Xander (Royal Protectors Book 2)

by Kat Mizera

  “Until after breakfast?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

  “If your pussy is breakfast, sure.”

  We spent a long, lazy morning in bed and then ordered room service. We showered and got ready while we waited for it, ate, and then headed out. I’d never seen Elen in jeans and a baseball cap before, and it was sexy as hell. But even sexier was the wig she wore. It was long and a deep auburn color, so different from her natural color that I could only stare. Our goal was to fall under the radar, and if we did any shopping, we’d pay cash to avoid anyone seeing our names. Mine probably wouldn’t alert anyone, but Elen’s was fairly well-known with everything going on in Limaj these days. She hadn’t said anything about going incognito, though.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered, staring. “You’re stunning in general, but as a redhead… Jesus. I think I’m hard again.”

  She laughed, wrapping her arms around my neck. “I’m glad you like it. I used it on and off while I was in exile, and it was fun. I grabbed it as an afterthought before we left, thinking maybe I’d surprise you in bed one night, but I figured this was more fun.”

  “I love it.” I reached out to touch one of the long curls. “And it’s an excellent disguise. No one will recognize you like this.”

  “That’s the point. Now let’s go.”

  We walked out of the hotel after I texted Chains to warn him of her change in appearance. He was sticking around while we were here, watching the hotel from his vantage point across the street, to make sure there was no sign of Omar or anyone else that seemed suspicious.

  “So, walk or subway or cab?” she asked as we got onto the street.

  “Let’s walk for a while.”

  “Okay.” She linked her fingers through mine and we talked as we walked.

  “When I was modeling,” I told her, “I was in and out of New York a lot. It was fun and at the time I needed the extra cash, but it was a hassle. I’d get off work and have to fly out late on a Friday night, spend all day Saturday shooting, and then get back on a plane Sunday so I could report for duty on Monday. My schedule wasn’t always Monday through Friday, though, and then I got deployed, but it was fun while it lasted.”

  “How long did you do it?” she asked.

  “About three years, but on and off.”

  “Would I have seen you in anything?”

  “Probably not if you were living in Tahiti or whatever. I did one national commercial for Home Depot, but everything else was either local places or catalogue work. I have copies of some of the stuff in storage at my mom’s. Next time I see her, I’ll ask her to grab some for me.”

  “How often do you see your mom?”

  “Since I started working for Erik? Only once, but I think I’m going to fly her and my brother out for Sandor’s wedding. It’ll be a nice break for her and hopefully she’ll feel better about leaving Parker with me for a few weeks.”

  “Do you think it’s safe for him?” she asked quietly, looking up at me.

  “Yeah, I do. He’ll be in the palace unless I personally take him somewhere, so I’m not worried about it.”

  She arched her brows. “Do you know anything about teenage boys at all?”

  24

  Elen

  I’d caught him off guard and almost laughed at the confusion on his face. “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “I mean, he’s a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old young man. What’s he going to do in the palace all day while you work? And don’t get me started about the nights. He’s going to want to go out, have some fun, meet a pretty girl, maybe go down to the beach for a few days… You can’t keep him locked up in the palace and think he’ll be okay with just meeting up for dinner and such.”

  He frowned slightly. “You have a point. I was planning to take a few days off after the wedding, take him and Mom around Hiskale, do some of the touristy things, but I hadn’t thought beyond that.”

  “Does he drink? The legal age in Limaj is eighteen so you could take him to a few clubs, let him do something age-appropriate.”

  “I’m not going clubbing without you,” he responded automatically.

  I smiled. “That’s very sweet, but you can absolutely go clubbing without me if you’re with your brother.” I paused. “I mean, I guess any time, although I’d like to think you wouldn’t want to now that we’re together.”

  “I definitely don’t.” He reached over to kiss me. “And here we are.”

  We arrived at an upscale lingerie store that I’d never heard of, but he tugged me by the hand as we walked inside.

  “Xander Holt! Is that you?” a loud, female voice called out, and he let go of my hand to go hug a beautiful brunette.

  “Hey, Gina.”

  They seemed friendly enough to make me want to scowl, but I managed not to as I approached them.

  “Gina, this is my girlfriend, El—Ellie. El, this is my friend Gina. We modeled together a decade ago.”

  “And two marriages and two pregnancies later, I’m right back here where I started.”

  “Did you work here?” I asked, looking at him.

  “We did a shoot for one of their catalogs.”

  “A week in the Bahamas,” Gina said, laughing. “It was awful. We were tired and sunburned and they had us staying in a hotel with roaches…”

  I grimaced. “That sounds…lovely.”

  “Believe me, modeling isn’t as glamorous as it sounds.” She smiled at me. “So, what are you looking for?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” I responded. “This was his idea.”

  “Something red,” Xander told her. “The sexier the better.”

  “Hmm.” Gina looked thoughtful. “Oh, give me a minute.” She disappeared into a stock room and I glanced at Xander curiously.

  “Is she an ex?” I asked as calmly as I could.

  The bastard laughed. “No, just a friend. Are you jealous?”

