Finding Chris Evans: The Royal Edition

Finding Chris Evans:
The Royal Edition

By Jennifer Chance

Finding Chris Evans: The Royal Edition

Copyright 2016 by Jennifer Chance

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book, with the exception of brief quotations for book reviews or critical articles, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Digital Edition
Cover artist: Elizabeth Bemis
Digital formatting: Elizabeth Bemis

For Liz
Because falling in love knows no season.

Finding Chris Evans:
The Royal Edition

LeeAnn Werth has done everything she must to keep the Werth Inn running strong, including putting aside her dreams of flying away from her tiny north woods town.

But at least this summer, the world has come to her. A mysterious foreign businessman has checked in for some serious R&R, and while LeeAnn knows Cris Evans can’t be the man’s real name, she’s fiercely dedicated to her guests’ privacy. Especially the incredibly gorgeous ones.

For international soccer bad boy Cristopoulis Matretti, Haralson, Minnesota is the perfect hideout. No one here knows he’s embarrassed his native Garronia by punching out his coach… and no one suspects his aunt is a queen. But when a local girl’s unexpected visit sends his bodyguards into an uproar, Cris realizes he must flee again—just when he’s finally getting to know the inn’s dreamy-eyed, hard-working owner. Still, maybe he doesn’t have to leave immediately…

LeeAnn’s not prepared for Cris’s sudden attention, and her defenses go up even as her heart begins to dance. Consorting with guests who make her long for adventure is something a responsible innkeeper simply does not do.

…If only Cristopoulis had ever learned to play by the rules.

The Finding Chris Evans Series

In a small town in northern Minnesota, Ellie Mittelstadt goes to a psychic where she receives this prediction: if she finds a man named Chris Evans, true love will follow...

Only one problem: Even in the tiny town of Haralson, Minnesota, there are six Chris Evanses!

• A firefighter who's smokin' hot...
  
• A reality TV star about to get the surprise of his life...
  
• An EMT with emergency-level sex appeal...
  
• A bad-boy royal on the run...
  
• A smoldering rock star ready to drop the mic...
  
• A doctor with a heart of gold...
  

What follows are six delightfully romantic tales that start with Ellie meeting each new Chris Evans. But while she doesn't find true love (yet!), her meeting sets off a chain of events that leads the Chris Evans in each story to fall in love with a heroine all his own. Then finally, in the sixth tale, Ellie's psychic prediction comes true in a charmingly perfect and heartwarming way. Because true love never fails!

Now's your chance to fall in love with Chris Evans, too--six different times! Featuring NYT and USA Bestselling authors
Erin Nicholas
,
Jennifer Bernard
and
Erin McCarthy
, and award-winning authors
Lizzie Shane
,
Jennifer Chance
and
Elizabeth Bemis
, the Finding Chris Evans series debuts in October, 2016.

Read the Prequel!

In case you haven't read the free prequel, we've included it in the back of this book!

Click to read it now!

Chapter One

The trumpeter swans were out again. Maybe they wouldn’t fly away at all this year?

At least one of us should.
LeeAnn Werth grimaced as she lifted her faded Werth Inn mug to her lips, reveling in the thick, rich coffee she’d brewed earlier that morning from actual beans. As much as she preferred the quick hit of the one-cup coffee makers, nothing beat the taste of real java on a crystal clear lake morning.

It’d grown cooler these past few days, the way Minnesota autumns sometimes did, the last bits of summer hanging on fiercely even as the encroaching winter prowled close, waiting to pounce. She used to love the changing of the seasons, but that was before it had meant another long hard winter of fewer customers and harder work, the cold seeping a bit further into her bones with each new snowfall.

The snap in the air this particular morning seemed particularly sharp, since another reminder notice from Mark Prentiss at the property management company had popped up in her email today. The lease on the inn’s main lodge was due to be re-upped this week.

Had it truly been five years since she’d returned to help her father? Back then, it’d been a no-brainer to continue the lease. LeeAnn had agreed without even thinking about it. Five years wasn’t so long to keep her father’s and grandfather’s dream alive, right?

And it hadn’t been. Those years had passed by in a blink in many ways…yet they’d also clipped her wings, too. So thoroughly, she was pretty sure she’d forgotten how to fly.

She was only twenty-seven but felt sixty, a matter not helped by the tall, willowy blonde striding purposefully up the walk.

To be fair, LeeAnn had always liked Ellie Mittelstadt. The social worker epitomized generosity and grace, and always had a kind word for everyone. This morning, however, she looked a little too stunning in her cheerful sundress and cute sweater, her long hair beach-ready despite the fact that Haralson, Minnesota was nowhere near an ocean.

LeeAnn’s hand strayed to her own messy top knot as Ellie climbed the stairs to the Werth Inn’s wide, gracious front porch.

“Is he here?” Ellie asked, her blue eyes resolute. “Chris Evans?”

LeeAnn nodded. “Christopher,” she said faintly. “He goes by Christopher.”

Werth Inn’s most prominent guest this summer didn’t look at all like a Christopher Evans, for the record. But when Ellie had stopped LeeAnn yesterday at the Farmer’s Market and had told her about the crazy psychic prediction she’d received at the Haralson Fall Festival, LeeAnn somehow hadn’t been surprised. Ellie was apparently fated to fall in love with a Christopher Evans.

