The Reluctant Prince

by Candice Gilmer

  Probably good shade in the summer too.

  A large picture window faced the street, the blinds were open and I could see a smallish living room inside. I hadn’t noticed it when I pulled up because of the trees.

  Bella dragged me inside. “See?” she said, holding out her arms.

  Hardwood floors everywhere I could see. The walls were scuffed and a little dirty, certainly needy of a coat of paint, and there was no molding around the floor. Which wouldn’t be a big deal, really, but this place looked like it needed the trimming.

  It felt like a half-finished project.

  The kitchen was straight ahead through a small doorway. It had hardwood as well, and refurbished cabinets, all painted white, with a white stove and refrigerator. There was plenty of room for a dinner table at the far end of the kitchen too. This room seemed a bit more done. The only thing lacking was a dishwasher. I glanced at the sink.

  And a garbage disposal.

  The bathroom was small, done in peach tile—gag—but it had huge, built-in cabinets that I could probably fit a medium-sized dog in. The hallway didn’t have a closet in it, but it had more of the same kinds of cabinets across from the bathroom. There were three bedrooms—small, smaller and are-you-sure-this-isn’t-a-closet?

  “So who owns this place? What’s the rent?” I could see me living here, a baby in a walker scooting through this place. Me yelling for the kid to get the screwdriver away from the electric plug.

  Yeah, I could see it.

  “Rent’s five hundred flat.”

  I blinked. “Five hundred? Is that all?” Most places of this size, and I figured it was probably a little over a thousand square feet, were more than that a month. All the ones we saw were, anyway.

  “Yep.” She held up the keys. “You interested?”

  “Okay this is weird,” I said. “Who in the Hell’s the landlord? How did you even get in here? There’s no one else here.”

  She shook the keys at me. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s perfect,” I heard myself say. And it really was. It wasn’t massively huge, but it would work for me and a baby. And Jim didn’t know where it was.

  Always a good thing.

  “Well, here’s the key.”

  “No. What’s the deal?”

  She grinned. “I own it.”

  “And you’re robbing me blind for five hundred a month?”

  She laughed. “Actually, Dad bought it. He’d been watching one too many of those flip the house shows, and started working on flipping this house, and he decided it wasn’t for him. So he finished up the big stuff a couple months ago, and it’s been sitting vacant while he tried to figure out if he wanted to sell it or rent it.”

  “And you convinced him to rent it to me?”

  “No. It was his idea. I told him we were looking for rental property. And it’s my dad—you know if anything goes wrong, he’ll come over and fix it. He’s an electrician.”

  “Unless it’s plumbing.”

  “Then he said, if you have to get something done, you can take it off the rent for the month—with proof of receipt, of course.”

  I laughed. “So when can I move in?”

  “Whenever you want.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes and I caressed my stomach, where I was starting to notice a bit of hardness. “Well, little one, maybe we’ve found a home.”

  I pulled into my parking lot with Bella right behind me. Both of our cars were loaded down with old liquor store boxes. I was about to get out of the car when my cell phone rang.

  “Hello, Sydney.” Why is it when Jim called, he sounded like the bad guy in that movie Scream?

  “What do you want, Jim?”

  “I left you a present, a special one, just for you two.”

  What in the world was he talking about? “Me too what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The phone went dead.

  My hands started shaking. Why couldn’t he leave me alone? I wasn’t all that special, I didn’t warrant this kind of possessiveness. Why couldn’t I fade away?

  Tears streamed down my face, and I fought the urge to throw up. I didn’t realize I was still in the car until Bella came up and knocked on my window.

  “Sydney? Honey? You okay?”

  “No. No I’m not.”

  She reached into the car, putting her arm around me. “Come on, let’s get you inside. I’ll make you a nice big glass of wine…”

  I started to bawl harder.

  “Okay, I’ll make you a bowl of ice cream, and we’ll veg-out, watching television. Maybe we can even see if Hadrian’s cooking show will be on later, okay?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t look at him right now.”

