by Cindy Gerard
“Now don’t you glare at me like that, Justin. As far as my parents know, the only reason I decided to stay in the States was to see if I could cultivate interest and gather additional financial backing for one of my projects.”
She graced him with another wide, winning smile—the one that had successfully opened thousands of checkbooks to the tune of millions of dollars for her numerous causes. “You Texans are known for the size of your bank accounts as well as the size of your state, is that not so? Which reminds me, darling…I’ve been meaning to speak to you about a donation.”
“All right. All right.” He held up both hands in surrender, his grin relaying both defeat and exasperation. “Message received. I’ll back off. You’re a big girl. You know what you can handle. Just—just call me, would you? Call anytime if you change your mind about the support group.”
“Yes, Mother doctor.”
“Okay. That’s it.” He scowled with mock seriousness and stood. “Take your smart mouth and your stubborn blue-blooded pride and do not darken these hospital doors again until I tell you you’re ready for cosmetic surgery.”
“Don’t worry. As kind as everyone has been, I still can’t get out of here fast enough.”
“The timing is good then because I believe your transport is waiting.”
“Gregory and Anna are here?” While Helena did not relish imposing on Princess Anna von Oberland and her husband, Gregory Hunt, she was nonetheless relieved at their offer to recuperate at their ranch, Casa Royale.
“The press got wind that you might be released today and have been camping out on the front steps. Greg and Anna are running a little interference, hoping to take some of the heat off you.”
They were very gracious, the princess and her handsome husband—especially in light of the recent unpleasantness between Asterland and Princess Anna’s homeland of Obersbourg. As unpleasant as it was, however, it was still more appealing to dwell on that horrible business than on the horde of reporters waiting for their first glimpse of her since the crash.
Waiting to be shocked by what they saw.
Waiting to look at her with pity in their eyes. To feed on her weakness and expose her for what she no longer was.
That, she promised herself, would never happen. They would see only what she wanted them to see. And they would not see a victim.
“Helena? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Fine,” she insisted quickly and attempted to mask the shakiness in her voice by sitting up. “Now unless you want to see my bare backside, I’d suggest you leave me so I can get dressed.” To prove she meant business, she tossed back the sheet and carefully swung her legs to the side of the bed.
“All right. I’m gone.” He laughed and turned to leave.
“Justin.”
Her soft voice stopped him, one hand on the door.
“Thank you. Thank you for being my friend. I’m glad it was you on call that night.”
His smile was achingly endearing. “Just doing my job, ma’am.”
“And I’m just doing mine, so don’t forget about that donation,” she reminded him, with another of those practiced smiles that she knew could charm him out of a generous contribution.
“The check’s in the mail,” he promised with a shake of his head, then chuckled when her playfully muttered, “Oh, I’ve heard that one before,” chased him out the door.
Helena watched the door close slowly behind him. Alone, she let down her guard, dropped all pretense of bravery and hung her head like the coward she feared she’d become.
She’d said all the right things, made all the right noises. While Justin wasn’t altogether convinced that she was all right, she felt she had convinced him that after spending most of January and all of February in the burn unit, she was bursting to get out of here.
The truth was that the thought of leaving terrified her. Yes, the isolation had been, in some ways, like a prison—but it had also been a refuge. As long as she was here, she didn’t have to face the public. She didn’t have to face the press.
As long as she was here, she didn’t have to face the fact that she had left the world a whole, perfect person—and that she would be returning to it profoundly diminished.
A few minutes later, a light rap on the door brought Helena’s head up from the simple task of buttoning her blouse. At any rate it used to be simple. Now, getting any assistance from her left hand was an exercise in pain and frustration.
Squeezing her eyes tightly, she composed herself. These resurgent and pathetic bouts of self-pity simply had to stop.
“Please come in,” she called cheerily. “I’m decent. At least I’m getting there. Although you might find the air in here a bit blue.”
When Anna von Oberland-Hunt walked into the room, Helena manufactured a sheepish grin for the elegant princess.
“You know, Anna, when I was a little girl, my mother was always threatening to ship me off to Australia to some obscure penal colony for foul-mouthed little hellions.” She gave a self-deprecating shrug. “I’m thinking, in retrospect, it might not have been a bad plan. No doubt, if she’d been here just before you arrived, she’d have thought she should have followed through and sent me packing.”
“If she were here,” Anna said gently, “she would have offered to help. I’m a poor substitute, but if there’s anything I can do, just say the word.”
Helena shook her head to combat the renewed threat of tears that Anna’s kindness fostered. “It’s these cursed buttons.” She sighed in exasperation. “It’s rather like starting from scratch, isn’t it? One two, buckle my shoe…three four, what’d they invent these blasted buttons for?”
“I’m so sorry, Helena. I should have thought of that when I selected your clothes.”
“Oh, please. I already feel that I’ve taken horrible advantage of you. Don’t make me feel worse by apologizing for your kindness.”
A look that passed between them underscored Helena’s gratitude for all that Anna and Greg had done—right down to retrieving her luggage from the authorities and selecting lingerie in the form of camisoles and teddies so she wouldn’t have to deal with the impossible task of wrestling with a bra. Hooks, and now it seemed buttons, were currently beyond her.
