by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
"Hmm. But don't get too smug, Princess. It won't happen again."
"That's what you said about the kiss."
"Yes, but this time I mean it."
She didn't doubt his conviction at all, but neither was she troubled by it. Now she knew how amazing their kisses could be. She would give a great deal for another one, and she suspected he would do the same.
And when the time was right, she would prove it.
* * *
A couple of hours on the two-lane state highway led them to Interstate 90. Tyler set the cruise control on eighty to knock a little time off their trip, then glanced at the princess. She'd been quiet since their little exchange at the side of the road, but it wasn't that wounded silence that made him crazy—rather, a thoughtful type. If he were a smart man, that would probably make him crazy, too, since he was coming to realize that with her, thoughtful equated planning, plotting and scheming.
But if he were a smart man, he wouldn't have kissed her back there.
If he had even a passing acquaintance with smart, he would have taken one look at her in the king's office and turned down this assignment. He should have known she was trouble from the start.
Now it was too late for would haves and should haves. The best he could hope for was that this trip would end before he did something incredibly stupid like seduce the king's youngest daughter.
Like perpetuate his father's disappointment in his youngest son.
Like end his career before it really got started.
Seducing the king's daughter… A couple of days ago, the thought had never crossed his mind. He'd seen her around Montebello, always with her bodyguards, often accompanied by a girlfriend or two, and he'd thought she was awfully pretty, awfully young, awfully spoiled, awfully not his type. He hadn't known her or wanted to get to know her.
A couple of brief kisses later, and, man, did he want to get to know her!
Seeking a distraction in exactly the wrong place, he glanced at her again. For the last few miles, her royal nose had been stuck in a travel guide, though she looked up often to gaze around. Given a choice, she would probably visit every tourist site in the state, stop at every historical marker and tramp through every museum. As it was, she seemed determined to absorb every bit of information she could find on the state.
"Can we talk, Your Highness? I realize I'm only supposed to speak when spoken to, but I'd like to ask you a few questions."
Closing the travel guide, she slid it between the seat and the console, then twisted to face him, her dark eyes shadowed with embarrassment. "My remarks this morning were rude and inappropriate. Officially your protection detail ended when you delivered me into my sister's care. You're no longer my bodyguard, and it was improper of me to treat you as such. You may speak whenever you like and say whatever you like."
It was a prissy little speech, but he didn't focus on that. Instead, he wanted to press for clarification. Whatever? Then how about finding a place where we won't be disturbed so you can give me a taste of what you gave Rusty night before last? Where you can make me forget you were with Rusty last night?
Just a taste. That would be enough to satisfy him.
It would be enough to hang him.
He was considering the trade-off—intimacy with the princess versus his best chance to prove himself worthy of a place in the Ramsey family—when she politely cleared her throat.
"You had something to ask?"
He shook his head to clear away the image of her, eyes closed, lips parted, holding on to him as if she would never let go, and asked the question that had been on his mind earlier. "Did your brother ever express any interest in mining?"
"No, never. I was surprised when my cousin Lorenzo returned from Colorado with the report that Lucas might have come to Montana to work in a mine. Lucas's interests were more … recreational in nature."
And the prince's favorite recreation had been busty, blue-eyed blondes, Tyler dryly agreed, followed closely by busty, brown-eyed brunettes and redheads of every eye color and cup size.
"Of course, who would have thought Lucas might work on a ranch?" she continued. "And yet if this former employee at the Chambers ranch is my brother, that's exactly what he's been doing for the past year." She fell silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was softer, more hesitant. "Do you believe it is Lucas?"
He shrugged. "Lorenzo seems to think the odds are pretty good."
"But if this man is Lucas, why is he calling himself Joe? Why was he employed as a cowboy, and why would he want to work in a mine?"
Those were questions that had been debated long and hard by the king, his intelligence people and every mercenary involved in the mission, and they'd come up with two likely answers. "Maybe he believes his life is in danger—maybe the accident was no accident—or maybe … he doesn't know who he is."
"Amnesia?" She gestured dismissively. "A common plot device of books and movies."
"But if it didn't exist for real, it wouldn't have become a common plot device. It's a legitimate diagnosis—a rare one, but it happens."
"My brother would never forget his family."
"It's not usually a voluntary thing," he patiently pointed out.
"Your brother was in a plane crash. He might have suffered head injuries that caused him to forget"
She was stubbornly shaking her head before he finished speaking. "He would never forget me. I'm his favored sister. He adores me. No injury could wipe clean his memories of me."
"No shortage of ego here, is there?" he murmured.
She flashed him a smile. "I'll locate you in six months and see how easily you've managed to forget me."
Tyler's expression turned grim. Easy to forget? Not likely. Not in six months or six years. Probably not in a lifetime.
"Do you believe we'll find any clues to Lucas's whereabouts at these next two mining operations?"
"I'm just here to ask the questions. I honestly can't guess."
"What if we don't? Then what?"
"Then you return to Montebello."
Her features took on an obstinate look, but she didn't argue the point "And you?"
He drew a breath. "I go wherever they tell me to go." It could be Montebello, or it could be a world away. Truth was, he might never return to the island again. Might never see Princess Anna again.
