Terror scraped along the inside of my skin, crawling like biting ants, but something strange and fierce in my brain told me not to fight.
The huge bear loomed over me, body pressing ever so slightly into mine, his mouth lowered to my ear.
“Don’t move,” he growled as his palm relaxed only slightly against my mouth.
“Where exactly do you think I’m going to go?” I hissed, pushing back ineffectually at the solid mass of muscle that was currently pinning me into place.
He pulled back. “Do be quiet, Your Highness.”
I froze. Shock, surprise, fear tumbled together as it hit me.
The man had spoken to me in Driedish.
A perfect, native Driedish accent.
Your Highness.
He knew who I was.
And I knew those eyes, even in the dark.
“Hugh?” I said, my voice barely more than an exhalation against the heat of his still-hovering hand.
The bear nodded, a precise movement. No energy spared, because all one million kilowatts were totally focused on me.
All of that muscle tensed against me, to keep me in place.
All of the ferocity, leashed only for me.
All of his attention.
On.
Me.
It was all a goddamned lie.
I pushed back, my hands free of the soaps and towels that had flown everywhere when Hugh Konnor sprang out of the fucking shadows and scared the shit out of me. “What the hell are you thinking?” Scratch that. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Let the record show that while I had pushed him with quite a bit of my available strength, the man barely budged. But he did move his palms to the wall beside me, so perhaps I should have been grateful.
I was not.
“Let me go!” I slapped at his arms, but he caught my hands easily and wrapped them around my back. If anyone saw this, they would assume we were in the middle of a passionate embrace. In the dark, against a wall. Tangled together.
But this was Hugh—no, I mentally adjusted the way I saw him. This was Konnor. A royal bodyguard. A man from my past had found me.
Not only that, but it was that man.
The man I had told Signore Rossi about, the man who had definitely not been my first love.
He was also the man who was most definitely about to get his ass kicked out of my apartment as soon as I could figure out how to put on an extra hundred pounds of muscle and win an arm-wrestling contest with an ex-soldier who had at least fifteen years of military and national-security experience.
“Let me go,” I hissed again. “You have no right to barge in here and take me prisoner!”
Konnor’s grip relaxed, but he didn’t let me go. “There’s a man in your apartment.”
I paused for a moment, processing the strange way he said that. A declaration, not a question. But… “Seriously?” My voice rose. “Don’t tell me you’ve come all this way to throw a man out of my boudoir. I’m seriously flattered. Last time we met you couldn’t have cared less who I had in my bed. My grandmother must not be giving you enough work to do back at the palace.”
His golden eyes glinted in the dark. “Do you know that there’s a fugitive in your apartment?”
“Which one?”
His dark brows crunched together.
“I own this apartment we’re standing in. Are you a fugitive?” Oh. My mouth dropped as I drew a quick breath. “Is that why you’re hiding in the dark?” So many possibilities flew through my imagination. “Are you kidnapping me?”
“Christ,” Konnor swore. He let my hands go but he still loomed in front of me, as solid and unyielding as the plaster wall at my back. “I didn’t even know you were here,” he spat. “So stop playing games and tell me if Christian Fraser-Campbell is upstairs in that apartment.”
This was about Christian? That pale, sickly shadow of a man? I opened my mouth to confirm that yes, Christian was recovering from a bad bout of flu in my spare room, but something made me stop.
That something was my intense irritation at this current situation.
“Did you rent this apartment?” I demanded. His head tilted slightly. I’d take that as a yes. “And you did it with the purpose of interrogating me about who I invite into my home?”
“Look. I don’t have time—”
“I’m a private citizen now, Konnor. I don’t have to do anything you—”
He swore again, slapped the wall and took three steps back. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way.”
“Or no way,” I offered, quite reasonably, I thought.
“You let me in and introduce me to your guest,” he said with a grimace. “Or I bust down the door with a team of my colleagues and we take him by force.”
A flush of heat and I saw red. “How dare you!” I sputtered. “You can’t do that!”
He leaned in and smiled without joy. “Like you said, you’re a private citizen now. I assure you I can.”
And while Konnor was thoroughly pissing me off, I realized that what was most maddening was…he was right. I was not a princess. I had been cut off from the family. I couldn’t threaten him with retribution from the Queen because she wouldn’t answer my phone calls anymore.
I was simply a woman. Powerless in the face of sheer brute force.
Or was I?
“On whose authority do you enter these premises?” I demanded.
He shrugged, an infuriating posture. “I rented it out. Paid for two nights.”
My fists clenched. “And that gives you the legal authority to enter my private apartment?”
“I’m an officer of the law—”
“In Drieden,” I interrupted, trying desperately to find a loophole that would put me back in control.
“There’s international reciprocity, especially in the case of imminent danger, like when…” He cocked his head. “I heard something. Did you hear that?”
“What?”
He started walking toward the back entrance.
“What did you hear?” I demanded, following him.
