Royal Hearts

Growing up, Kelly Pavlik always thought she would follow the family path and become a Montana rancher. Instead, she discovered novels, and with Masters degree in hand, she is now an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Montana State and has been invited to be a lecturer at Oxford once she obtains her Ph.D. This has placed a slight rift between her and her now-widowed father, Hank Pavlik, who feels no longer connected to her in her redirected life path. In part because of her bad choices and in part because of her somewhat unrealistic expectations, Kelly has had little luck in the romance department, she wanting to be swept off her feet by the likes of a dashing young man in her favorite Jane Austen novels. They are told by a solicitor named Grimsby that Hank is to inherit the estate of a relative he never knew from the Central European principality of Merania. It isn't until Hank and Kelly arrive in Merania for Hank to sign the necessary papers that Hank learns that part of that inheritance is a title: King. Truly wanting none of the above and solely wanting to go home to his Montana ranch, Hank is placed in a quandary when he is further told that without a male ruler (what would happen if he abdicates), Meravia would lose its independence in being annexed by neighboring Angosia as is written in their respective constitutions. In the process of trying to convince Hank to stay and be King until a solution can be arrived at for the best of all Meravians including himself, Kelly meets Nik, the King of Angosia. In there being a mutual attraction between the two, Kelly believes she may have found her "Mr. Darcy" in the form of Nik, who does ask her to marry him. What Kelly may not immediately see in having that certain type of man in mind is that she does not love Nik and that he is not all he appears to be on the surface, whereas she is truly in love with Alex--he also in love with her--the royal stablehand who is not all he appears on the surface.