“Sorry you didn’t accept my offer?” she asked softly, obviously aware of his admiring glance and not the least bit discomfited by it.
“Sorry” didn’t even halfway describe the depth of his feelings. She had no idea how much he’d wanted to throw away his training, forget about the mission and make love to her for the rest of the night. Yet, if he had to make the decision again, he would make the same one. Two people on the run had no business making love to one another. Especially when one of them was responsible for the other’s safety. He couldn’t let her distract him from the danger—no matter how delectably tempting her offer.
And she had been oh, so deliciously tempting. Even now, he had to fight against leaning forward to smooth the smudge from her cheek and inhaling her sweet scent. Instead he faced the entrance, peered at empty asphalt and hoped that when the enemy showed, she would recognize him.
TASHYA DIDN’T KNOW where her boldness in pursuing Hunter had come from—except maybe fear and desperation. Last night, the idea of making love to him, clinging to his strength, had seemed the right thing, the only thing in the world that would heal her at that moment. When she’d turned to him she hadn’t thought with her head but had let her female instincts lead her into temptation.
She’d discovered and tapped into a deep well of emotions that she hadn’t known she had. Fear for her family that had caused her to turn to Hunter. Feelings of need and lust and wanting to give as much as she wanted to take had wrapped her in a whirlpool of self-discovery.
But last night after he’d refused her, the wellspring of emotions had run dry, leaving her with a hollow emptiness. She hadn’t slept, tossing and turning, worrying over the boys, hoping they would see the kidnapping as an adventure and not be scarred from their experience.
Last night she’d been angry that Hunter hadn’t wanted to help her forget her fears. This morning she felt weary but stronger knowing that he’d refused because he was a man of integrity and honor. The same protective spirit that made her want to lean on him also made him strong enough to put aside his own desires for the sake of his mission.
Hunter might deny his attraction to her with a warrior’s tenacity, but like the waves of water lapping against rock, she would eventually wear him down. So she could afford to be patient. Yet, the waiting wouldn’t be easy. She could choose to use the gifts nature had given every woman to go after the man she wanted. She had lived at court long enough to understand the art of flirtation, long glances into one another’s eyes, an “accidental” touch, a flip of her hair over her shoulder—yet she didn’t want to incite just his lust.
She wanted more.
Hunter pointed down the road. “Car’s coming.”
Tashya focused the binoculars and her thoughts on their current predicament. As she shifted her concentration from the personal to finding her brothers and the danger they faced, she realized that she was adapting. Shifting her thoughts with a speed that amazed her.
She didn’t recognize the light gray vehicle. “The driver’s too far away for me to make out her features.”
“Her?”
“Definitely a her. She has long black hair.” Tashya lowered the binoculars in disappointment.
“Look again,” Hunter urged. “Maybe it’s Sophia.”
“If you think Sophia would kidnap her own children and then pretend to all of us that she’s upset, you don’t know her very well.”
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t believe her.
“Sophia is practically a saint. She doesn’t plot. She doesn’t even like politics.”
“Just look again to be sure, okay?”
Tashya sighed, raised the glasses and gasped.
“What?”
“It’s Neve. Dimitri’s and Nikita’s nanny.”
“Let me see.” Hunter reached for the binoculars, and she handed them over to him. He widened the lenses to fit his broader face, then stared through them. “She’s probably working with the kidnapper.”
“Or maybe Sophia sent her,” Tashya suggested.
Hunter shook his head. “Sophia doesn’t know our location—not unless she traced her own call to us and is responsible for kidnapping the boys.”
Tashya couldn’t believe that the woman who had so loved her father, the woman who had acted as her mother, the woman who didn’t appear to have one ambitious bone in her body, could coldly use her own children to cause Alex and Tashya harm. “Someone else could have traced Sophia’s call. Maybe the chief of security or General Vladimir or his aide, Stephan Cheslav.”
“Or maybe the nanny has concocted this scheme with the help of one of them,” Hunter conceded. “We’ll know soon enough.”
