by Leah Ashton
Marko’s words—unexpected and definitely not part of the script—dragged Jas’s attention back to the man beside her. She met his gaze, confused and disoriented. Why say that?
But he answered the question in her eyes with a kiss—soft and brief.
When his lips lifted from hers, the camera crew started talking quickly, and Marko got to his feet, reaching out a hand for her.
He chatted to the woman behind the camera for a minute, before turning to Jas.
‘Let’s leave them to edit,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind my ad-lib at the end. The crew loved it though, thought it was a nice touch.’
A nice touch?
Jas knew she shouldn’t feel so disconcerted by a sentence so in keeping with their supposed engagement.
To hear talk of love now, just as she was finally letting go of her own self-flagellation, which had been so closely linked to her—again supposed—love she’d felt for Stuart, had left her flustered.
She’d thought she’d loved Stuart, but she realised now much of her pain had been that of betrayal, and not of lost love. Love had never existed between them, no matter how badly Jas might have wanted it to.
But with Marko...
No.
That was impossible. She’d known him only weeks. She’d lived thirty years without telling a man that she loved him. Without truly falling in love. She knew that now.
So to fall in love with Marko, a man with no interest in a relationship, let alone love...
No. To fall for Marko was a self-fulfilling prophecy of pain and disappointment. As she’d known right from the very beginning, Jasmine Gallagher was no princess. Without the circumstances that had thrown them together, Marko would never even have noticed her in a crowd.
He might have noticed her now, and they might have some sort of a connection...but to extrapolate that to be love would be as naïve as the trust she’d placed in Stuart.
Marko had led her to the wide hallway outside the Knight’s Hall. He was looking at her curiously.
‘Jas—’
‘I’m just going to go up to my room,’ she said quickly, not quite meeting his gaze. ‘I’d better call my mum before the video goes out.’
‘I’ll see you at lunch?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No. I—’ A beat passed. She’d been going to say she was feeling unwell, but she didn’t want to lie. ‘I think I need some time alone, if that’s okay,’ she said. ‘These last few days have been...overwhelming.’
In so many different ways.
Marko frowned. ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘I don’t like leaving you alone—’
‘Marko,’ Jas said, much more sharply than she intended. ‘I am fine. I promise. I just need some space.’
Marko nodded just as sharply as she’d spoken. ‘Let me know if you need me,’ he said abruptly.
Then he walked off down the hallway, to where, Jas had no idea.
Leaving Jas to head for her room.
Just like a few days earlier, she told herself that having some space was a good idea.
Back then, she’d been worried about blurring the lines of their relationship—from fun to serious. From superficial to sharing their deepest secrets.
But those lines had now been erased.
Let me know if you need me, he’d said.
And that was the thing, of course.
She didn’t need Marko. She just needed to remind herself of that.
Chapter Fifteen
‘SHE DID NOT choose to fall in love with a prince. She fell in love with me...’
Why had he said that?
Marko stood beside Jas later that evening, in the historic Vela Ada City Hall. They had yet another event, this time honouring some of Vela Ada’s most generous citizens—people who had dedicated their lives selflessly to others. Foster carers, disability campaigners, philanthropists—it was a diverse group of very good people, and a heartening reminder that such people existed, given that it had taken mere minutes after their videoed statement was released for Jas’s photos to end up all over the Internet.
The police and the palace were managing the situation as best they could. Jasmine was handling it brilliantly.
She’d emerged from her room appearing refreshed, and certainly without that almost panicked look she’d had after they’d finished filming. She’d hidden it well, but he’d noted it the moment it had appeared—which was the moment he’d mentioned her—apparent—love for him.
He shouldn’t have gone off script, but at the time it had felt right.
While videoing the statement had helped to channel some of his anger at the whole situation, it hadn’t helped to abate it. And much of that anger was still directed at himself. This was his fault. As he’d said—Jas hadn’t chosen this.
But mentioning love, even faux love, even if his intent was to show that Jasmine had done nothing to deserve any of this, was a mistake.
He should’ve known, given his own reaction to Jas’s joke about them being ‘madly in love’ when they’d been surprised by that cleaner in a passionate clinch. He still couldn’t work out how he’d felt—other than he hadn’t found the joke amusing, and he didn’t really know why.
Also, he hadn’t allowed himself to think too much about it. He wasn’t a man who had ever spent much time reflecting on love, in any context.
So why mention love, especially on camera?
He could lie and tell himself it was all part of the role he was playing—of a loving, concerned, protective fiancé.
But he wasn’t really playing that role. He was genuinely concerned, genuinely protective—even if Jas insisted she didn’t need him to be, and was probably right. The only thing false about the situation had been the fiancée bit. And the bit about Jas loving him.
She was in sparkling, princess form tonight. She’d grown into her role over the weeks, and now she effortlessly charmed everyone she met. Even tonight, as Vela Ada buzzed about the ‘photo scandal’, she was flawless. Dressed in a form-fitting deep red dress and holding a glass of pink champagne, she chatted easily beside him. It was Marko who was discombobulated.
