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

by Marcella Bell

  CHAPTER SIX

  “TAKE OFF THE sweater,” Zayn said through clenched teeth, waiting for an obviously overheated Mina to catch up once again.

  While the wild woods of Cantorini were renowned in the region for their density, they remained Mediterranean woodlands, comprised of a mixture of oaks and mixed sclerophylls. It was an infinitely traversable landscape, even if the rocky terrain was brutal on the ankles. But not if one was wearing a wool sweater more appropriate for a winter evening by the sea than a warm summer walk through the woods.

  “Excuse me, I will not,” she insisted.

  It was the same thing she’d said each time he’d made the demand, but this time he was going to make her do it. He was the King, after all. It was his prerogative to order people to do things.

  Her cheeks had a rosy flush to them that had nothing to do with her reaction to him, and her skin glistened with perspiration. He wasn’t having it. She had only a few more miles in her before heatstroke set in, and they had more miles than that before they’d reach the cabin.

  Rather than repeat the order, he simply began to unbutton his own shirt.

  Mina’s green gaze widened. “What are you doing?”

  “Giving you my shirt.”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to wear my shirt.”

  “I couldn’t,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I insist,” he ground out, his irritation at being resisted growing with every button he freed.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “If it requires my tearing that atrocious sweater off your body with my bare hands, I absolutely insist.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she challenged.

  “As that eyesore has been burning itself into my mind’s eye since the early hours of this morning, I can assure you I would. Quite happily.”

  He said the last with a growl in his voice and Mina took a step back.

  Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, he said, “I’m the King, Mina. Not a murderer. You’re going to get heatstroke if you don’t take off the damn sweater.”

  She stared at him mutinously and he prepared for another refusal, inwardly curious at the idea of making good on his word. The image of relieving her of her clothing, albeit with more finesse than she was likely expecting, lent itself to all kinds of intriguing conclusions.

  But it wasn’t to be.

  “Turn around,” she said.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Really, Mina? We’ve just survived an emergency plane landing, we’re alone in the woods, and we’re married.”

  She set her jaw and nodded.

  “You’re a child,” he said, turning.

  Behind him, she muttered under her breath, “Just because I’m not an exhibitionist like everyone else around here...”

  He found himself smiling. And that in itself was unexpected. After starting his day with the punch to the solar plexus that had been Mina fresh in the morning, and closing it out by crash landing his favorite plane on a heretofore pristine beach, he wouldn’t have thought he could muster the mood for a smile.

  Stealing a quick glance over his shoulder, though, he caught a flash of Mina’s golden-brown skin before it disappeared beneath the black of his shirt and realized he could do more than smile. The glimpse was over before he’d barely had time to register it, and banally chaste at that, yet his mouth watered. The heat that raced through him was the same heat that had overtaken him when she had been in his arms the night before.

  Had it only been the night before when he’d kissed her for the first time? He’d have to add bending time to her list of uncanny abilities, this stranger who was his wife. In the short time he’d known her she had been transformed, and yet he realized now that the packaging was entirely superficial when it came to this woman. The core essence of her remained, no matter what she wore, and at her core she was the same woman he’d encountered in the chapel at their first meeting.

  The thought had him stealing another glance at her.

  She walked deliberately, her eyes continuously scanning the scenery. His shirt was large on her, though her breasts appeared to be doing their best to fill it out, and it occurred to him that it wasn’t fair to other women to have such a brilliant mind wrapped up in all that delicious packaging.

  They fell into sync, making their way through the woodlands, walking side by side, with Mina occasionally stopping to examine a particular plant or sign of wildlife, and Zayn tolerating the delays long enough for her to make a quick note in her pocket memo pad before he drove them onward.

  On one particularly exuberant occasion she stopped, gasping and pointing a waggling finger over his shoulder as a series of strange squeals escaped her throat.

  Zayn whipped around to catch a rustle in the underbrush and the sound of something scurrying away. Turning back to Mina, he waited for her to catch her breath.

  “It was a brown-beaked warbler!”

  He smiled. The brown-beaked warbler was one of the endemic species on the island. He’d seen them before, having taken countless trips to the island over the course of his life, but her excitement was catching nonetheless—like watching a child at Christmas.

  “To just happen upon one!” she gushed. “What are the chances?”

  Her color was up, and so bright that not even the black of his shirt could diminish her glow, and he realized that, despite the circumstances, he was enjoying this time with her. In a way he couldn’t remember enjoying anything since becoming King.

  It was hard to truly enjoy things after losing your father, learning that your uncle had been behind the plot that killed him, saying goodbye to your mother, because her home had become a house of mirrors filled with the ghost of her husband, hiding it all, and then assuming the throne—all within a year and a half. And yet here he was, enjoying himself nonetheless.

  As they continued their hike Mina grew bolder, pointing out more and more flora and fauna as if she were leading a tour group. None of the information was new to him, the island having been in his family for the last hundred years or so, but her enthusiasm charmed him. With every step, the combination of her earnest exuberance and being back on the island seemed to shake off some of the weight of the past two years.

