permanently and irrevocably out of her league. Caitlin felt like she had no right to even glance in his direction, let alone catch his eye.

  Resisting the impulse to stare longer, Caitlin quickly swiveled her body to face the bar and, for good measure, propped her head on her right hand, turning her back to the prince. Her heart was beating so fast she couldn’t work out if it was because he was famous or because he’d smiled at her. That smile … those perfect cheekbones, those even teeth, that smooth skin. All framed by the perfectly undulating dark brown waves of his hair, cut fashionably like he was some kind of European playboy—which, in a way, he was. The United Kingdom was part of Europe, wasn’t it?

  Caitlin swallowed once, twice, three times and then picked up her innocent glass of soda water and took a gulp. The carbonated bubbles made her cough and she suddenly wished she was anywhere else but sitting across a bar from the most famous young man in the world. She knew she was making a fool of herself, spluttering and choking.

  “Darling,” said a voice that was undeniably his, and she jerked her head up to see him greeting a tall, slender woman with impossibly glossy blond locks by kissing her quickly on the mouth while he put one hand around her waist. The blonde pressed her pelvis against him and he smiled, cheekily, then pulled back as he took her hand and sat down, gesturing to the seat next to him. “How have you been?”

  “Since I saw you on the weekend, you mean?” said the woman in a rather high-pitched, Southern-sounding accent. Caitlin could see that the had woman put a hand on his thigh. “Just fine, darlin’. Just fine.” She slid her hand up his thigh toward his crotch. He put his other hand over it just in time and grinned.

  “Careful,” he said, and kissed her quickly again. “There are eyes everywhere.”

  Caitlin was glad that her own eyes were now glued to the top of the bar, even if both her ears were continuing to strain in his direction, hearing his deep chuckle.

  “Mind if I stroke those muscles?” said the blonde.

  “Well …” His laugh bubbled up and Caitlin turned one eye quickly to see David and the blonde moving their heads toward each other.

  Suddenly a flash erupted off to Caitlin’s side. She squawked involuntarily and then heard the prince swear.

  “Letitia, move,” the prince barked at the blonde, and Caitlin watched as he took hold of the young woman’s arm and nodded at someone nearby.

  Within seconds two broad-shouldered men in gray, expensively cut suits appeared at the prince’s sides, one of them taking Letitia’s elbow, the other placing himself between David and the photographer whose flash kept brightening the bar’s natural gloom as it pursued the prince and his girl all the way out the back entrance.

  Caitlin picked up her soda water and drank it more slowly this time. Putting the glass down, she breathed deeply. Once, twice, three times. She wasn’t convinced that any of that had just happened. Except her heart was still beating fast, and she didn’t think it was because she’d had a close encounter with a photographer.

  “Hey, Caitlin.”

  Caitlin rotated on her seat. “Ingrid!” she said, beaming, before enveloping her friend in a hug.

  “What was all of that?” said Ingrid.

  “All of what?”

  “The kerfuffle. People were standing outside the bar talking and pointing.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The newspaper—a tabloid, not the kind she normally read since she was a New York Times girl to her core—sat on Caitlin’s kitchen bench. She sighed and frowned as she looked at the photograph on page five, the companion to a smaller photo on the front page. That smaller photo had been the reason she’d bought the paper in the first place—it showed Prince David’s startled face inside the bar where she’d seen him yesterday. The photo on page five, however, was the reason why her friends had been sending her text messages for the past hour—the most pointed from Ingrid, who had now seen the image of Caitlin sitting close enough to Prince David and his companion to be clearly visible in the background of the larger shot and who was demanding to know why Caitlin hadn’t told her that she’d had such a close encounter with the Sexiest Prince Alive.

  Caitlin’s cell phone rang with the chirpy pop song that her brother had downloaded purposely to annoy her; she had been meaning to get rid of it for months but had no idea what to choose in its place.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said wearily as she answered, still frowning. “Yes, Mom, it’s me … No, I didn’t talk to him … Mom! You can’t just go up to a prince and talk to him … Because—because you just can’t … Anyway, he was with someone … What? No, I don’t regret it … Mom, he would never even talk to someone like me! … Yes, I know you think I’m beautiful. Yes … Okay, yes, every man I’ve ever met is an idiot for not realizing that … Mom? Mom? I have to go. I’m late for work … Okay, love you, bye.”

  Caitlin exhaled with irritation as she pushed the phone across the bench.

  “What’s going on?” came a sleepy voice from the kitchen doorway.

  “Sorry, Lise, did I wake you?” Caitlin said to her roommate, who was now leaning against the refrigerator and yawning.

  “It’s fine.” Lisa fluttered a hand. “I was awake. Just didn’t want to get up. What was that about a prince?”

