by Maisey Yates
She was intent on causing a scene and going along with her wishes seemed the best way to keep it from escalating. That was why, in some ways, he preferred protecting someone in a war zone to something like this. In a hostile situation, he would simply pick her up and sling her over his shoulder if he needed to move her.
In public, in a situation where he was protecting her reputation more than her safety, it was something that couldn’t happen.
He sat in the chair and she put the coffee in front of him. Her full lips tipped upward into a smile. She had sauntered across the coffee shop, each movement speaking of her utter satisfaction with herself. Each step revealing a bit more of her long, golden legs.
She was beautiful, there was no question. He had noticed it the first night, when she’d been putting herself on display, and he noticed it now, when she was practically demure in a dress that recalled old days of sophisticated glamor and elegance.
At least, he imagined that’s what a woman might think. Being a man, his focus tended to run toward her toned, tanned thighs.
He tightened his hand into a fist. Not for the first time, he wondered if it was time to find a lover. Well, the answer to the question was yes, it was past time. But there were complications. Complications that would only grow.
Eva took her seat across from him, a hint of her feminine scent drifting to him. Like floral soap and clean skin. His blood started to pump hotter, faster. Thinking of her at the same time he thought of finding a lover was not the best idea.
Another crack in his iron-clad control. She always seemed to be at the center of those breaks. Not something he cared to analyze. That was how he lived his life. He filtered out what he didn’t need. Extra information, emotion, and he concentrated on what he did need. Essentials, the ability to act in a crisis. He had to. He had to be able to cut through noise, and confusion, to take swift and decisive action.
He didn’t have time to stop and smell the flowers. Whether they were literal flowers or soap that smelled faintly of them.
“Why do you turn them down?” she asked, her head tilting to the side, dark curls spilling over her shoulder like a glossy river.
“You’re trying to share again. Why do you go to casinos?”
“We’ve been over that,” she said, looking down into her cup.
“To try and destroy your reputation?”
“In part. I won’t lie. But also because I want to have some fun. My father … I love him but he believes very strongly in control and in public opinion. Those two things mean that my life has been micromanaged from the moment I was born. If I ever went on vacation with friends I had to bring an entourage of palace employees. To keep me safe, that’s what he’s always said. But the reality is it’s also to keep me in line. The more I’ve grown the more I realize that … the more I’ve hated how much I’ve always stayed in line.”
She lifted her head, and he felt her looking at him. Her dark eyes were still covered by her sunglasses, but he could imagine them, glittering, fringed by thick black lashes, filled with emotion. Yes, she was beautiful.
“You feel things too much, Eva. Take too much personally.”
“Now you’re giving advice?” she asked, her lips tightening.
“You wanted to talk. I’ll talk. Emotion changes constantly. All you really have in life, the only constants, are honor and commitment to upholding that honor. You make choices to do certain things, and you do them. And you can find satisfaction there.”
“Sounds noble,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee.
“I’ve never considered myself noble,” he said. “But it’s how I live.”
His eyes were always on the goal. If he said something would be done, he saw it was done. It was why he’d consented to dealing with Eva for the next six months. Completing the task, and doing it exactly as promised, was more important than being comfortable, or happy.
“Are you happy?” she asked.
He clenched his teeth together. “Happiness, in my mind, is one of life’s biggest lies. People break so many things in the pursuit of happiness. Contracts, marriages, they destroy other people’s lives to find a taste of it, and, yet, it never lasts. There has to be something more enduring that you live for.”
She frowned, a slight crease forming between her perfectly shaped brows. “So you think it’s more important to consider the greater good than your own feelings?”
“I don’t trust feelings. They lead to a great many stupid actions. People would be better off if they used their heads and not their hearts.”
“You are a barrel of monkeys, aren’t you?” she asked.
A reluctant laugh escaped his lips. “This means I’m … fun?”
“Yeah, but with sarcasm. Meaning you aren’t.”
“Then why didn’t you let me sit across the room from you?” he asked.
“Because this is more interesting. I don’t know if it’s fun, but it’s more interesting.”
“And the casino? That’s fun?”
She shrugged. “It’s different. Carefree.”
“And the men?”
She shrugged again. “I don’t even remember their names.”
His stomach tightened, but not with desire this time. “You find that sort of thing fun then?” Jealousy, hot, unreasonable, unfamiliar, surged in his veins. His muscles tightened, every male instinct telling him to act, to follow the emotion, to ignore the cerebral. To make her his. Only his.
He gritted his teeth, searching for his control. Counting on that dead rock in his chest that had encased his heart years ago to come to his rescue.
“What do you assume I did with them? I was in the high-roller room the whole time. They kissed my dice, but nothing else. Anyway, what I do in my private life is my own business.” She laughed, the sound strained. “Sorry, that was a bad joke. We both know I have no private life.”
A sense of relief flooded him, and he couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t pretend he felt nothing over her admission. “It’s the cost of being royal.”
“Right. So tell me, what’s in my file, Mak?”
