Crowned: Gowns & Crowns, Book 4

by Jennifer Chance

  “We’re getting close to the main beach,” she said, her attention drawn to the wide swath of sand. “You should…I don’t know, turn?”

  “Turn.” He laughed again and glanced over his shoulder, sighting their position. As he did, his expression brightened so abruptly Fran nearly dropped her life jacket.

  “What is it?”

  “This…this I know,” he said. His voice was warm, his eyes dancing as he maneuvered the oars to take them at an angle to the beach. “There’s a rocky promontory up the coast with a small sandy inlet. We can take the boat in there, hide it in the trees. We used to do it all the—aigh!”

  The convulsion shook Ari with such violence that his hands jerked high. The oars jacked up violently in their rings, the boat immediately rocking as Ari clapped his hands to his head. Forgetting the life jacket on her knees Fran scrambled forward, wrapping her arms around Ari. The force of her motion sent him falling backward as well, but instinctively he grabbed her, holding her against his body as the boat tipped precariously one way, then the next. Her stomach rolled and she tried to scurry back, but Ari’s strong grip held her fast.

  “Steady! Steady,” he ordered, his voice low and tight. “I’m okay, you’re okay. The boat will be okay too, but you must stop moving.”

  Fran couldn’t speak, her heart thundering loud enough to drown out any other thought but that she was on the verge of imminent death. She squeezed her eyes shut, struggling for control, for her center. But her center was cartwheeling dangerously, and the only thing controlling her was Ari’s powerful arms around her, pinning her to his chest and torso as his legs spread and his non-stop patter never faltered.

  “You’re okay, yes? You’re fine. I’ve got you, you won’t fall in. You’ve got your life jacket and me and the boat and the oars. The oars float, did you know that? They float…”

  Fran dragged in a choked breath, glad her face was resting against Ari’s chest. The thin cotton of his shirt did nothing to block the heat of his skin, damp from the exertion of rowing and the splash of water. She’d been moving forward to protect him, but now she was burning with embarrassment.

  Embarrassment and awareness, if she was honest. Ari’s hands were moving slowly up and down her back—comforting her, quieting her. But his body was firm and muscled beneath hers, and she couldn’t deny how good it felt to be held in someone’s arms…even so in so awkward a position. She hadn’t allowed herself to indulge in any serious relationships before she’d been accepted into college. After that, there’d been grad school to study for and an endless round of jobs for spending money. She hadn’t had time for a relationship…and she’d never found someone who she trusted not to ask too many questions.

  Funny how it took a man who’d lost his own past to catch her off guard.

  But the moment was passing. She needed to regain control of herself…and to let Ari get control of the boat.

  She breathed out a long sigh. “We’re not going to die?” she ventured.

  Ari’s laughter shook them both, sending the boat to bobbing again as she clutched at him.

  “We’re not,” he assured her. “I’ll need you to sit up as I sit up, then to move back to your seat. Once you’ve done that, I’ll get the oars back in line, which will set us rocking again, but it will be okay.” His voice was quiet, like she was a fawn about to bolt. “Can you do that?”

  She considered it. “Maybe.” She lifted her head off his chest to find him looking at her, his chin tucked down, his gaze steady. His shoulders rested on a storage crate behind him, and though his entire body was locked to provide her support, he didn’t seem to be in any discomfort.

  “That must have been some work camp you were in for a year,” she said dryly as she braced herself against his chest.

  “It clearly had its value. Easy does it.” Ari watched her as she straightened, smiling with reassurance as she slowly edged back to her own seat. “You good?”

  “I’m good,” Fran managed, straightening her jacket with one hand as the other gripped the side of the boat. “You can relax now.”

  Ryker wished it was so easy as that. He sat up, wincing slightly as his body compressed, the pain serving to clear his head as he struggled to get his body to ignore the fact that seconds ago a woman had been sprawled over him for the first time in a year.