“Are we going to follow her?”
“I’m going to question her.” He took his weapon off safety and jammed it into his jacket pocket as Neve parked the car. “Stay here. If there’re people hidden in that car, I don’t want you in the line of fire.”
She didn’t like his order, but she understood. “By the way, Alex sometimes calls her Little Neve and always speaks to her as if she’s part of the royal family.”
“Got it.”
Hunter rubbed the dark stubble on his chin. “You should be able to hear our entire conversation through the earpiece. If anything happens…if I can’t return—” he handed her the car key “—don’t call anyone. Just drive straight back to the palace.”
“I understand,” she told him. Whether she would do as he said depended totally on the circumstances. That he was about to leave her, even for just a few minutes, had her nerves on edge, but outwardly she was determined to remain calm. “Go on. I’ll be fine.”
She didn’t need him distracted with worry over her. Without another word, he moved silently and quickly out of their hiding spot behind a thick hedge.
“Be careful,” she whispered.
“Careful is my middle name,” he whispered back through the microphone/receiver hidden in his ear.
She expected him to head straight for Neve, who walked through the front entrance. Instead he acted as if he was taking a morning stroll. One hand in his pocket, the other free, he ambled along a sidewalk, watched goldfish swim in a pond, and finally checked out Neve’s car.
“No one’s hiding in the back,” he told her.
Although she appreciated the communication between them, she couldn’t squash her fear. Hunter could be walking into a trap. Another car could roar down the drive, a car filled with men carrying guns. It was possible, although unlikely, that while they had been climbing out onto the roof and down the tree, men had entered their suite. Perhaps someone had recognized the prince and princess shortly after they’d checked in and had called the palace.
As possibilities drifted through her thoughts, she fought to steady herself. Hunter knew what he was doing. He sensed danger the way a horse smelled fire. If he barreled into trouble, he could handle himself. She’d seen him fight expertly with only his bare hands as weapons, had seen his familiarity with a gun and had no doubt he was an expert shot. Nor would he take Neve’s seeming innocence for granted.
Yet how could Tashya not worry? Checking her watch, she realized that only two minutes had gone by. Not even long enough for Neve to reach their suite. Certainly not long enough for Hunter to have caught up with her.
Tashya ached to ask Hunter where he was and what was happening. However the man needed to concentrate without interruption. So she bit her top lip and fretted and waited, each moment achingly, impossibly long.
She picked up faint background sounds. The rattle of a newspaper, the ding of an elevator. Luggage wheels rolling across the floor. The rattle of dishes. It almost sounded as if he had gone into the dining room.
Damn him. Why didn’t he say something? Anything.
HUNTER HAD LEARNED that when he impersonated Prince Alexander, he couldn’t sneak anywhere. Someone always recognized the prince of Vashmira. He would have preferred to ditch his disguise and follow Neve in secret. But instead, he hid behind another newspaper and hi
s sunglasses and waited for her to come out.
While he waited for her to join him on the veranda, Hunter watched to see if anyone followed her. He saw no one. When she exited the hotel lobby, he stepped from his concealed spot in the shadows. When she recognized him, she broke into a dead run, threw her arms around him and burst into tears. He patted her back and led her down the sidewalk toward the spot where he’d left Tashya waiting.
He wanted the women together where he could be close enough to protect Tashya if she needed him. He also wanted the princess’s take on whatever Neve had to say. Tashya knew the nanny and she would be the best judge of the woman’s veracity.
“I’m so glad I found you, Highness.” Neve wiped the tears from her eyes with the backs of her hands. When he pulled her toward the hedge, she hesitated, slightly wary, slightly alarmed. “Where are we going, Highness?”
“Someplace private where we can talk.”
He urged her along, not about to take no for an answer. If she tried to scream, he was prepared to cover her mouth with one hand and to use force to drag her behind the hedge. But she came willingly.
