Free Her Royal Husband by Cara Colter

was all a romantic fantasy almost too intense to handle.
    Owen, probably with a snap of his fingers, had set the stage. He had created an inviting space of warmth and beauty that could make even the most hardened cynic decide that maybe fairy tales weren’t so bad.
    It frightened Jordan that he could manipulate her feelings so completely without speaking a word.
    Then the pony. Wasn’t that part of her dream for Whitney? If Jordan was really honest about it wouldn’t she rather have bought a little farm than a little house? Of course, it was way out of her price range, but how she would have loved for Whitney to have a dog, and kittens and yes, a pony. What mother didn’t want to see her daughter glowing with joy the way Whitney was now with her arms wrapped around that pony’s solid little neck?
    And now, sitting across the beautifully laid table, and just looking at Owen, the handsome familiar lines of his face, the deep blue of his eyes, the quirk of his mouth, the way that lick of hair fell so endearingly over his eye, she felt that treacherous stirring of desire.
    The only thing she had never liked about Owen, way back when, was that awful blond hair. Now, even that was gone, and his hair was glossy, nearly black and beautiful. It made some traitorous part of her long desperately for things she knew were lost.
    It didn’t help knowing underneath those well-tailored clothes was her Ben, his flawless skin stretched taut over muscles that she had brailled with her fingers, imprinted forever on her brain.
    Trying to think of something else, she looked squarely in his face. She saw the bruises beginning to fade, the swelling going from his lip, and it made her think of himin captivity, at the mercy of someone with a brutal agenda. It made her ache, made her want to cross the distance between them and touch his swollen lip and bruised cheek with her fingers. Or maybe even her lips.
    It felt as if her survival depended on him not knowing that, never suspecting how weak he made her, how flimsy seemed the wall of her resolve.
    “That’s right,” she said brightly. “I’m getting married. He’s a—” mouse catcher? “Exterminator. Justin Jason.” Her voice faltered at the look on his face.
    She was not sure she had ever seen such pain in a human being, and she had certainly never caused anyone else such pain. On purpose. To protect herself.
    The blood had drained from his face, his eyes darkened to a color of blue she had never seen before, a white line appeared around the lower edge of his lip. But then, almost so quickly she was not sure she had seen it, the pain was gone, and his face looked as if it had been carved from cold, hard stone.
    “Over my dead body,” he said quietly.
    Had he expressed the sadness, the torment, she had seen so briefly cross his face, she had the awful feeling she would have been lost, like a weak ninny.
    But this autocratic response brought her the tool she most needed—her fighting spirit surfaced.
    “You have gotten far too used to ordering people’s lives,” she told him. “You have no authority over me, and you will not tell me how to live my life. You had your chance. But I wasn’t good enough to be a bride for a prince, was I? Tell me, what’s changed, Owen?”
    “I have,” he said firmly. “And it’s unfair to say you weren’t good enough to be my bride. We were eighteen, Jordan. Neither of us were thinking in terms of forever. Not then.”
    “But now you are?” she said sweetly.
    “Yes.”
    “Me, too. And his name is Jason Justin.”
    “I thought you said it was Justin Jason.”
    “I didn’t,” she said with certainty, though of course she was not certain at all.
    “I hope he’s not as ridiculous as his name. I can’t believe you’d want to go through the rest of your life as Jordan Jason.”
    “That’s because you’re shallow enough to think something so superficial as a name would matter to everyone, just because it matters to you. I bet your