Determined to Protect, Forbidden to Love

by Beverly Barton

  Rory beamed and held her head high as she made her grand entrance into the ballroom amid applause in the stunning orange gown that Laurent had picked out for her all those weeks ago. Olivier kissed her, as did her newly pregnant sister-in-law Penelope.

  The silver-and-blue rococo ballroom shimmered with light and mirrors and crystal. In well-rehearsed French, Rory told the invited guests how happy she was to be home after living abroad for so many years and that she was honored to serve Estaire and its citizens.

  Despite the difficulties of learning what her new position entailed, Rory loved Estaire with its hillsides dotted with wild poppies and daisies and the vineyards of Riesling grapes sloping down to the ancient village of Auvergne on the banks of the Rhine.

  Renald winked at her from the sidelines. In the past eight weeks, Renald had decided that he would like to continue in his position as his brother’s personal secretary, and he did not wish to bring scandal upon his mother’s name by making the facts of his birth public.

  Rory and Olivier had accepted his decision, but had made it clear that they considered him a brother in every way.

  Rory’s heart froze when she realized who was standing beside him. Laurent.

  No, not just Laurent. It was Prince Laurent in formal ceremonial dress of black tailcoat, white piqué waistcoat and tie. He looked even more handsome than he did in her dreams, his inky eyes shielding mysteries that her heart still ached to share. She wasn’t over him yet. Like her mother, she’d probably never get over the man she loved.

  “Mesdames et messieurs, if you would indulge me for a special presentation.” Olivier gestured regally. “His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Laurent of Ducharme.”

  Rory’s pulse fluttered and her knees trembled as Laurent made his way up to the dais where she stood with her brother and sister-in-law. She watched him warily.

  He acknowledged Olivier and Penelope, then he went down on one knee before Rory. Gasps filled the ballroom.

  Her face turned scarlet and her heart plummeted to her stomach as Laurent kissed her gloved hand. Was he going to offer her a public apology?

  Her knees threatened to buckle from the warmth of his fingers.

  “My darling, Lorelei,” he said in his rich clear voice. “I’ve come here this evening to beg your forgiveness for my arrogance. You offered me the gifts of your love and friendship and demanded the same in return. In my arrogance I thought our union would better withstand the pressures of our positions if we didn’t bring false expectations of love into the equation. But there is nothing false about my feelings for you, mein Lorelei. I love you, not as a crown prince, but as a man who wants a cherished partner to share his joys and sorrows with. I want your beautiful face to light my days and your wise words to comfort me and make me laugh. I offer you my heart and my devotion with my two hands.” His voice shook, and Rory saw tears in his eyes.

  That set her off. She started to sniffle.

  Laurent smiled at her, his handsome face softening with love. “Will you honor me by agreeing to be my wife?”

  Rory beamed at hearing the words she’d longed to hear. “It’s hard to resist a man who can admit when he’s wrong. I love you, Sebastian. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

  He removed a diamond ring from his pocket and slid it over her gloved finger. “This was my mother’s ring.” Then he rose and kissed her. The room exploded with applause.

  “Champagne!” Olivier ordered.

  Laurent laughed, joy dancing in his heart and in his soul. He had never been happier in his life.

  Rory was breathless. “What made you change your mind?”

  He told her about the newspapers Heinrich kept leaving for him to find. “I read one that suggested you were pregnant with our child.”

  Her beautiful blue eyes widened. “Is that what your proposal was about? Some kind of misguided duty because you think I might be pregnant?”

  He pressed a finger over her lips, unable to keep from smiling. “Shh, mein Lorelei. Allow me to finish.”

  Rory stopped talking, but her eyes sparked her opinion.

  “The newspaper article made me think about my mother and the legacy she passed on to me. She spent most of her life pining for my father’s love and never having the courage to ask for what she wanted and to expect it as a right. I realized I didn’t want to spend my life like that. Life can be very lonely when you do not have love.”

  The wariness faded from his princess’s eyes as Laurent kissed her, losing himself in the lure of her sweet lips.

  Love was much headier than the power of the monarchy.

  PROTECTING THE PRINCESS

  BY

  CARLA CASSIDY

  Carla Cassidy is an award-winning author who has written over fifty books. In 1998, she won a Career Achievement Award for Best Innovative Series from Romantic Times.

  Carla believes the only thing better than curling up with a good book to read is sitting down at the computer with a good story to write. She’s looking forward to writing many more books and bringing hours of pleasure to readers.

  Prologue

  The explosion of gunfire shattered the beauty of the California spring morning. Screams rent the air as people dove for cover or ran blindly in terror.

  It happened so quickly she didn’t have a chance to do anything but react. Princess Anna Johansson and her father, King Bjorn Johansson had just retrieved their baggage and been heading out of the Los Angeles airport to hail a cab when a pair of men opened fire.

  The air filled with the acrid smoke of danger. A panicked crowd jostled Anna away from the scene as they pushed and shoved to escape. She dropped her suitcase in an effort to stay on her feet as the people went wild.

  She held tightly to her purse and small overnight bag despite the press of the bodies against her.