  Which of course meant he’d either be on television as soon as we came in—okay, so I’ve been secretly stalking the reruns of his show on TV, or he’d…

  Bring

  “Of course,” I muttered and pulled out my cell phone.

  “Sydney?” Sure enough, it was Hadrian.

  Bella escorted me past the mailboxes toward my apartment, and we rounded the corner that led to my place.

  At least it would only be my place for a short while longer.

  “Hi, Hadrian.” I managed to sound at least like I wasn’t totally crying.

  “Are you crying?”

  Maybe not. “Sorta,” I muttered. “Uh, movie.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s going on?” I managed to say through a snotty nose.

  “I’m at the airport.”

  “You’re coming back?” I asked. This was good. I needed to see him. I wanted to see him. Wait, I needed… God this whole thing was confusing.

  “No, I’m at the airport. In Wichita.”

  I blinked. We walked up to my door. Sitting on the stoop was a bouquet of flowers. “What the Hell?”

  “I had some business to take care of in LA, and I came out to see you…”

  I really wasn’t paying attention to Hadrian on the phone. I was too busy staring at the bouquet.

  It was a huge congratulations bouquet. There were baby things all over it—booties, washrags, rattles, diapers or at least what I thought were diapers.

  “Holy shit,” Bella said. “All the blooms have been cut off!” She picked up a bit of the white stuff that was scattered all over the landing. “What is this?”

  My hands were shaking. All the baby things were ripped, stabbed, sliced and broken in one way or another. The blooms on the bouquet had been cut off, and the leaves torn.

  “Jesus Christ,” I muttered, reaching down to caress what was left of a baby bootie.

  “If you want me to go—” Hadrian’s voice jarred me.

  I’d forgot I was on the phone with him. “No. Don’t go.”

  “So you want to see me?” he asked.

  I shook my head and handed the phone to Bella. I went down on my knees, picking up the pieces of the filleted diapers, and more tears poured out. I barely registered Bella’s conversation with Hadrian—her voice mere noise in the background.

  I caressed a baby bootie. So tiny, so precious, so helpless. Now it was nothing but scants of fabric that were torn and strewn about. The remnants of a onesie sat in the midst of it, torn and stabbed. I felt sick to my stomach.

  Wind swirled around me, grabbing at the bits of the torn diapers, making them whip around like bizarre snow, filling the air with stuffing.

  Nothing had been spared on the bouquet. Everything was destroyed—like Jim was working to destroy my life. Could I not be allowed some happiness? Could it not be permitted for me to be happy?

  Bella held out her hand to me. “Keys.”

  I handed her my house keys, still picking up the remnants of the bouquet. Jim hadn’t even bothered mutilating it somewhere else. He did it on my front porch.

  Which meant he knew I wasn’t going to be back for a while.

  I threw up on my neighbor’s mini flowerbed. Good thing it was February, and I wasn’t actually killing any plants.r />
  Bella patted my back. “Was that the morning sickness, or something else?”

  “Is there a difference anymore?” I muttered. The door came open, and I crawled inside.

  Bella tossed the phone, on speaker, onto the couch while she picked up the bouquet.

  “What is going on?” Hadrian yelled, his voice all grainy through the speaker.

  “Sydney threw up on a flower bed. It’s probably her morning sickness. Her ex delivered a mutilated bouquet to her door.” Bella sounded incredibly too cheery for the shitty last few minutes.

  Hadrian started cursing with that really creative language he had. “What do you mean morning sickness?”

  I lay on my back. “I’m pregnant,” I yelled at the phone, between sobs.

  More curse words came out of Hadrian. “I’m on my way.”

  I rolled my eyes. Great, he’d be here next week. My stomach was still rolling, but mostly because I didn’t exactly want to tell him I was pregnant like this—not my intention at all.

  “Call if you get lost,” Bella said and pressed the button to cut off the phone.

