Operation: Monarch

by Valerie Parv

  "And you're the same old pain in the—"

  Before she could finish, he flexed his muscles, loosening the band enough to throw it off. Yanking on it, he toppled her against him, making her think she was going to find herself in his arms for the second time in her life. The prospect caused her heart rate to rocket, hammering at her shield of professionalism.

  For a heartbeat she was back in school, her teenage body pressed against him as her mouth shaped hungrily to his. The memory of his indifference rolled over her anew, giving her the strength to straighten away from him. She could swear he knew what she'd been thinking and had provoked her to see how she'd react.

  When she moved back he tossed the apparatus to her, almost but not quite dissipating the unwanted feelings. "You made your point. Both points," he said, sounding world-weary. Surely he hadn't wanted her in his arms?

  It wasn't exactly an apology but it would have to serve. Unnerved by the easy way he'd demonstrated his greater physical strength, she dropped to the mat and continued her workout. After a few repetitions she reminded herself she had a job to do. Her own feelings couldn't be allowed to get in the way.

  "Are you on leave from the navy?" she asked.

  His powerful movements made the resistance band stretch and contract like breathing. "I left the service after a disagreement with the brass."

  She wanted to say, "I know, and I don't believe you were at fault," but couldn't without betraying how much she knew about him. Instead, she said, "You never did like authority much."

  "I don't have a problem with authority provided it isn't wielded by fools," he growled.

  "Such as the man who got you fired from the navy?"

  The cord snapped to his feet as he swung his gaze on her. "I didn't say I was fired. I said we parted company."

  "My mistake," she said mildly, although her heart was pounding.

  He retrieved the cable and resumed his methodical rowing movements. "As it happens, you're right. Not that it matters who's at fault when a trainee under my care comes close to getting killed."

  It mattered to him, she saw, impressed that his concern was all for the injured diver. There wasn't a trace of self-pity or justification in his tone. "You don't believe you were at fault, do you?"

  The mask lifted for a moment. "I know I wasn't." Then the shutters came back down. "For all the good it will do me."

  "Couldn't you get a lawyer to defend you?"

  He unhooked the cable from his feet and looped it around his hand. "What's the point? Admirals are always right. Besides, I'm happy as I am now."

  She was genuinely curious now. "Doing what?"

  "Salvage diving. Provided they don't mind diving with a black sheep, I take adventurous tourists down at exorbitant fees."

  It was out before she knew it was what she wanted. "Would you take me sometime?"

  He shrugged. "Your money is as good as anyone's."

  Annoyed with herself for feeling hurt, she said, "I was thinking more for old time's sake."

  He drew his legs up and hooked his arms around them. "I wasn't aware we had any old times."

  "Not because I didn't want to have them," she said softly.

  "Is that why you made a bet with your friends that you wouldn't have the nerve to kiss me?"

  She felt her face flame. "The bet was their idea, not mine."

  "You took them up on it."

  "Yes I did, and I've regretted it ever since."

  He tossed the cable aside and rolled over onto his stomach, levering himself up on his arms and exhaling slowly as he pushed himself away from the mat.

  Inhaling, he lowered himself down to the point where his chest was a few inches from the floor. His control left her breathless. Resignedly she rolled over and began a set of push-ups as demanding as his own. Showing off? She wondered.

  By the time she finished her repetitions she was breathing hard. Garth had already finished and his chest was hardly moving, she noted. And she had thought she was fit.

  "You shouldn't have regrets, especially about me," he said unexpectedly.

  She sat up and blotted her face with a towel. "Don't flatter yourself. I haven't exactly been pining."

  A water bottle lay within arm's reach. Picking it up, he drank then offered it to her. She swallowed some water, trying not to think of his lips on the bottle before hers. Too intimate by far.

  "I shouldn't think you'd be left to pine for long."

  Her head came up. "Because I'm a doll who trades on her looks?"

  A shadow darkened his rugged features. "That was cruel. I was out of line."

  Better late than never, she thought. "Thanks, but you were right. I let my parents manage my life for too long. Modeling was never what I wanted to do, but they came to depend on the glamour and the excitement. Whenever I go home I hear about what could have been."

  "They managed without you."

  She laughed hollowly. "I didn't give them much choice." When she finally convinced them she was serious, her mother had started a business advising other would-be models and her father had gone back into banking.

  "Asserting yourself must have taken courage."

  Finally she had demonstrated a quality he could admire. She fought to stop her spirits from leaping. After he found out why she was here, he wouldn't waste time admiring her. He would think she was being just as dishonest with him as she had been before. He would be right, too. She decided enough was enough.

  She dragged in a steadying breath. "This meeting isn't exactly an accident."

  "Surprise, surprise."

  She felt her eyes widen with astonishment. "How did you work it out?"

  "I saw a program on TV about the facilities you people have available at the palace gym. You wouldn't be here without good reason. Obviously your reason involves me."

  "I'm sorry," she began.

  His gesture sliced across her apology. "Never mind that, Serena. What do you want from me?"

  Chapter 2

  She looked around. The thumping music had stopped and people were streaming in from the other room, scattering themselves around the equipment. "Not here," she said. "Can we go somewhere more private?"

