This was never going to work.

Maggie wobbled across the carpeted expanse of her sister’s living room, tilting and twisting on heels that felt like stilts. The palace walls were thick stone and would muffle any sounds she made.

She was no rodeo clown, but she’d probably get some laughs if she tried to wear these heels and pitched hiney over teakettle in front of the photographers who followed her family around any time they stepped foot out of the royal palace.

Muttering words that were certainly not suitable for her station, Maggie peeled off one torture device and then the other—otherwise known as Louboutins.

She retraced her steps back to her sister’s bedroom. Before yesterday, she’d never been in this suite. It’d been well over a decade since she’d stepped foot on Glorvaird soil. Even the suite they’d shared as children would’ve felt foreign.

This morning, Tirith’s personal assistant Elizabeth had laid out the plum-colored pantsuit, white silk blouse, and offending shoes while Maggie had been showering.

The clothes whispered along her skin, the softness almost as foreign as having someone choose her outfit, down to the diamond cuff bracelet that felt like a shackle around her wrist.

And that was a drop in the bucket of discomfort after Maggie had been subjected to nearly an hour in a chair getting her hair, makeup and manicure done before she’d been allowed to dress.

The stylist had been aghast at the state of her hair. She hadn’t had the heart to tell him that the highlights he was griping about were natural from being out in the sun all day. At least the manicurist had been silent in her judgment of Maggie’s farm-girl hands.

Had they already figured it out? Would they go to the press?

Maybe she wouldn’t even last the first morning of this charade.

She stomped back to the bedroom, shoes in hand. The crowd of helpers—more like handlers—had made themselves scarce after she’d been adequately groomed, and she now had the suite to herself.

She’d spent close to an hour last night practicing in the mirror, trying to get Tirith down. They might be twins, but Tirith was practically a stranger to her. How she stood, how she walked… if Maggie messed it up, this crazy plan would be over. She’d had deportment lessons from an instructor her mother had sent to the Triple H when Maggie was thirteen. That was twelve years ago, and she’d never had an occasion to use what she’d begrudgingly learned. She’d skipped senior prom in favor of going camping with her dad.

Now she went straight to the walk-in closet—bigger than her room back at home—and stepped inside. Flats. She just needed a pair of flats that matched this suit.

She blinked at the array of clothes in every color, each one with a designer label. Nothing like what filled her closet back home.

Even blinking felt wrong. Her eyelashes were Tirith’s, not hers. Curled with a wicked-looking silver tool, painted with mascara and lined with a pencil.

She should have probably been thankful the stylist hadn’t given her false eyelashes.

Being Tirith was the whole point.

She sighed as she left the heels right in the middle of the closet floor and went to the set of shelves built into the very back of the space.

There. The ballet flats were plain black, and Maggie knew she could make it through the day without falling on her face if she wore them. She quickly slipped them on.

“Just be Tirith,” she said under her breath as she went back through the bedroom and into the living area.

It was easier said than done. Her sister didn’t even have a television, only bookshelves that lined one entire wall.

Maggie enjoyed curling up with a good book as much as anybody, but come on. Sometimes a girl needed a few hours of college football to unwind. There was something therapeutic about booing the referee when he made a terrible call. Dad kept several of last year’s best games on the DVR for when they needed a fix during the off season.

The sleek orange cat tiptoed out of Tirith’s bedroom door and into the bathroom. The second sighting Maggie had had of it. It must’ve slept under the bed. Or in the closet. Probably waiting to pounce.

Of course Tirith had a cat.

Maggie was a dog person.

She gritted her teeth.

She’d make do. It was only for two weeks.

She grimaced, then caught a glimpse of her face in the wall-mounted mirror across the room.

When was the last time Tirith had asked her for anything?

Never.

Not since they’d been taken—

Maggie couldn’t let herself go there. Not when she was this close. There was a reason she’d stayed in Texas for so long.

But her twin needed her. And Tirith never needed anything. She was strong. So much stronger than Maggie.

The fact that Tirith had asked for help now meant she needed it desperately. How could Maggie say no?

She left the suite, forcing herself to walk with the same forbidding posture Tirith used. She wanted to run her fingers along the stone walls, remember their texture. Something else she’d forgotten in her long absence. She wanted to wander over to what had been the nursery when she and Tirith had been infants. Surely the cribs they’d slept in were gone by now. Or maybe not. The crown prince would be expected to produce an heir sometime in the future.

But there was no time for reminiscing. And she didn’t want to make anyone suspicious.

Tirith’s assistant had gone down a list of today’s appearances while Maggie had been in the chair of doom, getting her makeup done.