  Panic choked her as she lost sight of her father in the resulting chaos. What was happening? Had he been shot? How had they been found? They had been traveling under different names, had changed planes twice in the past twenty-four hours. How had the rebels known where they were?

  Anna managed to slip out of the crowd that carried her away and crouch behind a stack of luggage. She tried to see what was happening, tried to catch sight of her father.

  Her heart thundered. She had to go back. She had to find her father. But fear kept her momentarily rooted in place. What if they’d killed him? Grief ripped through her, but it was a grief that couldn’t be sustained beneath the weight of cold, stark fear.

  What if the gunmen were still around the area? They wouldn’t be satisfied just killing her father. As his only heir, she was a liability.

  Her heart continued its rapid beat as she tried to make sense of what had just occurred. She’d thought when they reached the United States they’d be safe. They had been so careful with their travel plans.

  Roused from their beds two nights prior to the sound of gunfire and explosions, they’d learned from loyal palace staff members that rebels had taken over the small island kingdom.

  Their lives in danger, they’d been hustled away from the palace and into hiding until arrangements had been made to get them out of the country.

  At this moment none of that mattered. What mattered was finding her father and getting them both to someplace safe. But, where was safe? And where was her father?

  Taking a deep breath as she left the cover of the luggage stack, she tried to head back in the direction where she and her father had been separated, but was halted by police before she could even get close to the area.

  There was no way she could speak to the authorities. She was traveling with false identification. She had no idea what might happen if she was detained. Her father had warned her that there would be danger until he could speak with the appropriate people and request some sort of temporary asylum. She had no idea who she could trust.

  Think. She had to think. Turning away from the police line, she inhaled several more deep breaths in an attempt to still the racing of her heart. Her father ha
d planned for the possibility of trouble.

  Aware that her life could still be in danger, she hailed a cab and slid into the back seat.

  “Take me to the nearest hotel,” she said to the driver, then slumped back in the seat to catch her breath. The past forty-eight hours had been terrifying and apparently the danger wasn’t behind her yet.

  She wouldn’t actually check in to a hotel, but she could sit in the lobby to take a few minutes to bring her nerves under control and hopefully catch a news report to see exactly what had happened.

  Digging into her purse, she withdrew the business card her father had handed her just before their plane had landed. “If there is trouble…” he’d said. “If we get separated for any reason, you go here.”

  He’d handed her the little white card that read “Wild West Protective Services.” She had noted the address in Cotter Creek, Oklahoma, and several telephone numbers as he’d added. “These people will protect you and I will join you there as soon as it is possible.”

  She held the card tightly between her fingers and stared at it. Wild West Protective Services. She had no desire to go to Cotter Creek, Oklahoma, but knew she had no other choice.

  She was in a strange country, with nothing more than what was contained in her purse and small overnight bag. Separated from her father, she would only be able to rejoin him if she got to Cotter Creek and utilized the services of these Wild West bodyguards.

  She only prayed that the attack hadn’t left her father dead and that the assassins wouldn’t find her before her father did.

  Chapter 1

  “You must protect me.” The voice belonged to the attractive blonde who flew through the open door of the Wild West Protective Services office.

  Slamming the door, she locked it, then leaned against it as if to bar the hounds of hell from bursting through behind her.

  Tanner West had just been about to leave the office for the day, but a burst of adrenaline drove all thoughts of home out of his head. Unsure of what was going on, he grabbed the 9 mm gun that was never far from his reach.

  “Protect you from who?” Unceremoniously pushing her aside, he was fully aware that a lock on a door wouldn’t keep out somebody determined to get in.

  “You don’t have to get physical,” the blonde exclaimed, apparently offended by his actions.

  He ignored her protest as he peered out the window. Nothing. He saw nobody on the street who looked like any kind of a threat. “What am I looking for?” he asked. “Who is after you? A crazy husband? A jealous boyfriend? A homicidal boss?”

  “Rebel assassins.”

  He whirled from the window to stare at her, wondering if perhaps she was pulling his leg.

  Rebel assassins in Cotter Creek?

  She was a stranger to him. In a town the size of Cotter Creek, Oklahoma, he knew almost everyone and he’d never seen her before in his life. She was the type of woman he’d remember. “Rebel assassins?”

  She nodded and dropped the small overnight bag she’d carried in to the floor. “Although I’m hoping I lost them after the shoot-out at the airport in Los Angeles.”

  Tanner felt as if he’d been thrust into the middle of a movie and had no idea of the beginning so couldn’t begin to guess at the ending. Was the pretty blonde in front of him in need of some kind of protection or was she in the throes of some paranoid delusion?

  “Maybe we should start at the beginning,” he said, gesturing her toward the chair in front of the reception desk.

  “I’m Tanner West, CEO of Wild West Protective Services.” She sat in the chair and he moved to sit behind the desk—setting his gun next to him where it could be grabbed in a split second if needed. He took advantage of the moment to look at her more closely.

  Her features were dainty. Her eyes a clear blue and her hair long and golden. Just looking at her caused the slightest rise in his pulse. She was one knockout.

