Second Chance With the Rebel: Her Royal Wedding Wish

by Cara Colter

  The music stopped. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the flower lady duck. Now, he thought, and felt every muscle tense and coil, ready.

  Nothing happened.

  An old priest came out of the shadows at the front of the chapel, his golden face tranquil, his eyes crinkled with good humor and acceptance. He wore the red silk robe of a traditional B’Ranasha monk.

  Ronan felt Gray’s tension beside him. They exchanged glances. Gray’s hand now rested inside his jacket. His facade of complete calm did not fool Ronan. His buddy’s hand was now resting on the Cannon. Despite the unchanging expression on Gray’s face, Ronan felt the shift in mood, recognized it as that itching for action, battle fever.

  The sideways feeling in Ronan’s stomach intensified. His brain did a cool divide, right down the middle. One part of him watched the priest, the bride. The groom would arrive next. One part of him smelled perfume and noted the exquisite detail on her silk dress.

  On the other side of the divide, Ronan had become pure predator, alert, edgy, ready.

  The bride lifted her veil, and for just a split second his warrior edge was gone. Nothing could have prepared Jake Ronan for the fact he was looking into the delicate, exquisite perfect features of Princess Shoshauna of B’Ranasha.

  His preparation for providing security for the wedding had included learning to recognize all the members of the royal families, especially the prospective bride and groom, but there had never been any reason to meet them.

  He had been able to view Shoshauna’s photographs with detachment: young, pretty, pampered. But those photos had not prepared him for her in the flesh. Her face, framed by a shimmering black waterfall of straight hair, was faintly golden and flawless. Her eyes were almond shaped, tilted upward, and a shade of turquoise he had seen only once before, in a bay where he’d surfed in his younger days off the coast of Australia.

  She blinked at him, then looked to the back of the room.

  He yanked himself away from the tempting vision of her. It was very bad to lose his edge, his sense of mission, even for a split second. A warning was sounding deep in his brain.

  And in answer to it, the back door of the church whispered open. Ronan glanced back. Not the prince. A man in black. A hood over his face. A gun.

  Long hours of training had made Ronan an extremely adaptable animal. His mission instantly crystallized; his instincts took over.

  His mission became to protect the princess. In an instant she was the focus of his entire existence. If he had to, he would lay down his life to keep her safe. No hesitation. No doubt. No debate.

  The immediate and urgent goal: remove Princess Shoshauna from harm’s way. That meant for the next few minutes, things were going to get plenty physical. He launched himself at her, registered the brief widening of those eyes, before he shoved her down on the floor, shielding her body with his own.

  Even beneath the pump of pure adrenaline, a part of him felt the exquisite sweetness of her curves, felt a need beyond the warrior’s response trained into him—something far more primal and male—to protect her fragility with his own strength.

  A shot was fired. The chapel erupted into bedlam.

  “Ronan, you’re covered,” Gray shouted. “Get her out of here.”

  Ronan yanked the princess to her feet, put his body between her and the attacker, kept his hand forcefully on the fragile column of her neck to keep her down.

  He got himself and the princess safely behind the relative protection of the stone altar, pushed her through an opening into the priest’s vestibule. There Ronan shattered the only window and shoved Princess Shoshauna through it, trying to protect her from the worst of the broken glass with his own arm.

  Her skirt got caught, and most of it tore away, which was good. Without the layers of fabric, he discovered she could run like a deer. They were in an alleyway. He kept his hand at the small of her back as they sprinted away from the church. In the background he heard the sound of three more shots, screams.

  The alley opened onto a bright square, postcard pretty, with white stucco storefronts, lush palms, pink flowers the size of basketballs. A cabdriver, oblivious to the backdrop of firecracker noises, was in his front seat, door open, slumbering in the sun. Ronan scanned the street. The only other vehicle was a donkey cart for tourists, the donkey looking as sleepy as the cabdriver.

  Ronan made his decision, pulled the unsuspecting driver from his cab and shoved the princess in. She momentarily got hung up on the gearshift. He shoved her again, and she plopped into the passenger seat. He then jumped in behind her, turned the key and slammed the vehicle into gear.

  Within seconds the sounds of gunfire and the shouted protests of the cabdriver had faded in the distance, but he kept driving, his brain pulling up maps of this island as if he had an Internet search program.

  “Do you think everyone’s all right back there?” she asked. “I’m worried about my grandfather.”

  Her English was impeccable, her voice a silk scarf—soft, sensual, floating across his neck as if she had actually touched him.

  He shrugged the invisible hand away, filed it under interesting that she was more worried about her grandfather than the groom. And he red-flagged it that the genuine worry on her face made him feel a certain unwanted softness for her.

  Softness was not part of his job, and he liked to think not part of his nature, either, trained out of him, so that he could make clinical, precise decisions that were not emotionally driven. On the other hand he’d been around enough so-called important people to be able to appreciate her concern for someone other than herself.

  “No one was hit,” he said gruffly.

  “How could you know that? I could hear gunfire after we left.”

  “A bullet makes a different sound when it hits than when it misses.”