First up, breakfast with Mother. Oh, sure. Run the gauntlet before the first cup of coffee.

Then again, if she could fool Mother, she could fool anybody.

As identical twins, Maggie and Tirith had switched places occasionally as children. But never for this long. And never when the stakes were this high.

For Tirith. It would be Maggie’s mantra as she counted down the hours until she could return to Texas, where she belonged.

It had been more than a decade, but she still remembered the twisting path to the blue parlor, where Mother preferred to eat family meals.

Family.

They hadn’t been a family since that terrible day.

Maggie breezed into the room. There was no room for emotion in a breakfast with Mother. Not if she wanted to pull this off.

Mother was already seated at the square table near the window that overlooked a spit of sand that jutted out into the ocean.

There was a time when Maggie had been content to sit near that window for hours, watching the waves beat against the shore.

“Good morning, Mother,” she murmured.

Alessandra reached out her hand, and Maggie squeezed it.

There were no bear hugs here, not like the kind Tirith would get from Dad two thousand miles away from here.

“You look tired, dear.”

Maggie had to stifle a hysterical giggle as she sat on the opposite side of the table. Had it really only been yesterday morning that she’d sat across from Scarlett, arguing over whether she was too nice?

This breakfast was as different from that one as a Brahma bull was from a pasture of Holstein milk cows.

Fine white linen covered the table and fell halfway to the floor. Exquisite china and real silver tableware were a reminder that she had to be careful. Always be careful.

The staff hovered about, moving silently and efficiently. A young man in the dove-gray palace uniform put a plate of sliced fruit and baked ham and an egg over-easy on the table in front of Maggie.

A young woman poured tea into Mother’s cup first, then Maggie’s. Tea? Not coffee?

She might only be here for fourteen days, but she might die without her daily coffee fix.

Remembering Mother’s comment, she made her lips form a serene smile. Tirith was always serene, wasn’t she? “I’m fine.”

Mother’s eyes were on the spoon she was slowly stirring her tea with. “Your father called.”

Maggie’s stomach lurched as it had when she was fifteen and had climbed on the back of a steer to feel what it was like to ride a bull. Serenity was hard to fake. “Oh?”

She hadn’t thought Gideon and Alessandra still spoke. Everything between them was amicable and mostly handled through Mother’s personal assistant.

But the divide was there, an impassable rift wider than the ocean between them. Maggie’s fault.

She swallowed hard, but Mother didn’t look up to see the emotion she couldn’t quite hide.

“He wanted to know if he should come.”

Mother’s quiet words froze Maggie with that dang teacup at her lips.

But she didn’t have time to freeze.

Her teacup rattled in its saucer as she set it down. She folded her hands in her lap, mind racing. Her first instinct had been a sharp no! but that would be a Maggie response, not a Tirith one.

She forced out a silent exhale. Tried for a smile, and, since they were talking about Tirith and what had happened two days ago, it was okay that her smile trembled.

“I hope you told him to stay in Texas.”

Sorry, Daddy.

Mother’s gaze flicked up and then back down. She set her spoon on the edge of the saucer. “That’s what I told him.”

Maggie was glad Mother wasn’t looking at her too closely. She’d borne the guilt for so long that sometimes it lost its sharpness.

Until moments like just now, when she realized how much she’d cost her family. Once upon a time, Alessandra and Gideon had been passionately in love. And once upon another time, Gideon had chosen Texas, and Maggie, over staying in Glorvaird with his wife and two other daughters.

Although they remained married on paper, they hadn’t seen each other in years.

Maggie didn’t think she could stomach breakfast after all.

She was about to excuse herself when the door opened and a brunette peeked her head inside.

And then Maggie’s baby sister Beatrix was ducking through the doorway.

“Good morning, Mother. Good morning, Tirith.”

Bea. If Maggie had been free to do so, she’d have jumped up and embraced her sister. Bea was two years younger. They spoke on the phone weekly, sometimes more, and Bea had come to Texas for a visit during the summer.

Maggie missed her baby sister like a mama cow separated from its calf.

But Tirith saw Beatrix often. Jumping out of her chair like Maggie wanted to would be out of character.

So Maggie sat, even though she ached for that hug.

Her younger sister went to Mother first and got the same hand squeeze Maggie-as-Tirith had.

Maggie waited for the same treatment, but Bea leaned over and hugged her shoulders.

It brought hot moisture to Maggie’s eyes, which she quickly blinked away.

“How are you holding up?” Bea asked.

That hysterical giggle bubbled up again, and again Maggie choked it down. “I’m…” She shrugged and then winced internally. Tirith probably didn’t shrug.

