by Sara Arden
He focused on Damara. She sat with her back ramrod straight, her legs crossed at the ankles and her hands folded primly in her lap. She was as serene as always.
Byron thought he was going to vomit.
For the briefest second, he thought he saw Austin Foxworth smiling at him from the crowd—with half his face missing.
His stomach gurgled.
Sonja stepped up on the stage. “Thank you for coming. I know you’re all very excited to ask our couple some questions, but please listen to each other. Keep your questions respectful and polite. If you do not, Mr. Hawkins’s fellow rangers will be assisting you with your exit.”
His eyes darted back to the men he recognized as belonging to Renner. They nodded almost imperceptivity to acknowledge their kinship.
He swallowed his bile. He didn’t deserve their protection.
But Damara did. He could choke it down for a while longer.
He nodded in return.
“We’re going to let the couple introduce themselves. Then they’ll be open for questions.” Sonja nodded to Damara.
“My name is Damara Petrakis, and I’m so happy to be here in your country. Thank you for the warm welcome that’s made me feel very much at home. I came to be here because my father had a dream of freedom for Castallegna. No more royals, no more right to rule. He wanted a country where the people were free to make their own choices. A democratic country.” She took a deep breath. “But my father died before his dream could become reality. When I found out that my brother was on international watch lists and the men who’d been coming to our small island home were all criminals, I knew I had to do something. Especially when he sold me to one. The man your government sent to help me is the best of men. Good in every way that my betrothed was bad. Castallegna will always be in my heart, but so will America, and my fiancé, Byron Hawkins.”
She was good. He’d give her that. She knew exactly what to say to both gentle them and to spike their curiosity about her escape.
“I’m Byron Hawkins. And the princess already said it all. She’s good at these kinds of things. I’m more the strong, silent type.” He flashed a cocky grin that he didn’t feel. The crowd tittered. It was a part, just another role like Brian Hale, he told himself.
“The press release says that you were in Tunisia at the time of the Carthage Museum robbery. Was that you?” The first question. Not too hard.
“No, the only jewel I took was this one.” Byron smiled over at Damara.
She demurred prettily. Cameras flashed.
“Grisha Kulokav says you tried to kill him.”
Also not hard. “I did. And I would have if not for the princess’s safety being my primary concern.”
One of the reporters sighed, as if she thought it was the most romantic thing she’d ever heard.
“Kulokav and his brother both maintain that they’re simply businessmen.”
“His gulag tattoos say otherwise,” Byron answered.
“His deal with my brother was to trade arms through Castallegna,” Damara added.
“Were you afraid?”
“Not for a second.” She looked over at Byron again. “We’d been in communication for months,” she lied easily. “I knew Byron wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
“When did you know you were in love?”
Damara fielded this one, as well. “We were floating in a small fisherman’s boat in the middle of the Mediterranean, talking about the stars.”
Another collective sigh filled the room, and Byron struggled to keep from laughing. That was what had happened, but the way she said it made it sound like something out of a movie.
“Do you think your father would approve of Byron?”
“Yes,” she answered almost instantly. “I know he would.”
He knew that was what she was supposed to say, but it twisted something in him because he knew her well enough already that he could tell she believed it.
“What do your parents think of the princess?” This question was directed at Byron.
Shit. He hadn’t even thought of his parents. So he answered honestly. The fewer lies he told, the less he had to remember. “They haven’t met her yet. This has all happened so quickly. But I know they’ll love her just as much as I do.”
Fat chance of that, but they’d go along with it or he’d get Renner to throw them somewhere horrible for the duration of the ruse. They didn’t hesitate to send him to Maur Hill so he’d have no hesitation, either.
“Just a few more questions,” Sonja interjected. “Our new favorite couple has been through quite the ordeal in the last few months, the last several days especially. They need to get their rest.”
“When’s the wedding?” Another questioner asked.
“August fifteenth. It’s my birthday,” Byron answered easily. It was a fake wedding, so who cared when it happened?
“Why can’t anyone see this for what it is?” Another voice sounded. “The princess is a radical, and she’s using the United States to—” His microphone was taken away and two of the rangers grabbed the man and dragged him toward the door.
She stood. The princess held her hand up to stop them, and they paused. “I will answer this. I like to think of myself as a traditional radical.” She smiled. “This was my father’s dream. And these changes aren’t unwelcome. The people voted more than seventy percent that they’d be in favor of this ‘radical’ thing called democracy. It’s my brother who is a radical and a tyrant.”
“Then how could you leave your people to run away and have this...romance?” he spat.
She smiled again, still calm and serene as ever. “Who are we to judge when love happens? I was leaving to find help and I found Byron Hawkins. I was already leaving. He just helped me. Protected me. And I love him. Knowing that an assassin could put a bullet in me at any moment, do you really think I should deny myself? Should any of us?”
