Guarding His Royal Bride

by C. J. Miller

  He had confided in her about Alexei. Maybe she had thought on the matter and had decided that he was a coward. Maybe his actions disgusted her. God knew he was disgusted with himself.

  Needing to burn off energy, Demetrius changed into jogging pants and a T-shirt and pulled on his running shoes. He didn’t often run outside, and when he did, he was accompanied by his servicemen. Tonight, he wanted the darkness and solitude to clear his thoughts. He needed quiet. He needed to be alone.

  He started out on his run, following a familiar route to the sea. He didn’t like to run on the sand, but Icarus had beautiful jogging paths that ran parallel to the water. Music wasn’t needed. Tonight his thoughts ran through his head on repeat.

  He wasn’t keeping track of the time or how far he had run. He decreased his pace, letting his breathing turn even and calm.

  Love of country and loyalty to family were the most important values to him. Iliana didn’t share either, at least not when it came to Icarus or him. How could he have thought she was right for him?

  The answer came immediately. She was right for him because she was. When he was with her, he could stop thinking about state matters and problems and revel in being with her. She was warm and welcoming; she was sweet and a little innocent. She made him feel like a man. Not a president or a warlord or a leader, just a man.

  Sex with her was mind-blowing. He knew the difference between going through the motions and passion. He and Iliana had passion in spades.

  A noise behind him had him turning. Another jogger. In the moonlight he caught a glimpse of an item in the jogger’s hand. A gun? A music player?

  Demetrius reached for his ankle gun, but the man was already on top of him, throwing a punch.

  Demetrius avoided the first strike and grappled for the weapon in the man’s hand. A knife, long and serrated.

  It had been a long time since Demetrius had lost a fistfight. He wouldn’t lose to a common pickpocket. Then four more men appeared.

  Demetrius had control of the knife, but it wasn’t enough. The other men had guns.

  “The Ghost says to back off.”

  The message would be delivered with a painful warning. Demetrius flinched when the first bullet hit him. He fell to the ground and reached for his phone.

  He didn’t want to die in the street, but if this was his fate, he needed to tell Iliana something important. He needed his wife to know that in the ways that mattered, she would always be in his heart.

  Chapter 10

  Abeiron appeared in their bedroom doorway. Considering it was so unlike him to invade their private space, Iliana knew something was wrong.

  Was she being escorted out of the country? Taken to live elsewhere away from Demetrius? He hadn’t spoken to her since that terrible conversation in the library. She regretted what she had said to him, knowing that trying to force Demetrius to do anything was pointless. She should have won him over, not tried to batter him into doing what she wanted with ultimatums and the threat of divorce. “What’s wrong?”

  Abeiron would not look at her. “You need to come with me. The president has been shot.”

  Panic tore through her. She grabbed the first clothes she could find and hurried after Abeiron.

  On the drive to the hospital, Iliana prayed. Demetrius could not die. He was the toughest man she knew. He was practically bulletproof. She asked Abeiron questions he didn’t have the answers to. They were nonsensical, and she was repeating herself. She was a wreck.

  How had he been shot? Where was he? What had happened?

  When she arrived at the hospital, Demetrius was in surgery, and a hospital administrator met her in a private lounge. “I want to be in there with him.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. DeSante. You cannot. I will take you to a comfortable place to rest.”

  “Rest? Do you think I’ll rest now? While my husband is in surgery?”

  Iliana had a flashback to when her parents had died in the car accident. It had been terrible, clinging to the hope that the doctors and nurses could help, when she had known they could not. She had prayed it had been a case of mistaken identity and her parents were still alive.

  This could not be happening again. Someone she cared for was slipping away, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

  “I want to be close to him. Take me where I can be close to him.”

  They allowed her to sit outside the operating room on the floor. Her guards remained with her. As a nurse passed, she knelt next to Iliana. “We are praying for your husband. Do you know that I’m a nurse because of him?”

  Iliana didn’t follow. “What do you mean?”

  “The president set up a program to help single parents get an affordable education. Instead of working two jobs and barely making ends meet, now I make good money here.” She patted Iliana’s shoulder. “He’ll be okay.”

  Another nurse stopped and handed Iliana a rosary. “This was my grandmother’s. I want you to have it. Say prayers for your husband and the Blessed Virgin will hear them. The president is a good man.”

  As more people stopped to console her, Iliana realized that his countrymen had seen the same side of him that she had in private. He was harsh and direct but honorable, too. He wanted to help his countrymen and women.

  Iliana kept to her post outside the operating room. Eight hours later, the surgeon came to speak to her. She rose to her feet, knowing if she had anything in her stomach, she would have been sick.

  “Your husband has lost a lot of blood. The Good Samaritan who called us saved his life. Any longer without medical care, and the president would have bled out.”

  She wanted to cry from stress and worry and exhaustion. “What was he doing alone?”

  “I can’t answer that,” the doctor said. “Hopefully, tomorrow morning, you can ask him that yourself.”

