Saved by the Monarch by Dana Marton

whatever drew her to him from the first moment, which was beyond disconcerting.
    He was incredibly male, full of sex appeal, powerful in every sense of the word. But he could also be gentle. And he wasn’t full of himself. He had a sense of humor. She had a feeling that if she didn’t fight him tooth and nail, sooner or later the crazy attraction between them was going to do her in.
    Dammit.
    This was so not why she’d come to Valtria. Was it too much to ask to have some fun and celebrate her birthday without kidnappings and avalanches? Instead, here was Prince Miklos wanting all sorts of crazy and impossible things. Like a marriage of convenience, for heaven’s sake. Well, for the country’s sake, actually. And if she weren’t careful, she could so easily fall in love with him—
    Deep breath.
    “That’s not going to happen,” she said to the empty room with some vehemence.
    She’d been trying to take stock of her situation for the past hour and come to some kind of resolution. A small noise distracted her at the door, and when she looked expectantly to see whether it was Miklos or Luigi coming, she caught sight of the old-fashioned key jiggling in the lock then being pushed in.
    Miklos and Luigi would knock if they wanted to come inside.
    Something scraped against the door. The short hairs at the back of her neck stood up.
    She moved quietly to the wardrobe. The blankets she’d been wrapped in were so warm and cozy that she’d been reluctant to give them up, but now she took the nearest pair of warm pants and a shirt, pulled them on, then shrugged into a pair of fur boots. They were too large, but she didn’t have time to worry about that.
    She grabbed a wool sweater next, but didn’t waste time by putting it on immediately. She dashed to the window instead, climbed the writing desk in front of it, managing not to knock anything off, and opened the latch. The next second she was out on a narrow ledge with nowhere to go.
    The cold air hit her face like a wall. She so did not want to go out in that again. And that was before she looked down.
    Oh God.
    The ground was farther away than she had expected. Cobblestones peeked from under slushy snow. Didn’t look like a soft place to fall.
    She pulled the window closed as much as she could behind her, teetering on the narrow ledge.
    The lock in the door scraped again.
    No time to hesitate.
    A flagpole protruded from the stone wall about two feet to her left. She stepped on that to be out of sight of the window, and prayed that it would hold her weight. She wished she had known that she would be required to do some high-wire act on a flimsy perch before she had scarfed down Luigi’s fabulous food.
    She considered her situation, holding her breath. The ground was too far to jump to, the roof too high to reach. She was pretty much at the end of the road.
    Where was Miklos when she needed him?
    Voices filtered from the neighboring room on her other side.
    “It couldn’t have been Prince Miklos. He’s not on a ski holiday, for heaven’s sake. He was kidnapped,” a man said, sounding like he was getting tired of the argument.
    “I just know it was him. I only saw his back when he turned down the stairs, but I’d recognize that back,” a woman insisted.
    The man groaned.
    And Judi very nearly did, too. Next thing they knew, the media would be here before the rescue team, breathing down their necks.
    She could hear the door in her room open then close, and that drew her attention from the bickering couple. She was hanging on to the uneven stones, holding the sweater with her teeth, quietly freezing to death once again. She hadn’t had time to grab her gloves.
    It was only a matter of time before whoever was inside the room would realize that the window was open a crack and would look out and spot her.
    So when a canvas-top truck pulled up in front of the restaurant, Judi offered a brief prayer toward the snow clouds in the sky. Other than the truck, the street was