by Amelia Autin
Maybe his pride was bruised because she’d been injured in the attempted kidnapping, just as Keira had been a few years ago when she’d taken a bullet meant for another man. Was that why he refused to talk to her? Was he feeling responsible because he’d failed to protect her? Didn’t Trace understand he had kept her safe? That he had foiled the kidnapping attempt—one man against three—and that she owed him her life?
She remembered the nightmare terror that had gripped her when she’d been dragged from her bed and known she was being kidnapped, terror that had changed into something even more terrifying when she thought Trace might be killed. If that had happened she wouldn’t have cared what happened to her. A cut hand was a small price to pay when compared to his life. She had only done the same thing Keira would have done, after all. Somehow she had to make him understand.
They walked in silence to the faculty parking lot. On Monday Liam had suggested that with the injury to her left hand it might be best for her chauffeur to continue driving, but Mara had stubbornly refused. “I will just drive slower,” she had insisted. “I will be careful.” It wasn’t as if she couldn’t use her left hand at all, she just had to be careful not to pull the stitches loose.
Liam wasn’t to know, nor Alec either, and especially not Trace, but she was trying very hard to wean herself away from reliance on the household staff that had been such a part and parcel of her life up until now. She’d had no choice the Friday before, not in the face of Trace’s adamant stance on not letting her drive. But she wasn’t completely incapacitated, and she didn’t need her chauffeur to drive her. She was trying her best to become as self-sufficient as most American women, and one woman in particular.
When she started out she had it in her mind to pattern herself on Keira Walker. The two women had become friends of sorts in the past few months, and since Mara knew Trace thought the world of Keira, what better role model could she pick? Trace didn’t know it, but weeks ago she’d started taking cooking lessons from her French chefs on the days Trace wasn’t on duty. Alec and Liam had been amused, but had willingly eaten her modest efforts. It wasn’t until she’d let it slip to them that she was trying to become more like Keira that Alec laughingly told her, “Keira can’t cook. Our mom gave up trying to teach her because she refused to learn.”
Mara had been taken aback by that, but not daunted. So maybe cooking wasn’t a skill Keira had ever acquired, but it would still make Mara more able to function on her own if she had to. And she wanted to prove to Trace she didn’t need a large household staff to survive. Otherwise, how would he ever come to believe she could be anything other than the princess she was? How would he ever realize the only one she truly needed in her life was him?
The drive home was as silent as the drive to work had been, and Mara had plenty of time to think. Trace’s refusal to talk to her hurt, but it gave her the opportunity to consider long and hard about what was really important to her, and what she would willingly give up to keep him in her life.
Money was something she had always taken for granted. When she turned twenty-one she’d inherited a sizeable fortune from her mother, much of which resided in a trust. She didn’t need the salary she earned as a professor at the university, and in fact had arranged to donate her salary anonymously to the general scholarship fund. Andre paid for her bodyguards since they were all in the Zakharian military, but she easily paid for the rest of her staff and all the household expenses out of the income she earned on the trust’s invested principal. But she knew from things she’d read that some American men could be touchy about money, particularly when the woman had it and they didn’t.
Trace was a proud man. A self-made man. Everything he had he’d earned himself, and Mara admired him tremendously for it. Most of her principal was in an unbreakable trust that benefited her and any heirs she might have, and if she died without issue the trust would revert to Andre and his heirs. But there was enough money under her personal control to give a proud man pause. “Fortune hunter” was an ugly title, but one she knew the tabloids wouldn’t hesitate to use. She’d lived her whole life as a target of the tabloids, but Trace hadn’t, and she had to shield him if she could.
To do that she had to convince him she could survive on a lot less. All she really needed was enough money to maintain her stable. Trace couldn’t ask her to give up Suleiman—he loved riding as much as she did, and she had it in her mind to provide him with a mount worthy of him, a mount to equal Suleiman so they could race together like the wind. But other than that her needs were few. A chance to teach, to share her love of mathematics with her students. A chance to write, to leave something of herself to posterity. And Trace. She needed him. Needed his love. More than anything else she needed his love.
Then a thought occurred to her, startling in its simplicity, but something that should have occurred to her a long time ago. Maybe the reason he never told you he loves you all this time is because of the money. Maybe he is afraid people will think the worst. Maybe he is afraid you will think the worst, too. Maybe he is waiting for you to say something first because of that.
By the time they got home Mara had convinced herself her supposition was the truth. She turned to Trace the minute they walked in the front door and forced him to meet her eyes. “We must talk.”
He stared at her, impassive. Then he said, “You’re right. I’ve been putting it off, but...”
Mara glanced around the front hallway and saw two of her staff passing through. “Privately,” she said in an undertone. He nodded, and she added, “Give me five minutes to take off my things. I will meet you in my sitting room.” She didn’t wait for acknowledgment, just headed for her bedroom. She dumped briefcase, purse and computer bag unceremoniously on the chair beside her bed, and in frantic haste removed her jacket, mitten, glove and glasses, leaving them lying on the bed.
