The Reluctant Royal

by Eleanor Harkstead

  Joe took her hand. “Joe. Nice to meet you. Will you be able to get home all right? If you two live together?”

  “We don’t.” Paloma shook her head. “He’ll be out of it for days now. Hello, Joe, my hero in a lovely jacket.”

  “Hello, Paloma, in your…well, it’s quite an outfit you’re wearing.” A hero? Joe held out his arm to her. “Would you like to take my arm?”

  “I would!” Paloma slipped her arm through Joe’s, as though this was the most normal thing in the world. Then she sniffed, but not the telltale coke sniff of her companion. This one was clearly intended only to keep her tears from falling and ruining her exquisitely applied makeup. “I made this dress. It’s a spooky wedding gown!”

  “You made it? That’s amazing!” Joe grinned. What the heck was he doing, arm in arm with a drag queen while his wife and her friends drank and laughed together? But he had to make sure Paloma was safe. He wasn’t about to abandon her in the street. Especially not if she was on the verge of tears. “Would you like to borrow my hanky?”

  “I might get makeup on it,” Paloma warned, sniffing again as her lip trembled even more violently. “Yes, please!”

  Joe took a cotton handkerchief from his jacket pocket and passed it to her. It had JW embroidered in one corner. “I didn’t order them especially with my initials on, in case you’re wondering. They were a Christmas present from my dad.”

  That, along with socks, was pretty much all his dad ever bought him for Christmas.

  “Very British. Just like you.” Paloma took the handkerchief and, as they paused at the café, dabbed at her eyes with such delicacy that she might be made of fine bone china. In the light that spilled from the plate glass window Joe could see the intricate makeup more clearly than ever, but still he couldn’t see any evidence of the man her attacker had claimed her to be.

  And it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  Joe pulled a chair out from one of the tables and indicated it to Paloma. “Take a seat. I’ll be back in a moment. Just a hot chocolate, or would you like something else?”

  “Hot chocolate is perfect.” She sat down, arranging her voluminous lace and silk skirts with care over a flash of black and red candy-striped leg.

  Joe forced himself not to look. Do not stare at the man’s legs, Sergeant! “I’ll only be in here. I’ll keep an eye out in case your skeleton comes back. Don’t worry!”

  Joe went into the café. Although it was late, people sat about drinking coffees and eating pastries. He liked this bit of London. It felt Continental, and even more Continental with someone called Paloma. What was that accent? Spanish? Joe placed his order, and watched the street outside through the café’s large plate glass window. Paloma hadn’t run off. Yet.

  Despite the deepening autumn the air was still almost balmy and a gentle breeze ruffled her sleek red hair. She patted it with one hand, dabbing at her eyes again with the handkerchief that was clutched in the other. Then she turned a little and met his gaze, offering a small tilt of her head in acknowledgement.

  Joe raised his hand, giving her a wave. She returned it with one of her own, a regality to the gesture that reminded him of the job he was about to go back to. Then the barista called out his order, and Joe headed to the end of the counter. He sprinkled some chocolate powder over the creamy top of the hot chocolates and carefully carried the two drinks outside.

  He placed a mug in front of Paloma and sat down opposite her. “I said yes to cream, but no to marshmallows. But if you do want marshmallows, you just say.”

  “I shouldn’t have anything really. I’ve let you tempt me.” And she finally smiled. A mischievous, naughty sort of smile. “But I’ve never had a hero of my own before.”

  Awkward, Joe scrubbed his hand back through his hair. He’d heard that word far too often after he’d nearly been flattened by a car. “I’m not a hero. Just doing what anyone would do. I risked getting a slap from the skeleton too, I suppose, but I’ve stared down scarier things than him.”

  “Him slap you?” She laughed, a bitter sound. “He wouldn’t dare! I shouldn’t annoy him, I’m always too much and—and you look adorable. There’s a reason tweed is a design classic!”

  “Nonsense, he shouldn’t slap anyone.” Joe sipped his drink, taking care to wipe his lip afterwards. He didn’t want to sport a cream moustache and look ridiculous in front of Paloma. “You could have him for assault, do you know that? Useful to be aware of. If someone even spits on you, that’s assault, too.”