When Neve spied Tashya, she sobbed even harder. The princess put her arms around the boys’ nanny and hugged her. “Everything’s going to be all right, Neve.”
“No, it isn’t.” Neve sobbed. “If the boys come to any harm, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Hunter handed the crying nanny a handkerchief and restrained his impatience, realizing that she needed to calm down before she could tell them a coherent story. “Can you start at the beginning and tell us what happened?”
“I helped kidnap the boys.” Her slender shoulders shook. Her nose turned red, and she sniffled into the handkerchief.
Tashya frowned. “You? Kidnapped the boys?”
“Someone broke into my house, and they beat my mother. She’s in intensive care at the hospital.” She shuddered then continued. “I got a note. The note said that if I spoke to no one, they wouldn’t kill her. I was so scared. I thought about telling the security chief, but I was afraid to use the phone. I wanted to give him the note, but I could never get him alone.”
“So what did you do?” Tashya asked.
“I tucked the boys into bed like always. I was supposed to leave the suite door unlocked.”
“Did you?” Hunter asked.
“I still hadn’t decided whether or not to cooperate,” she told them, clearly miserable. “When I walked out the door, someone grabbed me from behind and placed a rag over my nose and mouth.”
“Did you see who grabbed you?” Hunter asked.
She shook her head. “I smelled something sweet and went to sleep. When I woke up, I was with Dimitri and Nikita, locked in a shed with a dirt floor.”
“Where?” Tashya asked.
“In the mountains. I think I can take you there,” Neve offered.
“Not so fast.” Hunter stopped her, unwilling to make one move until he’d carefully considered every facet of her entire story—the details of which he had yet to hear. “You said you were locked in a shed?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get out?”
“A guard brought food. I flirted with him, and then hit him over the head with a rock.” Tears started to flow again. “God. I may have killed a man.”
She sank to her knees in the grass, dropped her head into her hands and sobbed. “He was young. Just a kid in the military.”
“He wore a uniform?”
“Yes. He seemed so young to be a soldier. I may have…ended his…” She hiccuped.
Tashya placed an arm around her shoulders and smoothed back her hair, trying to comfort her. “The boys weren’t hurt?”
“They were still sleeping. I couldn’t wake them. I think they were drugged. I couldn’t carry both of them. If I left one alone, the other would have awakened alone and been terrified. You know how much they like to be together.”
“I know.”
“So I figured I should run for help.”
“Then what happened?” Hunter asked, highly suspicious that this little slip of a girl had managed to escape. It was much more likely that she was working with the kidnappers, planning to lead Tashya and him into a trap than that she was telling the truth.
“I rushed out the door. There was a car out back with keys in it.”
How convenient, Hunter thought.
Neve kept talking. “I took the car and drove toward the boys.”
“Toward the boys?” Hunter asked.
“I intended to carry the boys to the car and take them with me. But a second guard was bending over the man I hit with the rock, so I…left.”
“Then what happened?” Tashya asked.
“I had no idea where I was. There were mountains and no houses. I took the only road. I think a car chased me, but I’m not sure. I got away. I tried to find a town to call Sophia, but I was lost.”
Hunter controlled his impatience. Either Neve had been through an ordeal or she was a very good actress. But parts of the story didn’t add up—such as how had she found them?
“I kept driving east and south. I don’t know the mountain area, didn’t even know which direction to head. I’d overheard the guards talking about where you were and hoped you might be close. When I stopped to ask for directions and discovered you were only an hour away, I came here. Should I have called the palace? Or the police?”
“You did fine.” Hunter kneeled in the grass beside the tiny nanny. “Do you think you can find that cabin again?”
“It was dark. I was so scared. I think I can, but I’m not positive,” she told them.
Earlier she’d offered to take them to the boys. Now she seemed unsure that she could find her way. Had she made a mistake when she’d sounded so sure that she could find the cabin? Had she realized he was suspicious and had then changed her story hoping he might forget her earlier offer?
