Protecting the Princess

by Carla Cassidy

  It was then, while she was weak and gasping, that he moved back up her body and entered her. She wrapped her arms around his broad back and held him tight, wishing she could keep him this close to her forever.

  She could feel his heartbeat thundering against hers as he remained unmoving for a long moment. His hands touched her on the sides of her face in a caress of infinite tenderness. The gesture brought tears to her eyes.

  He filled up her body, but no more so than he filled up her heart. As he moved his hips against hers, stroking deep and slow, once again he swept her up to a dizzying height of pleasure.

  “Anna,” he whispered just before his lips claimed hers.

  Her heart cried his name in return and then she was lost, beyond words, beyond thought, as he drove into her, bringing her to climax once again. He stiffened and moaned as he reached the pinnacle of his pleasure.

  Moments later they remained tangled together amid the navy sheets, waiting for heartbeats to slow, for pulses to return to a more normal rate.

  The tears that had filled her eyes earlier once again threatened. They were the physical expression of the emotions that burned inside her. Tears of joy. Tears of love.

  He rolled her to her side and with one hand he stroked her hair. It seemed that she had been drifting all her life, seeking something…seeking someone.

  She had degrees she hadn’t used, skills and talents that had been thrown away by a life wasted in running away from herself.

  In the brief time she’d been with Tanner and his family, she’d seen a different kind of life, one filled with love and respect, of work and self-fulfillment.

  She realized she wanted to be a woman Tanner could respect, but more important she wanted to be a woman she could respect.

  She looked at him, his features barely discernible in the near darkness of the room. There had been many times when she’d wondered what people did to fill the silences of the nights.

  As she listened to the sound of Tanner’s deep, even breathing, as she thought of the sweet words he’d murmured to her while he’d made love to her, she knew.

  There was no silence for the people in Cotter Creek who spent their nights listening to their loved ones, comforted by the nearly inaudible sounds of hearts beating and love flourishing.

  “You okay?” he asked, his voice a deep, soft whisper.

  “I’m better than okay.” Surely he loved her. Surely he couldn’t make love to her as he did and not be in love with her. He couldn’t look at her the way he did and not love her. “I’ve made some decisions.”

  He propped himself up on one elbow. “Decisions?”

  “No matter what happens with my father in Niflheim, I’m not returning.” The moment the words were spoken out loud she knew the rightness of her decision. “There’s nothing for me there. There never has been anything there for me.”

  “So what will you do?” The questions seemed hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.

  “Arrange for citizenship, then maybe teach. I could teach a foreign language or economics. I think I’d like that…working with kids.”

  “Are you sure now is the best time to make life-changing decisions?” he asked. “I mean, you’ve been under a tremendous amount of stress and now might not be the best time to make those kinds of decisions.”

  “When is a good time?” she countered. She wished she could see his facial features better. “I’ve been unhappy for a long time. This week here has given me time to assess things, to figure out that going back to the same kind of lifestyle isn’t going to make me happy.”

  His finger smoothed across her lips, the gesture as intimate as anything she had ever experienced. “You deserve happiness, Anna.”

  She held her breath, hoping…praying he would say something, anything that would indicate he hoped she’d spend her life with him.

  He had to love her. He had to, because she couldn’t imagine what she’d do if he didn’t. Tell him, a little voice whispered inside her. Tell him how you feel.

  Her heart pounded as the words formed on her lips. She had never wanted anything as much as she wanted Tanner’s respect, his love.

  “I love you, Tanner.” The words that had beat in her heart spilled from her lips and she knew that by speaking them out loud she had crossed a line and couldn’t go back.

  Chapter 12

  “I love you, Tanner.”

  It wasn’t just the words that sent a weighty dread through him, but the sweet yearning, the naked emotion that was in her voice as she’d spoken them.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him. Those four words that she’d spoken were words he’d never expected to hear from her, hadn’t wanted to hear from her.

  A mistake. He’d made mistake after mistake where she was concerned and now he had the difficult task of trying to straighten out the mess and it was the worst kind of mess, one of sheer, naked emotions.

  He’d rather wrestle with a gunman or face a psycho with a knife than do what he had to do now. He’d rather cut off his right arm than see the hurt he knew was about to steal over her features.

  “Anna,” he began, and sat up, needing to get some distance from her. “You might think you’re in love with me, but I’m sure you’re mistaking love for other feelings.”

  She leaned over and turned on the lamp on the nightstand. He tried not to notice how beautiful she looked with her hair in disarray and her lips slightly swollen from his kisses. She looked soft and sexy, except for her eyes, which glittered with familiar challenge.

  “So you know what’s in my heart and you think I must be mistaken?” Without warning, she hit him in the chest with her fist. “You are the most irritating, aggravating man I’ve ever known. You are so arrogant you think you know what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, and you don’t.”

  “Whoa.” He caught her fist before she could hit him again, then scrambled from the bed and grabbed his jeans from the floor.

