by Cara Colter
But now he saw that, just like Shoshauna, he had been brought to this place to find what was really within himself.
He was a man who wanted to be loved.
And deserved to be loved.
A man who had come to know you could fill your whole world, but if it was missing the secret ingredient it was empty.
With the fire warm against their faces and the blanket wrapped around them, they slept under the winking stars and to the music of the crashing waves. He had not felt so peaceful, or so whole, for a long, long time.
But he awoke with a fighting man’s instinct just before dawn.
For a moment he was disoriented, her hair, soft as eiderdown, softer than he could have ever imagined it, tickling the bottom of his chin, her head resting on his chest, her breath blowing in warm puffs against his skin.
The feeling lasted less than half a second.
He could hear the steady, but still far off, wop-wop-wop of a helicopter engine, beneath that the steady but still-distant whine of powerboats.
He sat up, saw the boats coming, halfway between the island and the mainland, three of them forming a vee in the water, the helicopter zooming ahead of them to do reconnaissance.
The fire, he thought, amazed at his own stupidity. He’d been able to see the lights of the mainland from here, how could he have taken a chance by lighting that fire?
Because he’d been blinded, that’s how. He’d forgotten the number-one rule of protection, no not forgotten it, been lulled into believing, that just this once it would be okay to set it aside. But he’d been wrong. He’d broken the rule he knew to be sacred in his business, and now he was about to pay the price.
He knew that emotional involvement with the principal jeopardized their well-being, their safety. And he had done it anyway, putting his needs ahead of what he knew was right.
He’d acted as if they were on a damn holiday from the moment they’d landed on this island. Instead of snorkeling and surfing, he should have spent his time creating a defensible position: hiding places, booby traps, a fallback plan.
He felt the sting of his greatest failure, but there was no time now for self-castigation. There would probably be plenty of time for that later.
He eyed their own boat, the tide out, so far up on the sand he didn’t have a chance of getting it to the water before the other boats were on them, and he didn’t like the idea of being out in the open, sitting ducks. He could hear the engines of those other boats, anyway. They were far more powerful than the boat on the beach.
“Wake up,” he shouted at her, leaping to his feet, his hand rough on her slender shoulder.
There was no time to appreciate her sleep-ruffed hair, her eyes fluttering open, the way a line from his own chest was imprinted on her cheek. She was blinking at him with sleepy trust that he knew himself to be completely unworthy of.
He yanked her to her feet. She caught his urgency instantly, allowed herself to be pushed at high speed toward the cottage. He stopped there only briefly to pick up the Glock, two clips of ammo, and then he led the way through the jungle, to where he had chopped down the tree earlier.
He tucked her under the waxy leaves of a gigantic elephant foot shrub. “Don’t you move until I tell you you can,” he said.
“You’re not leaving me here!”
He instantly saw that her concern was not for herself but for him. This was the price for letting his barriers down, for not maintaining his distance and his authority. She thought listening to him was an option. She did not want to understand it was his job to put himself between her and danger.
She did not want to accept reality.
And his weakness was that for a few hours yesterday he had not accepted it either.
“Princess, do not make me say this again,” he said sharply. “You do not move until you hear from me, personally, that it’s okay to do so.”
Three boats and a helicopter. He had to assume the worst in terms of who it was and what their intent was. That was his job, to react to worst-case scenarios. There was a good chance she might not be hearing from him, personally, ever again. He might be able to outthink those kind of numbers, but their only chance was if she cooperated, stayed out of the way.
“My life depends on your obedience,” he told her, and saw, finally, her capitulation.
He raced back to the tree line, watched the boats coming closer and closer, cutting through the waters of the bay. His mind did the clean divide, began clicking through options of how to keep her safe with very limited resources. Not enough rounds to hold off the army that was approaching.
The boats drew closer, and suddenly he stood down. His adrenaline stopped pumping. He recognized Colonel Gray Peterson at the helm of the first boat, and he stepped from the trees.
Ronan moved slowly, feeling his sense of failure acutely. This was ending well, but not because of his competence. Because of luck. Because of that thing she had always seemed to trust and he had scorned.
Gray came across the sand toward him.
“Where’s the princess?” he asked.
“Secure.”
Of course she picked that moment to break from the trees and scamper down the beach. She must have left her hiding place within seconds of Ronan securing her promise she would stay there.
“Grandpa!” She threw herself into the arms of a distinguished-looking elderly man.
Ronan contemplated her disobedience—the complete disintegration of his authority over her—with self-disgust.
Gray looked at her, his eyebrows arched upward. “Good grief, man, tell me that’s not the princess.”
“I’m afraid it is.”
But Gray’s dismay was not because she had broken cover without being given the go-ahead.
“What on earth happened to her hair?”
The truth was Ronan could only vaguely remember what she had looked like before.
“She’s safe. Who cares about her hair?”
Gray’s look said it all. People cared about her hair. Ronan was glad she had cut it if it made her less of a commodity.