  A few hours later, Iliana was curled on a bench underneath a window in his hospital room. Demetrius was hooked to machines that beeped all night. The sound was comforting. It meant her husband was alive.

  * * *

  When Demetrius woke, he remembered what had happened. If he hadn’t, the aching in his shoulder that pulsed through his arm and across his chest was a painful reminder. The jog in the park and his insistence that he run alone. Stupid, considering the Ghost was targeting his wife, and since Demetrius had made no secret of his mission to uncover the Ghost’s identity, he was a target.

  His behavior disgusted him for myriad reasons. He knew better. He didn’t go into battle alone. He didn’t run from his problems. He’d needed a release. Iliana got under his skin and into his head and confused him.

  No other woman had ever made him feel this way.

  His shoulder and arm felt heavy and sore, but at least his arm was still attached. Wiggling his fingers, he was relieved they moved. He must be drugged, which he didn’t like. Making decisions quickly required a clear head.

  What time was it? No clock in his room. How long had he been unconscious?

  A dozen pressing issues sprang to mind. He had meetings to attend and decisions to make. He didn’t have time for this! He struggled to sit up, ignoring the pulling from the various cords taped to his body.

  His eyes fell on his wife, who was sitting, or rather sleeping, on the couch under the window on the far side of the room. She was curled up with her legs tucked close and her head resting on her elbows.

  Surprise washed over him. “Iliana.”

  She opened her eyes, and she smiled at him. After the sleep cleared from them, her smile faltered. Was she remembering their argument? Concerned about him? Was his condition more dire than he thought? He felt okay. He was breathing on his own and no tubes were shoved down his throat.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, crossing to his bedside. She was wearing a green dress that flowed to her an
kles, and it swayed with her feminine stride.

  His throat was dry. He swallowed. “How long was I asleep?”

  “Twelve hours,” she said. She reached to his bedside table and handed him a cup with a straw.

  With a nod of thanks, he took the cup from her hand. No way was she helping him drink. He wasn’t that weak. He took a sip. “Twelve hours is long enough. I need my phone.”

  Worry darted across her face. “You need to rest.”

  “I will rest. While I work.”

  Iliana set her hand over his arm. “I don’t think you understand what happened.”

  “I understand it.” He didn’t want to go over what a fool he had been. He knew. Most of the country probably knew.

  He pressed the call button for the nurse. Perhaps his wife would not obey him and deliver his phone, but others would. A nurse appeared in moments, wringing her hands. “Yes, Mr. President?”

  “My phone. I need my phone.”

  “Yes, sir.” She hurried from the room, hopefully to find it or someone who could give him a new one.

  “Demetrius, you need to take a break. You were shot twice.”

  He pressed the button to move the bed into a sitting position. Pain shot across his chest. He ignored it. “I know I was shot, Iliana. I’m pissed this happened. I never go running without my servicemen.”

  She set her hand on his forearm. “Why did you last night?”

  He had wanted to blend in and disappear. Demetrius was smart enough to know that he was recognizable. He was a target, and his position dictated he needed protection. His hubris had allowed him to believe he could defend himself. Being alone without quick access to his weapon, he’d been an easy mark. But running with his gun strapped to his chest hadn’t been an option.

  Yesterday, he had wished he wasn’t president. People surrounded him all the time. More than two hundred people worked in his private residence. Seventy members of his government either advised him or reported to him on a weekly basis. He was the president, but he also wanted to be himself. In recent years, he wasn’t sure who that was anymore.

  As the leader of a great nation, he’d always known that he’d sacrifice his personal life for the good of the country. He hadn’t cared about that until he had met Iliana. Now he wanted a small piece of himself just for her. “I wanted to be alone.”

  Iliana bit her lower lip, and it drew his attention to her mouth. Her luscious, kissable mouth. “Did you want to be alone to think about our fight?” She whispered the question, her voice strained.

  The fight had upset him. Many things upset him. Most of the time, he shoved “upset” and related emotions into a deep, dark unvisited corner of his mind and focused his attention on critical situations. Using that technique to solve his problems with his wife didn’t work as well. “In part.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Demetrius.”

  He couldn’t interpret the tears. He reached to wipe one that fell down her cheek. “Are you sorry that I was shot or sorry that you plan to divorce me?”

  His words hit their mark, and she winced. “Both.” She wiped at her tears and reached for a tissue from the box mounted to the wall.

  He didn’t want to talk about his failings as a president or his failings as a man. His personal life was a mess. Not having an example of a satisfying, healthy relationship, he didn’t know that he’d ever find one, or if he did, what it would look like. He’d thought Iliana could be that for him, but she didn’t want him. That knowledge didn’t make him angry. It made him sad.

  He didn’t like dealing with sad.

  In desperate times, he turned to what he knew, which were facts. Dealing in battle plans and countermeasures made sense. Navigating love and marriage blew his mind. “The attack was orchestrated by the Ghost. It was a message for me to back off.”

  She inhaled sharply. “The Ghost? How do you know? Never mind, you know everything. You could have been killed.”