The room was quiet, and the man had no answers.
“Thank you, gentlemen.” She nodded to the men who held the naysayer and they led him out the door.
He was amazed at the way she handled the crowd, how easily she spoke of feelings and how very quickly she’d dug into the secret needs and desires of each person present.
She sat back down. “Any more questions?”
“When do we get to see the ring?” The tension had broken and everyone was once again focused on the love story.
She laughed. “As soon as he buys it for me. As romantic as it was in the middle of the ocean, there’s no Tiffany’s.”
“What kind of ring do you want?”
“How do you buy an engagement ring for a princess on your salary?”
Damara was still unruffled. “Whatever he chooses will have emotional value over financial. I left behind hundreds of diamond rings in Castallegna. Stones mean nothing to me.”
Oh, Christ, the pressure of choosing a ring. He was suddenly thankful for Sonja. She and Damara could pick whatever was best, and he’d smile and nod and go along with whatever they wanted.
“This talk of a ring has you looking terrified, Hawkins,” a voice said from the back.
“What man isn’t terrified of choosing the right ring for his bride?” He shrugged, playing up the hopeless male stereotype.
“Why did you bring her back to Glory?”
Byron answered this one. He knew why Renner had chosen Glory. “Because of the people. It’s small-town Americana that I knew Damara would love as much as Glory is going to love her.”
“That’s enough questions for today, people. You all have my card. We’ll work out something for future interviews. Thank you.” Sonja indicated the junket was over.
A flood of questions erupted from the gallery, but Damara and Byron were ushered from the room and out a back door. There was s
till a crowd of people, but all they seemed to want was a view of the princess.
He couldn’t believe how in her element she was. Most people would be exhausted to the point of tearful rage by now, but not Damara. She kept going; she kept smiling. Her face must ache by now, he was sure.
She even stopped to speak to a little girl in a wheelchair. Of course she would. That’s what fairy-tale princesses do. He had a feeling that’s what Damara would do even if she wasn’t a princess.
“You’re so pretty,” the girl said.
“And so are you,” Damara returned the compliment easily and sincerely. “What’s your name?”
“Megan.”
“What do you want to be when you grow up, Megan?” Damara eased down so she was eye level with the girl.
“A princess.”
Damara seemed to know what her answer would be, and she probably did. She’d done this a million times. Yet her responses seemed no less real, no less genuine. If Byron didn’t know better, he’d swear this was the first.
She took off the tiara that had been pinned carefully into her hair.
“Wherever I go, there are always other princesses in the crowd. I think it’s my job to make sure they don’t forget. So I give them a tiara. And whenever they start to forget or someone tells them they’re not a princess, they’ll have it to remind them.” She positioned the tiara on the girl’s head. “There you go, Megan. So you don’t ever forget. Maybe someday, you can remind someone else not to forget, too.”
Their security detail moved them along because the rest of the crowd had started to swarm toward the back in hopes of more pictures or getting some nugget for their publications that no one else had managed to obtain.
They were stuffed back into the car, and Damara immediately kicked off her heels. “Oh, my gosh, I hate those shoes. I’m going to burn them. Do you by chance have a blowtorch on you?”
Byron laughed. “I couldn’t tell. You were amazing.”
She waved her hand. “It’s just a mask. A face that I put on and take off like makeup.”
“It wasn’t to Megan.”
“No, it wasn’t. But that part was real to me, too. It’s important to me that women never let themselves be marginalized like me. I have a platform, so if I can use it, I will.”
“Marginalized? I don’t think you know your own power.”
“I do what I can with what I have.”
Her honest humility made him feel like even more of a bastard somehow.
“Freeing Castallegna is as much for me as it is my father,” she confessed. “I think it would be amazing to have the freedom to do what I want simply because I wanted to. Some people think being a princess is all money and privilege, and some of it is.”
“But you told Megan that she was a princess.”
“A lot of little girls dream about being the storybook ideal of a princess. It doesn’t matter what the reality is like. What matters is what they believe. I hope they keep their fairy tales forever. Like Disney princesses. They’re all kind and good-hearted, and with enough hope and hard work, they get a happily ever after.”
Byron didn’t know what to say to that, so he changed the subject. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m starved. I’m always hungry.”
“You haven’t had your McDonald’s yet. Do you want to?”
“Yes!” she cried.
The smallest, strangest things made this woman happy. He knocked on the window that divided the space between the passenger and the driver. “McDonald’s. Drive-through.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
The window went back up.
“Can we go see some sights or something? But with the heat on? I’m freezing.”
He knew the proper response was to put his arm around her, but after everything it just didn’t seem right.
Except her teeth were chattering.
“Do you have snow in Castallegna?”
“No. Greece gets snow in the mountains, but Castallegna is all spring and summer. We don’t have fall or a real winter.”
“Then you might be in for a treat, depending on how Kansas is feeling. The weather here is a little...bipolar.”
