by Madeline Ash
Pain crushed her and she gave a strangled sob.
Tonight, she’d started that process. She’d cut him off in every way. No friendship. No attraction. Nothing left to salvage. If he believed he’d been nothing but a job to her, he’d pull back. Block her out and move on.
Then she could focus on her overflowing priorities. Ensure Mark and Ava were effectively cocooned outside of the public eye. Continue to gently steer Tommy toward public appearances. Stop Kris from getting into trouble. Manage the security of the palace. And continue her investigation into the balcony collapse that had killed the late royal family.
Quit, a defeated part of her yearned. This mess is too big. Just leave.
But she couldn’t.
Resolve thickened like a scab over that yearning. She’d never quit. Working for the royal guard was an opportunity she’d shaped for herself. It was her chance to live an honorable life—to prove her own decency.
And she hadn’t proven it yet.
The tread of footsteps from below had her stiffening. Swiftly wiping her eyes on the sleeve of Hanna’s shirt, she looked up with a scowl.
“Chill, babe. It’s just me.” Zara Nguyen was regarding her with grim sympathy as she climbed the final few steps and sat beside her. She wore a light dress and flip-flops. Easy summer clothes to roll into after being rudely woken in the night. She extended her hands and a pile of chocolate bars rained down on the step between Frankie’s feet. “Supplies.”
Frankie sniffled, cheeks heating. “I didn’t ask you to come.”
“Yeah, well.” Leaning back on her palms, Zara gave a small smile. “Women-in-need is kind of my thing.”
God, was that how Zara saw her? Frankie set her shoulders, sitting straighter.
They’d met months ago while helping with Ava’s escape, and soon after, Frankie had offered to deliver weekly self-defense classes at Zara’s women’s shelter. In that time, she’d warmed to the woman’s crass friendship—obviously more than she’d realized, since she’d messaged her earlier.
Shit hit the fan with Kris. Falling apart without class at top of Scepter. Coffee tomorrow?
And Zara had found her.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Frankie said, cheeks still hot as she swiped up a chocolate bar. “I shouldn’t have messaged you. This is nothing. I overreacted.”
“Stop making this about you.” Zara knocked Frankie’s arm with her elbow. “I want the goss.”
Frankie eyed her and Zara gazed back, teasing yet expectant. Weird. Although being caught with a puffy face was top-tier mortification to Frankie, Zara didn’t seem to be judging.
“Fine,” she said, and took a steadying breath. “Kris has this little habit of slipping security sometimes when he’s out in the city.”
Zara snorted, then sobered swiftly at Frankie’s look and said, “Bad prince.”
“Reckless,” Frankie said. “He’s been doing it more often. Tonight, I stopped him.” Her throat thickened and she bit into caramel chocolate. A waste, really, because she couldn’t taste a thing. “He was so happy to see me. Like a kid bursting open a piñata.”
“Oh, honey.” Zara swiped up a bar near Frankie’s foot.
“I told him the truth.” Well, parts of it. “He tried to be angry, but he was devastated.” His desolate glances and fraught movements had gutted her. “I’d hoped he wouldn’t care too much, not after I’d kept my distance since he’d arrived in Kiraly. But he did.” Her voice shook as she remembered his pained confusion, his pleas for her to tell him he was wrong. “Then I pretended our friendship had been part of the job, because I can’t be in his life anymore. Not the way I used to be. This needs to be the end of it.”
“Hang on a second,” Zara said.
Frankie’s stomach balled.
Swiveling, her friend regarded her through narrowed eyes. “This doesn’t sound like the end of a friendship.”
“It sure as shit isn’t the happy middle.”
“No.” She pointed her half-eaten chocolate at Frankie. “This sounds like a breakup.”
Looking away, Frankie said, “Don’t devalue friendship by assuming it can’t hurt like this to lose it.”
Zara hummed, sounding unconvinced, but didn’t push.