  And she had no idea.

  “What exactly is your field of study?” he asked, suddenly feeling the gulf of his lack of knowledge about her.

  She frowned, eyeing him suspiciously. “I’m a biological systems scientist. Or rather, I was...” This last she’d added with a frown and a note of confusion.

  The uncertainty in her voice roused in him an urge to conquer and destroy, but her identity crisis wasn’t an enemy he could fight. She could thank their fathers for that.

  “You are still,” he said, trying anyway. “Becoming Queen does not negate your years of study.”

  She sent him a nod, accompanied by a vague smile, and he had the unusual experience of realizing she was humoring him.

  “It doesn’t,” he insisted, more determined in the face of her brush-off.

  “Of course not. I know that.”

  She put more effort into her smile, and it occurred to him that the expression would likely have fooled anyone who wasn’t looking closely.

  He was looking closely. “But...?” he asked.

  She sighed. “But what does a queen need a PhD in biological systems for?”

  He was still searching for an answer when she distracted him once again.

  “Look! Another warbler. A female, I think.”

  He obediently turned in the direction she pointed and smiled when he caught sight of the small, unassuming brown head.

  “Females are even more difficult to spot than males,” she squealed. “We’re lucky we’re here at the beginning of the mating season.”

  “You know quite a lot about our little warblers.”

 
She shook her head. “Not the warbler, actually. Just this particular bio-system. I was the only scholar at the university in over a decade to focus on Cyranese ecosystems. It was never as sexy as studying the famous ones, like the Great Barrier Reef or the Amazon, but my father always encouraged me to value my home and work for ‘the good of Cyrano...’”

  Her voice trailed off as they both followed the thought to its conclusion.

  Her father’s meaning and motivation were clear now, and they both knew that he had gone far beyond simply being an encouraging parent, but for the first time Zayn didn’t resent the man.

  “It certainly doesn’t hurt for a monarch to have a deep understanding of the nation in their charge.”

  She cringed, saying, “You don’t have to pretend when it’s just the two of us. We both know I’m no monarch.”

  Zayn raised a brow. “I believe there’s a small island nation which would disagree.”

  Instead of rising to his bait, she doubled down. “But we both know I’m a fraud.”

  “How do you come to say that?” he asked.

  “I’m a scholar. Not a queen.”

  “As far as I understand, being a queen entails inheriting or marrying into a throne—the second of which you have done.”

  “I’m an imposter.”

  He didn’t reply, scanning the scrub and the grasses that covered the ground around them, and smiling when he saw a cluster of the plants he was looking for. Four small stalks stuck out of the ground, each bearing leaves of shiny dark green, growing in sets of three. Crouching down, he reached toward the plants on the left.

  Mina opened her mouth to protest and he stopped, his finger just inches from the leaves.

  “The wax leaf sand thistle. Now, here is an imposter,” he said. “As I’m sure you know, Dr. Aldaba, this plant nefariously mimics its companion here, the wax leaf sugar sap, growing in the same conditions and showcasing almost identical foliage. But, whereas the wax leaf sugar sap is both a delectable treat for the spotted fallow deer that live on the island, and an important nitrogen fixer for the soil, the wax leaf sand thistle is bitter to the deer and known for stripping the earth. It mimics the sugar sap for its own benefit—using the deer to spread its seeds, while offering them nothing but a stinging mouth in return.” He rocked back on his heels before adding, “We don’t know each other well, Mina, but I don’t get the impression that you are a person out to take without giving back.”

  Leaning back further, to take her in, he noted the cracks in her inscrutable expression, her desire to believe him warring with her natural skepticism.

  When her eyes widened and rounded, he thought desire had won out—until she shouted, “Watch out!” just before he felt a sharp stinging pain in the fleshy side of his palm as his hand brushed too close to the thistle.

  The burn of it was immediate—another feature of the sand thistle was its shockingly powerful prick, often likened to that of a bee sting.

  Mina acted instantly, dropping her pack to crouch down and begin searching the undergrowth. Zayn distracted himself from the swelling throb in his hand by watching her move. It didn’t matter that he had no idea what she was doing, or that she wore baggy jeans and his shirt, there was something erotic about her in that position.

  She found whatever she was looking for with an, “Aha!” and was at his side an instant later. “Give me your hand.”

  Her command was absolute. She had no thought that she might be disobeyed, and he found a silly half-grin lifting the corner of his mouth at her authority, even through the discomfort of obliging her.

  She shoved the bunch of leaves he now saw she had collected into her mouth and chewed, before slapping the gooey mess on the place where his hand had made contact with the thistle.

  Instantly the pain subsided. A small sound of pleasure escaped him, and he didn’t know if the expressive slip-up had more to do with the sudden absence of discomfort, the fact that being on the island was like going back in time to an era when he hadn’t had to manage his every move, or the fact that Mina had just made him feel good.