“Polar?”
“No, like...emotionally unbalanced,” he corrected.
“Oh.” She laughed. “I see.”
He felt like a pompous ass going through the drive-through in a government car with a driver, but whatever. He ordered, and she seemed fascinated with the whole process.
She ate her fries and she ate his fries, leaving him with both burgers.
“Um, those were my fries.”
“Nope. They were mine. Obviously.” She grinned. Damara had some salt on her lips, and the first thing he thought about was licking it off. “What? Do I have some in my teeth?”
“You’ve got salt on your lips.” He tried to keep his voice steady and even, but it dropped an octave anyway.
She licked her lips and every swipe of her tongue sent a jolt of awareness through him.
“Did I get it?”
He could say all sorts of things—the worst and cheesiest would be, “Let me help you with that”—and then he’d kiss her, taste her, take her in the backseat of this car as though their relationship weren’t a ruse. That it was real.
And she belonged to him.
She seemed to feel it, too, because she was suddenly so still. He didn’t know if she was frozen, like some small mammal hoping he’d move on to other prey, or if she wanted him, too.
He didn’t know why she would, not after the way he’d acted. He couldn’t stand himself, so he didn’t know how she could.
“It’s easy to pretend, isn’t it?” she asked without looking up into his eyes.
“It is. But there are parts of this that are more than pretend.” When she didn’t answer, he wondered if he’d broken whatever had started to bloom between them. “Aren’t there?”
“There doesn’t have to be. We’re adults. We’re capable of controlling ourselves.”
“I’m glad you are.”
“You seem to be doing just fine to me.” She turned her head to look out the window.
“If you knew the thoughts running through my head,” he confessed, looking at her, waiting for her to feel his regard and acknowledge him.
She didn’t.
Part of him wanted to grab her and kiss her hard, melt that icy reserve, but then there was that part of him that knew this was how it had to be. How he said he’d wanted it to be.
But his lips moved without his permission. “Damara.”
“What?” she whispered, still not turning toward him. “What do you want from me?”
“You could start by looking at me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She sighed. “Because I can’t hide it, okay? I’ll look at you, and you’ll see right through me. You’ll see everything.”
He didn’t realize he affected her so. “Isn’t that only fair? You’ve already seen my wounds laid bare.”
“No, I haven’t. I know you’ve got wounds, but I don’t know what caused them. You give me that part of you but hold back the rest. So no, I’m not just going to hand you that power over me.”
He was both intrigued and tormented by the knowledge that he had some kind of power over her. Byron closed the distance between him, pressed his face against her neck and inhaled the scent of her. “You smell so good, Damara.”
She didn’t push him off, but she didn’t invite more contact, either.
“How is it that you still smell like jasmine?”
“I guess that’s just me. It’s always been my preferred scent.” This question she answered easily, though her body stiffened when he grabbed her shoulders. “I don’t want h
er.”
“What?” He leaned back.
She turned to look at him then. Her eyes bright and somehow still dark. “I. Don’t. Want. Her. It’s what you said on the phone.”
“You don’t understand.” Byron didn’t know how to explain it to her. He was trying to protect her, to keep her safe from everything, including himself.
“I understand perfectly. I don’t know if you’re just lonely, or you’re trying to make the best of a bad deal, but I’m not going to sleep with you just because we’re pretending a relationship.”
He didn’t understand—it was fine for her before. What had changed? Part of him was sure it was because she’d seen what was beneath the hero’s veneer she’d painted over him. “You wanted me in Barcelona.”
“And you wanted me in Barcelona, too.” She shoved him away from her. “You wanted to be with me because...I don’t know why. But you did. This? Now?” She shook her head. “This is something else. Maybe you’re just lonely. But I’m not something that you can drag out and play with and then throw away when you don’t want me anymore. Sonja wants you. If you’re that hard up, you should give her a call.”
The idea of anything to do with Sonja did nothing at all for his libido. She wasn’t homely or unattractive, but she wasn’t Damara. “There was a time when I could have any woman in this town. It’s not desperation.” But maybe it was. He was desperate to feel the way that only she made him feel. Desperate to be lost in her skin, her scent, her pleasure. Just her. He’d had one taste of her, and now he needed more.
“Then I suggest you call one of them.” Damara crossed her arms over chest.
“If that’s how you want it.” This was probably best. He’d tried to be the good guy, tried to warn her off in Barcelona, but she hadn’t listened and neither had he. He kept pushing, kept wanting, kept reaching for her because she was just so damn desirable. She was light when it was dark, sweet when the rest of the world was sour and soft when the world was hard.
“That’s how you said you wanted it. I’m just trying to keep things in perspective.”
“Do you really think you can go years without touch? That’s how long this is going to last. This isn’t a temporary thing.” He was hurting her. Why couldn’t he just close his mouth?