  She reached over and dabbed the handkerchief softly against his upper lip. “What’re you up to this Halloween night? Besides protecting my honour?”

  Joe gazed at Paloma. I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t. “Escaping a tedious gang of solicitors. They’re all slowly getting drunk, and I’m off the sauce tonight, so, yeah, it’s not exactly a fun night out.”

  And one of them’s my wife.

  Paloma pulled a face. “How better to escape than with a drag calavera? I promise you, Osito, I’m usually far prettier than this!”

  Osito? Joe had never studied Spanish properly, but had picked up the odd word from his last job. Joder was his favourite. He’d heard it said more than once, and with the right intonation could release all manner of rage and frustration. But he’d not heard osito before. Maybe it meant hero in Spanish. Or bringer of the hot chocolates. Or even pillock in tweed.

  “You look pretty like that!” Joe insisted. “And it’s Halloween season after all. It’s better than wrapping yourself in loo roll and calling yourself a mummy!”

  “You should be James Bond,” she replied, rather more appreciative than the skeleton had been. “You’d be perfect.”

  I sort of am. Joe raised an eyebrow instead. “Like this?”

  “Exactly like that!” Paloma took a sip of hot chocolate. She left a print of glittering red lips on the white mug. “In a gorgeous tux!”

  “I have one at home.” Joe laughed. “But I don’t own a sports car, sadly.”

  “How about a speedboat?” She lowered her long eyelashes. They can’t be real, Joe found himself thinking, and blinked the forbidden thought away. “You look like you might have a speedboat!”

  “I’ve got two of them—and a helicopter!”

  Joe laughed. When was the last time he’d laughed? As he swept his gaze over Paloma’s outfit, a thought occurred to him. He started to take off his jacket. “Damn it, I do apologise. Would you like to borrow my jacket? Keep the chill off?”

  “Are you sure you won’t be cold?” She shivered again, though, her handmade dress perhaps not quite as cosy as Joe’s tweed. “Won’t your solicitors be missing you?”

  Joe moved his chair closer to Paloma’s and draped his jacket over her shoulders. “I’m wearing my T-shirt under this. Don’t worry, I’m nice and warm.” Joe wasn’t wearing a T-shirt under his shirt at all, but he didn’t want Paloma to worry that he’d be cold without his jacket. Paloma’s need was greater than his. He patted Paloma’s arm. “No, they won’t be missing me. They’re all talking shop. You know what it’s like when you go out with a crowd and they all go on about their jobs and you haven’t really got a clue what they’re going on about?”

  Paloma’s hand shot out and her fingers darted into the open neck of his shirt to brush his bare chest. The touch, that moment of contact, sent a shiver of a rather different sort through Joe. “There’s no T-shirt! You’re just being chivalrous!”

  “Nothing wrong with that, I hope?” Joe grinned. He knew he was blushing. That would keep him warm, at least.

  “Quite the contrary.” She laughed. Her head tilted a little then came to rest on Joe’s shoulder, a bloom of fragrance filling the air. “Thank you for stepping in.”

  “Not at all. Glad I was around to help.” Joe wanted to stroke Paloma’s hair, but he forced himself not to. He took his phone from his pocket and sent Wendy a text.

  Run into a problem. Will be back in a bit. J

  After he pressed Send, Joe told Paloma, “Just letting my fri
ends know where I am.”

  “I’m sorry your night hasn’t gone so well, Osito.” She shifted slightly to peer up at him through those luxuriant lashes and whispered, “Trick or treat?”

  Joe forgot to breathe. He was caught in an enchantment.

  Don’t be silly, Sergeant Wenlock!

  He blinked. I want to be silly. Before he went back to work and his time was no longer his own. “Trick or treat? Well, I’m not sure I’d like a trick. How about a treat?”

  Paloma drew her finger down his face, the lace of her glove rasping against Joe’s evening stubble. Then she lifted her head and put her mouth to his, kissing him with those glittery red lips that had shimmered in the darkness.

  It took Joe a moment to process what exactly was happening. He was being kissed, in the street, by a drag queen. He should stop, he should lean away, but the kiss was so sweet, so unexpected, that he couldn’t retreat. He responded, touching his fingertips to Paloma’s jaw, and parted his lips under hers. Her answering sigh was as soft as her touch and she snuggled a little closer, her palm resting on Joe’s thigh. Had he and Wendy ever kissed like this? Maybe, once upon a time. Possibly not.