Bea swiped a triangle of toast off her plate. “Do you want me to go to the ribbon cutting with you this morning? Or maybe you can get out of it…?”

“Not necessary,” Maggie murmured coolly. “It won’t take long, and I’ve got my army in place.”

Tirith had promised that her personal assistant Elizabeth wouldn’t question the request for a second bodyguard in addition to the one that usually followed Tirith around when she was out and about in the kingdom. Maggie wasn’t sure she could function with just one. Another sign of Tirith’s courage and Maggie’s cowardice.

Maggie pushed back her chair from the table. “I should be going.”

If she stayed much longer under Mother’s watchful eyes, the game would be up.

But Bea followed her out into the corridor, linking their arms as Elizabeth fell in step two paces behind.

Mild panic coursed through Maggie. Did her sister know?

Before either woman could speak, a tall figure strode from a side hallway and toward them like some kind of heat-seeking missile.

“There you are. I’m glad I caught you.”

Valentin!

Her cousin, the crown prince, swept both sisters into a hug that rivaled Dad’s. And Maggie felt the hot prick of tears again.

Seriously? What was wrong with her?

Being back after all this time was making her off-kilter and over-emotional.

Or maybe it was that she’d always imagined Tirith an ice princess, shut off from real affection and warmth in the family castle.

But that didn’t seem to be true. Bea had hugged her. And now Valentin, who walked beside them as they made their way toward the lower level of the castle and the garage, Maggie’s destination.

“Annika is attending the naval base celebration with me,” he said.

Annika. Annika. Maggie had to rack her brain before she remembered Annika was his current girlfriend. They must be serious if she was attending a royal event at his side.

Or maybe they’d been serious for a while and Maggie hadn’t known it.

Tirith was also supposed to attend the recognition ceremony for a general who’d served in the Glorvaird service for three decades.

“She’s a little nervous,” Valentin said, “so I thought maybe you’d ride in the limo with us and… talk to her.” He gave a shrug that Maggie had seen before when Miles was talking about Scarlett. The one that meant women stuff, as if he were baffled.

Bea still had her arm tucked through Maggie’s and gave her side an unobtrusive nudge. Was that meant to be a tee-hee or a warning?

Maggie had to fight off that hysterical giggle again. Tirith would likely be great at dispensing advice about handling royal events. She participated often enough.

Maggie was hanging on to the distraction her cousin and sister presented. Every time she thought about this stupid ribbon cutting, she wanted to throw up. What was she going to tell Valetin’s girlfriend that would ease her nerves?

“I’m sure that’s fine,” she murmured when it was clear Valentin was waiting for an answer.

He kissed her cheek and went on his way.

When she and Bea reached the garage door, a security guard in a suit and wired at the ear spoke softly into the air and held it open.

Bea let go.

Maggie froze.

Everything so far this morning, all the pretending, could be erased if she turned around now and confessed.

Once she stepped through that door, she was committed to this crazy charade.

Tirith needed her.

And Maggie hadn’t come through once before. She’d let everyone down when it counted most.

She had to do this.

She stepped through the door alone.

Luc Moreno was a born politician. His mother had said so when he was a three-year-old standing front of a counter at the sweet shop. He’d cajoled her until she gave in and let him get a treat.

He knew how to get things done. A whisper in the right ear could pave the way when money and intent weren’t enough.

And he also knew how to keep secrets.

He’d been a junior councilman for two years. And then after the bruhaha with Father he’d taken a hiatus from serving the public and spent the past two years working tirelessly with his brother Ernest’s foundation. Trying to right what Father had done. If things went perfectly, all his work was about to come to fruition. All he needed was one princess to cooperate for another week. Seven days, and the deal would be done.

He stood just inside the sparkling atrium with its glass walls. Waiting for her arrival along with several other people. He’d greeted the hospital director, Nancy, and schmoozed with a parliament member and a photographer who happened to be an old friend from college. A couple other members of the press had been hand-selected and would accompany them inside. More press were gathered on the sidewalk outside, visible through the sparkling glass.

He’d been supposed to meet with Tirith for coffee before this ribbon cutting. She’d texted him early this morning to cancel, and she hadn’t said why. His several follow-up texts had been ignored.

And then the royal limo arrived, pulling up to the sidewalk outside. Relief. If she pulled out of the polo match or the gala, he would be doomed.

As usual, the small knot of reporters swarmed the limo door even as the princess’s bodyguard shouldered through them to make room for her to exit the car.

And there was Tirith.

Except it wasn’t her.

The doppleganger looked like Tirith, but Tirith would never allow herself to be manhandled between the two hulking bodyguards. She’d own the space, even if she were sandwiched between them.