If she was telling the truth, she’d had an incredible string of luck. Escaping from a locked room and her guards. The keys conveniently left in the car. Finding them after conveniently overhearing the guards. Or had Sophia traced their call and told Neve where to find them?
Was Neve working with Sophia? Were the children really in danger? It was possible that Hunter and Tashya were risking their lives for no reason. If Sophia had kidnapped her own children, she certainly wouldn’t hurt them.
But it was just as likely that Sophia was innocent and the chief of security or the general had traced the call. That a soldier was guarding the boys could mean the military was behind this entire incident. General Vladimir had been loyal to Nicholas’s father, but was he as loyal to the new king?
What of the general’s aide, Stephan Cheslav? Had he gotten close to Sophia so he could kidnap her children? Could he be allied with Sophia or the nanny? But what would be his motive?
Hunter sorted through the multitude of possibilities, knowing he didn’t have enough information to form a valid conclusion. But right now they had only one lead that might take them to the missing children, and that lead was sobbing her eyes out.
Hunter picked up the binoculars and focused them on the road. The bright early morning sunlight revealed that no one else had shown up.
No one had shown up that he could see, he corrected himself.
There could be a roadblock or an ambush just waiting for them to make a move out of here. While they had no choice but to try to find the children, he still had a few tricks up his sleeve.
Chapter Nine
Tashya was learning to read Hunter. Although his expression never changed and he hadn’t relaxed one muscle as he’d listened to Neve’s story, she sensed that he was skeptical of the nanny’s innocence. Tashya supposed in a career like his, trusting anyone always put someone else’s life at stake. Tashya didn’t blame him for remaining wary when she, too, had doubts. Neve’s story had stretched credibility. Although Tashya had trouble believing that anyone in the court’s inner circle would resort to kidnapping and murder, someone at the p
alace had to be behind the children’s disappearance.
“Ready to head out?” Hunter asked Neve, whose sobs had quieted, and Tashya, who wondered if going on alone with just the three of them was best.
“Wouldn’t the search go faster if we called in help?” Tashya asked.
Hunter shook his head. “You mean, like the military or the police? Have you forgotten that Neve said the men holding the boys wore military uniforms? And a police search would be impossible to keep quiet. The kidnapper would get wind of our intentions and certainly move the boys to another location.”
Maybe kill them. Tashya helped Neve from the grass to her feet. “You still think the boys’s best chance is us?”
“The sooner we leave, the sooner we can find them.” Hunter hurried them toward the parking lot. He didn’t head toward either the car they’d driven last night or the vehicle Neve had appropriated.
Instead, with his master set of keys, he unlocked a late-model blue sports car with a narrow rear seat. Quiet and pale after her emotional telling of her story, Neve slipped into the back without a word, apparently unaware the “Prince” was stealing a car. Tashya settled into the front passenger seat while Hunter placed his duffel in the trunk.
He slid into the driver’s seat, tense and wary. But he drove at the speed limit. “Our phone call with Sophia was traced. Whoever traced the call will probably be here shortly.”
Neve frowned at Hunter. “How do you know?”
“Because if I was a bad guy, that’s what I’d do. I’m hoping if we leave now, we can avoid an attack.”
If Neve thought it strange that the prince of Vashmira was an expert tactician, she didn’t say so. Alex had had military training, so perhaps Hunter’s actions weren’t that suspicious.
“If you hide in the back seat, I could drive,” Tashya suggested somewhat tentatively. “The kidnappers won’t be looking for two women.”
“If you weren’t so recognizable, that might be a good suggestion.” Hunter swerved around a bend in the road and relief washed through Tashya. She’d felt obligated to make the offer, but she really wasn’t qualified to drive. Under normal circumstances she could manage through streets that didn’t have much traffic, but she wouldn’t have been able to keep the car on a highway at this speed, never mind a two-lane country road. She vowed that if she got out of this alive, she would practice her driving. She didn’t like being dependent, hadn’t realized how much she relied on other people, like her driver, until recently.
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