And if
ever
there was someone slated to be a psychic love match, it was the ultra-mysterious Christopher Evans currently staying at Werth Inn.

Tall, athletic and impossibly good looking, he’d come out of nowhere in early May, arriving only a few days after the swans had migrated back to Lake Haralson. With his thick European accent, flashing eyes and ready grin—and his entourage of work associates who never left his side—the enigmatic businessman had captured LeeAnn’s imagination completely.

He said he was a Greek transplant vacationing in Minnesota for a little R&R after the chaos of New York City. Well, he’d done his level best to see
all
of Minnesota—taking multi-day adventuring excursions with the larger, more tourist-friendly North Woods Resort higher on the lake, running nearly every morning through the forest with one or more of his coworkers, and heading out on camping trips for weeks at a time.

When he’d been on site at the inn, he’d been invariably polite, even charming—but LeeAnn had never tried to discover who he really was. Guests came to her resort to relax and get away…and sometimes to escape their lives. She understood that, and so far, she’d never been burned. Her policy of respecting people’s privacy was one of the things she was proudest of at the inn.

This guest, however, had proven impossible for her even to talk to. Every time she’d tried, she turned as flustered as a baby cygnet fresh out of the nest, and it was all she could do not to make a fool out of herself. Christopher Evans may be the businessman he said he was, but in her daydreams he was some rogue operative undercover in the north woods, or a billionaire bad boy on the lam, or a—

“LeeAnn.” Ellie’s impatient blurt brought her attention back, and LeeAnn flushed.

“Sorry,” she said. “Yes, he’s here. He’s in the side garden having breakfast. But his, um, coworkers are always lurking around. I don’t think you’re going to have much time alone.” Christopher’s sidekicks were never more than ten feet away from him it seemed, haunting him like a shadow. LeeAnn was surprised he put up with it, but it was as if he didn’t notice them. As if he’d been trailed by attendants his whole life. Which was impossible and yet…

“It shouldn’t take long. This is so nuts,” Ellie muttered. She met LeeAnn’s gaze with a rueful smile. “And hey, thanks for letting me ambush one of your guests. I can’t believe what I’m doing, but—” she sighed. “I have to try. True love, you know.”

“I know.” Though she didn’t. LeeAnn had given up on what she’d thought had been her true love—travel—to come home to Minnesota. And she didn’t regret it. Her dad had had enough people letting him down.

Now she watched as Ellie made her way along the porch. Despite her every intention to keep her beak in her own business, she failed miserably. She set her mug on a tray as if she’d just bussed her coffee from a table, then picked up the tray and ducked beneath the trellised entryway in time to see Ellie walk up to Christopher.

In the morning light, LeeAnn had to admit, they looked like the perfect fairytale couple. Ellie’s striking face lit up with a brave smile as she paused in front of Christopher’s table, and Christopher glanced up with that uniquely European quirk to his brows, his own smile wry and his eyes bright with interest.

“You—you’re Chris Evans, yes?” Ellie asked as she reached into her handbag. “I… well, I was told to find you and—”

Two men burst by LeeAnn so unexpectedly she dropped her tray. As she stumbled back, her mug crashing to the cobblestones, the remaining two members of Christopher’s entourage dived for his table from the back of the garden.

Before Ellie could so much as squawk out a startled “Hey!” she’d been grabbed by two of the burly men. They lifted her high enough that her strappy sandals dangled.

“What’s going on!” LeeAnn demanded. She rushed forward while Christopher shoved his chair back and stood, his hands going wide.

“Look, that’s enough—” Christopher sputtered in his thick accent. “She is a local. She’s no trouble!”

His men didn’t seem to hear him. Instead they turned as if one unit—one highly trained unit—and hustled the hyperventilating Ellie out of the garden. They disappeared under the trailing clematis as LeeAnn turned on Christopher.

“What were they thinking?” she blurted. “She wasn’t attacking you.”

“I am so sorry,” he said. “They told me someone was looking up Christopher Evans, but I didn’t think—I didn’t think anyone would seek me out here.”

LeeAnn jerked anew as the sound of Ellie’s frightened voice reached them, rising in alarm. “What are they
doing
to her?”

She bolted toward the trellis, Christopher right behind her.

“They won’t hurt your friend, I promise!” he protested. Then again, he wasn’t slowing down either. The two of them rounded the corner as Ellie spun away from Christopher’s men, who now stood arrayed in a human wall between her and their charge. Sure enough, they hadn’t hurt her. But she wasn’t getting through them, either.

“I just wanted to talk to him!” Ellie snapped, incredulous. Beside LeeAnn, Christopher groaned.

“I’m so sorry,” he repeated. Ellie made a beeline for her car, her long legs eating up the pavement. As Haralson’s sweetest social worker flung herself behind the wheel, LeeAnn tried to make sense of what had just happened.

But clearly, her morning wasn’t about to get any better.

The gorgeous Christopher Evans, hero of a thousand daydreams, turned to her with his face as bleak as winter. “I should go,” he said quietly. “I should go and leave you and your beautiful hotel in peace.”

Somewhere out on the lake, all the swans burst into tears.