“That cry for help.” His steps quickened as he entered the utility area and reached for the door that led to the stairway.
“I didn’t hear—” I broke off because I realized my idiocy. He was already half a flight ahead of me, taking those stairs three or four at a time, and I knew he’d find the door lodged open because I had left it like that just in case Christian called out for me.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
I heard a crash, a shout, a Driedish curse.
I ran into my apartment and saw the back end of Konnor running out the front door. The security system monitors were all ablaze and lit up.
Christian.
I knew he was gone even before I looked for him. The apartment felt deserted. But still I checked the spare room. His shoes were nowhere to be found.
I barely had time to think through my next steps. It was really instinct telling me what to do.
Christian had left his small leather bag.
Take it.
My computer.
Shove it in the bag.
A coat. My keys. My wallet.
I’ll buy what I need later.
Any second, Konnor and/or his buddies from the Royal Secret Service were going to come back in here and demand that I give them whatever they were looking for.
They expected me to be a good little princess, docile and obedient and completely okay with them ruining the story of the year.
Like hell I was.
Go.
Chapter Seven
I had fallen into bed around three in the morning, after I had gotten lost in the back roads outside of Santa Chiara, which was understandable. It had been nearly five years since I had visited my mother’s Tuscan villa, and i
n those days I was still chauffeured behind tinted glass.
The warmth of the late-morning sunshine through the window was comforting, even as the memory of the night before crept back to me.
My home in Varenna, the little enclave of semi-normalcy and independence I had carved out was, likely, gone.
Finding Christian Fraser-Campbell wandering about the town was an unlikely coincidence. A palace security officer in my rental apartment was not.
Somehow or another, my location had been discovered. I would not be able to return to Varenna, not unless I was ready to have my door beaten down by the press and other obnoxious persons like Hugh Konnor.
But even in the blessed silence of my mother’s house in the middle of the Italian countryside, I was living on borrowed time. Someone, sooner or later, would visit this villa. And with the kind of luck I had, it would most likely be Felice.
I was lucky, though. Not every woman had a mother who had collected extravagant real estate while she was married to the Crown Prince of Drieden. Her “hidey-holes,” she called them. When I was twenty-one and decided to study art history in Rome, Felice had taken me aside and given me the access codes to this particular hidey-hole. “In case you need to escape the city with someone tall, dark and Roman,” she had purred.
I won’t be coy. Mother’s villa had come in handy, a time or two. And for that reason—and others—a few years later, I invested in my own first hideaway in Varenna. But maybe this Tuscan villa had always been my back-up, I realized. Maybe I’d known, even then, that a well-prepared woman planned multiple escape routes. As Mother had taught me.
The not-too-musty linens reminded me that someone must keep an eye on my mother’s house and that, even here, I could not count on privacy for long. I would keep the lights off for a few days while I plotted my next steps—whatever those were going to be.
I was ranking the possibilities as I slid out of bed and washed. I could go into hiding again. The mountains? America? If I mixed a bit of both, I could run off to Patagonia, as Mother had done. Nothing but hundreds of miles of open air and the occasional South American polo player/cologne model. The idea had merit.
But so did the story of the disappearance of Christian Fraser-Campbell. I patted his leather bag, which I had picked up the night before. When I was safely out of Varenna, I had pulled over and looked through it briefly, searching for any possible clues about where Christian was going next—and what he was running from. I had found only one piece of evidence—a pad of paper from a hotel in Rome. I’d go there next, and maybe someone would have contact information for him—or anyone who knew him. It could jeopardize my privacy to start asking questions in public, instead of anonymously in an email or over the phone, but the pay-off would be worth it. A mystery solved. A huge, shocking revelation. It would cement the journalism career of Clémence Diederich.
If I decided to do the piece, I reminded myself. I wanted to talk to Christian again. Get some answers. And some assurances.
It was habit that made me go to the kitchen, even as I knew there would be nothing fresh to eat. But this was one of Felice’s hidey-holes, and what good was an impromptu assignation spot without some coffee or basic pantry staples?
Still thinking about the best way to travel incognito and how to cautiously approach Christian’s friends and associates, I didn’t notice the man at the kitchen table until it was too late.
I screamed.
Backed up against the wall.
He didn’t move, but he did look mildly irritated.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “How did you get in?”
Fucking Hugh Konnor, of Her Majesty’s Royal Guard. In the bright morning light, I saw him much more clearly than I had in the apartment. His usually close-cropped dark hair had grown, along with an auburn beard and mustache. It had been years since I’d seen him like this, in close quarters, without a crowd of people around.
His arms rested on the table, the sleeves of his thermal woolen shirt pulled up to reveal muscular forearms. A thick black tattoo skated along the outside of his right arm. My attention wanted to linger there. To decipher the code. But it didn’t matter what it represented.
I needed Hugh Konnor out of this house. Immediately.
