The Prince Next Door
When Serena Gregory's clothing-optional Caribbean cruise fell through at the last minute, the thrill-seeking dermatologist decided that helping Darius Maxwell, her mysterious new neighbor–who might or might not be a crown prince–commit a felony would be a worthwhile alternative.Yes, it would involve clothes–for the most part–but the risk of skin cancer would be drastically reduced. Not to mention she'd be helping to secure the future of an entire European country…that she'd never even heard of.That's how Serena wound up over her head in trouble when she should have been next to naked in paradise–and risking her career and cold, hard jail time for a man she'd only just met!
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“I can’t believe I’m actually proposing to commit a felony in order to prove I’m not a prince.”
“It does sound weird,” Serena admitted.
“It’s the stuff of comic opera. Ordinary man on the street is suddenly informed he’s a prince. He quite naturally denies it. Then his mother informs him she has been kidnapped, and a dubious figure from the local consulate of the country involved confirms it. Ordinary-man-slash-prince knows better. Neither is he a prince, nor has his conniving mother really been kidnapped. But in order to save this flyspeck of a country buried in the Pyrenees, said ordinary man must now break in to a museum to discover who the real prince is.”
“If I were an editor, I’m not sure I’d buy the book.” Serena was laughing silently, her eyes dancing.
Darius laughed with her, aloud. “This is sheer insanity.”
“I know it is. But I love insanity.”
Readers can’t resist Sue Civil-Brown’s alluring blend of love and laughter!
“The zany supporting characters from Civil-Brown’s previous novels are back…in this breezy contemporary romance…. The romance between Derek and Sam will have fans believing in magic.”
—Publishers Weekly on Next Stop, Paradise
“The tone is upbeat, the breezes are warm, and the characters and dialogue crackle like lightning before a Florida thunderstorm.”
—Oakland Press on Catching Kelly
“Her offbeat characters and humor are wonderful.”
—Affaire de Coeur on Chasing Rainbow
“You won’t stop laughing or reading until the very end.”
—Amazon.com on Carried Away
“A powerhouse author.”
—Romantic Times reviewer Melinda Helfer
ALSO BY SUE CIVIL-BROWN
BREAKING ALL THE RULES
NEXT STOP, PARADISE
TEMPTING MR. WRIGHT
CATCHING KELLY
CHASING RAINBOW
LETTING LOOSE
CARRIED AWAY
HURRICANE HANNAH
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
MARIA TERESA MAXWELL believed in God. That He existed was beyond question. Still, it would be nice if He would listen when she told Him what to do. Instead, like her late husband and her son, God insisted on making up His own mind. Men, she thought with a huff of impatience.
Worse, her late husband, her son and God all seemed to have something else in common. They had absolutely no sense of humor or adventure. Okay, God must have a sense of humor, but He certainly kept it well hidden. And as for young Darius, well, if he ever blew the universe a raspberry, she hadn’t seen it.
That simply had to change. The boy was entirely too stable and solid. Stable and solid were good to a point, but a man was never going to attract a good woman, the kind of woman who would melt his butter for life, without at least a little bit of the wild side. His father had had one, after all; and bless his dear departed soul if he had hidden it too often, but when he had let it out, oh my, her world had rocked!
She smiled at the memory. The elder Darius had lit up her life for forty-one years. And while God had taken him far too soon, she had come to accept that he was now safely among the celestial beings, which made him fair game.
“So, Darius, it’s time to get your sainted butt in gear and talk to His Omnipotence. It would be nice if you and He could get little Darius off his bubble. Soon. I’ve never prayed for patience, and I don’t especially want to learn it. So now would be nice.”
But she didn’t really expect Him or him to do anything. After all, what influence did a poor shepherd’s daughter have with beings on high, anyway?
Plenty, she decided. Especially if she set the ball rolling and the celestial beings had no choice but to catch it and play the game.
So she would, naturally, start the ball rolling. She always had. Darius, Sr., had gotten used to it over the years, and even sometimes admitted that the most exhilarating times of his life had come when she had done something naughty beyond belief and he’d had to rescue her.
He had actually swashbuckled fairly well, once pushed to it.
But Darius, Jr.—or Darius I as he would soon become, like it or not—was as immovable and as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.
Now what, she asked the beings above, could be more boring than that?
Of course she received no answer. She rarely did. But the silence didn’t make her feel as if they weren’t listening. Right now she would bet her diamonds at Monte Carlo that her late husband was standing right there beside her, covering his angelic eyes and begging her not to be outrageous.
She sniffed again. Whatever had possessed her to marry a Swiss banker? She couldn’t imagine anything stodgier. On the other hand, she had been quite certain she’d seen a twinkle in his beautiful green eyes on more than one occasion. It was that twinkle that had won her heart.
