Stolen To Wear His Crown (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Royal Guard, Book 1)

by Marcella Bell

  Heat came to Mina’s cheeks even as she shook her head in denial. The dress hadn’t come from a department store. It was from a boutique that had been going out of business. And it was not square.

  Reading her mind, Roz said, “Everything you wear is square. Off with it all. Put this on.” She held out an ivory silk robe.

  Shoulders slumped, Mina took the robe and turned toward her bathroom with a sigh.

  Roz stopped her with a commanding click of her tongue. “Where are you going?”

  Mina turned around slowly, feeling as guilty as if she had tried to disobey her mother. She winced. “To change?” she said, the question in her voice acknowledging that it was obviously the wrong answer.

  “Not in the bathroom.” Roz shook her head. “Right here. We need measurements.”

  The woman with the asymmetrical hair nodded.

  Mina shook her head. “No.”

  Roz tsked. “Don’t be stubborn, Mina. You don’t have anything that everyone in this room hasn’t seen a million times before.”

  The woman with the perfect face smiled encouragingly, adding in a soft, wispy voice, “It’s true.”

  With her inherent modesty now being represented as immaturity—at least in the eyes of this roomful of strangers who were waiting to see her naked—Mina gritted her teeth and pulled her sweater over her head. She followed it with the rest of her clothes, until she stood shivering in the bright morning light wearing nothing but her underwear.

  “Good figure,” the woman with the perfect face commented.

  “Bad underwear,” asymmetrical haircut added.

  Mina’s cheeks heated uncomfortably.

  Roz agreed. “Horrible. Get rid of them.”

  Mina started to shake her head, but realized there was no point. Roz always won in the end.

  Face aflame, she quickly removed her undergarments until she stood naked in the room. The woman with asymmetrical hair darted over and began taking measurements, calling out numbers to the young woman in black, who took notes.

  When she’d finished, Mina quickly shrugged the robe over her nakedness, just before the woman gave her a little push toward the bald man and the salon chair. Then she took the notes from the younger woman and hurried out of the room.

  Staring at the chair, and the man who stood behind it, Mina heard her practical German mother’s voice rising in her mind: “Never trust a bald hairstylist.”

  But there was no getting out of it.

  Sucking in a deep breath, Mina sat in the chair.

  The man spun a cape around her and secured it at her neck. In one swift motion, he slid a pair of scissors out of the pocket of the apron at his waist and cut the elastic that held the end of her braid.

  Mina reached up with lightning speed to place her hand on his wrist. Turning to meet his eyes, she said, “Please don’t cut too much off. I’ve been growing it for over twenty years...”

  Since her father had died.

  The man grimaced, as if her statement explained everything, and then waved her words away with little flicks of his hand. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m going to make you look divine.”

  And then he moved behind her and made his first cut into her bone-dry hair.

  Her stomach knotted as he worked. No one had ever cut her hair dry before.

  She winced at every thick slice, each one a visceral reminder that scissors were now shearing their way through years’ worth of growth in curls that were slow to grow and quick to frizz.

  She took a deep breath.

  It was only hair.

  Hair that hung past her rear end when it was wet.

  Hair that she hadn’t cut since her father had died because he had seen the stubborn curls as a reflection of her inner strength and determination.

  Her heart squeezed, but she didn’t move in the chair. She was strong enough to endure a haircut.

  By the time the stylist moved to the front of her head she wasn’t so sure.

  Not only had he taken off inches and inches of length all over her head, he’d done the unthinkable for a curly woman—added multiple chunky layers. A pained moan bubbled out of Mina’s throat, and her eyes teared as he continued, oblivious. He completed his massacre with a flourish and two swipes of his scissors, saving the worst horror for last: a set of frizzy, puffy bangs.

  He had turned her into a nineteen-eighties poodle.

  Then he barked, “Washbowl!”

  The girl all in black ran over, pushing a portable sink and that had appeared in the room sometime when Mina wasn’t looking. Raising Mina’s seat with the foot lever, the man tilted her back and began washing her hair.

  The light, fresh aroma of the shampoo, combined with the relaxing pressure of his fingers massaging her scalp, lulled her mind away from the monstrosity he had made of her head.

  A haircut is temporary, she mentally repeated to herself.

  The mantra was easy enough to believe with her eyes closed and strong hands massaging her skull. When he sat her back up and she heard the distinctive sound of foil crinkling, though, all sense of ease evaporated.

  She opened her eyes in time to see him painting a dollop of white cream onto a wet curly clump, and slapping a piece of foil on top of it. He made quick work of a second and a third, before the first squeak escaped the frozen O of Mina’s mouth.

  Without pausing in his application, he said, “Relax—you’ll hardly notice it.”

  Heart beating rapidly, Mina tried to breathe. She had never colored her hair. She had always heard that color was the death of curls.

  In far less time than she felt it should have taken, the stylist had her whole head foiled. He stood back and admired his handiwork while Mina’s stomach churned.

  Roz smiled. “That’s good for now. Someone call for lunch. We will eat and then continue working while the color sets. Time is ticking.”