  She looked incredulous and skeptical. “And with everything going on, you were listening for that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Not listening for that exactly, but listening. He had not heard the distinctive ka-thunk of a hit, nor had he heard sounds that indicated someone badly hurt. Details. Every member of Excalibur was trained to pay attention to details that other people missed. It was amazing how often something that seemed insignificant could mean the difference between life and death.

  “My grandfather has a heart problem,” she said softly, worried.

  “Sorry.” He knew he sounded insincere, and at this moment he was. He only cared if one person was safe, and that was her. He was not risking a distraction, a misdirection of energy, by focusing on anything else.

  As if to challenge his focus, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He had turned it off for the wedding, because his mother had taken to leaving him increasingly frantic messages that she had big news to share with him. Big news in her life always meant one thing: a new man, the proclamation it was different this time, more extravagant wedding plans.

  Some goof at Excalibur, probably thinking it was funny, had given her his cell number against his specific instructions. But a glance at the caller ID showed it was not his mother but Gray.

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “Clear here.”

  “Here, too. Aurora—” he named the princess in Sleeping Beauty, a reference that was largely cultural, that might not be understood by anyone listening “—is fine.”

  “Excellent. We have the perp. No one injured. The guy was firing blanks. He could have been killed. What kind of nutcase does that?”

  He contemplated that for a moment and came up with one who wants to stop the wedding. “Want me to bring her back in? Maybe they could still go ahead with the ceremony.”

  Details. The princess flinched ever so slightly beside him.

  “No. Absolutely not. Something’s wrong here. Really wrong. Nobody should have been able to penetrate the security aroun
d that wedding. It has to be someone within the palace, so I don’t want her back here until I know who it is. Can you keep her safe until I get to the bottom of it?”

  Ronan contemplated that. He had a handgun and two clips of ammunition. He was a stranger to the island and was now in possession of a stolen vehicle, not to mention a princess.

  Despite circumstances not being anywhere near perfect, he knew in his business perfect circumstances were in short supply. It was a game of odds, and of trust in one’s own abilities. “Affirmative,” he said.

  “I can’t trust my phone, but we can probably use yours once more to give you a time frame and set a rendezvous.”

  “All right.” He should have hung up, but he made the mistake of glancing at her pinched face. “Ah, Gray? Is her grandfather all right?”

  “Slamming back the Scotch.” Gray lowered his voice, “Though he actually seems a little, er, pleased, that his granddaughter didn’t manage to get married.”

  Ronan pocketed his phone. “Your grandfather’s fine.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful news! Thank you!”

  “I can’t take you back just yet, though.”

  Some finely held tension disappeared from her shoulders, as if she allowed herself to start breathing after holding her breath.

  Eyes that had been clouded with worry, suddenly tilted upward when she smiled. If he was not mistaken, and he rarely was, given his gift with details, a certain mischief danced in their turquoise depths.

  She did not inquire about the groom, and now that her concerns for her grandfather had been relieved, she didn’t look anything like a woman who had just had her wedding ceremony shattered by gunfire, her dress shredded. In fact, she looked downright happy. As if to confirm that conclusion, she took off her bridal headdress, held it out the window and let the wind take it. She laughed with delight as it floated behind them, children chasing it down the street.

  The wind billowing through the open window caught at the tendrils of her hair, and she shook it all free from the remaining pins that held it, and it spilled down over the slenderness of her shoulders.

  If he was not mistaken, Princess Shoshauna was very much enjoying herself.

  “Look, Your Highness,” he said, irritated. “This is not a game. Don’t be throwing anything else out the window that will make us easy to follow or remember.”

  She tossed her hair and gave him a look that was faintly mutinous. Obviously, because of her position, she was not accustomed to being snapped at. But that was too bad. There was only room for one boss here, and it wasn’t going to be her.

  With the imminent danger now at bay, at least temporarily, his thought processes slowed, and he began to sort information. His assessment of the situation wasn’t good. He had been prepared to do a little wedding security, not to find himself in possession of a princess who had someone trying to kill her.

  He didn’t know the island. He had no idea where he could take her where it would be secure. He had very little currency, and at some point he was going to have to feed her, and get her out of that all-too-attention-grabbing outfit. He had to assume that whoever was after her would be sophisticated enough to trace credit card use. Ditto for his cell phone. They could use it once more to arrange a time and place for a rendezvous and then he’d have to pitch it. On top of that, he had to assume this vehicle had already been reported stolen; it would have to be ditched soon.

  On the plus side, she was alive, and he planned to keep it that way. He had a weapon, but very little ammunition.

  He was going to have to use the credit card once. To get them outfitted. By the time it was traced, they could be a long way away.

  “Do you have any enemies?” he asked her. If he had one more phone call with Gray, maybe he could have some information for him. Plus, it would help him to know if this threat was about something personal or if it was politically motivated. Each of those scenarios made for a completely different enemy.

  “No,” she said, but he saw the moment’s hesitation.

  “No one hates you?”

  “Of course not.” But again he sensed hesitation, and he pushed.