They sat in silence, punctuated only by the rustle of wrappers and Frankie’s occasional rapid, jagged intake of breath. A dog barked in the distance. The headlights of a car broke through the buildings below and disappeared again. Moonlight made liquid silver on the surface of the lake far below.
Then Zara spoke softly. “Kris is pretty gorgeous.”
Caught off guard, Frankie glared at her.
“Oh, put it away.” Toeing off her flip-flops, Zara pressed the soles of her feet onto the stone step. “If you were just friends, you’d apologize to him, explain why you did what you did, and eventually he’d come back around.”
Heart tight, Frankie turned back to stare at the city below.
“So when you said this needs to be the end of it,” Zara said, “I assume by it, you mean he thinks you’re pretty gorgeous, too.”
“He’s wanted to get in my pants since we met,” she muttered, unwilling to romanticize the sweet thrum of desire between them.
“Making you the one who got away.”
“He needs to move on.” Frankie didn’t manage to hide the dismay from her voice.
“Because he’s royalty and you’re not?”
“Yes.”
Zara sighed, shaking her head before lowering her forehead into her palm.
“You going to try to convince me that status doesn’t matter?”
“I wish I could.” Zara’s voice was strangely sad. “But royalty is a world above. They’re not made for us. And we’re definitely not made for them.”
Frankie swallowed hard.
“Honestly, what’s with these Jaroka guys falling for women they can’t realistically be with? I swear, next thing I know, I’m going to be sitting at a bar talking coping strategies with some woman in love with Tomas.”
“Pass on my condolences,” Frankie muttered, because if a woman fell for Tommy, it wouldn’t end well for her.
“I guess you just avoid Kris from now on?” Zara wriggled her toes in the warm night air. “And wait for time and distance to make this all go away?”
“Not exactly.” Frankie resisted covering her head with her forearms. “New protocol. Whenever he’s outside palace grounds, I’m going to be his bodyguard.”
“You’re—what?” Her friend sounded startled. “You’re not much bigger than I am.”
“I could take you before you’d seen me move,” she mumbled.
“While that leaves me suitably terrified, I’m not planning on harming your prince.”
“I’m not a full-grown male, but I know how to subdue one.” Not to mention that all members of the royal guard carried a firearm on duty.
“Alright, hang on.” Zara was shaking her head. “I’m lost. Because obviously my first thought is that volunteering to be his bodyguard is the perfect way to ensure he gets over you. You know, spending lots of time together one-on-one really aids separation.”
Frankie pressed her eyes shut, groaning.
“You command a security team, sweetcakes. Lock someone else by his side when he leaves the palace.”
“I can’t.” She couldn’t trust anyone else. “He can be stupid. Only I can tell what he’s going to do before he does it.” Only she could keep him safe.
There was a beat of silence. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
Zara was shaking her head. “This is not going to work.”
“It won’t be forever.” Just until she’d removed any lingering threat to the royal family. “After tonight, he’s cut me out. I’ll just be there in the background to make sure he doesn’t get hurt.”
“Sure, whatever you said to him tonight might be what he needs to get over you,” Zara said. “But this bodyguard gig is the perfect way to make sure you never get over him.”
“I’ll be fine.”
A lie. A bulging, splitting-at-the-seams lie, because Kris wasn’t just gorgeous. He was soul-stealing. And she wanted him to have it, the soul he’d lifted right out of her being, because in all her years before she’d met him, she’d never felt whole alone inside herself. Around him, she felt unbroken.
A mighty lure to resist.
“Okay,” Zara said, and then gave her a glance that was the opposite of reassuring. “But do we want to make this our regular meeting spot for when you realize you’ve made a huge mistake? Or do you want to come to my place next time?”
Frankie glowered at her. “I can focus on the job.”
“Yeah.” Zara gave a little smile and patted her on the leg again. “Let’s do my place.”