Two days ago he'd told himself he was looking forward to that prospect.
Even two days ago he'd known it was a lie. He knew it even better now.
"Is that the life you want? Going where someone sends you? Always following orders? Living nowhere in particular, and having no one to miss you when you're gone?"
Though he didn't much feel like it, he grinned. "Sounds like heaven, doesn't it?"
She made a prissy face. "It sounds lonely."
He wasn't lonely, and he wouldn't be. Traveling was better than staying in one place. Everyone took orders—even King Marcus devoted much of his time to keeping the queen and his three little princesses happy—so why shouldn't Tyler take his doing something he enjoyed? Living nowhere in particular meant nothing to tie him down, and as far as someone missing him … women were a complication he had no time or desire for. Zip. Zero. Zilch.
"And you think your life is ideal? Living in the palace? Bodyguards escorting you everywhere you go? Being at risk for no reason other than who your father is? Having your every move scrutinized, criticized or analyzed by your public?"
Distance crept into her gaze as if, instead of snow-covered ground outside the SUV, she saw her paradise island home. "Of course it isn't ideal. Nothing is."
"So change it. Your sister did."
Her smile came quickly, lightening her expression, making her radiant. "Christina is brilliant. She's a microbiologist, and is the best in her field at the university, you know."
"No, I didn't know that. And what are you? The village idiot?"
She laughed, and damn it, he would have been better off not hearing it. It was too cheerful, t
oo pleasing, too easy on a man's ears. "No," she chastised him. "I'm as smart as I want to be, but I'm nowhere near brilliant."
"You're bright enough to avoid the subject. If life were ideal—"
"It isn't."
"But if it were—"
"It's impossible."
He rolled his gaze skyward. "Hypothetically, let's pretend, make believe … if life were ideal, where would you live and how?"
The distance returned, joined with a little wistfulness. "The where and how are unimportant. It's with whom you live that matters." Deliberately, badly, she changed the subject. "This is our exit," she said with a gesture toward the highway sign they were approaching. "According to the guide book, there's a restaurant in the first town we'll pass through that serves buffalo. Can we stop there? I've never dined on buffalo before, and I would like to be able to tell Roberto I'd done so."
He could think of any number of creatures he'd rather eat than buffalo, but he didn't say so. Instead, he slowed to exit the interstate, then turned south. "What's the name of this restaurant?"
She looked it up in the travel guide, but within a quarter mile they discovered it wasn't necessary. The place was the only restaurant in town, and even if it hadn't been, the ten-foot-tall fiberglass buffalo out front was a dead giveaway.
He found a space in a parking lot filled with pickups and eighteen-wheelers, then shrugged into his coat before opening the door. The princess didn't wait for him to help her out, but slid to the ground and belted her own coat around her narrow waist.
"This cold is amazing," she remarked as they made their way across frozen gravel and dirty slush. "If I were a native, in winter I would move to the tropics."
"Montana only has two seasons, you know—winter, and winter-will-be-right-back." Tyler kept a straight face as he went on. "Not everyone can afford to move south for the winter. The ones who do are called snowbirds, and an awful lot of them wind up in my home state."
"Can we visit Arizona?"
"Nope." Not that he wouldn't mind seeing a few familiar places once he was finished with this assignment. "Arizona's a good long drive from here."
"Everything in America is a good long drive. You have cities larger than my entire country."
"Yep." He opened the restaurant door, then followed her inside. It was no fancier than its name—Buffalo Bill's. Everything from the tables to the decor to the staff was worn and years beyond its prime, but the aromas were good enough to make his mouth water, the place looked clean and the customers looked satisfied. What better endorsement could a man ask for?
There were only a handful of empty seats in the dining room, and he checked them out before steering Anna toward a booth against the far wall. He took the bench facing the door, sliding in after removing his coat. She pulled off her coat to reveal faded jeans and a red University of Montana sweatshirt worn over a white turtleneck. Too bad it was sized more for him and didn't even hint at what it covered.
"When did you find time to buy that shirt?" he asked as he opened the menu.
"It was a gift from Christina. She sent it to me several years ago. It was to be part of my disguise."
He looked up from his study of the usual diner fare and scowled at her. "Your disguise?"
"To escape you." She smiled guilelessly. "When we first arrived in Billings and stopped for a hamburger, I intended to go to the ladies' room while you ordered. There I would change into this outfit, which was hidden in my hag, and then I would sneak away. While you searched for a foreigner in a red dress and black coat, I would pass for a Montanan in a sweatshirt, baseball cap and jeans, and I would begin my search for my brother."
His gaze narrowed. How panicked would he have been if he'd lost the princess at a fast-food restaurant only a few miles from the airport? He would have called Princess Christina, the local police, his brother, and his father, and everyone would have realized that he didn't have what it took to succeed in the Noble Men. Caved under pressure, they would have said. Wasn't cool in a crisis. He would have had to move quickly to quit before they fired him.
She slowly grew more serious. "You're not amused."
"No, sorry, I'm not. I would have been the biggest failure my father and his partners have ever seen."