  He draped the towel around his neck. "I'll meet you out front in ten minutes."

  She was ready in nine but he was already waiting for her, his dark hair glistening from the shower and his shirt damp as if he hadn't taken the time to completely dry off. She knew better than to think he had been anxious to meet her. More likely he wanted to get the meeting over with as quickly as possible.

  He gestured toward the battered pickup. "We can talk in my truck."

  She had been thinking along the lines of coffee and a baguette in a café by the waterfront. She saw him read her body language and frowned in disapproval. For the latte set he thought she still belonged to, or for her company?

  Probably both, she thought on an inward sigh. One day she would learn that he simply didn't want her around. "Lead on."

  He threw his duffel bag into the pickup and opened the passenger door for her from the inside. Before she could climb in, he reached down and pushed an assortment of fast-food wrappers under the seat. If not for the immaculate state of his diving equipment, she would have believed he was a complete boor.

  "Now you can get in," he said, sounding as if he didn't care either way.

  He slammed the door and she inhaled a mix of chlorine and southern-fried chicken. When he joined her, she asked, "Do you live in this thing?"

  "Not usually."

  Only since his parents were killed, she interpreted, feeling a surge of compassion for him. She knew he didn't have any other family, and losing them must have hit him hard. Her background check showed that he normally lived aboard his dive boat which was presently in dry dock. He would have inherited his parents' house, but maybe he couldn't bring himself to move in there yet and was living out of his car until his boat was repaired.

  He could also be the rightful heir to the Carramer throne, she reminded h
erself, although without much conviction. If he ever assumed the crown, the country was in for a shock. The members of the royal family she had met were fairly down-to-earth, but none could match a long-haired, fried-chicken-eating bad boy like Garth. That he could be a de Marigny by birth seemed fantastic beyond belief.

  Luckily she didn't have to make the decision, only bring Garth to the palace so Prince Lorne could investigate his relationship to the throne. She choked back a smile as she pictured them together, alike enough in looks to be brothers, but as different in temperament as night from day.

  "What's so funny?"

  "Nothing, really. I'm here because Prince Lorne asked me to renew our acquaintance."

  "How did you know where to find me?"

  This was the tricky part. A man as private as Garth wouldn't take kindly to learning she'd been asking about him. "The castle has its resources."

  "Resources like having me watched?"

  "Only so I could bring you to meet Prince Lorne."

  He slammed his palms against the steering wheel, making her jump. "The hell with that. Carramer is supposed to be a free country."

  In many countries he would probably have disappeared before he could destabilize the monarchy, she thought. "It's precisely because it's a free country that the prince asked to see you, instead of having you arrested and brought before him."

  He looked as if he didn't particularly appreciate the courtesy. "Don't tell me the navy has seen the error of its ways and the monarch wants to apologize and restore my commission personally."

  His cynical tone made her want to squirm. She didn't tell him that the prince had already started a discreet investigation into Garth's experience with the navy. No sense getting his hopes up in case nothing new was uncovered. "I wouldn't know about that. He has something more personal to discuss with you."

  "You aren't going to tell me, are you?"

  "I can't. It's a matter of national security."

  "Is it, Serena? Or are you enjoying keeping me in the dark to punish me for hurting your pride all those years ago?"

  She half turned, wishing the space weren't so confined. Garth was so big that their knees were touching, only the gear shift keeping their bodies apart. If she pressed against him, would he feel as hard and lean as he looked? In the gym she had seen how toned he was, wanting to touch him then. She wanted it more now. Evidently she was the only one. Anger drove away the urge, leaving only bitterness. He hadn't changed. "I'm not that petty."

  "No you're not."

  The admission sounded so genuine so that she felt her eyes mist and she blinked hard. "To what do I owe the concession?"

  He massaged his eyes, digging his fingers into the temples as if his head hurt. "You always managed to bring out the worst in me. I thought I'd grown past it, but evidently not."

  So he was far from indifferent to her! Struggling to keep her seesawing emotions under control, she said, "My father says the same thing about his brother. Even in their fifties, they still fight over little things. It's called sibling rivalry." Maybe she could manage her runaway responses by thinking of him in those terms.

  He gave a humorless laugh. "Believe me, whatever I thought of you, it wasn't brotherly."

  Hurt speared her in spite of her attempt to remain unruffled. "Because we came from such different backgrounds?" Was he holding that against her even today?

  "Because we come from such different genders."

  It took a moment for his meaning to penetrate. "Oh."

  "They must have taught you about the birds and the bees in security school?"

  Thinking of the ways she had been taught to disable a man who even looked as if he had birds and bees on his mind, she felt a smile start. "Yes, but not in the way you're thinking."

  "You have no idea what I'm thinking. If you did, you'd be out of this truck like a shot."

  If she had any sense, she would leave anyway. But when had she ever had any sense around Garth Remy? And she still had her job to do. She tried for a light tone. "Let me guess. You're wondering if you made a mistake letting me slip through your fingers the first time."