  “Who do you think did this?” he asked. “What’s your gut feeling?”

  “What’s a gut feeling?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  “Your instinct.”

  “It’s silly.”

  “Tell me,” he ordered.

  “Prince Mahail was seeing a woman before he asked me to marry him. She’s actually a cousin of mine. She acted happy for me, but—”

  Details. People chose to ignore them, which was too bad. “Your instincts aren’t silly,” he told her gruffly. “They could keep you alive. What’s her name?”

  “I don’t want her to get in trouble. She probably has nothing to do with this.”

  The princess wasn’t just choosing to ignore her instincts, but seemed determined to. Still, he appreciated her loyalty.

  “She won’t be in trouble.” If she didn’t do anything. “Her name?”

  “Mirassa,” she said, but reluctantly.

  “Now tell me how to find a market. A small one, where I can get food. And something for you to wear.”

  “Oh,” she breathed. “Can I have shorts?” She blinked at him, her lashes thick as a chimney brush over those amazing ocean-bay eyes.

  He tried not to sigh audibly. Wasn’t that just like a woman? Even a crisis could be turned into an opportunity to shop!

  “I’m getting what draws the least attention to you,” he said, glancing over at her long legs exposed by her torn dress. “I somehow doubt that’s going to be shorts.”

  “Am I going to wear a disguise?” she asked, thrilled.

  She was determined not to get how serious this was. And maybe that was good. The last thing he needed was hysteria.

  “Sure,” he said, going along, “you get to wear a disguise.”

  “You could pretend to be my boyfriend,” Princess Shoshauna said, with way too much enthusiasm. “We could rent a motorcycle and blend in with the tourists. How long do you think you’ll have to hide me?”

  “I don’t know yet. Probably a couple of days.”

  “Oh!” she said, pleased, determined to perceive this life-and-death situation as a grand adventure. “I have always wanted to ride a motorcycle!”

  The urge to strangle her was not at all in keeping with the businesslike, absolutely emotionless attitude he needed to have around her. That attitude would surely be jeopardized further by pretending to be her boyfriend, by sharing a motorcycle with her. His mind went there—her pressed close, her crotch pressed into the small of his back, the bike throbbing underneath them.

  Buck up, soldier, he ordered himself. There’s going to be no motorcycle.

  “I’ll cut my hair,” she decided.

  It was the first reasonable idea she had presented, but he was aware he wasn’t even considering it. Her hair was long and straight, jet-black and glossy. Her hair was glorious. He wasn’t letting her cut her hair, even if it would be the world’s greatest disguise.

  He knew he was making that decision for all the wrong reasons, and that his professionalism had just slipped the tiniest little notch. There was no denying the sideways feeling seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his stomach.

  * * *

  Shoshauna slid the man who was beside her a look and felt the sweetest little dip in the region of her stomach. He was incredibly good-looking. His short hair was auburn, burnt brown with strands of red glinting as the sun struck it. His eyes, focused on the road, were topaz colored, like a lion’s. As if the eyes were not hint enough of his strength, there was the formidable set of his lips, the stubborn set of his chin, the flare of his nostrils.

  He was a big man, broad and muscled, not like the slighter men of B’Ranasha. When he had thr
own her onto the floor of the chapel, she had felt the shock first. No man had ever touched her like that before! Technically, it had been more a tackle than a touch. But then she had become aware of the hard, unforgiving lines of him, felt the strange and forbidden thrill of his male body shielding hers.

  Even now she watched as his hands found their way to his necktie, tugged impatiently at it. He loosened it, tugged it free, shoved it in his pocket. Next, he undid the top button of his shirt, rubbed his neck as if he’d escaped the hangman’s noose.

  “What’s your name?” she asked. It was truly shocking, considering how aware she’d felt of him, within seconds of marrying someone else. She glanced at his fingers, was entranced by the shape of them, the faint dusting of hair on the knuckles. Shocked at herself, she realized she could imagine them tangling in her hair.

  Of course, she had led a somewhat sheltered life. This was the closest she had ever been, alone, to a man who was not a member of her own family. Even her meetings with her fiancé, Prince Mahail of the neighboring island, had been very formal and closely chaperoned.

  “Ronan,” he said, and then had to swerve to miss a woman hauling a basket of chickens on her bicycle. He said a delicious-sounding word that she had never heard before, even though she considered her English superb. The little shiver that went up and down her spine told her the word was naughty. Very naughty.

  “Ronan.” She tried it out, liked how it felt on her tongue. “You must call me Shoshauna!”

  “Your Highness, I am not calling you Shoshauna.” He muttered the name of a deity under his breath. “I think it’s thirty lashes for calling a member of the royal family by their first name.”

  “Ridiculous,” she told him, even though it was true: no one but members of her immediate family would even dare being so familiar as to call her by her first name. That was part of the prison of her role as a member of B’Ranasha’s royal family.

  But she’d been rescued! Her prayers had been answered just when she had thought there was no hope left, when she had resigned herself to the fact she had agreed to a marriage to a man she did not love.