"They wouldn't have blamed you."
Whether they blamed him was inconsequential. He would have blamed himself, rightly so.
Her smile was faint and coaxing. "As I pointed out, even princesses are allowed to go to the bathroom alone."
"Maybe not anymore," he muttered. Maybe he would invest in a pair of handcuffs and attach one end to her wrist and the other to his own. Maybe then he could make absolutely certain that she didn't try anything.
When the waitress arrived to take their order, Anna smiled gratefully as if she'd just received a reprieve. She scanned the menu, then asked, "What do you recommend?"
"That you eat someplace else," the gray-haired granny said with a cackle. "But if you're too famished to wait, you're probably safe with a few of Bill's dishes … long as you don't have too strong an aversion to gettin' your stomach pumped."
"I want to try your buffalo. How should I order it?"
"In English gets you served quicker, seein' as how I don't speak anything but. Scoot on over, honey, and let me tell you about our buffalo." As soon as the princess slid farther across the bench, the waitress sat down beside her. "Now, ol' Buddy was meaner "n a rattlesnake and tough as rawhide. Why, it'd be easier to take a bite out of ol' Burke's hide out there—" she waved toward the fiberglass buffalo outside the plate-glass window "—than to chew a steak cut from Buddy. This fine sunny morning we've also got burgers ground from Bob and stew from Betty Lou. Our sirloins come from Bronc and our short ribs from Barney, and we've got a particularly tasty chili from Barbara."
Anna glanced out the window—whether at Burke or the cloudless gray sky, it was hard to tell—then leveled her gaze on the waitress again. "You're teasing me, aren't you?"
The old lady raised her right hand in testimony. "I never ate a buffalo I didn't like. Except for ol' Buddy." Then she laughed again and elbowed Anna. "You're right, honey. I'm pullin' your leg. The only buffalo 'round here with a name is ol' Burke outside—and Bill, who's the chief bottlewasher and cook in this here establishment. He has a head hard as a rock and empty as a broken egg. He also happens to be my husband of fifty-two years, and I'm beginnin' to think maybe this marriage thing just might work out." She paused for a breath. "You two just passin' through?"
"More or less." Before Tyler had guessed her intention, Anna pulled a photo of the prince from her bag. "We're looking for this man. Have you seen him?"
The waitress picked up the picture and studied it a moment, then transferred that alert gaze to Tyler for a moment before turning back to Anna. "You got him, and you're lookin' for a replacement? What's wrong? Don't all his parts work right?"
Anna's cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink. "Presumably … except for also having a head as hard as rock. This man is my brother, and he's gone missing. We're simply trying to locate him, to make certain he's all right."
"Haven't seen him in here, darlin', and if them doors are open, I'm here." The waitress returned the photo and picked up her order pad and pen. "Now … if I haven't scared ya off from eatin', what can I get ya?"
Chapter 5
G arden City was located in the Gallatin National Forest, south of the Absaroka Range, southeast of the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness and just north of the Wyoming state line and Yellowstone. The town appeared to be more than double the size of Clarkston and supported more of a tourist trade. Fortunately, the season for their activities, primarily camping, hiking, fishing and such, was long over, which meant fewer people to question, as well as fewer strangers in town to go unnoticed.
Anna waited impatiently in the vehicle while Tyler asked for directions to the mine. She wished the cell phone in her bag would ring and her father would be on the line, announcing that Lucas was alive, safe and on his way home. Even to
ugh it would mean a reassignment for Tyler. Even tough she might never have another opportunity to spend time alone with him.
The thought made the muscles in her stomach tighten and caused her to catch her lower lip between her teeth. Thus, when the cell phone in her bag did ring, it startled her and she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.
Quickly, she rummaged through the large bag, reaching straight to the bottom where the phone always seemed to migrate. Her fingers closed around it, she pressed the button to receive the call and raised it to her ear, her hand trembling apprehensively.
"You promised you would call me," Christina said reprovingly by way of a greeting.
"Oh, Christina, it's you!"
"Of course it is. Anyone in San Sebastian who wanted to reach you would naturally try my house, since that's where they believe you're staying. Anyone … oh, I don't know … such as Papa?"
"Has he called there?"
"Quite early this morning. He wanted to see how you're enjoying our visit. I told him you were sleeping. Considering the hour, I assumed chances were better than even that I wasn't lying. Do me a favor and call him back at a time when you're certain to awaken him in the middle of the night."
"I will," Anna murmured. She could pretend she had forgotten about the time difference, tell the staff not to wake him and simply leave a message. She liked that idea better than outright lying to him.
"So … how's it going?"
There was a teasing note in her sister's voice that Anna hadn't heard in a long time, and it made her realize how much she'd missed Christina's presence in the palace all these years. Growing up, she, Christina and Julia had been so very close—playmates in the nursery, best friends and confidantes. Julia, being the eldest, had naturally been the first to grow away. Though her family remained important to her, they'd been displaced somewhat by her new husband, Rashid, and their baby. Then Christina had not only grown away but gone away as well, coming to Montana to continue her studies. Like Julia, she still loved her family dearly, but Jack and the children they would soon have came first in her life.