Royal Mate

by Juniper Hart

  As he hopped into the squad car, Cameron wondered who it was that Bob had hit.

  He didn’t identify her by name, the sheriff realized. He probably doesn’t know her.

  It was hard to believe. In a town the size of Great Falls, Bob Jacobs was apt to know everyone. He had a long-standing market in the heart of town where he inevitably came to know all the residents. He was as much a fixture in the community as anyone could be.

  Probably a drunk tourist, Cameron thought, gritting his teeth. He really could have done without the drama this morning. The freshwater springs at Giant Springs State Park sometimes brought along the type of people Great Falls could do without.

  In mere minutes, Cameron was at the site of the accident, and for a moment, his heart seemed to freeze.

  As Bob had stated, both cars were in dire condition: the grocery store owner’s Toyota Tacoma was sandwiched to the size of a compact car, and a shiny silver Mercedes was in smithereens.

  How the hell did they walk away from that unscathed? Cameron leapt from the cruiser to examine the scene.

  Bob was standing on the sidewalk, his arms folded firmly over his chest, bald head turned slightly away from a hauntingly beautiful brunette who was yelling directly in the shopkeeper’s ear.

  “Bob?” Cameron asked as he approached. “Are you all right?”

  Bob’s annoyance seemed to melt into relief as he saw the sheriff, and without speaking, he pointed at the irate girl.

  “I will be fine if you can get her out of my face,” he said pleadingly, his hazel eyes wide with exasperation. Cameron could see the mild-mannered man was on his last nerve.

  Imagine having to arrest Bob Jacobs for assault, he thought, swallowing a smile as he envisioned the community backlash. Still, he could tell that it was a real possibility by the way Bob was twitching.

  Cameron turned sternly to the woman.

  “Miss, I need you to stop screaming,” he told her flatly. The beauty’s face turned more furious as she stared at him.

  “You call this screaming?” she shrieked. “You will know when I am screaming!”

  Cameron gritted his teeth and studied her closely. He was sure she was not a Great Falls native, but there was something oddly familiar about her, something he could not place.

  Maybe she is a tourist, he thought, peering at the shredded Mercedes.

  “What happened here?” Cameron asked stoically, and the young woman threw up her hands in frustration.

  “This idiot hit my car!” she snapped before Bob could speak.

  Cameron found himself growing angry with the boisterous girl.

  “Do not speak again,” he ordered her and turned fully to the store owner. “Bob? Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “I was going straight and this deranged woman decided to make a left turn in front of me!”

  “Deranged?” the woman cried. “Are you kidding me? You ran a red light!”

  Cameron glanced at her. “What did I tell you about speaking, miss?”

  “You can’t shut me up!” she yelled. “What is this? The good old boys club where women can’t say anything? Am I in Montana or in the fifties?”

  Cameron didn’t want to deal with her attitude. “I am going to place you under arrest now,” he told her monotonously. A part of him enjoyed watching her jaw drop as he pulled the handcuffs from his waistband.

  “You’re what?”

  Her voice was so high, he was shocked it did not shatter the nearby windows. Bob grimaced and put his fingers in his ears.

  “For what?” the girl demanded as Cameron slipped the bracelets on her skinny wrists.

  “For being a public nuisance and causing an accident, for starters. I am going to run a breathalyser on you in a minute, after I finish taking Bob’s statement.”

  “I am not drunk!” she bellowed as he led her to the rear of the squad car. “This is false arrest!”

  Cameron maintained his calm, slamming the door on her inane babbling before turning his attention back to Bob.

  “Has she been like this the entire time?” he asked, and the older man nodded, sighing.

  “Thank God you got here when you did or you would have walked onto a murder suicide scene.”

  “I’ll talk to some witnesses and then I guess I’ll deal with that one,” Cameron said as he pointed to the squad car. “Can I call someone to take you home?”

  Bob shook his head.

  “Betsy is on her way now. She just dropped Devon off at the sitter so we can go to the insurance company.” He turned his full attention to the sheriff. “This wasn’t my fault, Cameron. She made a left turn when the light was still green, I swear it.”

  The sheriff nodded.

  “I believe you,” he replied, glancing back at the nearly hysterical brunette. “The way she’s acting speaks volumes for her attention span. She was probably texting or putting on her mascara. I wonder what she’s doing in these parts, anyway.”

  “I guess you’re gonna find out,” Bob chuckled.

  Cameron ran his tongue along his teeth. His gums were beginning to throb, and he steeled himself to be calm. He could not afford to lose control. While he had kept his composure, the woman had instilled annoyance in him, and he willed himself not to react to it. Reluctantly, he shuffled off to speak with the witnesses who had stuck around, already knowing what they would say; the unstable brunette had made an illegal turn and caused the crash.

  By the time he had returned to the squad car, he fully expected her to have tired herself out, but to his surprise, she was still fuming.

  “It’s about goddamn time!” she raged. “You didn’t even crack a window! I could have suffocated in here.”

  Cameron arched an eyebrow, amused.

  “It’s fifty-four degrees outside,” he told her matter-of-factly. “And you’re not an infant in a car seat.”