A lot of things. Her attempted escapes, the fact that she was very likely to be matched with Prince Bastian Van Saant. That her grades in math were terrible and her writing and composition were above average. He had a list of things he knew about her, and he’d been content to imagine it meant that he had her pinned down. That he would be prepared to anticipate his charge’s every move.
He was starting to wonder if she was right. If he didn’t know her at all. She had a way of surprising him as no one else ever did.
“You have no major infractions listed in your file,” he said.
“Ah. No major infractions. I would think that encompasses threesomes with random strangers in full view of the public?”
“Yes. I imagine that would bear mentioning.”
She raised her cup and offered a sassy half smile. “I would take note of it.”
“As would a great many people.” His heart pounded harder. He had no interest in sharing her, so the specific topic was of no interest to him. But he had interest in her. And his thoughts had turned down streets they should not have.
She made him wish things could be different. Pointless. Futile. Wishing for that always was.
“Anything of interest?” she asked. “Or am I as dull on paper as my life has felt thus far?”
“Not dull,” he said. “I liked the bedsheets thing. Shows initiative.”
“I’m glad you appreciated it. No one else did.”
“I can imagine.”
“Is this the part where you defend my father and tell me that I’m being protected for my own good?”
He ignored the constricted feeling in his chest. Or tried to. “No. Because, as I said, this is a job to me. I am not on anyone’s side. And, were it not so easy to walk out the front door of my house late at night, when I was in my teens I would have very likely climbed out a window or two myself.”
Her left eyebrow arched up above her s
unglasses. “You broke rules? I find that hard to believe.”
There was no ignoring the kick of emotion that hit him in the gut when she said that. “I did,” he said. “And I’ve broken a hell of a lot more than rules in my life.”
CHAPTER FIVE
MAK did keep his distance during the clothes-shopping portion of the trip, loitering near the entrance of a small shop while she tried on, and bought, several pairs of boots. Then, keeping at a distance as she trawled through a designer boutique and picked up a few new dresses.
When she emerged with her hands full of bags, Mak was standing outside the door, ready to take them from her.
“Are you about finished?” he asked.
“I should be.”
They wandered back up to the car and deposited her purchases in the trunk. “Are you ready to go back to the palace?”
No. No she wasn’t. Just the thought of it made her throat feel as if it was about to close up completely. She felt claustrophobic. Suffocated.
“No. I … can we go down to the beach?”
He took his sunglasses off and swept her up and down with his eyes. “Dressed like that?”
“I want to go. Just for a while.”
He nodded once in consent and they left the car in its place, walking down the boulevard to where the sidewalk ended and the sand began.
She bent and pulled her black pumps off, holding them in one hand as she walked down to water, letting the waves touch her toes.
She closed her eyes, heat washing through her, warming her skin but nothing else. She felt cold inside. Maybe it was all a bit dramatic, but she felt like a prisoner in some ways. In terms of what was expected of her, what was going to happen.
She had no idea what her father would do if she outright went against him and refused to marry. So she’d taken the coward’s way out. She’d tried to get the men to run away from her.
“Maybe I should just try and swim to freedom,” she said, sensing Mak behind her. She turned and looked at him, bubbles of amusement fizzing in her stomach at the sight of him in his black suit jacket, slacks and shiny shoes, standing on the shore.
“It’s a long swim to the next island or to mainland.”
“True. And anyway, my father would just send a helicopter to bring me back.”
“Would he?”
She turned to face him, their eyes clashing, the impact resonating through her body. “Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t know what he would do if I simply refused to marry the man he selects for me. But I … I don’t know that I really want to find out. See, the thing about using my reputation to get them to run from me … well, that way is about them. And I could … blame someone else.”
“Easier than doing it yourself.”
“Yes. I’m a coward.” She looked at his profile. “Soon to be a married coward, I suppose.”
“Marriage isn’t that bad,” he said, his voice rough.
“You don’t seem like you’d be a big endorser of the institution. Since you don’t believe in love and all.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe in it. I said I didn’t want it. Love is real, Eva. Very real, and it’s not rainbows and blue skies. If you love someone enough, it can cause the kind of pain you can only imagine. The kind of pain you wouldn’t wish on an enemy. You think you want love because you’ve read fairytales. Because you read until the happily ever after. Real life isn’t like that. You can’t just say, ‘This is it, this is the end and it will be all right.’ You don’t know if it will be.”
Eva felt the conviction in his words, felt it cut straight through her. Into her. She had a tendency to roll her eyes at advice, mainly because there was always someone telling her what to do. And half the time, it wasn’t so much to help her as it was to try and control her. She’d learned to tune it out.
But she couldn’t tune this out. This came from deep inside him. From a place of honesty.
“I … but is it so wrong to want more than a cold union based on … nothing more than political gain?”
Mak turned to her, his eyes searching her face. It felt like a caress. It felt intimate. “It’s not wrong. But you don’t know if it will be cold. Maybe you will grow to love him, at least in some respects.”
