Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Pocket Books and Simon & Schuster.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

To the best author’s husband in the world, aka HOT COP.
Thank you for picking up dinner/doing laundry and dishes/walking the dogs/doing all the vacuuming those few hundred times while I was suffering from Deadline Dementia.
You make the difficult times easy.
I love you with all my heart.
Thou and I.

Acknowledgments

A special thanks to my fabulous proofreaders, Rachelle Wadsworth, Cail Rodgers, and Suzanne Verikios, who helped so much with their thoughtful comments, spot-on questions, and sharp eyes for detail.

From the bottom of my ink-stained heart, thank you!

Chapter 1

“... the roads are wretched, this carriage is sprung like a log, and I am freezing. Bozhy moj, have the people of this frigid country never heard of a foot warmer?” In the dim glow of the lantern that swung on a hook in the creaking coach, Grand Duchess Natasha Nikolaevna waited for a response. She’d catalogued no fewer than fourteen complaints, yet her companion didn’t look impressed. In fact, he seemed to be asleep.

Deeply asleep.

But she knew better. Her grandson might be a prince, but he was also a lifelong soldier who’d made a name for himself in many hard-won battles. A famed general and the leader of the Grand Army of Oxenburg, Prince Gregori Maksim Alexsandr Romanovin didn’t sleep deeply. Ever.

His brothers and parents called him “Grisha,” a nickname for Gregori, but Natasha had refused. From the day he was born, she’d called him “Max” as befitted a conqueror. The name had fit him, and to his parents’ irritation—and Natasha’s delight—he grew to prefer Max and eventually refused to answer to anything else.

But warrior prince or not, there was no excuse for ignoring his grandmother. She thumped her cane on the carriage floor.

His lashes shifted and she knew he’d slipped a glance her way. Though it wasn’t much, it proved her point: she was being deliberately ignored.

Her hand tightened on the gold cane top and she imagined his face if she rapped the cane across his knee. That would make him take heed. Sadly, it would also infuriate him, and she needed to be in his good graces. At least until she found a way out of her not-so-little predicament.

She forced her tightly curled fingers to relax. There would be time to sort that out later. For now, she should focus on her grandson. To be honest, he worried her.