The Lost Princes of Ambria 06 - Taming the Lost Prince by Raye Morgan

shortly, but there was no warmth in his eyes as he turned away.
    Kayla made her decision. “I think we’re going to have to put off doing more work on our prince project,” she told him. “I really feel I need to go to the playground with them. I’ve been neglecting Teddy so much lately. Do you … do you want to come along?”
    She waited as he mulled it over, hoping he would say no.
    “I’ve got a few things I’ve got to take care of,” he said at last, his gaze touching hers, then veering off again. “I’ll catch you later.”
    “Okay.” Relief flooded her. This was just too nerve-wracking to keep up much longer.
    She didn’t look at Max again. Her attention was all for her baby. Caroline gave her a questioning look and she knew that her sister wanted to get filled in on a few details and get a fix on her feelings, but she wasn’t up to discussing Max and all that he meant to her. Too much had happened too soon and she needed to reevaluate.
    But right now it was Teddy’s time. She turned her face away and began a baby-talk discussion with her son. Her sister would have to wait.
    Max wandered down into the main castle courtyard and out along the man-made miniwilderness where he could lose himself among the trees. A small babbling brook ran cheerfully past a large flat rock, and that was where he settled, out of sight of the walkways.
    Normally, he wasn’t much for introspection. He thought of himself as a man of action. He didn’t tend to second-guess himself, to try to analyze why he did the things he went through or why the results had been good or bad. Navel gazing was just not his style.
    But today he felt like a little self-analysis was in order. He’d just spent an hour in a meeting with two of his brothers—Prince Mykal, who had been identified as one of the royals only a few weeks before Max had, and Prince David, who had caught sight of him in the hallway and invited him to join them in a discussion of renovations to a still-destroyed area of the castle.
    Much of the original and ancient castle had been burned on the night thirty years before when the Granvilli family had mounted a successful rebellion and taken over Ambria, killing the king and queen and establishing their vicious dictatorial regime. That night, each of the royal children had been spirited away by various servants or friends or members of the administration and hidden from the Granvillis. It had taken twenty-five years for the princes and princess to begin to find each other again. Their fight to win back their country had been successful and now there was only a remnant of the Granvilli faction that held a remote part of the island to deal with.
    David was the second oldest prince and considered second only to King Monte in importance. Tall and dark, he had a serious air about him.
    “Max, I’m glad to see you,” he said when he met his brother in the hall. “I’ve been neglecting you, I know. There are so many issues coming up right now. I really want to get you more involved in management matters. We all have to share the burden of managing the castle, and eventually, the nation at large.” He gave him a firm pat on the back. “I’m meeting Mykal in the blue meeting room right now. Why don’t you join us?”
    Max was glad to do just that. He was still new enough at the castle to be a little starstruck by his brothers and he wasn’t sure he would ever get over being impressed by them. He’d been told a little of David’s background. He’d been raised by a family in the Netherlands, and since he was six when he was taken, he remembered where he’d come from. But he also knew it had to be kept secret, and it wasn’t until he was in his twenties that he and Monte found each other and began to plot their return to power. As the two oldest, they were regularly considered the head and heart of the family.
    Mykal was almost as new to this as Max was, and it showed. Still recovering from a terrible motorcycle accident,