“I’ve met the front runner, and he … I don’t feel anything for him. Nothing … I’m not attracted to him.”
She was even more aware of that now. More aware of the fact that what she felt for Bastian was lukewarm at best. Mak, being near him, it was unlike anything she’d ever felt. It made her heart beat faster, made her limbs feel weak.
And she didn’t even like him.
Well, that wasn’t strictly true. At the moment, she almost liked him. More than that, she felt a sort of strange connection with him. She wasn’t certain where it came from. What he spoke of came from a place that was well beyond her experience.
“There’s more to marriage than sex,” he said, his tone flat.
“But it matters,” she said, her cheeks heating, her heart pounding in her temples. “In fact, I sort of thought it was one of the things that made marriage worth it.”
His expression was unreadable, his black eyes flat, emotionless. But something had changed, even if she couldn’t read what it was. The lines of his body had hardened, his posture getting straighter, every muscle tensing. “Are you ready to go back?”
“Yes.” No. She wasn’t, but she could sense that he was. And, since she could also sense it wasn’t because he was simply annoyed with her, it made her care.
She shouldn’t care. But she did.
“Bastian is coming tonight.” Stavros, her older brother and future king of Kyonos, poured himself a drink and sat in one of the white chairs she had positioned in her living area.
Three weeks after Mak had taken over as her bodyguard and she was completely on edge. His presence, constant, unnerving, had her blood pressure permanently spiked and her stomach perpetually tight. But having Stavros around always helped.
“Is he?” She tried to sound uninterested. Unconcerned. She wanted to vomit.
“I think our father is still hoping you’ll fall head over heels in love with him.”
“Not happening. We don’t have …”
“Chemistry?” he finished when she paused for too long.
“Yes.” It went deeper than that, but that was the simplest way of putting it. She wasn’t about to start talking love again, not to Stavros. He was quite possibly the only man to rival Mak for cynicism. Or maybe cynicism was the wrong word. When it came to his family, Stavros was protective. When it came to other areas of life … his emotions seemed turned off.
“He’s a good bet for Kyonos.”
“And is that all you’ll consider when you take a bride?”
Stavros shrugged one broad shoulder. “It’s the most important thing.”
“Not … not companionship or … anything?” She wasn’t bringing up sex in the presence of her brother.
“It’s not my goal to find someone I clash with, but in the end, I’ll do what’s best.”
“For Kyonos, not for yourself,” she pressed.
“That’s what this life is about, Evangelina.”
“That’s not how Xander sees it.” Any time she mentioned their brother’s name, a sickening silence followed. Stavros preferred to pretend their brother was dead, but Eva tried to hold onto the good memories. The ones of Xander smiling, being her partner in crime. Yes, he’d been the heir, fifteen years her senior, but he had made her laugh. Had encouraged her to run across the palace lawn with the wind blowing through her loose hair.
Xander had at least felt like an ally. Stavros seemed to see Mak’s perspective as perfectly reasonable. Duty and honor, or death. Jolly good fun.
“I hear you have a new guard,” he said. The subject change was another time-honored tradition that came with the mention of Xander’s name.
“Oh yes, my nanny. Have you met him?”
Stavros shook his head. “But I imagine I’ll see him
lurking tonight at the ball? In case you try to make a break for it?”
“You might. But I won’t. Make a break for it, I mean.” Even if she wanted to. “Will you be meeting possible princesses tonight?”
“No,” he said, putting his now-empty glass on the side table. “I’m in the process of hiring someone to handle it for me.”
“What?”
“I’ve found a woman who matches people for a living. I’ve hired her to go through profiles and help select the most qualified candidates.”
“A matchmaker?” she said.
“Not exactly. She’s an expert on compatibility and she has excellent connections.”
She snorted out a breath. “Only you would turn finding a wife into a job interview.”
“It works for finding the right employees. You use a good HR manager. The proper staff for the proper job. Why not for finding a wife?” He stood. “Good to see you, Eva. I’m sure I’ll see you again tonight.”
“Good to see you too, Stavros.”
“Be good. Don’t run off.” He walked out and closed the door behind him.
She thought about Bastian. About having to dance with him. It wasn’t as if he disgusted her or anything, but it was horrible to be in his arms and feel nothing. To have the idea that if she was his wife, and she was in his arms in bed, she would feel more of the same nothing.
Unbidden, her thoughts turned to Mak. To the night in the hall, when he’d pressed her against the wall, his hands strong on her. She’d been so very aware of him, so conscious of his strength, his heat. She’d wanted to lean into him when what she should have wanted was to pull away.
What would it be like to dance with Mak? To have his arms around her?
She shook her head and stood up from the couch. There was no point to thinking things like that. They would never happen.
Anyway, she had a ball to get to, and fantasizing about her bodyguard wasn’t going to help her get ready.
It was a good thing Eva was his target. Because there was no other woman in the room as far as he was concerned. Every gown, no matter how bright, every black tux, faded into an indiscernible mass. Unimportant. Inconsequential. There was only Eva.