  He reached for the oars, leaning forward on one knee as Fran went white again with fear. When she’d burst toward him, her arms flailing, he’d barely had time to register her movement before she knocked him back. She’d done it out of pure instinct, clearly seeing the shock of pain that had rattled him, but the woman had never been in a boat before and she’d nearly capsized them both before he got his arms around her.

  Once he did, however, his pain had evaporated in an instant, replaced by the pure, unmistakable pleasure of a woman in his arms.

  Fortunately, Francesca’s heavy lifejacket had kept her from becoming too intimate with his body, or she would have discovered exactly what he’d thought about having her pressed so closely against him. As it was he could barely breathe, and he needed the brief struggle with the oars to get back on course—in more ways than one.

  He watched the sailboat in the distance as he began rowing toward shore again. It hadn’t moved. No doubt the captain was waiting to see exactly where he docked, but if they moved fast, he and Francesca could disappear into the city before any agents of the well-meaning Stefan Mihal could find them.

  Francesca’s quiet words recalled him. “When you have an—episode like that, what happens if you think of the same place again? Does the pain come back?”

  Ryker shook his head. “No. Once it happens the first time, the trigger disappears. The memory doesn’t get any clearer, but the pain goes away.” It had been the reason he’d been able to bear being around Stefan. “Almost like I’m still fishing, but I’ve lost the hook entirely.”

  She nodded. “I’m glad of that, in a way. It would make it more difficult to land if everywhere we went made you flinch.”

  He chuckled. “Fair enough.”

  The remainder of the trip was uneventful, and they found the rocky inlet exactly as he’d expected it to be. It was deserted this morning, and he ran the boat up close to shore as Francesca stared at him with eyes the size of saucers.

  “I’m getting out,” he warned her as he tucked the oars inside the boat.

  She squeaked in protest, slapping her hands to the sides of the boat though they weren’t moving at all. “You’ll get wet!”

  “I’ll dry. Here we go—”

  He lifted himself up and stepped out of the boat in one smooth motion, grabbing it to steady the craft as it bobbed upward without his weight to ground it.

  “Oh,” she said, peering over the side. “I guess it’s pretty shallow.” She looked up at him expectantly. “I can get out now too?”

  “I can lift you if you don’t want your feet to get wet.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  Still, Francesca didn’t move, and Ryker grinned as he stepped to her side. “Give me one hand, and when you’re braced, even if the boat tips I’ll have you. Deal?”

  She nodded tightly, but it took two tries before she would lift her hand to his. He gripped her forearm, and when she stood and the boat tipped—as he’d known it would—he swept her into his arms.

  “Feet up,” he ordered, splashing through the shallows until he reached the shore. “Okay down.”

  “The boat—”

  “I’ll get the boat.”

  Disrupted by their movement, the boat had slid off its rocks, but Ryker caught it easily enough, pulling it to safety and then further up onto the shore. As he remembered—and this time without the pain—there was a natural indentation in the brush that easily accommodated the small craft.

  Francesca frowned, however, as he stepped back from it. “Won’t it get stolen?”

  “That’s not going to be a problem,” Ryker shrugged. “We were watched the whole way into this inlet. I’m surpri
sed we didn’t have Stefan’s agents waiting to hand us out of the boat. As it is, we should hurry.” He reached for her hand, tugging her into a well-worn pathway.

  She let him pull her along. “How far are we from the city?” she asked. “I need to get to a bank.”

  “Fifteen minutes, more or less, if we hurry.”

  “No hurrying,” Francesca’s words were surprising enough to make him slow, and she shook her head as she surveyed him critically. “Unbutton your shirt and roll up your sleeves—maybe your trousers too? I want to go up through the crowds on the beach if we can. The more people the better.”

  As he complied she pulled her own outfit apart, tying her shirt at her midriff and rolling up her trousers farther, exposing toned calves above her sandaled feet. She also shook out her hair and let it fall around her shoulders. It was longer than Ryker realized.

  “Why don’t you wear it like that all the time?” he asked as they set off again.