Yes, she owed Anna and Gregory Hunt. The invitation they’d extended for her to stay with them was one she appreciated for both its kindness and its diplomacy. Given the strained relations between Anna’s homeland of Obersbourg and Helena’s of Asterland—a result of Helena’s late cousin Ivan Striksky’s disgraceful and failed plot to force the princess to marry him—their offer was generous beyond measure.
“It looks like you could use a little help right now,” Anna offered kindly.
“A lot is more like it,” Helena admitted. “And I’m past being too proud to accept it until I can manage better on my own.”
If she could ever manage better. Tears welled up again. She blinked them back. Damn and blast it. She’d begun to think that someone had surgically removed her spine when she was under anesthetic. Worse even than dealing with her new limitations was fighting this crippling depression. She would not give in to it.
She met the princess’s eyes as Anna made quick work of the pearl buttons on the dove-gray silk blouse that matched Helena’s slacks. Not for the first time, she admired Anna’s beauty and grace. She thought of the times that their paths had crossed. Theirs had been a passing acquaintance even though she’d often thought they would make fine friends. Now she was sure of it.
“I hope I won’t have to impose on you for much more than a month. I need to stay close to the medical complex until the graft is more stable. Then, there’s this pesky thing.” She tapped the temporary boot cast that was nearly hidden beneath her loose-legged slacks. “This, at least I can walk in and remove from time to time until I lose it for good.”
“You have something major to look forward to then.”
“Truth to tell,” Helena confessed, needing to take the focus away from herse
lf, “I am so looking forward to seeing Casa Royale. An honest-to-goodness Texas ranch. How exciting.” Rallying another smile for Anna’s benefit, she confided with a teasing lift of a brow, “This cowboy thing is…well, it’s fascinating, isn’t it?”
Another rap sounded on the door.
“Ladies?” a deep masculine voice intoned. “How are we doing in there?”
Helena’s eyes were twinkling when they met Anna’s. “Speaking of fascinating…”
Helena laughed when Anna answered her wicked grin with one of her own.
“Actually, we could use your help, Gregory.” Anna eyed Helena’s wheelchair with a dubious scowl as her husband walked into the room. “I’m not sure how to make this thing work. Or for that matter, how to get you into it, Helena.”
“That part, I can manage,” Helena assured them, then proved it by easing carefully off the bed. In halting steps, she maneuvered into the chair.
Greg Hunt was quick to kneel down in front of her, support her cast and adjust the leg and foot brace on the chair.
“Goodness, you’re very good at that dropping to one knee business.” Helena’s eyes sparkled as she watched his dark head bent over her leg. “Makes one wonder if Anna pulls rank on occasion and has you kneeling to the crown.”
A totally male, totally engaging grin stole across his darkly handsome face. “A loyal subject always knows when to step and when to fetch where the princess is concerned.”
Anna looked from Greg to Helena and back to Greg. She smiled sweetly. “Having fun?”
“Always, darling.” He stood and dropped a kiss full of promises on her brow then turned back to Helena, who was quietly envying the love they shared. “All set?”
“Absolutely.” Helena told herself it wasn’t a lie. She was ready to do this, and she held on to that belief right up until a racket in the hallway had them all turning their heads.
Greg strode swiftly to the door and looked outside. He turned back with a scowl. “Looks like it’s show time. The press are on the floor—and they’re salivating.”
Helena had been anticipating this. She’d been preparing for it. And she’d thought she was ready. Her racing heart said she wasn’t. The rush of dizziness confirmed it.
The press had tried to feed on her for her entire life. She’d always known how to handle them, had always maintained control. She’d treated them like the predators they were, using her looks to hold them at bay as a lion tamer used a whip and chair.
In a stunning moment of truth, she realized that no matter what she’d thought she could do, she couldn’t hold them off now. Not in this condition. She most definitely could not control them. She wasn’t that strong. To her mortification, she realized that she wasn’t that brave. Without her full arsenal to draw from, they would rip her to shreds.
She met Greg’s eyes, determined he’d see neither her shame nor her fear as the noise in the hall escalated to an electric buzz in anticipation of the feeding frenzy she knew it would become.
“You know,” she said, drawing on her reserves to keep her voice steady, “I really don’t think I want to do this today. It’s so pedestrian and, well, tacky—this spectacle they would make of something as uneventful as my release from the hospital.”
Greg and Anna exchanged a concerned glance.
“I mean—can’t we just make them go away somehow?” she suggested with a regal calmness her racing heart worked to undercut.
Her breath caught when the door swung open, and it suddenly seemed it was going to happen with or without her permission. She steeled herself, closed her eyes, and waited for the first verbal blow to land.
Instead of a chorus of demanding voices, one voice—a gruffly velvet, Texas drawl—rang out, clear, composed, and in total control. “It seems we’ve got a situation out here.”
If possible, her heartbeat quickened, not with fear but with relief as she looked up and into a pair of forest-green eyes that burned so furiously and so fiercely that she would have flinched if she hadn’t recognized them.