  “She’s gorgeous,” I muttered, as if that explained everything.

  “So are you. And you’re the woman in my life, not her.”

  I let out a breath. He was right, of course. He didn’t need Lennox’s bridal party dress fitting trip to see an ex-girlfriend. I’d never been jealous like this, and it was an odd sensation. When had my feelings for him moved into something that elicited that kind of emotion? Was I falling in love with him? I had no idea what that was supposed to feel like so I didn’t know.

  “Ellie, would you like to try some things on?” Gina gave me a friendly smile and I realized I was being ridiculous. Gina had a wedding ring and Xander wasn’t the kind of guy to bring his girlfriend to a place just as an excuse to see another woman. I needed to relax and have some fun with this.

  “Um, sure.” I followed her into a dressing room and looked at a beautiful selection of silk and lace lingerie that I had a feeling Xander would love. It was all skimpy and sexy, but classy and high-quality.

  I got undressed and tried on a couple of the pieces that were just tops or skimpy little negligees. Everything was gorgeous, but extremely pricey, and I didn’t have that much cash on me. If I bought everything I liked, it would be well over a thousand dollars and I wasn’t sure how to handle this. I’d told Xander I didn’t want to use my credit cards today so no one would recognize me, but I couldn’t allow him to spend this much money on lingerie. I could afford it, and could pay him back if it came down to it, but part of me was afraid it would be awkward. Of all the things I’d been worried about with us, money hadn’t been one of them. Suddenly it was.

  “Xander was always my favorite model to work with,” Gina was saying as she brought me a smaller size of one piece I’d liked. “Always so respectful and kind, not like a lot of the guys who got handsy.”

  “He’s a good guy,” I said quietly. I had to be careful when changing clothes, not to dislodge my wig, so I took my time with everything.

  “How long have you been dating?” she asked me as she waited for me.

  “A few months,” I said slowly. “It fee
ls like a lot longer, though.”

  “How do you know him?”

  Shit.

  I had no idea how to answer this because I couldn’t tell her he was my bodyguard or that would blow my cover completely.

  “You should ask him,” I told her, winking. “It’s a fun story—do you have anything in pink? He likes me in pink.”

  She hurried off and I quickly sent Xander a text, warning him she might ask how we’d met. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but I wanted to be a regular woman for the next few days. A rich one, but not a famous one. Definitely not a royal one. So telling anyone we knew each other because he was my bodyguard was out of the question.

  Two thousand dollars later, we left the boutique and I chewed my lip as I tried to think of a way to ask him what he’d just done. Wasn’t two grand a lot of money for a guy who made… Fuck. I had no idea what he made. This was something we needed to talk about even though it was awkward as hell.

  “What’s going through that very enterprising brain of yours?” he asked, wrapping his free arm around my shoulders and hauling me against his side.

  “You just spent a lot of money,” I said. “And I’m trying to figure out the least insulting way to talk about it.”

  “It was a gift,” he said, staring straight ahead.

  “But…” I blew out a breath. “I guess we should have talked about money before now. I’m not sure you understand how wealthy I am, but I have no idea at all how much money you have.”

  “I know exactly how wealthy you are.”

  “You do?”

  “You’re worth approximately five hundred million, depending on the oil market at any given time.”

  My mouth fell open. “How do you know that?”

  “It’s part of our training. You, Sandor, Daniil, and Skye are worth almost the same, and Erik a little more now that he’s king. We have to be prepared for any type of threat and knowing your individual worth could help us determine how to deal with a ransom demand, should there ever be one.”

  I flushed, embarrassed and frustrated. “So you know everything about me and I don’t know anything about you?”

  “I wouldn’t say you don’t know anything about me.”

  “Well, I definitely don’t know how much you make.”

  “All you have to do is ask.”

  “Okay.” I hesitated. This wasn’t a conversation I’d ever had with anyone, much less a man I was sleeping with. “How much do you make?”

  “Two fifty.”

  I was embarrassed to admit I had no idea what that meant, and cocked my head slightly.

  He met my eyes and paused before saying, “Two hundred and fifty thousand. U.S. dollars. Per year.”

  I was truly an idiot because I also didn’t know what that meant as far as wealth went. Was that good for a single thirty-two-year-old American man?

  “You have no idea about what that translates to for regular people,” he chuckled. “Do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Okay, let’s see if I can put it into perspective for you. I don’t have exact numbers, but I think an average U.S. salary is around fifty thousand a year. When I worked for Joe, I made a hundred. Making six figures in my late twenties was pretty damn good. At two fifty, I’m in the higher range of what you might call middle class. As a married man with a couple of kids, we’d have a nice house and could afford a couple of nice vacations a year, depending on where we lived. In Los Angeles, not so much. In places with lower costs of living, that money would go a lot further.”

  “So you make a lot of money for a guy like you.”

  “For a single man who has no bills, I make a hell of a lot of money. So I can afford to buy my girl expensive lingerie. I don’t drink much or do drugs, I don’t have rent or a car payment or anything. And because of the way Erik pays us, I don’t pay taxes either, so that money is all mine.”