  “Too out of control,” she said, her voice clipped and final, her attention no longer on him. “Let’s make time here.”

  Agreeable enough despite her change of manner, Ryker led her through the forest, moving quickly until they reached the edge of the residential district. “There’s a beach access—there,” he said, and tugged her down a sandier path until they stepped out on the wide expanse of Royal Beach.

  Francesca was watching him curiously. “So…is this familiar?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes—and no,” he said. “I don’t have any sense of threat here.”

  She laughed. “Good. I’ve got enough for both of us. Walk beside me now, if that’s okay.”

  They fell into step together, and her words came low and fast despite the fact that she swung her arms and laughed, the epitome of a vacationer in love. “We need to get to a bank, get euros. You’ll have to handle the transaction. The less I say the better, I’m more noticeable than you right now.”

  He nodded and she kept going, walking him through the next step. When she asked for the bar closest to the marina, though, he hesitated. “The marina is almost certainly going to be watched,” he said.

  “Not if they’re searching for us at my rented villa,” she shook her head. “We go behind them and they won’t think to double back.”

  “Fair enough.”

  After they’d visited the bank, the bar district was exactly as Ryker remembered it, but he had no attachment to this place either, other than knowing it was where men went to find pick-up dock work, boat work, and supplies. “It’s not a safe place for women,” he murmured as they approached the second to last tavern from the water, a seedy place with bars on the windows and crude, hand-painted signs on the door.

  “I’ll wait in the street, but close, wringing my hands,” Francesca said. “We’ve been mugged, and I’m your girlfriend. Tell them that if they ask. But they probably won’t ask. Tell them you want the cheapest papers they can get you fast. Pay…” she blew out a breath. “I don’t know what the right amount is. Not too much though. You’ve been mugged and this was money I had hidden in my clothes. In fact, tell them that up front. No more than maybe seventy-five euros. You simply want to get home with no trouble.” She firmed her hand on his arm. “They won’t believe you, but that’s not the point. The point is that you give them a story they can remember and recite with feeling if anyone shows up later with a problem. Make sense?”

  He frowned at her. “How do you know all of this?”

  “Good,” she winked. “It makes sense. Now kiss me like you’re about to do something that makes you nervous. They’re watching inside.”

  Ryker studied her, but not for too long. Francesca’s face had changed completely. She seemed frazzled, anxious as he squeezed both her hands, kissing her hard on the mouth.

  As it had been the day before, the touch of Francesca’s lips against his was electric, but Ryker forced himself away, pleased that her eyes had gone wide…though in truth he couldn’t tell if it was an act or in reaction to his kiss.

  That sent a flair of irritation through him, which he carried into the dark confines of the tavern. The place was exactly the way Francesca had explained it would be. A bar with several men in clusters, tables at the back. He went directly to the back where a few men sat with their bags beside them, and made his plea.

  To his surprise, they didn’t look at him. Not closely anyway. “How much d’you have?”

  “I—we were mugged. My girlfriend…” Ryker cast a longing glance outside, relieved that Francesca was there, talking to a squat older woman in the street. “We were mugged. She—this is all she had left, in her pockets. If it’s not enough, I…” he reached for his pocket and the men tensed.

  “How much?” the one closest asked him again. Something had shifted in the man’s hand, and it was Ryker’s turn to stiffen. A knife gleamed beneath the edge of the table.

  “Seventy-five euros,” he said.

  The knife disappeared. “Buy a round. Come back with the rest.”

  Without asking any other questions, Ryker went to the bar, where the barkeeper already had the drinks lined up. The man didn’t look at Ryker either, merely accepted the money he gave him and gestured to him to take the three drinks. By the time he returned to the table, a folded piece of cloth was beside one of the men’s elbows.

  He sat the drinks down with the rest of the money tucked beside it, then reached for the cloth packet. An oily hand lifted and clamped over his until the second man pawed through the euros.

  “Good luck to you,” the first man grunted, then lifted his hand.

