Captured (Gowns & Crowns #2)

by Jennifer Chance

  “This! That!” She pointed at his naked chest. “Something has happened, and you’re shielding it from me, distracting me with the whole He-Man routine. What is it? Is it my family? Henry? Have they made calls? Are they on their way here?”

  His eyes widened in what appeared to be genuine alarm. “Not at all. I told you I’ve had no contact—”

  “Oh, bullshit! You’re a captain of your country’s security force. Of course you have a phone on you.” She threw her napkin down and strode toward him. He backed up until his hips met the sink, and she still kept coming. Standing this close to Dimitri was dangerous, but she could control it. She could control her reactions too. She knew that, but that didn’t stop her from standing a little too close, leaning in a little too far. Dimitri smelled of spices and heat and—Focus! “What is it you’re not telling me?”

  He didn’t answer right away, and she flapped her right hand in front of his face. “Hello? I asked you—”

  “Enough.” He moved so quickly that she didn’t see it coming, but he grabbed her hand and there was that jolt again, the vital leap of energy between them, that at once grounded her and made her blood feel too fizzy in her veins. “You keep coming after me, princess, and sooner or later, you’re going to catch me. Do you have any idea what you’re going to do when that happens?”

  “You’re disgusting.” She tried to pull away from him, but he held firm. He stared down at her, laughter in his eyes.

  “Disgusting? That’s really what you think of me?”

  “I—” Lauren blinked as he pulled her hand toward his lips, brushing the fingertips as all the blood drained out of her head. “I don’t—stop that.”

  “Stop this?” He pressed her hand more firmly to his mouth, his warm lips drifting down to the hollow of her palm until his mouth slipped over the edge of her hand, and she felt the pressure of his teeth bite down.

  Need shot straight through her and exploded in a burst of panicked lust. Her insides spontaneously melted with a speed she’d never experienced before, and she gasped, her right hand trapped, her left hand pressed against Dimitri’s chest, his eyes riveted on hers, tempting her, taunting her…

  A crackling voice rang out with abrupt authority. “Dimitri! You are—oh!”

  Lauren turned, her right hand captured in Dimitri’s, as an old woman pushed into the kitchen from the front room of the villa, her arms laden with food. Though stunned for exactly half a second, as soon as she saw Dimitri and Lauren together, she burst into an excited, shocked, or certainly startled flood of Garronois, her accent so thick that Lauren couldn’t follow her words. The old woman asked practically fifty-seven questions all at once, one on top of the other as she dropped the loaves of bread on the table along with dark purple fruit.

  Dimitri startled Lauren by kissing her hand once more, firmly. Then he squeezed her fingers and pushed her away.

  “Grandmother,” he said, striding across the room. The old lady’s eyes widened as she took in his lack of a shirt, and she batted at him ineffectually as he picked her up and swung her back and forth like a plump doll. The two devolved into another conversation while Lauren braced herself against the sink, willing her brain to come back online. The woman was laughing and crying at the same time, back to speaking a million miles a minute, and as Lauren watched, a new realization struck her.

  No one was paying attention to her. At all. She might as well not be in the room, a situation that hadn’t happened to her in—forever. Far from being offensive, it was wonderful. Freeing. And made Lauren suddenly feel safer than she had in longer than she could remember.

  She turned toward the sunshine, and walked out.

  Dimitri shook his head slightly as his grandmother stumbled in her nonstop patter. With a gesture, he urged her to keep it up as they both watched Lauren drift down the porch. The old woman’s eyes rounded as she babbled on, but the moment Lauren stepped down the short staircase and onto the sand, she gasped out a breath and glared at him.

  “How dare you bring such a beautiful woman and keep her locked up here without telling us,” she hissed. “Who is she? Your girlfriend? She is very pretty, very sweet. I can tell. I like her much better already than your last.”

  He scowled at her, trying not to laugh. “I have not brought anyone to Miranos since I was fourteen.”

  His grandmother pushed at his chest, then realized it was bare and settled for planting her fists on her sturdy hips. “Then it is high time you did. We will have a party. Your mother will be happy. Your father will be happy. Your girlfriend, she will be happy too. Happier if you put on a shirt, though. Who is she?”