  “I feel ridiculous,” I whispered. “Like I’m some pampered moron who doesn’t understand how the world works.”

  “Didn’t you get an understanding about what other people made when you were in exile?”

  “Kind of.” I shrugged a little. “But I’ve always had money so I never thought about how much other people make.”

  “What about when you bartended? Didn’t you get tips?”

  “I did, but I thought it was because I was pretty or funny or whatever. It never occurred to me that other people used that money to live on. To eat.” I blew out a breath. “I have many faults, and I freely admit that, but I never realized I was naïve and beyond self-absorbed. Completely oblivious to how the real world lives.”

  “That’s not true,” he said, pausing to stop in front of a small park where children were playing. He put his arm around my waist and looked down at me. “You’re generous and caring. You took care of Samaria and Fetu because you wanted to, because you instinctively understood they struggled to get by even if it wasn’t something you articulated. You taught underprivileged children to read—without getting paid, by the way—because you care about people in general. Being born wealthy, a princess, doesn’t make you selfishly naïve, just a bit more sheltered than I would have thought. It definitely doesn’t make you bad.”

  “Would a hundred thousand dollars a year still be a good salary if you were in Vegas working for Joe, with regular expenses?”

  “Yes. I could support a family on a hundred grand. We’d have a moderate house, decent cars, and save up for nice vacations. We wouldn’t be wealthy, but we definitely wouldn’t be hungry. People get by on a lot less.”

  “So my money, what I have without doing anything at all, is not something you’d probably ever achieve just by working hard or whatever.”

  He chuckled. “No. I’d have to win the lottery or invent something or get really lucky. Half a billion is not something I’d ever see in my lifetime.”

  “Does it intimidate you?” I whispered, meeting his eyes.

  “A little.”

  “Why haven’t we talked about it before now?”

  “What’s there to say? I don’t care about your money; I care about you. If things keep getting serious between us, we’ll probably have to talk about all that, but right now I’m too busy falling for a beautiful woman who makes me happy.”

  “Are you…falling for me?” I asked, my voice cracking a little.

  “Well, yeah. Aren’t you falling for me?”

  “I am, but…” I wasn’t ready for this conversation. I’d never told anyone I wasn’t related to I loved them. Not since I was a teenager. And we were on shaky ground, talking about money and how rich I was and me admitting how little I knew about the real world.

  “But?” He was waiting for something and I didn’t know what.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted. “And it scares me.”

  “Why? What difference does it make? You know I’m not royalty and you had to know I wouldn’t come to this relationship with anywhere near the money you have. Does it matter?”

  “Not to me, no, but don’t you…wonder?”

  “Wonder what?”

  “How I could be so fucking clueless?”

  25

  Xander

  This conversation was going off the rails and I needed to rein it back in. She was upset, and I wasn’t sure why, but I needed to keep it from going too far because I was beginning to realize how much I cared about her. I was confused too, running the gamut between head over heels in love and doing my damnedest to slow down. My heart told me she was struggling with these intense feelings growing between us too, but my brain remembered being burned in the past. Women who hadn’t wanted to get involved with a military man because there was always the chance I would die and I would never be rich. It hadn’t fazed me at the time, but everything was different with Elen.

  “Honey, there’s really only one thing that matters beyond how we feel about each other.”

  “What?”

  “Do you care that I don’t come to this relationship with
the kind of money you have?”

  She shook her head immediately. “No! Not even a little. It’s not about you, it’s about me! How spoiled and selfish I am. I’ve been ready to quit Parliament because they’re mean to me… I mean, do you understand how ridiculous that sounds now that I’ve put it in perspective? You literally put your life on the line every single day, for me and for my king and my country. For not even a fraction of what I’m worth. And I whine because Senator Novak makes me work twice as hard as some of the other ministers. At my nice, cushy job as a politician.”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” I shook my head. “Jesus, how did we go so far off course? Listen to me, okay?”

  She looked like she might cry and I leaned in, kissing her firmly on the lips.

  “You’re smart and beautiful and actually care about both your king and the people of your country. You want them to have better educations and health care and to thrive. Your family has been putting profits from your personal oil dividends into the infrastructure of the country without a second thought. This tells me everything I need to know about you, and your family, for that matter. Do you think I would do this job if I didn’t have huge respect for your family? I gave up everything to move to Limaj to do this with all of you. I love it and make a great salary doing it. Is it dangerous? Sure. Sometimes. But that’s why Erik pays me that much. And, in case you weren’t aware, with us working seven days a week, Erik gives us ridiculous bonuses. The last one was fifty grand. So buying my girl two grand in lingerie is nothing.”

  “I feel like we just skirted around the biggest issue, the one about me being selfish and naïve.”

  “No. We didn’t. We’re having a blast building this relationship, and if the time comes for us to move to the next level, I’ll be signing the biggest, most comprehensive prenup available in your country to prove I don’t want your money.”

  “I never thought that, but this is about my shortcomings, not yours.”

  “You don’t have any. At least not when it comes to anything we’ve talked about today. The only issue beyond how we feel about each other is whether or not a princess like you wants to be with a bodyguard like me.”