It was Matthew Walker. Her tall, green-eyed Texan. On the heels of that shock, came another. Neither her memory nor her dreams had done justice to this magnificent man in a silver-gray Stetson, slim dark slacks and crisp white shirt who had just burst back into her life like an avenging angel intent on slaying Lucifer himself if he had to.
He glanced first at Anna then at Greg before his gaze settled, with grim intensity, on her.
She didn’t stop to ask him why he was here. Didn’t think to question whether it was odd or out of the ordinary. She only knew that he’d come. And because he’d come, she knew that everything would be all right.
“Well,” she said, praying that neither her relief nor her panic affected her voice, “it would seem the cavalry has arrived. How wonderfully John Wayne of you.” Like her tone, her smile was carefully contrived to convince everyone—including herself—that this was all one grand adventure. “So tell me, darling, how, exactly, do you intend to save the day?”
Three
The quick plan Matt had hatched to get Helena out of the hospital without being bombarded by the press was simple and effective—if reliant on a little sleight of hand. After pressing the call button to summon a nurse—who, upon hearing him out, was not only game but also excited by the prospect of a little intrigue involving a princess and the daughter of an earl—they set it in motion.
As expected, when the door to Helena’s hospital room opened and Greg, with Anna by his side carrying Helena’s overnight bag, wheeled the chair out into the hall, the paparazzi swarmed like piranhas around the woman bundled from head to toe in a hooded bathrobe.
Inside the room, Matt and Helena listened to the commotion. Matt watched her face and told himself he wasn’t indulging in the look of her after a month of watching her from a distance. As he’d intended, she’d never been aware that he’d been standing guard. Just as she hadn’t needed the extra stress of knowing she faced a potential threat added to her already difficult recovery, he hadn’t needed the complications that getting to know her better would surely bring.
From the moment he’d met her, his physical reaction to her had been far too intense. His interest, much too strong. Just because he was finally face-to-face with her, just because her eyes were a deeper shade of blue than he’d remembered, the silk of her hair as lustrous as spun gold, her face and body the epitome of a heroine in a romantic novel, it didn’t mean he was going to change his game plan now.
All he had to do was get her safely away from the hospital, settle her at the Hunts under the 24/7 guard he’d arranged, and he’d be back to business as usual. And yet, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
She said nothing as she sat on the edge of the bed, but the tight set of those beautiful full lips betrayed her tension. The solemn-eyed intensity of her gaze, never wavering from the closed door, spoke volumes about nerves that were strung drum-tight as the reporters’ voices reached them from the hall.
“Lady Helena! Look up! Lady Helena! Over here! Give us a smile for the public who wants to know how you are.”
She flinched at the sound of her name, and he couldn’t help it. He reached out. Touched a hand to her shoulder, gave it a reassuring squeeze as Greg’s voice boomed down the hall.
“Back off, Herkner,” Greg growled at the reporter from the American Investigator, a sleazy tabloid that put the other rags to shame in the exploitation department. “Give the lady a break. And give the other patients on the floor a break, too. Let us get her out of the building and she’ll give you a few words and a chance to shoot some photos.
“Or don’t back off,” Greg baited, the dare in his voice unmistakable, “and we’ll let the ER docs practice a little triage on your ugly face. Your call, of course.”
Matt looked toward the closed door, very much aware of the history between Willis Herkner and Greg Hunt. The reporter had hounded Anna during the Striksky affair. Obviously, Greg held a grudge. More obviously, Herkner was hamburger if he test
ed those particular waters.
When the racket quieted to a hushed din, telling Matt his plan was working and Greg and Anna were leading the press from the floor, he turned back to Helena.
She was pale and shaken and trying valiantly to keep herself together.
He hunkered down in front of her. “Hey…you okay?”
She worked over-hard to gather her composure and grace him with a look that tried to make a lie of the fact that she was far from all right. “Of course, darling,” she said in that cool, regal tone that dismissed his concern as unnecessary. “It’s just such a bother, isn’t it?”
“And then some,” he agreed, trying to get a read on her, knowing there was more going on behind those brilliant blue eyes than she wanted him to see.
“Look,” she said, all starch and breeding and a bit of impatient prima donna that didn’t quite ring true, “I don’t know why you’re here. And frankly, I don’t care. Just get me out of here. Please,” she added with enough entreaty that he knew she wasn’t as blasé about all of this as she’d like him to think.
He tipped his fingers to his hat brim and because he felt she needed one, he gave her a reassuring smile. “At your service, my lady.”
She smiled then, too. A real smile, not one he suspected she’d used on the public to hide everything from boredom to pain to fear.
“What’s next?” she asked after a steadying breath.
“What’s next is that we sneak you out the rear entrance without catching anyone’s attention.”
And that was going to be no easy feat. He’d been afraid that her release would come to this. The media circus it created wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that her visibility increased her vulnerability. He wasn’t about to give anyone but the people he trusted access to her.
All he needed to do was transport her safely out of the hospital and deliver her to the Hunts. Greg was a fellow Cattleman’s Club member and Matt knew she’d be safe with him and Anna at their ranch until the mystery behind the jewel theft and Riley’s murder was cleared up, and he was certain she was out of danger.