Plot Summary

Princess Amelia is first in line to the throne of Bundbury; that ascension is to come soon because her widowed mother, Queen Ava, has already revealed her intention to imminently abdicate. Amelia accepts her responsibility, but she has not much liked her lack of freedom over the course of her life; she craves to experience some of it without the strict royal protocols. That experience extends to romance: she would prefer a matrimonial match based on love rather than royal arrangement, and feels that this can only happen in that freedom of experiencing life. In that vein, she wants at least to discover if a connection she made with Chicago-based artist Wes Riverton, who was commissioned to paint her portrait, could be love. The weeks of portrait sittings gave each the idea that they are attracted to each other and want to continue to see each other, something that the protective Queen, if she knew, would probably not allow. Under the guise of celebrating her maternal Uncle Andreas' birthday in his Beverly Hills home base (he's the Bundbury emissary to the U.S.), Amelia plans to escape the watchful eyes not only of her mother and her uncle while in Los Angeles, but also Grady Beck, the bodyguard her uncle assigns to her, to travel to Chicago to reunite with Wes. While she knows that her secretary Camille is on her side, Amelia is surprised to learn that her uncle is a romantic at heart and allows her to go, unknown to the Queen, with an initially-reluctant Grady assigned as her bodyguard/escort/driver. The road trip may provide the Princess the freedom she wants, while showing her a different part of life than she was expecting with Grady as her guide.—Huggo