  “She’s…shit.” Dimitri’s head came up at the sound of an engine starting.

  “Dimitri! Your language! What are they teaching you—”

  He was out the door before his grandmother could finish her admonition, but it didn’t matter. He’d left the keys in his four-wheeler. Of course he’d left the keys in his four-wheeler. Of course he’d left the keys, and of course Lauren had taken it, The same way she’d probably taken for granted that everything she saw was hers the moment she laid eyes on it.

  He shook his head, his anger dissolving into rueful laughter as his grandmother bustled out, her complaints flying. Together, they watched as Lauren roared down the beach in the beach rover, completely in the opposite direction of town.

  “She is trouble or she is in trouble, which?” his grandmother asked.

  Dimitri sighed. “Both.”

  It took him an hour to track Lauren down. Not very difficult, given the size of the only town on Miranos, and the fact that she was the only blonde on the island. He saw the vehicle first, parked in front of the main pub. There would be a TV there, and a phone, he knew she assumed. She wasn’t wrong. Because she also wasn’t stupid.

  He entered the bar and waved to the bartender, Anker, whose grin broadened as he looked up from Lauren, who sat hunched over Anker’s ancient flip phone. “She said you would pay for her coffee, my friend. I said to myself, a beautiful woman I have never seen before comes to my bar, of course she is friends with Dimitri Korba. Unfortunately, she has been having no luck with my phone. I told her the connection on the island, it is not so good. It is the price we must pay. But oh! Good, you can help her.”

  Lauren turned to him then, her eyes narrowing as she saw what he held in his hand. “Your phone was charged all along!”

  “You Americans are all too connected.” He handed the sat phone to her. “Call the number I last dialed. Nicki Clark will pick up. Stefan tells me she has been hounding him by the hour for information, that she would not go to sleep until she knew that you were safe. And even then, she slept in the communications room.”

  “She—worries.” He could tell she was thinking something else, and her words sounded false to him, anyway. From what little he’d seen of Nicole Clark, she didn’t worry. She acted, reacted, attacked, confronted. He didn’t envy Stefan with her underfoot, literally. She was probably coming out of her skin. If there was one thing Garronia’s most polished diplomat didn’t like, it was any lack of control. And Nicki Clark had that in spades.

  Lauren’s voice recalled him. “But she’s the only one there?” she asked, clearly mapping out her communications strategy. “Not my parents?”

  He shook his head. “They continue to search. Cyril has taken them into the mountains, stopping at every château along the way. He has assured them that you cannot leave the country without our knowledge. Garronia is not that big.”

  She grimaced. “I have to contact them, Dimitri.”

  She did, yes. But that idea seemed strangely wrong. At least for the moment, until he understood the full scope of the threat against her. “Remember the pictures we took. We don’t know what else he’s put in place.”

  Her face shuttered, enough to let him know that his barb had hit its mark. “Fine. Then I definitely need to make some calls.”

  As she dialed, Dimitri watched her. Though her makeup had been scrubbed off and
her clothes remained far too fine for Miranos, she looked perfectly at ease in the tiny bar, fully in control. He rested his elbows on the counter as she spoke, and nodded to Anker as he slid him a steaming mug of coffee.

  “Your wife?” Anker asked, timed to ensure that Dimitri choked. “Ah, your girlfriend, then. She is pretty. Stubborn too.”

  “You noticed that.”

  “I notice everything.” Anker winked. “I asked her why she is here, and she said you are worried for her unnecessarily.” He eyed Dimitri. “She thinks you are foolish for trying to protect her.”

  “She’ll get used to it.” Dimitri took another sip of the dark brew as Lauren scowled. She spoke rapid English, which he could follow, though he found himself getting distracted from her words by the sheer attraction of her anger. She honestly was lovely when she was happy, but she was magnificent when she was mad. Which probably did not bode well for a relationship.

  A what? He shook his head. Clearly, he needed more caffeine.

  “I need you to keep an eye on Fran and Emmaline. Especially Emmaline,” Lauren was saying now. “If another one of those packages shows up, do not fool around with it.” She waved her hand with irritation. “Whatever you do, Nicki, don’t make a scene. That’ll make him happier than anything else.”