  Food arrived moments later, and the group ate efficiently, quietly talking amongst themselves. All except for Mina, who took robotic bites of food and stared woodenly at the clumps of her hair littering the floor.

  And then round two began—not with the hairstylist, as Mina had expected, but with the woman with the perfect face.

  Upon closer examination, Mina could tell that the woman’s visage was the result of careful and precise makeup application. She had used lighter and darker colors to alter the dimensions and shape of her face like an artist with paints on canvas.

  “I’m excellent. I know.”

  The woman’s voice was wry when she spoke, and Mina stopped staring long enough to make eye contact. “My apologies,” she muttered.

  “None needed,” the woman said. “Be still.”

  And then she set to work.

  An hour later, she stepped away from Mina and handed her a mirror.

  Mina’s mouth dropped open at what she saw—only it wasn’t her mouth. It was the lush, deep, red-wine–colored mouth of a siren. Or, set against the bronzed sheen of her golden-brown skin, it looked like the mouth of an ancient Egyptian goddess. In that vein, Mina’s large hazel eyes were lined in thick black, and her lashes curled and darkened to match. Her eyelids shimmered with shades of gold, drawing out the similar specks floating in the depths of her irises.

  She looked...arresting, even with a head full of foils.

  The short woman said to the man, “Don’t wash any off when you finish her hair. You’ll owe me three-hundred and twenty-five crowns’ worth of product if you do.”

  Mina swallowed. Three hundred and twenty-five crowns for one coating of face paint? She had only ever spent that much of money on rare texts when she’d been unable to secure them through the university library.

  The man merely snorted before tilting Mina’s chair back. His busy hands made quick work of the foils, and soon his strong fingers were once again massaging her head in the
sink.

  After using another lovely-smelling product in her hair he gave it a light rinse, before tilting her upright and pulling out a strangely shaped hairdryer.

  Mina closed her eyes, dreading the frizzy mess her hair would be when he’d finished with her. Her hair did not take well to blow drying.

  While he set to work, Roz addressed the room. “Where are the clothes?”

  Someone ran off. Mina did not see who it was.

  After what felt like a lifetime of blow-drying, two sets of feet shuffled back into the room.

  “You give me no time, but I still work miracles.”

  Mina recognized the lyrical voice of the woman with the asymmetrical haircut.

  “Yes. Yes. Get over here. She’s ready,” Roz rasped.

  The man spun Mina in the chair to face Roz.

  “Stand,” Roz commanded.

  Mina did.

  The woman handed her undergarments first—though Mina wasn’t sure there was enough fabric for the underwear to be considered a garment. An impossibly thin and seamless black thong—a tiny triangle of material—slid on like silk and felt like a cool nothing.

  Mina had never worn a thong.

  Scholars did not wear thongs.

  The woman then reached out her arm for the robe. Mina looked around, frowning. The whole team of five watched expectantly, again with no patience for her modesty. Reluctantly, she shrugged the robe off her shoulders, leaving herself exposed before them, this time topless in nothing but the thong.

  The woman crouched in front of Mina with a creamy liquid gold piece of fabric that put a warm glow into the bright room.

  As was clearly expected of her, Mina stepped inside its circle.

  The woman pulled the garment up over Mina’s hips to cover her body.

  The fabric was as thin as the thong and softer than a rose petal. It whispered against her skin as the woman fastened the clasp behind her neck. The cut was a very deep halter and the fabric an exquisite silk, clearly of the highest quality. The design was simple, as elegant as it was revealing. It was virtually backless and fit snugly around her hips and rear before falling gracefully to pool around her feet.

  Mina squeaked when the woman’s hand darted under the dress to place a small adhesive cone over one nipple. Ignoring her, the woman repeated the process on the other breast and then stepped back to look at her handiwork.

  A fierce and prideful light had appeared in the woman’s eyes. Roz gave a satisfied nod, and Mina knew that whatever their goal had been, they had achieved it.

  “Shoes!” Roz barked.

  The girl in black ran over with a pair of elegant pumps in the same gold color as the dress. The heels were three inches, if they were anything, and Mina had never worn anything over an inch and a half.

  She sighed. Of course there would be heels. She had never quite mastered the balance and the shifting of weight required to walk in heels with any grace. Walking around in these would be a nightmare. But as she wrapped her fingers around their bright red soles and slid her foot inside she was surprised to find them comfortable.

  Roz said, “Turn around.”

  Mina did as she was told, and gasped when she saw the creature that stared at her from the full-length mirror that had been dug up from somewhere.

  The woman in the mirror was not Dr. Amina Aldaba, only daughter of Ajit and Elke Aldaba. That woman wore a severe braid and boxy suits.

  The woman in the mirror was an art deco goddess in a perfectly fitted dress of luminous golden silk. Her skin gleamed a warm brown, as if it had been buffed and polished like a pearl, and her hair exploded around her head and shoulders like a starburst of bouncy hydrated curls, every one defined, their dimension magnified by gorgeous highlights.

