The Star Princess

by Susan Grant

  “You’re whining.”

  Ilana gripped the steering wheel. “Damn right, I’m whining. I deserve to whine.” The flying clinic, the invitation, and now this? All she wanted to do was crawl home and hide, order Chinese and listen to the surf. “Besides, I’ve always been able to whine to you,” she added with a pleading smile.

  Linda pushed aside Ilana’s hair so she could see her face. “And you always can,” she agreed. A second later she added, “I’m sorry about the whetting. I just said the first thing that popped into my mind. I’m a book reviewer and your personal assistant. A retired teacher. I never said I was a press agent.”

  Keeping her eyes on the road, Ilana shook her head. Then she reached across the seat and squeezed the woman’s hand. “I’ll drive around a bit, give the news folks a chance to clear out. Then I’ll take you back to your car.”

  “Whatever it takes. I’m in no hurry.”

  Ilana gave Linda’s hand one last squeeze. “Thanks.”

  They drove up and down the backstreets. She merged onto the freeway, heading back in the opposite direction, blankly, as if she were driving on autopilot.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Autopilot. Airplanes. Spaceships.

  Stop!

  The beginnings of a headache pressed behind her eyes. Cheesecake and a glass of Chardonnay were hell on an empty stomach. The last thing she needed was a carb overdose when she was stressing.

  Her thoughts swung back to the news people. “She called me Earth’s Cinderella-heiress.”

  “Well, you are, technically, an heiress, Ilana. To the galaxy’s richest family.”

  Ilana frowned. She’d never thought of herself as an heiress. It wasn’t denial, exactly; she just hadn’t made that mental leap with regard to her identity. Heiresses were people whose names ended in Woolworth or Rockefeller, not women who bought supermarket shampoo and used those dryer sheets to save on dry cleaning bills.

  She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “Word on the street. The reporter said that, too. What the heck did she mean? I haven’t heard anything.”

  “Neither have I, if it makes you feel better.”

  Ilana had been combing newspapers, magazines, TV, and the Web, looking for inspiration for a new film, but nothing had yet sparked her interest. She’d felt so…uninspired. Scriptwriters suffered writer’s block. This must be filmmaker’s block. But if there had been gossip about her, she would have seen it.

  She hoped tonight’s incident didn’t mean that her privacy had come to an end. Other than an unlisted number and an assumed name on her mailbox, she hadn’t needed to do much to stay anonymous, despite her family’s high profile. Had that now changed?

  A strange suffocating sensation enveloped her.

  “Are you okay?” Linda asked.

  Ilana huffed, “If they think they’re going to discover any gossip-column tidbits about my social life over the next six months, they’re going to be very disappointed.”

  And if they expected to see her hanging on some alien prince’s arm, they were dreaming.

  It was after eleven when Ilana finally pulled into the carport below her building, across the street from the beach in Santa Monica. Twenty condominiums had been salvaged from what used to be an old office complex. Although the building had a chronological age of seventy years, remodeling had made its age feel closer to five. Ilana had lived in her condo for three.

  It was early for a Friday night. Most of the other tenants’ spaces were empty. Ilana gathered her purse, slipped her shoes back on. Then she noticed an unfamiliar car parked by the curb.

  Its engine was off. Its interior lights were on. A lone man sat inside, watching her.

  Darkness shadowed his features. Cole? No. Cole didn’t drive a black Porsche. Neither did any of the other men she’d dated recently…that she knew of. She had no idea who this dude was, only that his unwavering attention was doing a bang-up job of giving her the creeps.

  She shoved her hair out of her eyes. Great, just great. A stalker would be the perfect ending to a perfect day.

  Keeping an eye on the Porsche, Ilana slipped her hand into her purse and closed her fingers over a cold, metallic tube. With the can of pepper spray armed and ready, she opened the car door and stepped out.

  The stranger’s car door opened, too.

  Shit. He was dressed from head to toe in black. The self-important way he carried himself spoke volumes about his confidence in his strength and purpose. And he was tall and solid enough to assure her that he could kick some butt if he wanted to.

  Stop it. She was letting her thoughts run away from her. She did that when she was nervous. Nervous, yes. Not scared. She wasn’t scared.

