Taming the Prince by Elizabeth Bevarly Page A

expression, one of mild humor, told her she was revealing too much of the personal now, which wouldn’t be tolerated by the RII once—if—she landed a job with them.
    “Anyway,” she continued, doing her best to curb her opinions, “Broderick’s been running Penwyck in the king’s place, and mucking things up royally, if you ask me.” All right, so maybe she wasn’t doing her very best to curb her opinions. “And now there’s this mix-up with the princes where, technically, there could be four of you to choose from for running the country. It’s like a bad soap opera, honestly.”
    “Three,” Shane corrected her.
    “Well, yes, I suppose there is enough going on for three soap operas, now that I think about it,” Sara agreed.
    “No, I didn’t mean three soap operas,” he said. “I meant three to choose from for running the country.”
    “What?” she asked.
    “Three to choose from,” he repeated. “I’m not running any country.”
    She gaped at him, not sure what to make of his assertion. “But what if you’re next in line for the Penwyck throne?”
    “In the first place,” Shane said, “that isn’t likely, because I find it very hard to believe that Marcus and I were switched at birth with anyone. Hell, I still can’t make myself believe we were adopted. In the second place, Marcus is older than me by almost thirty minutes, so even if we did end up being the missing heirs to the throne, he has seniority over me, being firstborn and all. Plus, he’s been heading up an international financial empire for years now, so ruling a small sovereign nation should be a piece of cake for him. And in the third place, even if they offered the job to me, I don’t want it.”
    This, Sara thought, was quite a surprise. Oh, certainly Shane Cordello made it clear that he was his own man who lived by his own rules, but she couldn’t imagine any man turning down the position of king of his own country, no matter what.
    “You say that now,” Sara said, “but you’d feel differently if someone actually told you that you’re next in line to be king of Penwyck.”
    Shane shook his head. “No, I say that no matter what. I don’t want to be king of anything.”
    “Rubbish,” she said before she could stop herself. “Every man wants to be king of something. It’s all about control with you.”
    He looked taken aback by her statement, and only then did she realize how vehemently—and revealingly—she had spoken.
    “Well, my, my, my,” he said softly. “Haven’t we just hit a raw nerve with General Wallington?”
    Sara closed her eyes for a moment, counted slowly tofive, then opened them again. “All right,” she conceded, “I’ll grant you that you did in fact touch a bit of a sore spot with me on that one.”
    “Why?”
    “Why is not important,” she assured him. Well, it wasn’t important to Shane Cordello, at any rate, she told herself. “And perhaps I was a bit overly sweeping in my observation,” she further conceded. “However,” she added quickly when she saw him open his mouth to object, “I still say that most men, if given the opportunity, would jump at the chance to be king of their own country. And yes, with many of them, it is most definitely a control issue.”
    He eyed her levelly for a moment, his gaze so focused and so intense, it made her want to squirm. Then, very quietly, very evenly, he told her, “I’m not most men, Sara. I’m not even many of them.”
    Well, that, of course, was something she had noticed about him some time ago. Though not, probably, in the way he meant. “But we digress,” she continued, less zealously this time.
    “Right,” he agreed. “We were talking about why you think men are control freaks.”
    “No, we were talking about all the strange things going on with the royal family,” she corrected him smoothly.
    “Oh, yeah. We can talk about the control thing later.”
    Not. Bloody. Likely, Sara thought. Before she had a chance to say