  Sergeant Wenlock, you’ll bring the force into disrepute!

  Joe didn’t care. He hadn’t felt like this for so long. He slipped his arm around Paloma and held her tight. At that moment, Joe heard fireworks, and he had no idea if someone was letting them off a week early for Guy Fawkes’ Night or if the fireworks were going off inside him.

  Then, from Joe’s pocket, a tinny version of The Flight of the Bumblebee started to play. Joe broke from the kiss. “That was…erm… Haven’t had a kiss like for a long time. But I better take this. Sorry.”

  Even Paloma’s pout was gorgeous, but the glitter on her lips wasn’t quite so vivid after their kiss. Her hand didn’t move though, still warm against his thigh as Wendy’s voice, muffled by loud music, asked from the phone, “What exactly are you doing, Joe?”

  “I needed some fresh air. Then once I got outside, I broke up a fight. Just sorting things out now.” Joe glanced down at Paloma’s hand. He didn’t want her to take her hand away. One of her painted brows arched as she mouthed ‘sorting things out’, then her hand moved, just enough to let her fingertips circle delicate patterns on Joe’s thigh.

  “Do you always have to play Action Man?” Wendy’s voice dripped with annoyance and he heard her take a drink, then give another long sigh. Paloma leaned closer again, nuzzling her lips against Joe’s throat. “It’s my birthday, didn’t you notice? Maybe you just don’t care.”

  Joe closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation of Paloma’s lips on his skin. “I do care, but I needed some fresh air. I doubt any of your friends noticed I’d gone.”

  “Doesn’t that tell you something about how you’ve actually tried to engage with my friends tonight?” Wendy had snapped into professional mode already, her clipped tones those of a lawyer questioning a man she knew was on the ropes. But he wasn’t on the ropes, he was sat at a street café and a drag queen made up as a sugar skull had just started nibbling his earlobe. And those seductive fingertips were still travelling up his thigh. “It’s hard to notice the Invisible Man.”

  “You know I can’t talk shop. Everyone was asking me things I can’t answer. I can’t be in that environment.”

  I don’t want to be.

  Joe closed his hand around Paloma’s. Her fingertips were so close to the top of his thigh that they were inches from a caress of his, oh, hell, his erection. Thank God the table hid it or he’d be arrested for public indecency. But Joe nodded to Paloma.

  Go higher. Please.

  She blinked, all innocence, then, thank God, laid her palm over his erection and began to caress it beneath the cover of the table.

  “You can’t be in the environment of your wife’s birthday? I sometimes think you hit your head when that car ran you over.” Wendy’s voice was steel now, twice as cold as the autumn air. Though he felt suddenly a lot warmer thanks to Paloma’s gentle ministrations. “We’re ready to move on. Are you going to bother coming back or are you just going to show me up?”

  Joe bit his lip, trying to stifle a moan as Paloma caressed him through his clothes. And trying not to respond to Wendy’s waspish comment about the accident. Why did she have to mention it when he’d told her he didn’t want to be reminded of it? “I—I’ll catch up with you later. Where are you going?”

  “You’ll come now, Joe,” she replied.

  Oh not now, not in the middle of the street.

  “I—I can’t. Still sorting things out.”

  “You’ve got five minutes,” Wendy warned at precisely the moment Paloma’s lips pressed to Joe’s neck again. “Five minutes before you wreck your wife’s birthday. And when you get back here, you’ll join in and maybe even try a smile?”

  “Five minutes?” Joe wavered. He should go back and be Dutiful Joe, but he didn’t want to go where he wasn’t wanted. “No. I told you, I’m busy. I can’t.”

  “So I’ll see you in five minutes.” The line went dead.

  Joe stroked the back of Paloma’s hand. “You know how much I’m enjoying that? But…I’m really sorry, I’ve got to go.”

  “I know,” Paloma whispered. “Back to real life.”

  Joe sighed. Real life. What a bore. “I’m so glad we’ve met. And…everything else. Will you be okay getting home?”

