The Trouble with Mojitos Read Online Free Page A

paper sticking out the pocket of Rik’s jeans. The manager clearly hadn’t done a particularly thorough job of searching him.
    She shouldn’t bother. She should switch out the light, pull the covers over her head, and get back to sleep.
    But that scrap of paper gnawed at her. What if it could tell her who Rik was and where he belonged?
    Curiosity won. She padded across the room and eased it out of his pocket, trying hard not to look an inch to the left at the bulge in his jeans. Rik mumbled and rolled over, and she jumped back.
    But he didn’t wake.
    The paper was a single page, creased as though it had been crumpled in anger then smoothed out again. She really shouldn’t unfold it. She should put it back. It was none of her business … 
    Oh what the hell … 
    She unfolded the paper. A letter. No address, just a barely visible embossed logo in the top left hand corner, in the same ivory colour as the paper itself. The note was hand-written in a large, old-fashioned hand, very neat, and dated several weeks ago.
    Rik – you’ve been a pain to track down. No more hiding - we need to talk. I expect you at my engagement party and I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer. I’ll owe you big. Max
    Nothing there to give any hint of who Rik was, yet something tugged at the edge of her memory, just out of reach. She moved to the bedside table and sat on the edge of the bed, holding the letter to the light. The paper was thinner than regular office paper, expensive, and the logo caught the light. Not a logo after all but a heraldic crest, a dragon framed by climbing roses. The memory nudged harder. She’d seen it before, and recently.
    Think, think.
    The mayor’s waiting room! She’d spent the better part of the afternoon staring at this shield, only it had been in full colour, above the obligatory portrait of the governor hanging on the wall. It was the emblem of Westerwald, the nation that owned this southern Caribbean archipelago.
    The same nation that had been in the tabloids a great deal lately.
    Fredrik and Maximilian …  she slapped her forehead. She’d never have recognised him with the beard and overlong hair, but it had to be …  She had a prince on the sofa in her hotel room! A disinherited prince, to be sure, but that hardly mattered.
    A
missing
disinherited prince. She wondered what the tabloids would pay for news of his whereabouts. Nope, not going there. There was no amount of money in the world that would induce her to throw someone into that rapacious spotlight. Been there, done that, and burned the tee shirt.
    She perched on the edge of her bed and considered the letter. Just last week she’d sat in the Soho production office and flicked through a magazine article on the recently announced royal nuptials in Westerwald. There’d been a great deal made about the guest list for the upcoming engagement party, a party Rik was clearly expected to attend.
    How she’d love to have been a fly on the wall during that confrontation!
    No wonder Rik had drunk himself comatose. The thought of going back to the country that had thrown him out, to face the brother who’d succeeded him, perhaps even the mother who’d passed him off as another man’s child, all under the glare of the paparazzi cameras… she’d have got drunk too.
    Kenzie set the letter down and took a hard look at him.
    Prince Fredrik von Waldburg of Westerwald.
    There’d been a picture of him with the article. She remembered it clearly, since she’d stopped for a long look. He’d been dressed in a suit and tie, clean-shaven and conservative, but there’d been a suggestion of ruggedness that had appealed to her even then.
    He’d had a glossy blonde on his arm in the picture, a girlfriend with a title to match the perfect looks and catwalk evening gown. What had happened to her? She’d probably gone the way of his inheritance.
    Kenzie set the letter down on the bed and stared at her unwelcome visitor. At least he hadn’t lied about