  “Dying would have saved you the trouble of divorcing me,” he said. A half joke, but in some ways on point.

  She flinched. “Don’t say things like that. You’re lucky to be alive. I was scared for you, Demetrius. I was scared we would have these unspoken things between us.”

  Unspoken things? He didn’t think adding more marital problems to the conversation would make it better, and he didn’t need for things to be worse now. “I talked you into marrying me. I talked you into giving us a chance after you learned about your father. I can’t keep convincing you to stay with me.” Pride kept him from telling her that she’d turned his head around and that she meant a lot to him. If she turned away after he threw those emotions on the table, he couldn’t handle it.

  He wouldn’t press her to stay, even if losing her meant losing the happiest part of his day. “I won’t force you to live a life you hate.” His father had done that to his mother for too many years before she had escaped. His mother hadn’t spoken of how she had managed to leave, only that friends had helped her run away with her children and that she had started over from nothing.

  He wouldn’t subject another person to that.

  “You think in black and white, right and wrong. I will free Alexei, and that is a vow I will hold in my heart. But with us, I don’t know what to think.”

  “Not knowing what to think is different than wanting a divorce.” If she would be clear with him, he’d give her anything she asked for, even if it killed him.

  “I deeply regret the last words we spoke to each other.”

  Regretted them out of guilt? “If the words you spoke were the truth, why regret them?”

  “You could have died.”

  “No,” Demetrius said, touching his shoulder. “I would not have.”

  “Stop being so difficult! According to your doctors, you almost died. The media was reporting grim news and people were sending flowers to your house and making a memorial out of the location where you were attacked. Strangers stopped me in the hospital to offer their sympathies, as if you were already dead. I only held it together because I knew that you were alive. But how do you think I would feel if you had died?”

  He didn’t understand her. She wanted to end their marriage and yet she would have mourned his death? “Tell me what you would have regretted. Say what you need to say now, while I’m strapped to these monitors and can’t leave.” He reached to turn off the pain medication dripping into his IV. He didn’t want his senses to be dulled to the physical pain, and no medication would help the hurt he’d feel when Iliana walked out on him. It was a depressing and sobering thought and he didn’t want to look too deeply into it. Because she was his wife and he cared for her? Loved her?

  She shook her head. “You’re an impossible man.”

  “I’ve made no secret of that.”

  She folded her arms, closing herself off. “You’re controlling and domineering and secretive.”

  “That’s also true. I didn’t lie to you about that or pretend otherwise.”

  “Before we were married, you were sweet and considerate.”

  “I am still considerate of your feelings when the situation allows,” he said.

  She shook her head in disbelief. “I feel as if I’m talking and you’re not listening. Do you wonder why this marriage frustrates me? It’s because I need to be with someone who trusts me and values me enough to share his innermost secrets and who treats me like an equal. You know things, things that could affect me, and you hide them from me because you think I’m weak.”

  Demetrius blinked at her. She had told him yesterday she planned to leave him. Today she wanted inside his private life. He wanted to let her in. He wanted to trust her. Could he? “I see.”

  “Demetrius—” She stopped short when his doctor walked into the room.

  Demetrius was grateful for the interruptio
n. His feelings for Iliana were unclear. He wanted her as his wife, but he wouldn’t force her to remain his. He wanted her in his bed, but he didn’t know if he could trust her to sleep beside him. She wanted to be closer to him; at the same time she wanted to leave him.

  What was he supposed to make of that?

  * * *

  Demetrius exited the hospital, holding Iliana’s hand. Cameras flashed and reporters called out questions. Iliana and Demetrius were wearing bulletproof vests. His had been put on over his bandages, which were well hidden below his suit. His movements betrayed no indication of the pain she knew he was feeling. Demetrius had refused to take pain medication and waved off the doctor who had offered him prescriptions. Iliana had taken the pill bottles and slipped them into her handbag when Demetrius was signing his discharge papers.

  He was a hardheaded man. The pain would catch up to him and she would be ready to help him when it did. If she had to grind up the pills into his food as if he were a child, then fine.

  She giggled at the idea.

  “What’s funny?” he asked her, leaning close to her ear.

  Cameras snapped around them. Must have been a good photo op. Or she looked deranged laughing on the heels of her husband being hospitalized. She blamed stress and lack of sleep.

  “I was thinking if I have to medicate you, I will.”

  He gave her a sideways look. “Are you talking about drugging me?” His tone had a teasing sound to it.

  “Only if you leave me no options.”

  He smiled at her, a huge smile she knew was covering pain and hurt. He was acting as if the incident had been as minor as twisting his ankle and that their marriage was rock solid.

  Iliana waved and smiled to the crowd. She had seen her cousin do this a hundred times, hiding her anxiety and stress and fear beneath a facade of calm.

  They climbed into the waiting SUV. Demetrius released her hand immediately and moved to the farthest side of the bench. The media couldn’t see into the tinted windows. The walk from the hospital had been a show. Her heart fell, and she wished again that she knew how to pretend she didn’t care.