  “My father sent me here. Six nights ago rebel forces took over our palace and we fled our country and got on a plane for the United States. My father told me on the flight that if there was trouble, if for some reason we got separated, I was to come here to Cotter Creek and seek your aid. Obviously there was trouble, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now. My father instructed me to come here and said you’d take care of things until he could arrive here, as well.”

  As his sense of urgency fled an edge of impatience took its place. He was no more clear now about what was going on than he’d been moments before when she’d first burst through the office door.

  “Are you going to tell me who you are? Who your father is?” he asked, unable to keep the impatience from his voice.

  Her startling blue eyes flashed with what appeared to be a touch of impatience of her own and her dainty chin rose slightly. “I am Princess Anna Johansson from the Island of Niflheim.”

  Tanner sat straighter in his chair, a new urgency slicing through him. “Your father is King Bjorn?” Tanner had met the king of the small Scandinavian country two months before at a fund-raiser in Washington, D.C. At that time the king had mentioned having a twenty-five-year-old daughter. “Where is your father now?”

  Her eyes darkened. “I don’t know. We got separated at the airport in Los Angeles. Gunmen were waiting for us when we walked out of the exit to find ground transportation. The only thing I know for sure is that he wasn’t shot. The news reports right after the incident indicated, thankfully, that nobody had been hurt but the suspects had gotten away.”

  She had a smoky kind of voice, a smooth alto that under other circumstances he might have found sexy as hell. But sex was the last thing on his mind at this moment.

  He’d caught a bit of a newscast concerning the shooting at LAX and now wished he’d paid more attention, because it appeared that he’d just been handed the biggest protection assignment of his career. An assignment that would solidify Wild West Protective Services as the premier agency to call when trouble came knocking.

  He and his father had been following the news report on the coup, although the information coming out of the small country had been sketchy. He hadn’t realized until this moment that the incident at the airport and the coup in Niflheim were related, as the reporters had apparently not realized that King Bjorn and his daughter had been in the airport melee.

  If her story was true, and he had no reason to doubt it, then the most urgent need was to get her to a safe location.

  He stood and grabbed his black Stetson cowboy hat from the top of the file cabinet. “Come on. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  She got up from the chair, her gaze focused upward on his hat as a tiny frown appeared across her forehead. “Are you a cowboy?”

  She said the word with the same inflection she might have used to say “ax murderer.” “Among other things,” he answered. “We need to go.” He had no idea what problem she might have with cowboys, but he didn’t have time for it right now. His initial thought was to get her someplace safe immediately.

  “Where are you taking me?” She leaned down to pick up the small overnight bag, then held it out for him to carry.

  He grabbed the bag and headed for the front door. “To the ranch.”

  “The ranch?” She halted all forward movement, a new frown tugging together her pale, perfectly arched eyebrows. “Oh, that won’t do. I don’t do ranches. Surely there’s a nice hotel here in town. What I’d really like is a long massage. The past two days on that bus were an absolute nightmare.”

  Tanner stared at her in disbelief. She’d just told him that rebel assassins were after her, and she was worried about whether she could get a massage or not. He recognized at that moment that the princess might be pretty and sexy as all get-out, but she just might be trouble, as well.

  “Look, lady, right now my goal is to get you someplace safe. You might have to skip a massage or two to stay alive.”

  Her vivid blue eyes narrowed. “There’s no reason to use that tone of voice with me, Mr. West.”

  Tanne
r bit back his aggravation. “Your father sent you here for safekeeping and until I have a better idea of what’s going on, the safest place for you to be is at the family ranch.” He wasn’t about to let her screw this up for him by making unrealistic demands.

  He moved to the door, unlocked it and eased it open, his gun once again in hand. He simply didn’t have enough information yet to know how imminent the danger might be for her.

  The late-afternoon April sun shone on the quiet streets of the small town. Two women walked at a leisurely pace up the sidewalk and old man Thompson sat in a wooden chair outside his barbershop waiting for customers. There was nothing to indicate assassins lying in wait.

  However, assassins could mean a sniper on the top of a building, an explosive lobbed at his truck, a shadowy figure in a doorway waiting for the perfect shot.

  He turned back to look at her, unable to help noticing how the fine silk blouse clung to her breasts and the long navy skirt hugged lush curves. Even with the frown tugging at her features she was stunning. The momentary lapse into pure male thoughts irritated him.

  “My truck is parked directly out front. We’re going to walk out together and you’re going to get into the passenger seat as quickly as you can.”

  There seemed to be a touch of mutiny in her eyes, but she nodded curtly and joined him at the door. Tanner was unsure exactly what to make of the princess, but he knew his job, and that was to assure her safety. He’d get a better handle on her and the entire situation once he got her to the safety of the ranch.

  He set her overnight bag just outside the door. “To the passenger side,” he murmured as he wrapped her in his arms and led her out of the door. He felt her stiffen, as if she found his closeness offensive, but he didn’t care. He had no idea what they might be up against, so he used his body as armor for hers as they headed toward his truck.

  “I think you might be overreacting, Mr. West,” she said stiffly as they moved forward together in an awkward kind of dance.