  He stilled so completely that she wondered if she was on the right track. Surely not? After graduation he had made no attempt to contact her, although he had admitted knowing where she was. And his reaction to seeing her again today couldn't have been less welcoming. "You were never in my fingers to slip through," he said after a long time. "All we did was kiss once so you could win a bet. Hardly the love affair of the century."

  How had they strayed onto this track? She felt weary of her body's betraying response to him, and the one-sided nature of the game. "You're right. We had nothing then and we have nothing now. At least we agree on something."

  He didn't look as pleased as she thought he should. "There's still the reason you're here."

  "I told you, to arrange a meeting between you and Prince Lorne."

  Garth's eyebrow lifted. "The ruler of the whole country doesn't own a telephone?"

  "This is too important to discuss by phone. Can't you just come with me and be done with it?"

  A glint of challenge lit his dark gaze. "Maybe I enjoy giving you a hard time."

  "Nothing new in that."

  "When does the prince want to see me?"

  "As soon as you're available."

  "What's wrong with right now?"

  She knew her quick glance at his clothes gave her away as soon as she saw him bristle. "My dress suit is at the cleaner's. Now or never, your choice."

  "Let me make a phone call."

  He waited with obvious impatience as she called the castle, using Prince Lorne's private number as instructed. If the monarch was taken aback at Garth's insistence on an immediate meeting, she didn't hear it in his voice. "Give me an hour," was all he said. From experience she knew how much juggling it would take for the prince to free his time. If she wasn't already aware of it, Lorne's readiness to do so signaled the gravity of the situation.

  She flipped the phone closed. "The prince can see you in an hour."

  He looked satisfied. "The castle is ten minutes away. That gives us some time to kill. I don't know about you, but I could use some coffee."

  The last thing she wanted was to spend more time than she had to with him, but neither could she let him out of her sight. "Okay. We can take my car."

  "What's wrong with this one? Oh, I forgot, this meeting is black tie. It's probably treason to roll up at the castle in a car you haven't cleaned in under forty-eight hours."

  Forty-eight days looked more like it. "I doubt if the prince will care what you're driving," she said heavily. She could have one of her security team retrieve her car from the gymnasium later.

  "But you do."

  "Stop it," she insisted. "I'm only doing my job."

  "What made you give up the glamorous life for a gritty job like policing?"

  She had to get out of the confined space before she did something really silly, like run the back of her hand down his stubbled cheek to see how it felt. "Can we swap life stories over coffee?"

  "Sure."

  She jumped as he reached across her, his hand brushing her breast by accident or design. Either way, her pulse rate shot up. But it was only to lift a black, zippered case from a shelf near her knees. He opened it and took out a portable razor, turning it on and filling the compartment with the sound of angry bees.

  Fascination gripped her as she watched him steer the razor across the faint hint of a cleft in his chin. Up and down and across without once looking in a mirror. When he flicked the razor off, the silence was deafening. He lifted her hand to his cheek. "Better?"

  His freshly shaved skin felt taut and vital. She was alarmingly aware of his hand guiding hers but couldn't bring herself to pull away, not even when he made her index finger skim along his lower lip. She felt a little hollow there she hadn't noticed before. Her breathing shallowed. Half an inch higher and he could close his lips around her finger.

  He let her go and
she masked her disappointment. It was for the best, she reminded herself unsuccessfully. "Much better."

  Ten minutes ago she had wanted caffe latte by the waterfront. The place he took her to hardly qualified as a café although it was in the open air. More like a kiosk with an awning that folded down when the place was closed, it boasted a few plastic tables and chairs scattered on the grass in front. At least it was waterfront, if she counted the commercial fishing fleet as a view.

  He surprised her by pulling out a chair for her. "I eat breakfast here most mornings. Alice's food is the best."

  So was her coffee, Serena had to admit when the woman brought it for them with a warm smile of welcome. Latte for her, espresso for Garth. Appearances could be deceptive. "This is really great coffee," she said after the first sip.

  Garth looked at the waitress. "Your place is Solano's best-kept secret, isn't it, Alice?"

  The woman pretended offence. "The number of people you bring here, we'll always be a secret."

  "I don't want to share you with just anyone," he confided.

  He wanted to reassure his friend, not make Serena feel special, but he had that effect, she found to her dismay. This would have to stop. As soon as she delivered him to Prince Lorne she would be finished with this. Finished with him.

  What would she do if he turned out to be the heir to the throne? Request a transfer back to active policing, she thought. She couldn't imagine working with him, guarding him, even if he would allow it. He was used to fending for himself, keeping his private life private.

  Who would get the greater shock? Garth because his life would be an open book as soon as his heritage was established, or the Carramer people who would have to deal with having a lone wolf as their monarch?

  While Serena was lost in thought Alice had moved away to serve another customer, a fisherman, judging by his appearance. The practical setup of the place began to make sense. You could come straight from your boat to a table without worrying about sea-soaked clothes or muddy boots. Serena leaned back. "This is nice." The salt tang of the air, smelling faintly of fish, was refreshing. Gulls wheeled over the boats, diving on scraps as fishermen cleaned their catches. In its own way, the scene was as beautiful as if the commercial boats had been millionaires' yachts.