  Dimitri scowled, considering her words. Lauren was channeling anger, but there was no missing the undercurrent of fear that laced her words. When he’d awoken this morning on the couch, his first thought had been to contact Cyril, and his second had been to check on Lauren—a thought he’d resisted, knowing that fear had exhausted her.

  What must this be like for her? She was the billionaire heiress of one of the world’s richest families. She’d doubtlessly had an army of maids and nannies and shopping buddies surrounding her like a pink cloud since she’d been born. This kind of woman wasn’t supposed to know fear of any sort.

  And yet…Smithson sending her a few unsavory presents wasn’t enough to account for that fear. He’d had to have hurt her personally worse than that, in a way she couldn’t prove. In a way she was clearly unwilling to tell him yet.

  Dimitri scowled, forcing himself to keep tabs on Lauren’s conversation with Nicki while his mind roved over the rest of the data he’d collected. Cyril had been surprisingly supportive about Dimitri’s decision to remove Lauren from the mainland, a reaction he thought had more to do with Cyril’s relief that they couldn’t be held accountable for another American if she wasn’t in the palace proper. But the reaction of the Grant parents and Smithson himself had been less relieved. They were outraged, all three of them. The current story was that Lauren had used her considerable money and influence to spirit herself out of the country, with the intention of shopping in Milan or Paris to clear her mind, but that she’d been stopped short due to her unfamiliarity with the terrain and the people—and the fact that she’d decided to run away when she was miles away from any actual town. So discreet inquiries were underway, and of course she would be noticed and found. Sooner rather than later.

  Which meant that eventually, exactly as she’d told him, she was going to have to face Smithson.

  He took a long pull on his coffee. What would it be like to have everything and still feel threatened by one man, threatened to the point of a deeply personal fear? He couldn’t imagine it. He couldn’t understand how Lauren had put up with it.

  Then again, his life was far simpler. He served his country and his king. He would sacrifice his life for either, or for his family, should the need arose.

  “You are looking very dark, my friend,” Anker observed. “A woman so pretty, she should not make you so sad.”

  “He should be sad for other reasons.” The familiar voice had Dimitri turning around, his heart undeniably lighter with it.

  “Alexi!”

  “Do not talk to me.” His sister held up her hand and scowled at him, then peered critically at Lauren. “You have a beautiful American woman, and who sees her first? Grandmother. This is unacceptable. And she is dressed in yesterday’s clothes. What sort of monster are you?”

  Lauren, as if sensing they were talking about her, swiveled around, and took in Alexi with an interested gaze. His sister gave a low whistle. “She is more beautiful than Grandmother said.” She punched his arm as Lauren slid off the stool and moved several steps away. “You are married?”

  That stopped Dimitri from going after Lauren. He stared at Alexi. “What? No.”

  “Good, then she cannot stay with you. She will stay with—”

  “No.” Dimitri shot out a hand, staying Alexi’s words as he clasped her arm. Lauren was bent over the phone, talking fast. She couldn’t know she was being recorded by tech built into Dimitri’s phone. He wouldn’t tell her either. “She’s in danger, Alexi. I can’t have her bring that danger to the family, only to me. She’s my responsibility.”

  She lifted her brows. “So you are married, then. Nevertheless.” She pushed out her lower lip. “She needs something to wear. How long will you be staying?” At his dazed look, she laughed. “Well, she can’t stay holed up in your villa. We will celebrate this night, yes? And go shopping this day. She speaks only English?”

  “Garronois as well.” Lauren stepped toward them, her face carefully composed as she handed her phone to Dimitri. “Thank you.”

  “Ah, excellent,” Alexi said. “Then we will get you new clothes and supplies to make your stay with my monstrous brother acceptable. He will keep you in his little villa so that you may remain safe, but you will come to our house this evening, yes? You must.”

  Lauren, who surely had more experience than most women in the world, seemed nonplussed, whether by the invitation or the word “safe.” Her gaze swiveled from Dimitri to Alexi and back, until finally she nodded. “You don’t need to do anything for me, truly. I’m fine.”

  “Nonsense. You are the guest of my brother, and you have brought him back to our shores for longer than a few hours for the first time in a year. This makes you a miracle.”