“I’ll ask once more. What are you doing here?” I hadn’t been a princess in so long, I’d forgotten how to sound princessy, and my voice showed it. It was thin, flimsy. Useless.
“I followed you, Your Highness.”
“I’m not a royal princess anymore. Please don’t call me that.”
His jaw tightened. “Mrs. Di Bernardo.”
“Oh, please, no.” My stomach heaved at the sound of my married name. I put a hand over my mouth. Something flickered in his eyes and his lips pressed tightly together.
“You followed me,” I echoed, hoping to get back to the topics I was most concerned about. “I don’t know why you would do such a thing. You can leave.” He stayed seated at the table. “Any time,” I added. Still, the man didn’t move.
A flutter of fear caused my stomach to flip. A small black canister on the kitchen table caught my attention. My pepper spray. Something I had bought when I first lived on my own and was jumping at every sound. I had left it in my car the night before…hadn’t I? Or had I brought it in, left it there when I stumbled through the house in the dead of night? I couldn’t remember.
Konnor noticed me looking at it and he pushed it toward me. “You can have it, if it makes you feel better.”
I lurched forward and clutched at the pepper spray, bringing it back with me against the wall. Konnor had been right. The small cylinder in my hand comforted me, but only a little.
Hugh Konnor’s presence wasn’t disconcerting, exactly. No more than that of any other member of Her Majesty’s Royal Guard would be.
Lie.
Okay, yes. Hugh Konnor was exactly the worst person to find me. To follow me. No other guard despised me as much. And the feeling was mutual. No other officer made me this nervous, this…panicked.
I wanted him gone, immediately.
Which is what I said. “Please leave, Mr. Konnor.” I held up the can of pepper spray. It was somewhat of an automatic gesture, more defensive than a threat.
“I’m afraid I cannot.” To his credit, he looked sincerely regretful. But also—strangely—pissed off.
“You can. There’s nothing stopping you.” I waved on the direction of the door. “Please remove yourself from this property.” And if you could, oh, I don’t know, manage to not tell anyone that you saw me, that would be great.
I didn’t add the request for his silence. Of all the palace security staff, Hugh Konnor was the most by-the-book officer I had ever known. As soon as he left, he would have a form filled out in triplicate detailing what had happened the day before. “Shit,” I said. “You’ve already reported this, haven’t you?” My chest started to hurt. “You’re waiting for back-up or something, aren’t you?”
I had to get out of here. My car was in the drive. My bag was in the bedroom. Would he stop me if I ran back to get it? Would he tackle me? Force me to stay?
“You can’t stop me from going,” I said, in a voice that didn’t sound like my normal self. I was shaking. A little hysterical. I hated being emotional in front of Hugh Konnor. “I’m a private citizen. I have rights,” I added, even though I knew how little that had meant to him when he was in my apartment in Varenna.
He stood slowly, holding his hands out in front of him as if he were calming a snapping dog.
“What are you doing?” I leaned back into the wall, wishing it would swallow me up. Anything to get me out of here.
“Your Highness—”
“No.”
“Your…” He broke off, then recovered. “Caroline.”
My name. The first time I’d heard my own name in months. And it was out of the mouth of this man?
“I haven’t called anyone.” His voice was still low, as if he meant to soothe. “But I can’t let you go, either. Not until—”
I leaped at the opportunity. “Until what?”
“Until you tell me what you were doing in Varenna with Christian Fraser-Campbell.”
Oh, right. Okay. I could do that, just to get him to leave. I opened my mouth to explain, to tell the simple truth about how I’d coincidentally run into Christian on a village street, but just then a bell rang at the front door of the villa.
Konnor snapped to attention, all alert and straight. “Were you expecting someone?” he asked in a low voice.
I shook my head, biting my lip in silence. He nodded and held a finger out to me. “Stay right there. I’ll take care of it.”
When he left the kitchen I allowed myself to slump with relief, and it was if the moment of relaxation triggered my brain to start problem-solving again. Putting the pieces together.
Konnor seemed surprised by someone ringing the bell, which gave credence to his statement that he hadn’t alerted the Secret Service—or anyone—as to my whereabouts.
And, I reasoned with myself, why would he? My grandmother had stripped me of my royal titles and removed me from the line of succession. There was no reason for Her Majesty’s Royal Guard to keep tabs on me anymore.
But I had still disappeared from public eye. Knowing my grandmother—and the rest of my family—the way I did, I was sure they were dying to at the very least monitor my movements.
Maybe. If they still cared.
Maybe that’s why Konnor hadn’t called anyone. No one cared. And if so, that meant he hadn’t been looking for me in Varenna. He had certainly seemed surprised enough when he had his arm against my throat.
But how had he found me, if he hadn’t been trying to search for me… Why had he followed me to my mother’s Tuscan hidey-hole?
My stomach twisted—from nerves, from the exertion of survival, from the execution of secrets. Footsteps sounded down the hall—just one set. I had lost my chance to run.
The Royal Bodyguard Page 4