She hurried to the bathroom and wasted a minute rubbing away the little indentations her glasses left, and tucking in the stray tendrils of hair that had escaped her careful chignon. Then she stared at her reflection for another half a minute, wishing she was as beautiful as Trace was handsome. A wasted wish. She pressed her lips firmly together and gathered up her courage. “He loves me as I am,” she reminded herself solemnly. “I am beautiful in his eyes.”
If Eve had looked like you, Adam would have gladly left Eden. Trace had said those words to her less than three weeks ago. And he had meant them, she knew it. He’d bared his soul to her that day. Now it was time for her to do the same. She headed straight for the sitting room before her courage failed her.
* * *
Trace had steeled himself for the upcoming confrontation, but he was afraid of what the princess might say if he let her start the conversation. So the minute she entered the room he whirled to face her. But as his gaze focused on the white gauze bandage wrapped around her palm, the words that came out of his mouth weren’t the ones he’d planned to say. “Why the hell did you do it?” he asked her abruptly. “Don’t you know any better than to get in the middle of a knife fight?”
He couldn’t drag his eyes away from that bandage, beneath which were those seventeen stitches. The cut had been straight and not too deep, and thankfully hadn’t required surgery, but each stitch was an indictment of him, and what he had failed to do. His anger at himself made him lash out at her. “Don’t you know any better than to grab at a blade that way with your bare hand?”
She stared at him for long seconds as if taken aback by his accusation. As if she had no idea this was what he’d wanted to talk to her about. “I thought he was going to hurt you,” she said finally, in a low voice. “I thought you might be killed.”
Trace swore, and she flinched. “It’s my job to keep you safe,” he said. “Not the other way around.”
“Do you think I care about that?” she asked intensely. “Do not talk to me about whose job it is to protect whom when I know I am more to
you than a job.”
He swallowed hard and turned his back on her so he didn’t have to see her pain. It had to be now—he would never have a better opportunity. But he couldn’t look into her eyes and lie to her. “No,” he said. “You’re a job. One I should have taken more seriously. That’s why I’m angry you risked your life. If anything had happened to you it would be a black mark against me, and I could kiss my career goodbye.”
She hesitated. “And love? Where does that fit in?”
Still with his back to her, he pretended he was staring out at the landscape through the window even though it was nearly too dark to see anything except his own reflection. The face of the man in the glass was the face of a stranger. As if he were standing outside of himself Trace answered, “It doesn’t.”
She moved quickly, coming to stand in front of him, forcing him to look at her. The expression in her eyes was one he’d seen once before, the night she’d struggled to save Suleiman. And he knew she wasn’t giving up without a fight, not when she loved him with every fiber of her being. Exactly what he’d feared. “I love you,” she said in a rush. “You must know. And you love me.”
“That’s what I was afraid you were thinking. That’s why I’ve asked to be reassigned.”
“Reassigned?” She stared at him in shock. “You...you are leaving?”
He nodded. “I’ll finish out this month, but come January someone else will replace me on the team guarding you.” When she didn’t say anything he tried to break it off gently. “What you feel isn’t love, Princess. You would have felt the same toward any man who—”
She cut him off, her voice low and fierce. “No!”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Toward any man who showed you what your body was capable of. It just happened to be me. But don’t fool yourself it’s love you’re feeling—you would react the same way with any other man.”
“You cannot believe that,” she whispered, obviously appalled. “I could never...no other man...”
Her expression tore at him, weakening his resolve, and he had to remind himself of all the reasons why they could never be together. “Okay, maybe what we had wasn’t just...sex.” He caught himself before he could reach out and caress her cheek at the stricken look in her eyes. “Maybe it was...special...in its own way. But it was going to end sooner or later. We both knew that. A year from now you’ll look back on this as a pleasant interlude, but not something to build a life on. You’ll meet someone you really love, and forget all about—”
“That is not true!”
He overrode her vehement interruption. “You’ll forget all about the special agent assigned to guard you. Just as I’ll forget about you.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head with determination. “You love me.” She placed her hand over her heart and tapped lightly. “I know it here. You will not forget me any more than I will forget you.”
He schooled his expression into one as hard as his voice. “I don’t love you.”
“You are lying to me.” Her voice broke as she pleaded, “Why are you lying to me?”
“Why can’t you just accept the truth?” he said harshly. “I had a job to do. That’s all. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of your inexperience, but I did, and I’m sorrier than I can ever tell you. I broke a cardinal rule in my line of work—never let yourself get personally involved. Never let yourself fall—” he corrected himself quickly “—get attached to the person you’re guarding. I regret it more than you’ll ever know, and it has to end. I’m moving on. End of story.”
She took a step toward him. “You are not like that,” she whispered on the edge of tears. “I know you are not. You are lying and I want to know why.” She stared at him for endless seconds. Then a light came into her eyes, her face. “You are trying to be noble. Yes! That is like you. You think I have not thought it through, loving you, and you are trying to be noble. But you are wrong. I—”
Desperate to convince her, Trace said brutally, “You just don’t get it, do you? Do I have to draw you a picture? The State Department didn’t just happen to pick me to be your bodyguard. I’m not a DSS agent like the Jones brothers—they couldn’t just assign me. They had to borrow me from the agency I really work for. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Walker.”