  She slammed her car door behind her, locked it, and strode toward her front door as if she meant business. A salty sea breeze caught her hair and blew it around her face.

  Her condo was two flights up. She reached the alcove where the stairs began, paused to see if the man had followed her.

  He had.

  Her heart lurched, dumping a bucketful of adrenaline into her bloodstream. Yet her mounting fear didn’t come close to what she’d experienced in Flying Without Fear for Dummies. While flying was a nogo, stalkers she could handle.

  Yes, she acknowledged silently—stalker. As far as she was concerned, this guy was a threat. Anyone who dressed in black and followed women in the middle of the night qualified.

  Adding to her heebie-jeebies were the sunglasses she could now see that he wore.

  Shades? At night? Worse, they were mirrored wraparounds. But he hadn’t tripped over the trashcan; nor had he stepped on any of the dog mines littering the wide swath of grass that separated the sidewalk from the building. He was obviously able to see.

  Smooth. He was definitely smooth. He reminded her of a highly paid hit man—not that she’d ever seen one, but she had a good imagination. Too good, and it was freaking the daylights out of her. Not that anyone she knew could afford a professional—they’d have hired some guy named Eddie, a down-on-hisluck ex-con with a potbelly and type-II diabetes.

  But what if someone she didn’t know wished her harm?

  Her thoughts sped off in a new direction. She was an heiress now. If the reporter saw her that way, others did, too. Heiresses got kidnapped and held for ransom. Her address was private, but it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

  Enough! She dropped a roadblock in front of her racing thoughts and hurried up the stairs. Halfway to the landing she whirled around, dismayed to find that in only a few, long, determined strides the man had reached the bottom of the staircase and was now half-hidden in the shadow of her building.

  Her grip on the can of pepper spray didn’t relax.

  “Ilana Hamilton,” the stranger called.

  His voice was accented, almost monotone. It was Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, to a tee. A robotic assassin from the future, the Terminator had hunted down all the Sarah Connors in the Los Angeles phone book, each time asking, “Sarah Connor?” as confirmation before he blew their brains out. In Ilana’s opinion, the similarities to this situation were not funny.

  “This is a joke, isn’t it?” she replied.

  The stranger looked confused. Ah, he was good, really good—probably an actor, making some weekend money while he looked for work.

  “Come on,” she guessed. “This is Flash’s idea, right?” Her friend had a habit of practical jokes, most that only he thought were funny. The year she moved in, he’d paid a Mexican trio from a local restaurant to sing cheesy love songs—she wasn’t fluent in Spanish and took his word regarding the lyrics—under her balcony. One birthday, he’d sent a male stripper who’d peeled off his clothes right down to the cluster of prettily curled ribbons he’d tied on his—

  She gave her head a shake. The neighbors had loved it.

  But, delivering a dark stranger to scare her late at night when he knew she was alone? Flash wouldn’t do that.

  “Flash…?” The stranger brought his hand to hi
s chin.

  It was a suave, almost aristocratic-looking gesture. There was something vaguely familiar about it. Maybe she had dated this guy. No, he exuded sophistication, confidence. And sex. She would have remembered him.

  He dropped his hand slowly. His mirrored glasses glinted. “My apologies. I don’t have all my English yet.”

  “Well, good luck in finding it,” she called cheerily and clicked the digital keypad on her keychain. Her front door unlocked with a sharp click. Her escape route was ready.

  “Wait. Please.”

  Breathless, she turned back to the man who stood too few steps below her. She’d bolt into her condo if he made any attempt to charge up the stairs, but he didn’t.

  A porchlight made a circle of brighter illumination near the base of the stairs, and the stranger stepped slowly into it. Ilana squinted at him, trying to discern features, scars, tattoos—any identifying characteristics that she could pass along to the police when they asked.

  He had an angular jaw and sculpted cheekbones. His smooth skin reminded her of the color one turned when one overdid sunless tanning cream. But there were no streaks. His was the real thing. In contrast to his bronzed skin, his hair was blond, but warm and dark like cinnamon sticks.

  Exactly the color of her stepfather Rom’s hair.