The gentleman who had been speaking to him, Marko realised belatedly, had disappeared at some point as Marko had been lost in his own thoughts. Jas bumped her shoulder against his arm, and glanced up at him, asking him a wordless question: You okay?
He nodded.
Why do you think I’ve never fallen in love?
He’d almost asked that question of Jas earlier that day, and now he asked it of himself.
He knew the answer. Since the very first girl he’d kissed, he’d known he couldn’t bring someone he loved into the suffocating, scrutinised life of a royal. He would not allow the woman he loved to be defined by her relationship with him—to become nothing but the royal title that marriage to Prince Marko would bestow.
To love him, and to marry him, was to lose too much of herself. He would not wish the way his life was invaded, and judged, and labelled on his worst enemy, let alone the woman he loved.
Yet—here he stood. Beside a woman who had had her privacy violated in a way that was more horrendous than any he had experienced. Yet she still stood beside him.
Was that due to her contract and hefty fee?
Even considering that possibility felt like a betrayal.
No, he knew Jas Gallagher. As he watched her now she straightened her shoulders and smiled. She was every inch a strong, resilient woman. And that was no façade.
Something—a sudden movement—caught Marko’s eye.
A split second later, an exclamation from the surrounding crowd followed:
‘Nož! Nož! He’s got a knife!’
And then Marko saw it—a flash of a silver blade, the whites of the knuckles of the man that gripped it fiercely.
The movement of t
hat blade towards him.
Instinct took over—his army training allowing him to instantly assess the threat, to move to disarm the—
But then, in a blur of a jet-black suit, the man was gone, tackled to the ground by Simon. In the same instant Jas had her arm around him, guiding him into a crouch. At his other hip materialised another person from Jas’s team, and together they ran for the exit—an exit Marko hadn’t even been aware existed, but Jas clearly did, guiding him there with total confidence.
The whole time, she was barking instructions to her team.
It felt wrong—totally wrong—to be fleeing from a threat.
He wanted to stay—he wanted to make sure the threat was disabled. He wanted to assist with clearing the room, with ensuring no other threats lurked, waiting.
But that wasn’t his role.
He wasn’t Lieutenant Colonel Marko Pavlovic today, and he certainly wasn’t a bodyguard.
He was the target.
Now through the door they ran down service steps, three pairs of feet somehow almost perfectly in sync with each other. Jas’s feet were in stockings only, her spiky heels obviously discarded for haste.
The other bodyguard paused at a heavy access door, talking urgently into his earpiece. Then the door was opened from outside, where two more from the team waited and then—perfectly timed—their car arrived. Moments later he and Jas were in the back seat, and well before anyone could consider details like seat belts they were off—just as Marko heard sirens approaching in the distance.
‘You okay?’ Jas asked finally.
He nodded. ‘Perfectly.’
From the front seat, Scott turned. ‘Suspect arrested,’ he said. ‘Simon is fine.’
Beside him, Jas breathed a heavy sigh. ‘Great job, everyone,’ she said.
Then she turned to Marko, her mouth kicking up into a triumphant grin. ‘Now that,’ she said, ‘was a lot of fun.’
* * *
‘Fun?’
It was several hours later, and Jas lay beside Marko in his bed. He was propped up on one elbow, his gaze trained on hers.
The room was lit only by a single lamp, all that had been needed for doing what had seemed logical after a threat to Marko’s life: make love.
No. Jas corrected herself. Have sex.
The night had been a blur after their escape from City Hall and then the necessary reports to police. They’d barely had a chance to talk.
Jas smiled up at him. ‘You know exactly what I meant. You do so much training—for months and years—for exactly those moments. And for it to all come together so perfectly...yes, it was awesome.’
‘I hate that I put you in danger.’
Jas snorted. ‘Are you serious?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘hear me out. What if that guy had gone for you?’
‘He wouldn’t have got near me. I could’ve disarmed him, but I wouldn’t have needed to. My team was onto it.’ Jas narrowed her eyes as she studied him. ‘It is literally my job to deal with this stuff, Marko.’
‘But it isn’t your job to be the target. With me you’re a target.’
She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t. That guy was one of Senator Božić’s supporters. He wasn’t angry with me, he was angry at your brother—and you, as his proxy. Not me.’
‘But another time it could be you.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve known that from the start. That’s why we have bodyguards, Marko. It’s why you employed my team.’
Marko rolled, moving his body until he was above her, his hands tangled in her hair.
The intensity of Marko’s gaze shocked Jas. The sudden intimacy—the way he was holding her so gently, his thumbs tracing her jaw and cheekbones—made her breath catch.
He kept his weight mostly off her, but they still touched all the way along her body—breast to chest, hip to hip, skin to skin.
‘What if something had happened to you, Jas?’ he asked.