4
Kris strode through a palace that in no way reflected the events of the night before. The chaos Frankie had wrecked should be all around him. The pre-dawn summer air should be acrid with her betrayal. The respectful, subdued palace staff should be dashing around, harried and alarmed. The wallpaper should be slashed, antique vases smashed in the corridors and the sound of weeping floating around corners. For all the pain she’d caused, there should be a rift in the damn mountainside.
Outside, Kiraly was oblivious in the early morning shadows.
Kris took off his hat—that always found its way back to him—as he and Tommy slid into the limo that would take them to Kuria Estate, the royal mansion on the outskirts of the city. The engine started, preparing to depart along with several security cars behind them.
“At least she thought better of the bodyguard idea,” Tommy said, rolling up the sleeves of his old blue and grey plaid shirt.
Kris rustled up a grunt in response, vaguely aware that no member of the royal guard sat in front with the driver.
Then he saw her.
Tearing out of the wide front entrance and down the vast sweep of steps. Something pinched in his torso as the sight of her under the golden outdoor spotlights. Her hair was a mess, her features haggard. The navy-blue security uniform from the night before was gone, replaced with her old boots, blue skinny jeans and a summer jacket the shade of a good sangria. She looked . . . like Frankie.
“Or not,” Tommy murmured.
She wove around several attendants without slowing her descent, and at one point, he was certain she considered leaping over the valet rather than sidestepping him.
At the car, she pressed her forearm over the driver’s window to speak to them and Kris caught sight of a shoulder holster concealed beneath her jacket. Then she was hauling the back door open and clambering in, breathing hard as she sat opposite him and Tommy. Scrubbing her face with one hand—something she did when she was beyond exhausted—she reached around to strap herself in with the other. Everything about her was uncontrolled energy, until the car glided away from the palace and she sat back and just . . . shut down. Staring at the vacant middle seat between him and Tommy, posture rigid, face impassive.
This again.
Kris shifted slowly, deliberately, knees widening so his leg interrupted her line of sight. Her gaze flickered and he sensed his movement steal her complete attention.
Tension bristled in the enclosed space.
“Morning,” Tommy said quietly.
Her only acknowledgement was to incline her head.
Kris bit his tongue. He wanted to say a thousand things, but it would all spring from heartbreak and he didn’t want her to look inside him with that blank stare.
Teeth clenching, he turned to stare out the window.
“I have questions,” Tommy said. There was a pause in which she gave no verbal response, but he continued with, “Did you instruct my guards to show me the cabin and passageways?”
Kris almost turned to gape at his brother. That’s what Tommy had been thinking about? The reality of her working in security? Kris was too deeply entrenched in her lies to consider anything else.
“Yes,” she said.
The sound of her voice, throaty and detached, collected all the tension inside him and knotted it in the center of his chest. Frankie, was all he could think. What have you done?
“Why?” Tommy asked.
“I thought it would interest you.”
“It would have interested me to know you were here,” Tommy said, voice hard.
Kris pressed his eyes shut as the knot tightened.
She didn’t respond.
“Were our guards randomly assigned?”
“Of course not.”
There was the light sound of Tommy shifting. “Why did you assign mine?”
“Aside from being faultless at their job, I’d thought you’d be comfortable around them.”
Kris frowned out the window. That clearly wasn’t the reason she’d assigned Hanna and Peter to him. It was impossible to be comfortable around statues.
“Was I wrong?” she asked, tone agonizingly neutral. “I can find you different guards.”
“Leave them.” Tommy moved on. “What was your role in the palace before you came to Montana?”
“I—” She stopped. “I didn’t work in the palace.”
Kris tried not to frown; tried not to seem as if he cared enough to listen.
“Philip sent you to monitor us without appropriate experience?” Tommy sounded incredulous. “The man I’ve seen order staff to refold napkins because the creases weren’t suitable for royal use?”