  Ryker pocketed the cloth packet.

  Getting an identity shouldn’t be this easy. Regardless, he did feel better knowing he could at least produce papers should the police stop him—which they might, if only because of his disheveled appearance. He couldn’t deny the sense of relief as he stepped once more into the sunlight. Francesca had been right—getting false papers had been the right decision.

  And now that he was a whole new person, he had a whole new agenda too.

  Where he needed to go and what he needed to do couldn’t happen until nightfall. That left him hours to see exactly what he’d been missing from life.

  Chapter Seven

  “You—give money? Give money.”

  Fran blinked at the old woman standing in front of her, too close. “I’m so sorry,” she said automatically, though her nerves tensed. She sometimes gave to panhandlers, but aggressive ones scared her—especially those who had such a flat, hard expression on their faces.

  “I gave all my money to my boyfriend—my boyfriend!” she said more loudly when the woman poked at her, hard enough to bruise. This was no trembling waif sent into the streets to beg for her supper. This woman was sturdily built, her mouth set into a fierce scowl. “I have no money!”

  “Bah!” The woman pushed at her, and only then did Fran see a child darting past on one side of her, felt the brush to her side. Her pocket! There was no money in it, she carried everything in her neck pouch, but the sudden shot of fear that raced through her tipped all too fast into anger. The way it always had, since she’d been a little girl and had learned the hard way that fear was sometimes worse than whatever faced you. Fear made you stop when you most needed to act, pouring sludge into your veins when you needed fire.

  Her anger served her better than her fear now too. Especially when the woman pushed her again.

  “I said stop that.” Fran didn’t shout, she didn’t snarl, but she stepped forward forcefully and pushed the woman back with equal strength, hard enough to make the woman grunt. The panhandler’s gaze whipped up to her, her mouth tight in an ugly snarl, but Fran’s chin jutted out, her fists came up. She wasn’t Francesca Simmons now but a different Fran, a Fran who was small and scared and tired and so, so angry that she couldn’t think straight anymore. You want to fight me, you—

  The woman didn’t give her a chance to finish the thought.

  With a sharp, dismissive curse she wheeled around
, loudly proclaiming something that Fran was sure wasn’t complimentary to Americans. Instantly, Fran’s anger cleared, her sensibilities reminding her where she was, who she was, what she was. Though her pulse hammered, she quickly unclenched her hands and lifted them to smooth her hair in place.

  After that, no one said a word to the crazy American girl standing in the tiny alley next to the broken-down bar. But no one else bothered her either.

  Fran’s nerves had almost settled when Ari rejoined her within fifteen minutes of entering the seedy tavern. He walked with a jaunty step—too jaunty for the cover of a man who’d recently been mugged—but she supposed the men he’d bought his identity from were not paying too much attention to anything but the amount of money they’d made.

  She fell into step with him. “Hotel,” she said. “To get you out of sight.”

  “A hotel would be good,” Ari said, “But there’s no hurry.”

  She frowned at him. “You could be recognized.”

  He shrugged. “Recognized by who? Think about it. My name is Conti Goba now. I’m a national from the country, and I’m walking the streets of the capital city with a beautiful American girl. Who will stop me?”

  “The police?”

  “That’s their prerogative, yes,” he said. “But so what if they do? The police in Garronia know that our most important import is tourism. They ask—and ask frequently—for ID, but if you have a document, you get no more than a cursory glance. I can already recite the details of my papers.” He tapped his shirt pocket. “And Conti, he is not one to cause trouble, so I believe he’s good simply by being able to produce identification. You see? You have made me very safe indeed.”

  “But Stefan will be searching for you.”

  “Stefan thinks he knows me and what I am doing, and Stefan let me leave that island. It is not as if the captain had orders to make me stay—if he had, I’d still be up in that guest compound, poked and prodded by doctors. No. He wanted me to be freed, once he had me long enough to ensure I was no danger to anyone, especially myself.”