There was something off about her gait. Not a limp, but she didn’t walk exactly like Tirith.

And she wore flats. He’d never seen Tirith in flats. Not once.

Which meant this was… Princess Margaret?

He’d never met the reclusive princess who resided in America. Not once in the two years he and Tirith had made plans to be seen together at public events.

Where was Tirith? After she’d ignored his texts this morning, he’d been concerned. Now that he saw this imposter, he was worried. He glanced at the limo but it was already pulling away from the curb.

What was the reclusive princess doing here?

The press shoved microphones in her direction, shouting questions.

“Princess Tirith! Princess—”

The clamor of voices was cut off by the swoosh of the hospital doors closing. The reporters knew better than to follow her inside without an invitation.

The bodyguards faded away, and the Administrator Nancy moved forward to shake the princess’s hand. “Princess Tirith, thank you for joining us.”

Luc waited for her to correct the woman, but the princess shook her hand with a smile that looked nothing like Tirith’s.

How did no one else notice? The truth was as plan as the warm tan on her face, the crinkles of her eyes.

Maybe they only saw what they’d expected to see.

A loud noise from down the hall—a cart spilling over? A metal bedpan hitting the tile floor?—and the princess went from smiling to complete panic.

Her face went chalk-white, and her posture changed as she went from a forced calm into fight-or-flight mode.

Based on the way her gaze was darting about, seeking an escape, he guessed flight was going to win.

He didn’t know why she was posing as her sister. Didn’t know anything other than he couldn’t let anyone get wind that this wasn’t Tirith. His brother’s foundation depended on it.

So he did think only thing he could think of. He stepped forward, close enough to slide his arm around her waist.

He murmured, “Hello, darling.”

And he kissed her.

He felt the infinitesimal stiffening of her spine, and then she was all softness in his arms. She smelled like lavender and sunshine and tasted faintly like strawberries.

He pulled back quickly, aware of the camera snap behind them. He angled his body to shield her from prying eyes as much as possible. He told himself he was protecting her because if she lost her composure, her charade would be spoiled.

But he found himself gazing down into her ethereal blue eyes and realized he wanted to keep holding her.

Which is why he let his hands fall away from her waist.

He couldn’t afford to be distracted, not when he was this close to achieving his goal.

There was a noticeable hush in the small group of doctors and administrators who surrounded them as they made their way down a quiet hallway and out to the hospital’s central courtyard, where the new cardiac wing would be dedicated. Another horde of people and cameras would be waiting there.

He probably should’ve thought through that kiss better. Probably?

Because kissing her was going to make headlines for sure. He and Tirith were friends, nothing more. Friends who attended events together when having a plus-one was better than being besieged by posers and losers. They had always been careful to be circumspect in public, rarely holding hands. They’d let the public and the press speculate as wildly as they wanted, but they but knew there’d never be more than friendship between them. Luc had been happy with the arrangement, as had Tirith. He’d never kissed Tirith, never wanted to. He’d never felt more than the tiniest twinge of attraction toward the royal princess.

But kissing Margaret?

He’d had his share of first kisses.

And none of them compared to the thrill of that first brush of his hand against her waist.

Kissing her had been electric, pure emotion rising up inside him with no outlet, it was… everything.

What had he just done?

Maggie was breathless. And it was no longer thanks to the fear that had gripped her by the throat at the sudden clatter back in the lobby.

She tried the deep breathing techniques she’d learned as part of her recovery, but she could feel the heat of him right behind her, and every inhale brought the scent of his spicy cologne.

She’d just kissed her sister’s boyfriend. And she’d felt… something.

Maybe she was confused. Her stomach was rumbling its complaints from her skipping breakfast. Maybe hunger had made her knees weak.

That was it. Had to be, right?

She could barely glance at him. But if she acted shy now, he’d figure it out. If he’d kissed her hello like that, in front of cameras, no less, he and Tirith must have been closer than Maggie had thought. She’d never asked Tirith outright, just made assumptions from the news articles and web videos the castle staff forwarded to her each week.

She should’ve quizzed Tirith a little better last night before she’d left Texas. Not that she’d had much time before the royal jet had been scheduled to depart.

Obviously, she needed to call her twin, but now wasn’t the time. She was getting ready to step in front of that crowd of people with a giant pair of scissors and smile for the cameras. Shake hands. Be royal.

That was hard enough without worrying about a rogue boyfriend.

She, Luc, and her entourage waited off to the side as a technician fiddled with a cordless microphone and then finally handed it to the hospital administrator.

And then Luc leaned in and spoke so that only she could hear. “Shall we go to lunch after this? Before the board meeting?”