  “I’m always okay,” she assured him. “I don’t suppose you— Someone’s waiting, aren’t they? Thank you, Osito, I won’t ever forget you.”

  Joe’s stomach plummeted. If only, all those years ago, he’d stood up for himself. If only he hadn’t taken the path chosen for him. “It’s a big old tangle.”

  Paloma nodded. She reached into her hair and removed one of the black silk roses. It seemed to shimmer when she held it out to Joe and said, “Happy Halloween.”

  Joe took the rose and sniffed it, pretending its scent was divine. But it was. There was something of Paloma in the silk petals.

  “And you have my handkerchief! It’ll come in handy if you catch a cold.” Joe began to rise from his chair. He would’ve done anything to stay but he had to go. He had to go and he couldn’t ever see this exotic, gentle creature again because that wasn’t Joe Wenlock. Joe Wenlock, with the nicest house in the nicest street in the nicest part of the suburbs and a commendation on his record and the steadiest reputation in the Met. Joe Wenlock wasn’t the sort of man to kiss people in the street.

  Paloma stood too and slipped his jacket from her slender shoulders. She held it out to him, grinning.

  “Thanks.” Joe took the jacket from her and put it back on again. “I’ll help you find a cab, if you like?” He was scrabbling for every possible second from their encounter. It was hopeless though, because the five minutes was ticking away and the street suddenly seemed thronged with black cabs, every one of them blazing with orange “For Hire” lights.

  “I wish—” Paloma began and he knew what she wasn’t saying, that the skeleton was waiting for her somewhere, just as the lawyer was waiting for him in an overpriced bar. “One more kiss?”

  “I’d like that.” Joe put his arms around Paloma, holding her tight, and kissed her again, urgent and heated. If only they could meet again, but they couldn’t, and there couldn’t be any sharing of phone numbers.

  Only a rose and a handkerchief.

  Chapter Two

  Joe hadn’t been in the large glass building, affectionately known as The Greenhouse, for months. He hadn’t been convinced that his ID pass would still work, but it did. He was back.

  Joe nodded to the guards on the door as he walked into the vast atrium.

  “First day!” he said.

  “I hope they pinned a medal on you,” one of them replied, beaming. “Back in the saddle, Superman!”

  He had received a medal, but the ceremony had been held in secret. So secret, in fact, that Wendy hadn’t attended. Joe laughed. “Back to the grindstone! I take it Commander Holloway�
��s office hasn’t moved?”

  “Still where it always was. Commander Holloway’s expecting you. I’ll radio ahead but he said to go straight up.” He pressed a button on the walkie-talkie he wore. “And welcome back, Sergeant. Don’t make a habit of it!”

  “I hope I won’t!” Joe said as he headed to the bank of lifts.

  Even though his job put him in the line of bullets, explosives and drivers speeding at people on pavements, it was a relief to be back. No longer at stuck indoors, with Wendy complaining that he was lazing about at home all day.

  As Joe rose up through the building in the lift, his mind returned to the moment on Halloween when he had walked back into the bar. Wendy had spotted glittery lipstick on his face.

  ‘I collided with an enthusiastic hen party!’ Joe had explained, which was true, because after walking away from Paloma, a gang of women had wafted their feather boas at him and tried to pinch his bottom. Joe had never been so popular, it had seemed. Except with the wife who had demanded he be at her birthday even though six months earlier, before the accident, she had told him they should seek a separation.

  And all that day, all that evening until the moment the car had hit him and catapulted him into oblivion, Joe had been facing the end of his marriage. And he’d been so relieved.

  But Wendy had never left.

  And now she never would.

  Guilt, was it? She had sat beside his hospital bed crying, and Patrick—Commander Holloway—had been there too. An old friend on the force, and also his boss. Joe had wondered then if maybe Wendy loved him after all, and he couldn’t break her heart. But his recovery process had been made all the more difficult when Wendy seemed to believe as if he’d deliberately jumped in front of the car purely to annoy her.

  Thank God for Patrick, that voice of steady, understanding sense. Years ago it had been Patrick who’d spotted potential in Joe, who had plucked him from the Met for Close Protection, who had mentored him in that strange new world. And as the months of rehabilitation passed, it was Patrick who had been at his side in the hospital, just as Joe had once been at Patrick’s.