  He started the cruiser as the tow trucks appeared to clear away the wreckage.

  “Where are they taking my car?” she cried, watching the scene with her nose pressed to the window.

  Cameron stared at her in the rear view. “You know the car is destroyed, don’t you?” he asked. “You saw it, right?”

  “It’s the only transportation I have!”

  He bit on the insides of his cheeks. “What’s your name?”

  For the first time since encountering her, the woman fell deadly quiet, and Cameron turned his neck to stare at her.

  “You don’t want to tell me your name? Will I find you in the system?”

  “No!” she answered quickly. “My name is…” She hesitated. “Grace.”

  “Do you have a last name, Grace?”

  “Kelly.”

  Cameron snorted and she turned to stare back out the window.

  “Grace Kelly? Is that what you’re going with?” he demanded.

  She glanced at him through her peripheral vision, and he realized that she didn’t see anything wrong with her alias. He cleared his throat and decided to help her out.

  “Grace Kelly was an actress…” When this didn’t elicit a reaction from the woman, he continued. “She became Princess of Monaco… Is any of this ringing a bell?”

  He watched as she inhaled sharply.

  “Ah yes,” she murmured softly, her tan complexion turning waxen.

  Perhaps he needed a gentler approach to make her talk. “Want to tell me your real name, honey?”

  The woman’s lips pursed together and she refused to speak as they pulled into the stationhouse.

  “Well at least I got you to shut up,” Cameron commented, savoring the look of pure fury crossing over her face. He opened the backseat and ushered her into the building by the arm.

  She looked around, her face seeming to understand the gravity of the situation. She did not seem like a screaming shrew now, but a scared little girl under the harsh lights. For a split second, Cameron felt himself softening as he looked at her.

  She’s all bark and no bite, he thought with some amusement. He
almost felt sorry for her.

  “Jeannie, I am processing this girl,” he told the receptionist. Jeannie glanced up from her bagel and did a double take.

  “Oh, my lord!” the redhead cried, pushing back her chair and leaning across the counter, her heavily made-up face registering shock. “Is that who I think it is?”

  “Grace Kelly? Probably not,” he replied, laughing as he glanced at his arrest.

  The girl seemed to shrink further against him, and suddenly Cameron was filled with a sense of alarm.

  “No, that’s Gabriella Medina, Cameron,” Jeannie gasped. “Aren’t you?”

  The name tickled the corners of Cameron’s mind, but he could not reconcile the woman at his side with whom Jeannie spoke.

  “Who?” he asked, his brow furrowing.

  The receptionist rolled her eyes, almost in exasperation. “Do you ever do anything but watch sports? She’s a supermodel, Cameron. She’s the supermodel!”

  “Is your name Gabriella Medina?” he demanded, turning to the woman he was still holding by the arm.

  She remained silent, shifting her eyes away and staring stonily at the door leading toward the offices.

  “Wow, what did she do, Cameron?” Jeannie asked as they continued through the threshold.

  Cameron found himself unwilling to speak. The door closed on Jeannie and he led the brunette toward the lockup.

  “I have already confiscated your purse,” the sheriff told her, but there was no longer a bite in his tone. He could sense a deep unease in the girl, and he did not want to push her too hard. “I will find out who you are in a minute. Are you sure you don’t want to tell me your name?”

  They stood in booking and Cameron took the cuffs off her to print her fingers. He watched her rub her wrists, noting her perfectly manicured hands and expensive clothing. Cameron was no fashionista, but he would have wagered a month’s pay that her outfit cost more than his Jeep Cherokee.

  Finally, the woman looked up at him, her deep coffee eyes meeting his bright blue ones. Her next words surprised him.

  “I’ll tell you,” she sighed heavily. “Yes, I’m Gabriella Medina, but please, you cannot tell anyone I’m here.”

  2

  “Who are you?” the sheriff asked her, and Gabriella steeled herself from screeching at him. She didn’t know why she could not contain her emotions. It was unlike her to act out, but her nerves were taut and she could not stop the barrage of words from escaping her mouth.

  Why is he being such an asshole? She had just been through a terrible ordeal and he was making it worse by treating her like a criminal.

  It had taken her four days to travel from New York City to Montana, and when she arrived across the state line from North Dakota two days earlier, Gabriella had felt a sense of relief so great, she had almost cried.

  I left the past in New York and I can lay low here for as long as I need to, she thought happily. But as she continued to drive across I-94, her joy was short lived. There is nothing out here, she realized. There is nothing but farmland and desolation. I can’t hide out here—I will rot away in the elements.

  It was not until she had reached Great Falls that she had felt a spark of hope again. She had been sure that civilization had not yet reached Montana.

  I can live here, she thought, exhaling as she saw a cute little coffee shop and a liquor store. Caffeine and alcohol would make this place a little more tolerable.

  It did not take her long to find a small house for rent just on the town line. The elderly couple was moving into a retirement complex and needed the money to maintain the mortgage on the house. Gabriella could hardly believe how little they were asking for rent, and she almost felt bad accepting their terms. The difference in the cost of real estate from New York to Montana was staggering.