  As he pulled them on, he was aware of her staring at him and knew she was waiting for some sort of a response. But for a moment he couldn’t speak around the lump that had risen in his throat.

  He raked a hand through his hair, wondering how on earth he’d allowed things to get so out of control. He’d never had this problem before with any of his assignments, and he’d had plenty of assignments in the past where he’d worked with pretty women. For God’s sake, he was supposed to be on twenty-four-hour watch. What had he been thinking? That he’d find the rebels in the sheets on the bed? She should be just like all the other jobs he’d worked, but she wasn’t.

  Anna was different. She’d been different from the moment she’d come through his office door. She challenged him, excited him in a way nobody had ever done before. She made him laugh and somehow made him feel more vulnerable than he’d ever felt in his life.

  “Anna, I’m sure whatever you think you feel for me is all tied up with the uncertainty in your life right now, the fear of being hunted, our forced proximity to each other and maybe more than a little bit of boredom.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You think I’m in love with you because I’m bored? That’s a horrible thing to say.”

  He grimaced. “I think it’s a combination of things that have you mistaken.”

  “I know you think I’m worthless, a piece of fluff who has never done anything productive in her life.” Her voice trembled with the depth of her emotion. “And in some ways you’re right. I have been spoiled, I am willful, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s in my heart. I love you, Tanner West, and that’s something you can’t be in control of. It’s my feelings, my emotions, and you can’t change them no matter how much you might want to.”

  Why was this so hard? he wondered. Why did his heart feel so heavy, so utterly dead? Zack had made him feel bad, but this was worse…far worse. It seemed so wrong, to break her heart even while the scent of her still lingered on his skin, in his pores.

  “I’m sorry i
f I led you on,” he said softly, “if I made you think there was something more than a strong physical desire between us.”

  He grabbed his gun from the dresser where he’d placed it as they’d entered the room, then left the bedroom, needing space from her luminous, slightly accusing eyes, needing distance from the scent of her, the very sight of her.

  But she gave him no distance. As he shoved the gun into the waistband of his jeans, she appeared in the bedroom doorway, once again dressed in her jeans and the light blue T-shirt that did dazzling things to her eyes.

  He’d never seen her look so vulnerable. There was no hint of the willful princess now, no touch of haughty disdain. There was only a woman with all her emotions naked and bared for him to see.

  “I know you feel something more for me than just physical desire,” she said. “I’ve seen it in your eyes. I’ve seen tenderness…caring. You can pretend this has been just a job to you, but I think it’s been something more. You can pretend you don’t care about me at all, but I know differently.” She took several steps toward him.

  “Anna, you’ve only known me for a week. I know it seems longer, but it’s only been a short period of time. Love doesn’t happen that fast.” He fought the impulse to step back from her.

  Her eyes flashed once again, this time with a touch of annoyance. “Really? Then you tell me, Tanner, how long does it take to fall in love? What are your rules when it comes to matters of the heart?”

  “There are no rules…”

  “Exactly.”

  He sucked in a deep breath, wishing he were anywhere but in this room with her, in this room breaking her heart into pieces. “Anna, you’re a princess. I’m a cowboy. We’re from two different worlds.” He tried to reason with her.

  “You know what I think? I think you’re a cowboy with fences around your heart and if you’d just let them fall like I’ve done with the walls around mine then you’d see what you really feel for me.”

  “Please, don’t make this difficult.” Instantly he knew they were the wrong words to say.

  Her back stiffened. “Don’t worry, Tanner. I won’t play the poor, pitiful wronged woman and make things uncomfortable for you. I just want you to understand one thing. I love you and I would have made a good partner for you.”

  God, he wanted her to stop. He didn’t want to hear any more. Her words were killing him inch by inch, but he felt the least he could do for her was to allow her to get it all out. He’d messed up big-time with her and he owed her to at least listen to her.

  Tears shone in her eyes as she held his gaze. “It might have taken me time to completely understand your way of life, but I’ve always been a quick study. And I’ll tell you this, I would have brought you laughter and passion.”

  She strode across the room and grabbed her crown from where it lay on the top of his boots. “I would have given you a daughter who would have worn this when she played dress-up and a son who could have one day filled your boots.”

  She tossed the crown onto the sofa, tears now running down her cheeks. “I’ve spent most of my life running away from the loneliness that plagued me, jetting off here and there, shopping until I wanted to be sick because I didn’t want to take a look at who I was and where I was going. Where are you going, Tanner? What are you running away from with your workaholic lifestyle? With your need to never get personally involved with anyone?”

  “Enough,” he exclaimed. He didn’t want to hear any more. He didn’t want to hear the hurt in her voice, feel the strange gnawing pain that tore through his gut.

  Again he raked his hand through his hair and averted his gaze from her. “Look, I made a mistake. I should have never indulged in my desire for you. I should have maintained professional integrity and never allowed this to happen.”

  It wasn’t so much a shadow as a slight displacement of light outside the window that caught his attention. Instantly a surge of adrenaline seared through him as he reached up and grabbed the gun from his waistband.

