A book in the Heart to Heart series, 2005

Dear Reader,

I do like a good dose of royalty. Not day-to-day, opening fetes and greeting-dignitaries-type royalty, but castles and footmen and glass coaches-the full fantastic fairy tale. Wouldn’t it be fun to be a part of it for a while?

Oh, I hear you say, but it surely never happens in real life. Normal people don’t find themselves in the middle of such a soap bubble. But what if…what if…?

That’s where I come in. I can’t resist a good romance and here we have two lovely people-normalish people even if Raoul’s a wee bit gorgeous-catapulted into wonder.

It’s fun, it’s fantastic and I believed every word of it as I wrote. I did enjoy donning a tiara, and I trust you’ll enjoy wearing one, too.

Marion Lennox

SHE should be driving on this side of the road. Surely?

This was the most fabulous autoroute in Alp’Azuri. The road spiralled around snow-capped mountains, with the sea crashing hundreds of feet below. Every twist in the road seemed to reveal postcard magic. Medieval castles, ancient fishing villages, lush pastures dotted with long-haired goats and alpacas-every sight was seemingly designed to take the breath away.

The twist she’d just taken had given her a fleeting glimpse of the home of the Alp’Azuri royal family. Made of glistening white stone, with turrets, towers and battlements and set high on the crags overlooking the sea, the castle looked as if it had been taken straight out of a fairy tale.

Two years ago Jessica Devlin would have been entranced. But now she was concentrating on reaching the next of her suppliers-concentrating on not thinking about the empty passenger seat-concentrating simply on staying on the right side of the road.