  “Why would he need directions?”

  “He’s in town. He’s on his way.” She bounced into the kitchen.

  I blinked. “What do you mean he’s in town?”

  “He’s here. He landed in Wichita, over at Jabara Airport. He’s on his way.”

  This time I managed to make it to the bathroom before I threw up again.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hadrian drove the little rental car like a bat out of Hell through Wichita. Fortunately, the city was easy enough to work out. It was pretty much a grid.

  Nothing had been going right since he’d landed in the States.

  He should have known when he stepped off the plane in LA and wind snapped at him, making him shiver with cold that wasn’t common in southern California.

  The traffic slowed down as he entered an area under construction. He slammed his hand on the steering wheel.

  “Unbelievable,” he muttered. He was partially cussing the traffic, and partially the situation. He and Robert had snuck out of Koros, avoiding the press to fly directly to LA, and from there, they’d driven straight to Alicia’s home.

  The house was trashed, a few valuables missing, but the computer remained. Hadrian had thought at the time they were incredibly lucky.

  No. They weren’t.

  Alicia’s hard drive had been wiped. The evidence Hadrian was certain would be on the computer gone.

  Robert’s cell phone chirped, and he answered it, though his answers weren’t much more than grunts.

  “Am I still under suspicion?” Hadrian asked after he got off the phone. The computer had been taken into protective custody of Koros, and was being shipped back to Koros to be processed.

  “Until we crack the computer, yes.” Robert had explained, when they found the empty hard drive that it was possible to pull the files anyway, and Hadrian was hoping they’d call with an update.

  Especially since they took his home computer to crosscheck the files.

  The theory was that if the files existed on Alicia’s computer, but not on Hadrian’s, then his story was true—he didn’t know anything about it.

  At least he hoped that was the case. It was possible Alicia could claim she was working under his orders.

  “Has Alicia been found?”

  “No. It’s like she’s disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  Hadrian jerked in the traffic, swerving around a rather slow moving car.

  “You are aware that I am expecting to survive this drive?” Robert asked him.

  “Shut up,” Hadrian muttered. Between the disaster in California, and now, arriving here for a quick visit to see Sydney, and hearing her freak out, well, this hadn’t been the best trip he’d ever taken.

  He had to get to Sydney. His heart hammered, even harder than it had when he was searching Alicia’s house. Even then, he’d half-expected Alicia to leap out at him from behind a corner with a gun or something.

  This was far worse anticipation.

  Had he heard her right?

  Pregnant?

  Surely it was a joke. Sydney couldn’t be pregnant. And he started to think back—though it was hard to think clearly, remembering touching her made his body stiffen.

  He didn’t once remember a condom.

  She didn’t object to him not using one…

  Could Sydney… He banished the thought before it could even fully form in his mind. He was not about to consider Sydney the type to manipulate him intentionally. So few people understood the horror of being manipulated like she did.

  He pulled out his cell phone as he drove westbound. He scrolled through his contacts until he got his mother’s number. Robert grumbled at him in Italian while he dialed his mom.

  “Mom?” he said when she picked up.

  “Hello, what’s going on? I heard that you’re being questioned for the attack?”

  “I am. Listen, is the house ready?”

  “Almost. Just a couple more things need to be done. I was going to get some non-perishables today.”

  “Good. I’ll probably be there in a day or two.”

  Robert grimaced as he hung up the phone. “We’re going out to the lake house?”

  “Syd’s in trouble. I need to make sure she’s safe.”

  “Are you sure you are not going too far for a woman you just met?” Robert asked.

  “Now you sound like Alicia.”

  “You don’t know this woman very much. Now you charge to her rescue? That’s not like you.”

  “You saw her ex. He hasn’t left her alone since she’s been back. It’s getting worse.”

  “That is not your problem Hadrian.” Robert crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I have never seen you like this.”