  “What are you going to do? Shoot me if I don’t shut up?” she asked.

  “I think there’s somebody outside,” he said in a deceptively calm, steady voice. “I want you to go to the bathroom, keep the light turned off and lock yourself inside. Do it now, Anna. No questions. Just do it and don’t open the door again until you hear me…no matter what.”

  Already he was mentally far away from her and this room; focused instead on the knowledge that he was relatively certain there was somebody lurking just outside his house. None of his men would be walking so close to the house.

  To his eternal gratefulness, she must have realized he was serious and wasn’t just trying to change the subject. She didn’t argue with him, but instead turned and hurried toward the bathroom.

  Only when he heard the click of the lock did he quickly move through the house, turning off lights to even the odds with the darkness outside.

  In each room after turning off the lights he crept to the windows and peeked through the slats of the blinds to see what might be out there. The half moon sent down just enough light to illuminate the landscape in ghostly hues.

  There was nobody in the front of the house that he could see and he wondered if perhaps he had just imagined a presence. Had his mind conjured up a diversion from the painful conversation with Anna?

  He got his answer when he peered through the windows of the master bedroom. There he saw the dark silhouette of a man running across the yard.

  He quickly moved to the bedroom window on the east side of the house. Another tall, burly silhouette moved nearer the house.

  At least two men. And they definitely weren’t his men. If there were just two, he could take them. But he had no idea how many might be out there. Where were his men? Where were the cops?

  While he had made love to Anna, a whole damn army could have surrounded the house. Dammit, another mistake he hoped he didn’t have to pay for.

  He grabbed his cell phone and punched in the number for the main house Smokey answered. “Something’s going down,” he said.

  “Got it,” Smokey replied, then clicked off. Tanner hung up as well, knowing that backup would be on the way. He still had no idea where the guards were that had been assigned on his place.

  Just for his own information, he picked up the regular phone receiver.

  Silence.

  No dial tone.

  Nothing. He wasn’t surprised, but his heart still pounded an unsteady rhythm. An attack was imminent. He knew it by the shadows moving around the house, the dead phone line and the instincts that now screamed of danger.

  There was no way he intended to be in a defensive position, not knowing what had happened to the half-dozen men who were supposed to be stationed around the house. He grabbed a knife and a roll of duct tape and moved to the front door.

  With grim intent he eased open the front door, looked outside, then locked and closed the door behind him and slid into the deepest shadows of the night.

  For a moment he remained perfectly still, listening for sounds of movement, the crackle of branches, the whisper of footsteps against the grass. Before he moved he needed to make sure there was nobody nearby. He also hoped to hell that his own men didn’t put a bullet through his brain by accident.

  The house was surrounded by trees on three sides, and he knew if he could get into the cover of the trees he could get a better idea of how many men lurked around the perimeter of the house.

  The immediate problem was getting to the cover of the trees. Between the house and the tree line there was about fifty yards where he would be visible and vulnerable should he be seen.

  His heartbeat had slowed the moment he’d stepped outside. A calm, coolness swept through him, a feeling that was familiar and comforting.

  Control. It was absolutely imperative that he maintain control and not allow any emotion to cloud his mind. Emotion got men killed.

  He looked left, then right, his eyes adjusting to the near darkness of the night. He saw nothing
, heard nobody, and with the stealth of a thief he crouched and moved fast toward the cover of the trees.

  The grass was cool against his bare feet and he wished he’d taken a moment to pull on his boots. He hoped he didn’t step on anything that would hobble him.

  As he ran he tensed, as if expecting a warning shout from one rebel to another, or worse, a bullet in his back. He didn’t take a breath until he’d reached the trees and leaned with his back against an ancient old oak.

  He took in several deep breaths as his gaze scanned the area directly around him. His heart seemed to stop as he saw one of his men lying prone on the grass. Dead?

  He crouched and ran to the man’s side. Burt. Not dead, but unconscious. He’d been taken down with an obvious struggle and Tanner had a feeling that Burt wasn’t the only man down. Somehow the rebels had managed to sneak up on the guards and take them down soundlessly, one by one.

  He gazed back toward the house, fighting rage as he thought of his men. There…on the side of the house, a man stood near the window of one of the spare bedrooms. The faint moonlight glittered off the barrel of the gun he held as he crept closer to the window, apparently attempting to see inside.

  These men had been sent to kill Anna. Tanner knew he had to take them on one by one to have any chance at all. With this in mind, he moved quickly across the lawn as the man lowered his gun to peer into the window.

  Without boots and only in his bare feet, Tanner moved soundlessly against the thick, springy grass. He came up behind the man, wrapped a forearm around his neck and squeezed as tight as he could. He pulled tight, cutting off air.

  A grunt escaped the man as he struggled against Tanner’s hold. It took only seconds for Tanner to render the man unconscious.

  As he slipped to the ground, Tanner quickly duct-taped his wrists and ankles, then slapped several pieces of the sticky tape over his mouth. He grabbed him by the feet and dragged him across the lawn and into the trees.