  “A year?” Lauren shot him a startled glance. The timing clearly didn’t escape her, and he shrugged.

  “It’s been a very busy year.”

  “It has been a year of mourning, and not only for the Crown Prince. But go—shoo.” Alexi pushed Dimitri away. “Let me dress this beautiful woman. We’ll see you later. “

  For the second time that morning, Dimitri watched Lauren walk away from him without a backward glance. He found he didn’t like it. Didn’t like it at all.

  He flipped open his phone to connect with his tracking service. At least he could keep her safe.

  Chapter Nine

  Within twenty minutes, Lauren had not only wheedled Dimitri’s sister out of her phone—this one hopefully not tracked within an inch of its life—she’d also gotten her to take her to the one place in town with decent cell service. The local sports bar and bookie shop. It all made a weird sort of sense. Even complete Luddites needed connectivity to place their bets and watch the latest games. With assurances that she wanted only to take care of critical wire transfers, she stepped to the side of the bar as Alexi ordered them both food and drinks. Breakfast already seemed hours ago, and Lauren hadn’t really been focusing on her meal. Not with Dimitri in front of her in his half-naked glory.

  Dimitri.

  Her attention was recalled by the crisp voice on the phone. It took only a few tries to get transferred to a real human, one of the perks of her name, she knew. You learned to take the good with the bad.

  She put the transaction through quickly, double-checked all the other accounts, and changed all the passwords, leaving strict instructions on what constituted any further “authorized” changes. The process only took a few minutes…which was the whole point of setting everything up in advance. At least now her money was safe. That was the easy part.

  But she had another call to make. One she didn’t want to make on Alexi’s phone, if she could help it. The bank call was safe enough, even if Dimitri had a bead on his sist
er’s device. This one…

  She made a show of wandering back into the little pub, wide-eyed and eager. Since it was afternoon, the pub was hopping—or as hopping as she expected it ever got on this tiny dot of an island. The clientele was mostly male, which was in her favor. She needed to single one of the guys out and…

  Shit. She didn’t have any money. She wasn’t going to be able to call anyone if she couldn’t buy a phone from some hapless tourist. That wasn’t going to happen without cash. She’d have to find another way.

  Trying not to let her irritation show, she rejoined Alexi and prepared herself for a long meal and a yet longer day trying to find clothes. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate Dimitri’s sister. The woman was sweet, practical, and strikingly pretty—her dark eyes big and flashing, her riot of curly black hair a perfect match to her buoyant personality. But Lauren didn’t have time for her. She didn’t have time for anyone. “Here you go,” she said, handing back the phone. “I only made the one call, and it shouldn’t charge you—”

  “Keep it.” Alexi grinned at her, and Lauren blinked at her, startled.

  “I can’t keep your phone. I’ll run up charges.”

  “Then Dimitri will pay them.” Alexi pointed to the phone. “It’s what he calls a ‘burner.’ Charming name, don’t you think? You burn it up and throw it out. Only mine stays good for much longer than he seems to think.”

  “He gave you a burner phone?” Lauren frowned at her. So perhaps the phone wasn’t tracked after all? “But why?”

  “Because he’s a big, overprotective ox. And I say that with love and affection. But I have six of those phones in their boxes at home, minutes already charged to them, and I don’t know when I’m going to get to them.” Alexi smiled at Lauren’s confusion. “With Dimitri, you don’t always get reasons. He simply does things.”

  “When did he start, though? Sending you phones?”

  Alexi cast her gaze skyward. “It was a year ago, of course. After Prince Ari died.” She smiled grimly. “That is why he said he gave them to us—so we could call him with any information about the prince’s plane. Such a tragedy, truly. We lost Dimitri that day as much as Aristotle. He said we might find—he didn’t know. Something. Wreckage of the plane washed up on the island. Information from the fishermen or divers. Something. He spared no expense—and not only for the family, but friends and neighbors as well. The local fishermen. Everyone.” She shook her head. “We suspected he mostly wanted us to be safer. He took it very hard when Ari died. Went dark for days, wouldn’t eat. Came here, you know, but we didn’t see him. He combed the beaches and coves for debris. Very sad.” She sighed. “He blamed himself.”