  Her heart rate picked up. With those glasses covering his eyes, he could pass for a Vash Nadah.

  She almost snorted. Right. Vash Nadah didn’t bebop around Santa Monica on a Friday night. Or any night.

  Despite the ridiculousness of the idea, Ilana took a closer look at him.

  He was dressed expensively and well—Armani, if she wasn’t mistaken—in a black, conservatively cut suit. But it was more than the clothing that unnerved her; the stranger carried himself with the aloof arrogance characteristic of galactic royal men.

  Or rich sheiks from Arabia. Hmm. Good point. That he was a wealthy foreigner was more likely, though no less bizarre. No Vash Nadah would chase her down at night, alone, unless his intent was to assassinate her—a theory too far-fetched for even her worst-case-scenario mind to consider. She wasn’t a threat to the Vash Nadah; she wasn’t even a blip on their xenophobic radar. Unlike the rest of her family, she stayed out of politics and galactic affairs. She lived anonymously on Earth, and intended to continue doing so. The Vash would have figured that out by now.

  Oblivious to the fact that she’d just processed five hours of mental information in 3.0 seconds—“thought warp,” her brother Ian called it—the rich sheik/highly paid assassin/garden-variety creep wrapped his hand around the banister.

  Ilana aimed her pepper spray. “Talk to me from down there.”

  He obeyed with the utmost deference. “Ilana Hamilton.” He sounded less sure now. “She lives here, yes?”

  “Why?”

  “She is to assist me.”

  I am? “You have fifteen seconds to tell me why you’re here and what you want, and then I’m shutting the door.”

  He hesitated long enough to worry her. “You are Ilana. Ian did not tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” She gripped the pepper spray so tightly that she briefly wondered if she’d explode the can. Women had been known to lift cars off injured children. It could happen.

  The man rubbed his face as if he were exhausted. Well, that made two of them. If it weren’t for him, she’d be in bed by now.

  “Ah. I see this problem now,” he said.

  “What freaking problem?” Her patience was shot.

  “You did not expect me. My apologies.”

  Off came the glasses, revealing a pair of startlingly pale gold eyes. She wanted to suck in a breath, but her diaphragm didn’t seem to be working.

  Pressing one fist over his chest, the man bowed his head. “Ché, firstborn prince of the Vedlas,” he introduced himself.

  Ché? Ilana’s finger convulsed over the can of pepper spray. A burst of orange-red gas hissed out.

  “Oh—!” She released the button, dropping the can, but too late. The cylinder bounced down the stairs toward Ché, a gust of wind pushing the small, rapidly dispersing cloud of mist in precisely the same direction.

  Chapter Five

  “Move away! That way!” Her eyes wide with alarm, Ilana Hamilton ran down the stairs. “It’s…”

  She continued speaking English so rapidly that Ché lost the meaning of her words. But he knew enough to turn his head and close his mouth as the mist passed by.

  Ilana shoved him away from the staircase and onto the turf. “I’m so sorry,” she cried, throwing her weight into him.

  He inhaled when she thumped into his ribcage. A whiff of her scent—subtle, sweet—came to him, chased by a bitter odor that burned its way down his throat.

  A prickling sensation in his throat made him cough. His eyes began to burn as well, and tears clouded his vision. The heel of his shoe sank into the damp ground, sucking loudly as he pulled it free. He stumbled, then caught Ilana by the forearms and steadied them both.

  His fingers touched smooth bare skin, warm and soft. Trained in proper social etiquette from birth, he released the Earth princess like a hot coal, a reaction that undoubtedly startled her—but then she might not realize that in her short sleeveless shift, she revealed more skin than most Vash women did in their lingerie.

  This was the way Earthwomen dressed, he reminded himself, coughing. It was a different culture, if it could be termed “culture,” and not as conservative as his. Yet he had to admit that seeing the crown prince’s sister in such a state of undress was, though unsettling, not at all unpleasant.

  Now, if he could only see anything else.

  He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “What is the vapor?” he rasped.

  “Pepper spray.” Ilana sneezed twice, sniffling. Her eyes watered and undoubtedly stung as his did.