  She looked like the kind of girl who danced all night and slept through lectures, rather than the sort of girl who had not gone to a single social event during the entire course of her university studies.

  She looked confident and...and busty. Very, very busty.

  The low cut of the dress and its snugness around the hips highlighted her figure, rather than hid it, and she fleetingly wondered what King Zayn would think. It was indeed a change from her suit.

  When she finally spoke, her voice was a thin croak, pathetic even to her ears. “I’m stunning.”

  “Of course you are, dear. Would you expect anything less of my grand finale?”

  Mina laughed, her eyes glistening, though she would never let a tear fall and mess up her makeup. “Certainly not, Roz,” she said.

  Roz’s team started packing up their tools, and Mina tore her gaze away from a mirror to check the time. The whole process had taken the bulk of the day, but there were still two hours until the ball began.

  She tottered over to the chair that sat near the window, overlooking the sea. Her current novel sat on a table beside it. Her thought was that she would not muss herself if she just sat and read, but Roz barked at her even as she began to bend.

  “Stop! No sitting. Practice walking instead. We haven’t much time to get you proficient. You might look the part, but it will all be for nothing if you fall flat on your face when it is time to take your mask off.”

  Roz deserved an award for her way with words, but Mina only snorted.

  The whole team guided her in practice for an hour and twenty minutes, and then retouched everything.

  Five minutes before their departure, Roz cleared her throat and the entire room stopped.

  “It is time for the mask.”

  The girl in black and the one with the asymmetric haircut scurried out of the room, while the woman with the perfect face clapped her hands together and the bald man smiled.

  Mina’s stomach sank. The mask. She would wear it until midnight, at which point she would remove it and reveal to Cyrano their sham of a queen. Roz and her team could make her look the part all they wanted, but she would never truly be the stuff of queens.

  The two women came back into the room, carefully carrying what looked like a small sun.

  It was Mina’s mask.

  Fitting snugly around the top half of her head, it was made out of soft yellow-gold fabric, with long beams jutting out from it in a haloed crown of rays. It wasn’t a mask that was about disguising the Queen until the big moment as much as it was a mask about identifying where to look when the time came.

  It gave off its own light, for goodness’ sake.

  It was a spectacular creation.

  Between the dress and the mask, no one would be able to take their eyes off her.

  Words rose up and got trapped in her throat.

  Between the gown and the mask, she would be the center of attention—Roz’s grand finale.

  It was all too much.

  The stylist carefully placed the mask over her head, securing the latch that would hold it in place until she pressed the release button.

  As she did so, the woman with the perfect face hissed, “Careful with my masterpiece.”

  The bald man hurried over to adjust individual curls once the mask was in place, and then stepped back with a smile.

  Mina looked once more into the mirror.

  The beautiful creature that stared back was made of living, breathing gold—exuding class and style despite the shine.

  Tonight, the sun would set on Mina the scholar and rise on Mina the Queen.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RATHER THAN CHECK the alert when it buzzed through on his phone, Zayn checked his watch.

  There was still an hour and a half until the start of the ball, and the car that would drive him was not due to arrive for an hour.

  He could be getting ready. The timing was not unreasonable. In fact, his assistant had been anxiously glancing at the wall clock for at least twenty minutes.

  Zayn ignored both of those observations. He was determined t
o finish reviewing the pair of trade agreements in front of him before he allowed Mina and her ball any more space in his mind. She had been a constant presence in it over the past week and a half, despite the fact that Zayn had expended actual time and energy to ensure that she would not be in his presence.

  His wife.

  He would not spend his time lost in thought about his wife.

  Not when there was work to be done. He refused. He was not his father, who had not been above putting off his royal responsibilities to spend time with his wife.

  Zayn would not be that man. Nothing came before Cyrano. His time of being irresponsibly carefree and open had ended the day his father had been shot. As King, he had no time for brown-skinned women with moss-colored eyes who lingered in his thoughts.

  He refused to waste any time on leisurely preparing his attire, like some kind of old-fashioned dandy. He might have been born into royalty, but his father had instilled in him a sense of proportion.

  He turned his attention back to the agreements, his will an iron wall around his mind, defending it from the obsessive onslaught of green eyes and wayward thoughts.

  Forty minutes later he was nearly two-thirds of the way through the second agreement when his phone vibrated again. Once again, he ignored it.

  “Your Majesty.”

  Frowning, he turned his attention to his assistant. “Yes?” he asked tersely.

  “I think you should see this.” The man held up his phone, a slight tremor in his arm.

  The headline read: All Hail Queen Midas! Below it was a full-body picture of Mina who, unveiled in her ball attire, revealed a body that indeed looked sculpted from gold.

  She had even more curves than he’d imagined. Heels lengthened her impossibly long legs, which were clearly outlined for the first time since he’d seen them by garments that actually fit. She held her shoulders straight, her posture holding the same determination he’d witnessed her summoning for him, and the effect only enhanced her high-breasted glory.

  Her mask was immense, its rays stretching out to create an invisible bubble between her and anyone who might get too close to her radiant form.

  She wasn’t merely gorgeous.