“She is safe, isn’t she?” Ronan asked. “That’s why you’re here? That’s why you didn’t wait for me to come in?”
“We made an arrest three days ago.”
“Who?” He needed to know that. If it was some organized group with terror cells all over the place, she would never be safe. And what would he do then?
Peterson lowered his voice. “You gave us the lead. Princess Shoshauna’s cousin, Mirassa. She was an old flame of Prince Mahail’s. You’ve heard that expression ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ but in this case it was more like high school high jinx gone very wrong.”
Ronan watched Shoshauna, felt her joy at being with her grandfather and felt satisfied that her instincts had been so correct. If she had that—her instincts—and now the ability to capture the power of the wave, she was going to be all right.
“You went deep,” Gray said, “if I could have found you I would have pulled you out sooner.”
Oh, yeah, he’d gone deep. Deep into territory he had no right going into, so deep he felt lost even now, as if he might never make his way out.
“But when one of the villagers saw the fire last night and reported it to her grandfather he knew right away she’d be here.” Gray glanced down the beach at her, frowning. “She doesn’t look like the same person, Ronan.”
Ronan was silent. She was the same person. But now she had a better idea of who that was, now, he hoped she would not be afraid to let it show, to let it shine.
He was aware of Gray’s sudden scrutiny, a low whistle. “Anything happen that I should know about?”
So, the changes were in him, too, in his face.
“No, sir.” Nothing anybody should know about. He would have to
live with the fact his mistakes could have cost her her life. Because they hadn’t, no one else had to know. Ronan watched the other two boats unload. Military men, palace officials, bodyguards.
“Where’s Prince Mahail?’ he asked grimly.
“Why would he be here?”
“If I was going to marry her and she’d disappeared, I’d sure as hell be here.” But only her grandfather had come. Not her mother. Not her father. Not her fiancé. And suddenly he understood exactly why she had loved a cat so much, the loneliness, the emptiness that had driven her to say yes instead no.
But she knew herself better now. She knew what she was capable of. As far as gifts went, he thought it was a pretty good one to give her.
Gray was looking at him strangely now, then he shook it off, saying officiously, “Look, I’ve got to get you out of here. Your commanding officer is breathing down my neck. Your Excalibur team is on standby waiting to be deployed. I’ve been told, in no uncertain terms, you’d better be back when they pull the plug. I’m going to signal the helicopter to drop their ladder.”
Ronan was a soldier; he trained for the unexpected; he expected the unexpected. But somehow it caught him completely off guard that he was not going to be able to say goodbye.
The helicopter was coming in low now in response to Gray’s hand signals, sand rising around it. The ladder dropped.
Don’t think, Ronan told himself and grabbed the swaying rope ladder, caught it hard, pulled himself up to the first rung.
With each step up the ladder, he was aware of moving back toward his own life, away from what had happened here.
Moments later, hands were reaching out to haul him on board.
He made the mistake of looking down. Shoshauna was running with desperate speed. She looked as if she was going to attempt to grab that ladder, too, as if she was going to come with him if she could.
But the ladder was being hauled in, out of the way of her reaching hands. Had he really been holding his breath, hoping she would make it, hoping by some miracle she could come into his world. Was he really not ready to let go? But this was reality now, the chasms between them uncrossable, forces beyond either of their control pulling them apart.
She went very still, a small person on a beach, becoming smaller by the second. And then, standing in the center of a cyclone of dust and sand, she put her hand to her lips and sent a kiss after him. He heard the man who had hauled him in take in a swift, startled gasp at the princess’s obvious and totally inappropriate show of affection for a common man, a soldier no different from him.
But he barely registered that gasp or the startled eyes of the crew turning to him.
Jake Ronan, the most pragmatic of men, thought he felt her kiss fly across the growing chasm between him and touch his cheek, a whisper of an angel’s wings across the coarseness of his whiskers, as soft as a promise.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHOSHAUNA LOOKED AROUND her bedroom. It was a beautiful room: decorated in turquoises and greens and shades of cream and ivory. Like all the rooms in her palatial home, her quarters contained the finest silks, the deepest rugs, the most valuable art. But with no cat providing lively warmth, her space seemed empty and unappealing, a showroom with no soul.
She was surrounded by toys and conveniences: a wonderful sound system; a huge TV that slid behind a screen at the push of a button; a state-of-the-art laptop with Internet access; a bathroom with spa features. But today, despite all that luxury, all those things she could occupy herself with, her room felt like a prison.
She longed for the simplicity of the island, and she felt as if she had been robbed of her last few hours with Ronan. She had thought they would at least have one more motorcycle ride together. No, she had even been robbed of her chance to say goodbye, and to ask the question that burned in her like fire.
What next?
The answer to that question lay somewhere in the six days of freedom she had experienced. She could not go back to the way her life had been before, to the way she had been before.