  She switched to Basic, the language of the Federation. Her dossier said that she read Basic fluently. Speaking it, she was less proficient. He imagined she didn’t get much practice on Earth.

  “I spray very small,” she tried explaining in Basic. “Wind strong.” She pinched her thumb and index finger together. “Only little we breathe.”

  “Pepper spray. A deterrent chemical?”

  “Yes. Was accident.” Holding on to his bicep, she dabbed at his tears with the heel of her palm.

  Ché’s loins tightened. Here was a very pretty woman, scantily clad, standing so close to him that he felt the heat radiating off her body. Yet her intentions were not sexual—he could sense that concern was her motivation. Her sheer proximity, her scent, her curves, her mouth—it was all overwhelming, to say the least. A Vash princess in his world would never have touched him with such casual intimacy. But Ilana was not of his world.

  “Here. Use this.” She shoved a small white sheet of soft paper into his hand, dabbing at her eyes with another. She blinked rapidly, wiping the moisture from her cheeks. “This spray very bad.”

  “It is quite effective,” he agreed in a husky voice.

  She gazed up at him with huge blue eyes that were more brilliant than he remembered. Perhaps the tears filling them made them so.

  “You surprise me,” she accused in Basic, an angry edge to her voice. “Why you come here?”

  “I took a holiday. A vacation.” He wasn’t ready to explain the rest yet. “When I informed Ian, he assured me you would know of my arrival.”

  “Ian not call.” She opened and closed her mouth several times. Finally, she clenched her fists. “I can’t argue in Basic,” she snapped, switching to English. “Ian didn’t call. But I was at work all day. How did you find me? When did you get here? How long were you waiting?”

  She went so long without taking a breath that he was almost ready to suggest she inhale. Then she sighed and asked, “What in the world are you doing here, Ché? Maybe you weren’t the last person in the universe I expected to see tonight, but pretty damn close.”

  “Slow…” He held up one hand. “Fast words I cannot follo
w.”

  “I’ll try.” She blew her nose. “This has been a horrible day.”

  “Ian told me the approximate time of your arrival home,” he explained. “When you did not answer your door, I returned to the ground car. I waited for many standard hours. I was nearly ready to seek temporary quarters on my own when you arrived.”

  She peered into the darkness. “So, where’s your entourage?”

  It pricked his pride to see that even the crown prince’s independent sister assumed he needed handlers to make his way. “I left them behind,” he answered crisply. “I’m here alone, on my own.”

  “Is that your Porsche?”

  “It belongs to Hollywood Luxury Auto Leasing.” He stumbled over the pronunciation, but assumed he got it right when she nodded. “While still home, I studied the procedures with which I’d need to…hire—yes, hire a vehicle.”

  She appeared impressed by the feat. “Rom doesn’t know how to drive, so I didn’t expect you to. I thought you guys flew everywhere.”

  “We do.” He puzzled over the brief tightening of her mouth. Wouldn’t she prefer to fly everywhere, as well? “But the ground cars we use to maintain our gardens are not all that different from yours here on Earth.”

  “You. In the garden.” She looked him up and down. “Somehow I can’t picture you weeding.”

  “I did not perform garden chores. But”—a corner of his mouth edged up with a surge of memories—“the vehicles were irresistible to a young boy and were easily commandeered.” He shrugged.

  Delight lit Ilana’s face. “So, you were a hell-raiser as a kid. A troublemaker.”

  He gazed down at her. Light from above illuminated her face. Tell me more, her eyes pleaded, as if she were more interested in the man inside than his face or imminent crown. That searching gaze jolted Ché’s senses like a bracing dive into cold seawater.

  Past or present, he couldn’t recall a woman who’d observed him so brashly. The others hadn’t dared to, or hadn’t cared to, he supposed. It was clear that Ilana fit neither category.

  “My childhood years were happy,” he revealed, spurred on by her curiosity. In his new English, he tried not to mangle the explanation. “But strictly supervised, as I had to be prepared to take my father’s place on the throne. The Treatise of Trade dictated everything my family did, that I did or did not do. But no matter how thorough the supervision, no matter how loving, a child will always find ways to outwit it.”