Free Second Chance With the Rebel: Her Royal Wedding Wish by Cara Colter Page A

behind the barrier of her newly closed housecoat, she looked stubborn and offended. So, she did not want a hero. Or a prince. Good for her. And he was not looking for a damsel in distress. Or a princess.
    So they were safe.
    Except, he didn’t really feel safe. He felt some danger he couldn’t identify, so heavy in the air he might be able to taste it, the same way a deer could taste a threat on the wind.
    “What happened to your fiancé?” he asked.
    “What fiancé?”
    “Mama told me you were going to get married.”
    “I changed my mind.”
    “She told me that, too.”
    “But she didn’t give you the details?”
    “No. Why would she know the details?”
    “You’re not from around these parts, are you, son?” She did a fairly good impression of a well-known TV doctor.
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “My engagement breakup was front-page news after my fiancé was chased naked down a quiet residential street in Glen Oak by a gun-wielding man who just happened to be the cuckolded husband of a woman who was my friend and the barista in our bookstore coffee shop.”
    It seemed Lucy Lindstrom’s fall from grace had been complete. Mac ordered himself to feel satisfied. But that wasn’t what he felt at all. He couldn’t even pretend.
    “Aw, Lucy.” Her eyes had that shiny look again. He wanted to reach for her and hold her, but he knew if he did she would never forgive him.
    “Don’t feel sorry for me, please.” She held up her hand . “Everything is on film these days. Someone caught the whole thing on their phone camera. It was a local sensation for a few days.”
    “Aw, Lucy,” he said again, his distress for her genuine.
    “Aren’t you going to ask me if I never guessed something was going on? Everyone else asks that.”
    “No, I’m going to ask you if you want me to track him down and kill him.”
    “With your bare hands?” she asked, and though her voice was silky her eyes were shining again.
    “Is he the one who made you quit believing in fairy tales?”
    “No, Mac,” she said quietly. “That happened way before him.”
    Her eyes lingered for just a moment on his lips, and then she licked hers, and looked away.
    Mac turned from the sudden intensity, and made himself focus on the house—anything but her lips and the terrible possibility it was him who had made her stop believing in fairy tales.
    “This isn’t how I remember it.”
    Once, he had made the mistake of going to the front door when she was late meeting him at the dock for a canoe trip.
    He’d stepped inside and it had reminded him of an old castle: dim and grim, the front room so crowded with priceless antiques that it felt hard to breathe. He found out he’d been invited inside to get a piece of her father’s mind, and that’s when he’d discovered that Lucy had been seeing him on the sly.
    I forbid you to see my daughter.
    After all these years Mac wasn’t sure, but the word riffraff might have come into play. Of course, being forbidden to see Lucy had only made him come up with increasingly creative ways to spend time with her.
    And it had intensified the pleasure of sneaking into this very room, when her parents were asleep upstairs, and kissing her until they had both been breathless with longing.
    That first meeting with her father had been nothing in comparison to the last one.
    There’s been a rash of break-ins around the lake. My house is about to be broken into. The police are going to find the stolen goods next door, in your bedroom. You’ll be arrested and it will be the final straw for that rotten place. I’ve always wanted to buy it. Someday, Lucy and the man she marries will live there.
    Mac had known for a long time that he had to go. That there was no future for him in Lindstrom Beach and never would be.
    He’d told her about her father’s threat and said he couldn’t stand it in this town for one more second. And that’s when she had said it.
    I could never fall for a boy like you.
    Had her