Where was Ronan? She still felt shocked at the abruptness of his departure. After that final night they had shared, she had wanted to say goodbye. No, needed to say goodbye.
Goodbye? That isn’t what she wanted to say! Hello. I can’t wait to know you better. I love the way I feel when I’m with you. You show me all that is best about myself.
There was a knock on her door, and she leaped off her bed and answered it, but it was one of the maids and a hairdresser.
“We’ve come to fix your hair,” the maid said cheerfully, “before you meet with Prince Mahail. I understand he’s coming this afternoon.”
Shoshauna did not stand back from the door to invite them in. She said quietly but firmly, “I happen to like my hair the way it is, and if Prince Mahail would like to see me he will have to make an appointment to see if it’s convenient for me.”
And then she shut the door, her maid’s mouth working soundlessly, a fish gasping out of water. For the first time since she had come back to this room, Shoshauna felt free, and she understood the truth: you could live in a castle and be a prisoner, you could live in a prison and be free. It was all what was inside of you.
A half hour later there was another knock on her door, the same maid, accompanied by a small boy, a street ragamuffin.
“He said,” the maid reported snippily, “he has something that he is only allowed to give to you. Colonel Peterson said it would be all right.”
The boy shyly held out the basket he was carrying and a book.
Shoshauna took the book and smiled at him. She glanced at the book. Chess Made Simple. Her heart hammering, she took the basket, heard the muted little whimper even before she rolled back the square of cloth that covered it.
An orange kitten stared at her with round green eyes.
She felt tears film her eyes, knew Ronan was gone, but that he had sent her a message.
Did he know what it said to her? Not “Learn to play chess,” not “Here’s a kitten to take the edge off loneliness.”
To her his message said he had seen the infinite potential within her.
To her his message said, “Beloved.” It said that he had heard her and seen her as no one else in her life ever had.
But then she realized this gift was his farewell gift to her. It said he would not be delivering any messages himself. Had he let his guard down so completely on that final day together because he thought he would never see her again?
Never see him again? The thought was a worse prison than this room—a life sentence.
She wanted to just slam her bedroom door and cry, but that was not the legacy of her week with Ronan. She had learned to be strong. She certainly had no intention of being a victim of her own life! No, she planned from this day forward to be the master of her destiny! To take charge, to go after what she wanted.
And to refuse what she didn’t want.
“Tell Prince Mahail I will see him this afternoon after all,” she said thoughtfully.
She realized she had to put closure on one part of her life before she began another. She did not consult her father or her mother about what she had to say to Mahail.
He was waiting for her in a private drawing room, his back to her, looking out a window. When she entered the room, she paused for a moment and studied him. He was a slight man, but handsome and well dressed.
She saw the boy who had said to her, years ago, as he was learning to ride a pony at his family’s compound, “Girls aren’t allowed.”
He turned and smiled in greeting, but the smile faltered when he saw her hair. She deliberately wore short sleeves so he could see the chunks of skin peeling off her arms, too.
He regained himself quickly, came to her and bowed, took both her hands.
“You are somewhat worse the wear f
or your adventure, I see,” he said, his voice sorrowful, as if she had survived a tsunami.
“Not at all,” she said, “I’ve never felt better.”
Of course he didn’t get that at all—that how she felt was so much more important than how she looked.
“I understand you have been unaccompanied in the presence of a man,” he said. “Others might see that as a smirch on your character, but of course, I do not. I understand the man’s character is unimpeachable.”
She knew she should be insulted that the man’s character was unimpeachable, but in fact it had been Ronan who had exercised self-control, not her. Still!
“How big of you,” she said. “Of course that man saved me from a situation largely of your making, but why think of that?”
“My making?” the prince stammered.
“You were cruel and thoughtless to Mirassa. She didn’t deserve that, and she retaliated. I’m not excusing what she did, but I am saying I understand it.”
The prince was beginning to look annoyed, not used to anyone speaking their mind around him, especially a woman. What kind of prison would that be? Not being able to be honest with the man you shared the most intimate things in the world with?
“And that man, whom others might see as having put a smirch on my character, was absolutely devoted to protecting me. He was willing to put my well-being ahead of his own.” To refuse everything I offered him, if he felt it wasn’t in my best interests.
“How noble,” the prince said, but he was watching her cautiously. She wasn’t supposed to speak her mind, after all, just toss her hair and blink prettily.
“Yes,” she agreed, “noble.” Ronan, her prince, so much more so than this man who stood in front of her in his silk and jewels, the aroma of his expensive cologne filling the room.
What would he say if she said she would rather smell Ronan’s sweat? She smiled at the thought, and Mahail mistook the smile for a change in mood, for coy invitation.
“Are you well enough, then, to reschedule the day of our marriage?” he asked formally.
So, despite the hair, the skin, her new outspokenness, he was not going to call it off, and suddenly she was glad, because that made it her choice, rather than his—that made it her power that had to be utilized.