“He didn’t exactly send me.” Her tone was equal parts uncomfortable and exhausted, and a deep-down part of Kris wanted to tell Tommy to do this another time.
“Explain didn’t exactly,” Tommy said.
“Philip wouldn’t hire me. But I got him to agree that if I could find the estranged Jaroka family, he’d give me a job.” She hesitated. “So, I found you. And instead of coming back immediately to a position in the palace, I—I stayed.”
Kris curled his fingers against the urge to ask why.
“You stayed to monitor us,” Tommy said, “officially entering the employment of our uncle.”
She hesitated again. “Something like that.”
“Funny how things turn out.” His words were edged with cynicism. “After years of spying and lying your way into our lives in order to secure a job, your position is now in our hands.”
Kris swung a glance at his brother with a sharp, “Tom.”
“I’m not firing her,” Tommy murmured, gaze still on Frankie. “But I feel it’s important to point out that we could.”
Christ. In the corner of Kris’s eye, Frankie remained stiff and unmoving, and Kris almost choked on the power imbalance.
“She’s concealed herself for over three months. Our own head of personal security deliberately hid from us. Not to mention the real reason for her being in Sage Haven. The general trend is that she thinks it’s okay to lie to us. That we don’t deserve her respect. You might have known us as cowboys, Frankie, but don’t forget that we’re your sovereign.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” Her features were pinched. “Your Highness.”
The silence was suffocating for the rest of the journey.
Mark was waiting as they pulled up at the top of the drive, his arms crossed and expression somber in the first rays of sunlight. Kris’s gut wrenched at the sight of him, his resentment feeling too close to grief. How could his own brother have kept this from him? Mark would never have lied like this back home.
This place, this life, was changing them.
Mark turned without a word and led the way across the grounds to the empty, half-timbered stables. Kris got it—the unspoken understanding that they didn’t need Mark’s staff looking on, listening in. This was between brothers with simple beginnings and what should be simple respect for each other.
Frankie followed at a distance with the other guards.
Inside the stables, Kris ran his tongue along his teeth, leaning against a closed stall door with Mark standing opposite him. His anger at Mark’s secret-keeping hummed
in the dusty air, but just as strong was their almost palpable discomfort—an instinctive resistance to bad blood between them.
The moment felt barbed, and Kris’s skin felt torn already.
“Mark,” Tommy said, sitting off to one side on the steps that led to the hayloft.
Mark had been avoiding eye contact. Now he looked at Kris with unwavering sincerity. “I’m sorry, Kris,” he said. “I didn’t want this.”
Kris huffed out a bitter breath, shaking his head.
“How long have you known she was here?” Tommy asked.
Mark rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “I found out soon after we arrived.”
That kicked Kris square in the gut. Months. Mark had known about Frankie for months.
“What the hell, Mark?” Tommy leaned forward in disbelief. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“She asked me not to.” Mark glanced at Tommy, features pained. “I’ve tried to convince her to talk to Kris—so many times—but she’s refused.”
“You should have told me anyway.” Kris spoke quietly, but his words shook.
“I—” Mark stared at him, stricken. “It was complicated.”
No, it wasn’t.
“You knew I’d been trying to reach her.” Kris pushed off the stall door, outrage swelling in his veins. “That I was struggling without her. And you’re defending yourself?”
Mark half-turned away before turning back, looking harassed. “I promised her.”
“You know what she means to me!” The words seemed to cut his throat on the way out. “I’m your brother! Your first promise is to me. You know how badly I—” Kris swiftly spun around and pounded his fist against the stall.
“I wasn’t supposed to find out,” Mark said behind him.
“But you did find out.” Kris spun back to him. “You found out and you didn’t tell me. I’ve been going crazy. I’d have thought that after Ava, all these months of not being able to contact her, not knowing where she was, you’d know how it feels.” The agitation; the anguish. “I’ve found myself literally trying to pull my hair out from missing her—and you’ve known she’s been right here!”