She held her tongue when it would’ve been so easy to retort that she could look after herself.
She knew that wasn’t what Marko wanted to hear right now.
So she remained silent, letting him speak.
‘I could’ve stopped that guy,’ Marko insisted.
Jas nodded. She knew that.
‘And I understand that it isn’t my role. But I hated how helpless I felt. How I was reduced to being a helpless prince you had to protect.’
Jas narrowed her eyes. ‘You’d better not think it’s your job as a man to protect me,’ she said. ‘Or that it’s not my job to protect you.’
‘No,’ he said, with the slightest quirk of his lips. ‘It’s our job to protect each other.’
Oh. Those words did those funny flip-floppy things to her heart.
She didn’t like that, and so she started talking in her no-nonsense work voice: ‘If you want a more active role in your protection we can probably involve you more closely. Engage you in our tactics—’
‘That isn’t what I meant, Jas,’ he said gently.
He bridged the gap between them, pressing his mouth to hers. As were all their kisses, it was sweet, and sexy...but this one was also almost frighteningly intimate...
Jas wrenched her lips away. ‘What did you mean, then?’
Marko held her gaze again. In the muted light his expression was like nothing she’d seen before—intense but open. As if, for the first time, he was revealing everything to her.
Then he rolled away.
Jas propped herself up onto her elbow to study him.
But his gaze now was unreadable.
Jas considered pushing him for an answer. Part of her needed to—she needed to know what he was thinking, she needed to make sense of the ache in her heart and the whirling in her head...
But the other part of her felt the adrenalin that had kept her buzzing drain rapidly out of her system. Suddenly, she was so very tired.
She crawled to Marko, wrapping her arms around his chest, and burying her head in his shoulder.
She breathed in the clean scent of his skin, and listened to the beat of his heart beneath her ear.
‘Jasmine?’
Only now did she allow the reality of tonight to settle on her shoulders. Only now did she make tonight about something other than a successful job.
Until right now, it had been fun. It had been about her team, and about their successful extraction of their principal. She’d been all arrogant bluster and cocky satisfaction.
But as she listened to Marko breathe, she finally let herself embrace the fear that it was her job to compartmentalise.
Not fear for herself, or fear of their attacker tonight.
‘What if something had happened to you, Marko?’ she said, oh, so softly, against the rise and fall of his chest.
Chapter Sixteen
MARKO CANCELLED ALL royal engagements the following day.
Instead, in a single car, Jas and Marko went to the beach. To Marko’s isolated, private beach.
This time, he was prepared. They had an oversized beach umbrella, colourful plush towels and a gourmet picnic basket complete with wines from a Vela Ada vineyard. It was a gorgeous day, the sky clear except for the slightest wisps of cloud, and the ocean all perfectly still shades of blue.
After falling asleep last night with Jas curled against his body, they’d barely spoken. Marko had woken before Jas and gone for a long, punishing run. When he’d returned, Jas had already headed to her salon to work. Although when he’d interrupted her shortly after to invite her to the beach, she’d accepted immediately.
Maybe she understood, or shared, his need to escape?
But escape from what, exactly?
Even here—in this perfect, private, place—Marko hadn’t relaxed.
He lay on his towel, wearing nothing but his board s
horts, trying to enjoy the beat of the sun against his skin, and the sound of the waves lapping against the shore.
But it wasn’t working.
At his side lay Jas. She was wearing a green and white polka-dot bikini, a broad-brimmed white straw hat and oversized sunglasses, and held a book in her hands that she appeared completely absorbed by.
But—her body seemed tense too. Or was he just overthinking things?
He didn’t know what was wrong with him. This didn’t feel like a normal reaction to an attempt on his life—especially as he’d never actually felt his life was in danger.
Last night...
Last night his brain had been busy with thoughts of Jas, and today all he’d wanted to do was spend time with her. Only her—no one else.
So here they were. But things between them weren’t how he wanted them to be. He was tense, and she was tense. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her bouncing her foot, just slightly, against the sand. She was fidgeting, and Jas didn’t fidget.
He should probably talk to her. Talk to her properly, not the slightly stilted small talk they’d managed in the car.
But last night they had been talking, and he’d stopped. She’d stopped, too.
What he wanted between them, right now, was for it to feel easy. But last night hadn’t felt easy. It had been the opposite of easy.
Now wasn’t easy either.
He stood quickly, shoving himself up from the sand.
‘Marko?’
He didn’t look at her. ‘Just going for a swim,’ he said.
In the water—which annoyed him by not being bracingly cold and rough but instead warm and languid—he immediately leapt into a powerful freestyle, heading for the horizon.
He swam and swam and swam—heading well past the boundary of the cove. When he finally stopped to tread water, the ocean had pushed him slightly around the edge of a peninsula, so now he could no longer see their private beach. In fact, where he swam now, he could see nobody. There was not one boat, not one person on the shore, nothing.
He lay back in the water, and stared up at the almost cloudless sky.