  “We got one more year on the mortgage,” the owner of the house, an old man named Allister, had told her. “It would be a shame to sell it when we’re so close to owning it.”

  Gabriella paid the couple a substantial deposit so they would not question her lack of identification. She had given them the same fake name she had given the sheriff; Grace Kelly. But unlike Cameron Lapin, Allister and his wife did not seem to get the humor in her alias choice. Gabby was not sure where the name had sprung to her; it had just seemed fitting somehow.

  “It’s just you, right, honey?” Allister’s wife asked, peering at the silver Mercedes as if she expected a man to be crouched in the seats.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Gabriella replied. “I’m a writer, and I needed to get away from the city.”

  Allister’s wife nodded appreciatively.

  “I could’ve been a writer, too,” she said, “if Allister here ain’t knocked me up all them years ago.”

  Gabriella swallowed her shock and mild disgust, forcing a smile on her face.

  “I am sure I will find much inspiration here,” she assured them, and that seemed to please them both.

  The accident had occurred as she was making a trip to Walmart for essentials. While the house came fully furnished, food was not included, and Gabriella was determined to get the smell of geriatrics from the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home.

  Air freshener, bleach, and incense, she recited to herself as she waited for the light to turn yellow. Her mind had been on how long it had been since she had cleaned her own apartment as she made the turn, and the impact had been absolutely terrifying.

  That bastard ran a red light and I am being held responsible for standing my ground.

  As she sat in the police station later, she realized how lucky they had both been to walk away unscathed, but it was difficult to count her blessings with the sheriff being such a jerk.

  “I already told you,” she growled at him, trying her best to keep her temper in check. However, Sheriff Lapin was making it extremely difficult. “I am Gabriella Medina.”

  “Yeah, I got that part,” he replied. “Why are you so special? Why would anybody care if you were here?”

  For a moment, Gabriella was at a loss for words. He really doesn’t know who I am, she thought, even though that lady at the front recognized me.

  She was filled with a combination of hope and offense. Her face was splashed across the front page of high-end magazines in every continent in the world, and that was well before the nasty business with the mayor of New York. The sheriff was young; certainly younger than she would expect a sheriff to be.

  He is also more attractive than I would expect a sheriff to be, she thought, and then immediately felt her cheeks turn crimson. You’re in deep shit and you’re checking out the man who wants to throw you in jail. You need a good therapist, Gabs, because you’re losing it.

  “I… I’m a model,” she told him quickly. “No one important.”

  His incredible blue eyes narrowed and he nodded slowly.

  “I remember who you are,” he said slowly.

  Gabby felt the fragile bubble of hope she had been holding onto burst. She waited for him to say more, but he did not. She wondered why.

  “What are you doing in Great Falls, Miss Medina?” he asked her pointedly, and she knew that lying to him was not an option. Strangely, she did not feel the need to lie, despite her precarious circumstances.

  “Hiding,” she replied truthfully. “I am trying to escape the media.”

  The sheriff sat back in his chair, and Gabby noticed that his pecs seemed to ripple beneath the khaki of his shirt.

  Stop it, she cried to herself, but she could not pull her eyes away from his chest.

  He had not bothered to process her after her confession and instead led her to an interrogation room to talk.

  “Are you going to charge me?” she finally asked, tearing her gaze from his torso to look into his blazing blue eyes.

  “I’m not sure,” he replied, and Gabriella felt her back tense.

  Is he toying with me? Or is he going to ask for some creepy quid pro quo because I’ll scream, I swear to God—

  “The witnesses say you cau
sed the accident,” the sheriff continued. “But it’s a tough call. I’m choosing not to press charges for now, but I may do so later. I’ll talk to Bob about you both dealing with your own damages since neither one of you seems to be at fault.”

  Gabby wondered if his words were meant to be a veiled threat of sorts.

  “Can I go?” she asked, unsure of what else to do.

  He studied her face for a long moment. “Are you going to be able to behave yourself in Great Falls?” he asked.

  Gabriella’s ears grew hot, and she glared at him.

  He’s flexing his muscles here. He holds your freedom in the palm of that large hand. Don’t give him a reason to take it from you.

  “I will probably be moving on from Great Falls now,” she replied tiredly, realizing what a daunting task it would be to pack up and move forward, especially without a car.

  Who knows where the next decent-sized town will be, she thought mournfully, but she dared not say anything aloud. Her problems were hers. Cameron Lapin didn’t care about her issues.

  “Why are you leaving?” he asked, sounding surprised.

  Gabby stared at him as if he were insane. “I came here to hide out and now I’ve been exposed,” she answered slowly. “Kind of defeats the purpose of me staying here.”

  Sheriff Lapin gazed at her pensively. “If you want to leave, I certainly won’t stand in your way, but no one knows who you are except me. I haven’t processed you, you aren’t in the system. I won’t mention you’re in town provided you stay out of trouble.”

  Their eyes locked once more and a silent battle seemed to be occurring between them.

  He is offering me a way out of here, Gabriella thought, but she wondered if there was reason for him wanting to keep her close. Does he think I am a danger and wants to keep an eye on me?