  Her answering smile glowed with relief. “Systems science. Antidotes to the toxins that have evolved in a given environment can almost always be found nearby.”

  If she’d still been wearing her glasses, he imagined this would have been the moment she pushed them up the bridge of her nose, but there was no derision in the thought. Her earnestness wasn’t the cluelessness of a sheltered academic. She was just genuine.

  He came to his feet to hide just how that revelation hit him, and composed himself before offering her a hand. “And you said a queen had no use for a PhD in biological systems...”

  After a slight hesitation, and looking at his offered hand for a beat too long, she accepted it, letting him carry some of her weight as she came upright.

  “Thanks,” she said, when they both stood again.

  Her green-hazel eyes mirrored the color of the forest around them as she stared at him, revealing herself in the process, as natural and forthright as the woods.

  She stole his breath, but she didn’t seem to care that that gave her power—maybe she didn’t even know it.

  Heat was coming to her cheeks at their continued eye contact, and she cleared her throat. “Well, should we keep going?”

  Watching her trying to hide her reaction to him filled him with an unfamiliar urge to beat his chest and let out a wild howl. And even though the movement wouldn’t have been like any version of himself—not the island-exploring boy, not the passionate student, not the charming heir, and certainly not the King—he realized it came from the same place that made a man hunt and kill and die for his woman. It didn’t matter what version he was of himself. This part was his real essence.

  It wasn’t a comfortable realization.

  He wasn’t, however, about to wallow in his mind’s damning over-simplifications. The real world offered intrigue enough.

  Unlike his present company.

  The more time he spent with her, the more he realized she couldn’t offer intrigue if her life depended on it. However her father had managed to secure a royal betrothal so long ago, his daughter didn’t appear to have a machinating bone in her body.

  “Tell me about your mother?” he asked, curious to know if her earnestness stemmed from another source.

  “Do you know you’re quite bossy?” she retorted, rather than answering his question.

  He raised an eyebrow. “I ask about your mother and you resort to name-calling?”

  She snorted with a little laugh, watching the ground as she walked, at complete ease, and he realized he couldn’t remember the last time someone had snorted around him.

  He tried again. “Will you tell me about your mother?”

  She laughed out loud this time. “Even when you use the right words you can’t really ask for anything, can you?”

  She sparkled, and he marveled at her while she teased him as if he wasn’t the King.

  Glancing at him out the side of her eye, she asked slyly, “Don’t you have some sort of dossier on me?”

  Taking on the challenge in her question, he shrugged. “Of course. Your mother was born in Germany and came to Cyrano on a student visa. She dropped out of school and illegally outstayed her visa, during which time she met your father. They married, and through your father—who was a natural-born citizen and had been a military officer—earned her citizenship.”

  Her eyes had widened into small green gold orbs in her face and he laughed.

  “But what is that? Facts? I want to know what my mother-in-law is like.”

  He really was curious about the mother-in-law he had yet to meet, but he couldn’t remember the last time he had been able to laugh at his plans going awry. Mina, however, was unaware of that—completely oblivious to the fact that she and the island were drawing out parts of himself he’d thought long de
ad—and she laughed, the sound of it as bright as the sun overhead.

  “When you put it that way...”

  Her voice carried her smile with it, right into his chest, where it blossomed like a hothouse flower.

  “She is a devoted mother, and so strong—she had to be after we lost my father—”

  The ghost of pain in her voice was a quiet echo of the raw-edged thing that lived inside him, usually clawing its way up to the surface from the deep place where he had buried it the moment he let himself slow down, and in a strange way it was both comforting and hopeful.

  “I could have easily fallen into a depression after that, but she wouldn’t let me. She said that he was alive as long as I kept his dreams alive in my heart, and she encouraged me to keep getting up every day, to keep studying and trying, and not to just lie down and give up forever.”

  “Somehow, I don’t picture that ever happening,” he said, an image of her squaring her shoulders in the chapel coming to his mind. “You would have gotten back up eventually—though perhaps she was right to push you. Watching someone you love collapse in grief is...hard.”

  She searched his face before asking, “Your mother?”

  Irritated by the pinch her soft question set off in his chest, he answered with a short nod. “For a time it looked like I might lose her as well as my father. Ultimately she had to leave, so it didn’t matter that she’d got back up. I lost her anyway.”

  A thousand questions flashed across her eyes, but she only asked one. “What do you mean, she had to leave?”

  Like a terrier, she had grabbed hold of the one thing he’d said with the greatest implication for matters of state. Matters that had not been made public and that he had no intention of ever making so.

  And he’d thought her mind was only suited to science. She just might learn to be Queen after all. And, though he’d been enjoying the unfamiliar lightness of their conversation, he didn’t resent this, her inevitable intrusion into his personal life, as it was an opportunity to test her as Queen.

  Carefully, he said with casualness, “She was the true target of the assassination.”