She stared at him. “Why?” She barely breathed the question. “Why did they...”
“Because women find me attractive, damn it!” He threw the words at her like stones, and he suddenly realized he could tell her the truth...the truth that was also a lie, but which just might do the trick. “Because they wanted me to seduce you!”
She stood there pale and still, as if carved in marble. Then she blinked. “Seduce...” She shook her head slowly. “I...I must be very stupid because I do not... Why? Why me?”
“Leverage,” he said, with a cynical twist to his lips. “Zakhar is politically important, and...” He let her fill in the blanks for herself.
“Leverage.” There was no emotion in her voice. No tears in her eyes. Just a face deathly white. “Then...those times at your cabin...?”
“You made my job easy.” Trace bitterly regretted that statement as soon as he’d uttered it, and he wanted to take it back. But it was already too late.
She blinked again, but that was the only sign she’d heard him. “I...see,” she said eventually, her eyes very dark in her pale, expressionless face. She opened her mouth to speak, and for just a second her bottom lip quivered, but she caught it with her teeth and bit it into submission. There was blood on her lip when her teeth finally let it go, and she asked in a voice barely above a whisper, “Photographs?”
Raw pain savaged him, talons ripping into his heart. He couldn’t have lied to her about that to save his soul. But his silence was enough.
“I see,” she said again. She stood immobile for a moment, her lips parted as if she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t. The thin line of blood on her bottom lip bore mute testimony to the control she had exerted on herself. Then she licked her lips, tasting the blood there, and Trace tasted despair when he saw it.
Mara touched a finger to her lip as if she’d just realized what she’d done, then stared at the blood on her fingertip for endless seconds. She whispered something in Zakharan that sliced through Trace like a razor, but she’d already turned away and didn’t see his reaction.
He fought the overwhelming desire to call her back, to tell her it was all lies, every word, that he loved her more than life itself. That he would never betray her love in that degrading fashion. But he’d chosen his course deliberately. He had to be cruel in order to drive her away. Now, before it was too late. Before she ended up dead or injured again because of him. Before he took what she ached to give him and he ached to have.
His eyes burned, but at first he didn’t recognize what it meant—it was so long since he’d cried. But he knew he would never forget her last words to him. Would never forget the desolate emptiness in her voice when she said, “I should have known I could not be loved.”
Chapter 15
Mara stood at her bedroom window, staring out at nothing in the gathering darkness. Wondering why everything seemed so distant. Wondering why the woman reflected in the pane of glass didn’t weep. She touched her right hand to the image on the glass, and wondered why she didn’t feel the cold seeping through the window to her skin. Wondered why she felt absolutely nothing.
She glanced at her bandaged left hand, but it was as if it belonged to someone else—another woman, not her. Some other woman had grabbed at the knife to push it away from the heart of the man she loved. Some other woman had felt the blade slice into her flesh. Some other woman had felt the blood gush, warm and sticky, between the fingers she clenched tightly against the blood and pain. And some other woman had anxiously asked Trace, You are okay? He did not hurt you?
Som
e other woman. Not her.
She leaned her forehead against the cold window, and her warm breath misted the glass, hiding her reflection from view. Somewhere beneath her frozen emotions something moved, and memories crowded in. Memories that made her shiver as the cold could not. Memories that threatened her fragile control.
Trace touching her with loving, lying hands, stroking her, making her cry out his name as pleasure burst through her body for the first time. Click. And a photograph was taken. Herself bending over Trace, touching him with her hands, her lips, taking him into her mouth and loving him the only way she could think of, the only way he would let her. Click. And a photograph was taken. Trace caressing her bare nipples through the veil of her hair, making her tremble with a rolling tide of love and desire. Click. And a photograph was taken.
Each click in her head was like a lash against her heart, and she flinched again and again, fighting the memories and what they meant. Fighting to keep the pain at bay. Fighting to keep the ice shield in place. Because what lay on the other side of that shield was too terrible to contemplate.
Click. Click. Click.
Suddenly she knew she couldn’t stay here. Not another day. She would rather smash the window and slash her wrists against the shards of glass than see Trace again, knowing the truth about him...and about herself. The truth her father had tried to teach her. The truth Andre had repeatedly denied. The truth she’d fought against accepting when she’d fallen in love with Trace and resolved to earn his love if she could. Until now.
Worthless. Nothing as herself, just a tool, a means to an end, a way of controlling her brother. A way of insuring his “loyalty.” Just a pawn in someone’s macabre, twisted game of political espionage.
Click. Click. Click.
She darted to the purse she’d dumped with her briefcase on the chair by her bed when she’d come home from work, and fumbled in it until she found her cell phone. She thought for a moment, trying but failing to remember what time it was in Zakhar. Then she realized it didn’t matter, and pressed the one number she had on speed dial.