  Caitlin pushed the newspaper along the bench toward her. “Check it out,” she said, pointing to the photograph.

  Lisa picked up the paper and perused the page, her face opening into a grin.

  “All right!” she crowed. “You met a prince?”

  “Uh-uh—I didn’t meet him. Just saw him.”

  “Where was this?”

  “That bar on the Upper West Side that Ingrid likes. I was waiting for her. He was waiting for some model or something.”

  “How could you not talk to him?” Lisa said, shaking the paper and squealing.

  “Tell me, Lise—how would you talk to a prince if you saw one?”

  “If it was that prince, I’d walk right up to him and ask him to be the father of my babies.”

  Caitlin smiled wanly. “I guarantee that you wouldn’t do that. It’s different when you see them—see him—in person. There’s … something. There was something about him.”

  “Something hot!” Lisa squealed again. “Cait, he’s gorgeous—how could you not have spoken to him?”

  “Because there was something removed about him—that’s what I’m trying to tell you, if you’d just let me. He had a force field.”

  “A fame force field,” Lisa said, grinning.

  Caitlin shook her head. “Not that. No one else seemed to notice him. He just seemed self-contained or something. Like he didn’t want to be approached.” She sighed. “I can imagine why.”

  “Cait, if you’d just been brave and talked to him you could be marrying a prince!”

  “Yeah, right,” Caitlin said sarcastically. “Because he was going to choose me over the five-foot-ten blond goddess he was actually there to meet. The one you can see in that photo.” She pointed to the paper.

  Lisa picked up a banana from the fruit bowl on the bench and started to peel it. “You’re unbelievable,” she said, her tone sharp.

  “What?” Caitlin said.

  Lisa took a bit of the banana and chewed slowly. “You are a goddess yourself and you know it.”

  “I am not!” Caitlin picked up a banana too.

  “Caitlin, false modesty does not become you,” Lisa said, raising an eyebrow as she took another bite.

  “I’m not being falsely modest,” Caitlin said with annoyance. “I appreciate you trying to make me feel good about myself, but—”

  “Cut it out,” Lisa snapped. “Guys hit on you all the damn time and you just ignore them.”

  “Huh? They do not! I do not!”

  Lisa scowled. “You do. It’s like you think they’re not good enough for you or something.”

  “What?” Caitlin said, suddenly feeling vulnerable.

  “Whenever we go out, I never get attention from anyone
. Nor does anyone else. Guys try to pick you up all the fricking time and you just dismiss them—which is annoying, to be honest, because they often have friends, and because you won’t talk to them, I don’t get to talk to their friends. It’s infuriating, actually.” Lisa ate the last of her banana.

  “I …” Caitlin swallowed. “I had no idea.”

  “Sure,” Lisa said flatly.

  “Honestly! I thought they were just sleazy men who would hit on anyone.”

  Lisa’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “How could you truly not know the effect you have on men? Haven’t you looked in a mirror lately?”

  Caitlin sniffed and blinked. “I’ve never been attractive, Lise. No, wait,” she said as she could see her roommate start to protest. “All through school no one ever looked at me once, let alone twice. I didn’t get a date for prom. I didn’t get any dates at all.”

  Lisa’s face softened. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Were you … different then?”

  “No. I just … wasn’t what anyone wanted.”

  Lisa frowned. “Maybe they were intimidated by you. You were too beautiful to ask out.”

  “Or maybe you’re just trying to make me feel better.” Caitlin smiled weakly.

  Lisa shook her head. “I’m not. You are a knockout, plain and simple. Let’s go out tonight and I’ll get you some proof.”

  Laughing, Caitlin stood up and walked over to give her roommate a hug. “I think you’re just looking for an excuse to go to a bar. But all right—we’ll go.”

  “Eight o’clock?”

  “Eight o’clock,” Caitlin said, nodding once. “That place on the corner?”

  “Uh-huh.” Lisa kissed Caitlin quickly on the cheek. “Have a good day at work, princess.”

  “Stop that!” Caitlin said, but she was smiling.

  “I’m gonna take a shower.”

  “Go for it. I’m about to leave, so I’ll see you later.”

  Lisa waved as she receded down the hall.

  Eating her banana, Caitlin looked closely at the photos of Prince David, his face caught in the camera’s flash, wearing an expression that was not irritation or even surprise, as she would have expected. He looked … resigned. Accepting. Like this was his life forevermore, and he knew it. Caitlin couldn’t imagine living that way—always expecting some photographer to ruin a private moment, never knowing who might tip off the press. Never knowing who to trust. Your whole life laid out in photographs and articles. So much scrutiny. Too much scrutiny. All because of the family you belonged to. And there was no way to stop it—you couldn’t leave the family, and even if you could, you’d still be famous. They’d find you. They’d always find you.