  “I felt it, Robert,” he said. “That kick in the gut that my dad told me about? The one he felt when he met my mother? The same one Michel felt for Heather when they met.”

  “Silly romantic notion. It worked out so well for your father.” Hadrian didn’t say anything—his parents had only been married about two years before they divorced. Long enough to make him.

  Hadrian slid across the lanes, slipping onto his exit. “One of the last pieces of advice my father gave me was when I met that person that hit me in the gut to hold on with both hands. To grab it and run with it with all my heart. I don’t know how it’s going to end, but I’m not about to spend the rest of my life wondering.”

  And he knew that was completely true. If this crazy feeling in his gut was love, well then, bring it on. He’d never felt this way about anyone before.

  He wasn’t going to leave Sydney to the wolves.

  Hadrian found the apartment with little difficulty. Robert led the way, walking up to the door, his head shifting as he checked the place out. In his black suit, he stood out like a sore thumb.

  It wasn’t a slum, but it was pretty obvious that Sydney didn’t live in the best part of the city. The buildings were old and not well cared for, the front door was weather beaten, and he’d bet, if he, or if Robert put some effort into it, the door would probably pop on its hinges in a few seconds.

  Not a good thing with her ex-husband stalking her.

  He was getting her out of here, the sooner the better.

  He knocked on the door. It opened, but it wasn’t Sydney at the door. Instead, it was a wide-eyed fan girl, practically drooling on the entryway, blonde hair and bright green eyes.

  “Hi,” she said, her gaze roaming over Hadrian in a way that wasn’t terribly comforting.

  “Where is Syd?” he asked.

  “She’s in the shower.” She stepped to the side. “I’m Bella.”

  Hadrian nodded. “Ahh, I signed the autograph for you.” Sydney had mentioned her before.

  “Yeah.” She grinned. “Thanks for that.”

  “May we come in?” Robert’s voice boomed over the woman, and she jumped back.

  “Of
course. I’m sorry, where are my manners?” She stepped out of the doorway. She looked Robert up and down then glanced at Hadrian.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Bodyguard,” Hadrian said.

  “Of course.” She glanced at Robert again as he walked through the apartment, looking it over. “Is he with you all the time?”

  “Not all the time.”

  Robert could be heard opening a door, and a scream came out of the room. Hadrian dashed down the hallway.

  “Who in the Hell are you?” Sydney screamed at him, brandishing a huge round hairbrush like it was a baseball bat. The spikes on the thing looked pretty dangerous, if the murderous look in her eye wasn’t enough.

  “Royal guard, Robert,” Robert said, backing away, hands up. Hadrian pushed him out of the way and stepped into the doorway.

  “Sydney.” Heat from her shower flooded out into the hallway, and she had towels around her head and her torso. Her skin gleamed. She glowed.

  Instantly, he was hard.

  “Hadrian?” She slowly lowered the hairbrush. “What’s all this?”

  He glanced at Robert. “I don’t think she’s got a gun in there, Robert.”

  Robert ducked away, pulling Bella with him, who’d followed to see what was going on.

  Hadrian closed the door behind him. “I’m sorry,” he said. They were now confined in the small, hot space, and as much as he wanted to attack her, he didn’t dare move for fear of what he would do as soon as he touched her. “He was checking for security issues. He does that.”

  “Must be strange to live with.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Sydney sucked her lip into her mouth, her gaze running up and down him.

  Hadrian took a step toward her, reaching out for her hand. She accepted, and his thumb ran over her soft dewy skin, turning him on in ways he never would have imagined.

  Her teeth scraped her lower lip, and when she released it, her lips were parted.

  “You don’t seem real.” She took a step toward him.

  “Like a dream,” he answered, a baby step toward her.

  “I thought, when I saw you again, if I saw you again, that it wouldn’t feel the same way. That it was the allure of Vegas.”

  “I knew I would feel the same.” He laced his arm around her waist. His face was barely an inch from hers. “Do you still feel it?”