Royal Pursuit

by Susan Kearney

  She leaned forward, staring into his compelling blue eyes, well aware that he’d left out the hours between the middle of last night and this meeting. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “Track down the assassins.”

  Whoa.

  She could find somewhere to hide him. Protect him. But track down assassins?

  She didn’t answer him immediately, but swiveled in her chair to face her computer. After she had entered several commands, her modem hooked into the Internet. She did a quick search of the morning papers, then challenged him. “In a town where last night’s rumors are this morning’s headlines, there are no stories about dead bodyguards at the Vashmiran embassy.”

  “Of course not. King Nicholas would demand that the papers suppress the story.”

  “Things might work that way in Vashmira, but here we have freedom of the press. And how can you predict how your king will react?” She asked the question hoping he would reveal his position at the embassy. He’d spoken so confidently that he either knew the king, knew his country’s public policy or was delusional—because he quite obviously believed every word he was saying.

  “The king would have asked your government to suppress the news in order to protect me.”

  “I don’t understand,” she admitted, and looked to him for an explanation.

  “The less information our enemies have, the more difficult it is for them to carry out their plans.”

  Was he deliberately being vague? She believed so. The man was cagier than he looked. Not for one second would she fall for the charm that radiated from him like seductive cologne. If she bought into his story, which she wasn’t sure she did, she had to buy his logic—but he was good at logic, too.

  She also noticed that he’d said our enemies. Was he talking about his country’s enemies in general or about enemies of a particular political party? Until this morning she couldn’t be sure that she’d ever heard about the country of Vashmira, and she knew zip, zero, zilch about their political system.

  She drummed her fingers on the calendar on top of her desk. A calendar empty of appointments, empty of work. Yet as much as she wanted to take this man’s money, she wouldn’t lie to him. “Political intrigue is outside my area of expertise. I’m qualified to conceal you from your enemies and to protect you from—”

  “That would make a good start.”

  “—but tracking down assassins?”

  “You track down cheating husbands,” he countered, revealing that he’d checked up on her, which was probably why he hadn’t been surprised to learn that Taylor was a woman. Another indication that he hadn’t just shown up on her doorstep by accident. He’d had the forethought to check her out.

  Still, he needed to understand that she was not qualified for this particular case. “The difference between searching for a cheating husband and an assassin is like the difference between fishing for trout and shark.”

  “Look, I need you to tell me where to fish. We can let the authorities reel them in.”

  He was challenging her to do the work she did best—investigation. She had a nose for finding people who didn’t want to be found. She could rarely resist an opportunity to match wits with a husband or wife trying to hide funds during a divorce or with an employee stealing on the job. She’d even taken a few jobs for bail bondsmen. But tracking an assassin?

  Sighing, she stalled. “How did you find me?”

  “The Yellow Pages.” His lips broke into a provocative smile that in no way convinced her that taking this case might be a good idea. And judging by his narrowing eyes, he seemed to know that his smile had failed. “I’ll pay triple your going rate.”

  Triple? She’d only been going to tack on a fifty percent premium for the danger factor. Either the man was a fool with his money—and he didn’t look like a fool—or there was something he wasn’t telling her.

  “Okay. You want to hire me. Here are the terms. I get paid by the day. You cover all expenses.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And I need one week’s compensation up front. If I solve the case sooner, you’ll be reimbursed.”

  “That could be a problem.”

  “EXCUSE ME?” Taylor Welles frowned at him. Not a faked, pouty frown with a come-hither gleam in her eyes, but a genuine frown, part wariness, part annoyance, part I-don’t-believe-you. He expected her to roll her eyes at the ceiling next, but she didn’t seem given to dramatics. She simply stared at him, judging him with calm gray eyes that left him slightly off balance.

  With her blond hair pulled straight back from her face in a tense coil, tightly compressed lips with just a hint of lip gloss and high cheekbones that were bare of makeup, she appeared to be all business. Some women pretended to be detached, well aware that men found their distant attitude an invitation to seduction. But he’d been sized up by enough women to recognize immediately that Taylor Welles was different.

  And expected payment up-front. “I left the embassy in a hurry. Without my wallet.”

  “You’re broke?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t you take cases on contingency?”

  “Occasionally.” She peered at him through narrowed eyes. “How’s your credit?”

  “In Vashmira, it’s excellent.”

  “We aren’t in Vashmira.”

  He hadn’t wanted to use his royal title to convince her to take his case. Maybe it had been pride, a determination to see if he could sway this stubborn American woman by his wits alone. But he’d misjudged her.

  So he stood and bowed very formally. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Alexander, Crown Prince of Vashmira.”

  She shook her head and not so much as one blond wisp of hair came loose. “Okay, I think our time here is over. You can leave now.”

  He didn’t budge, could scarcely believe she intended to throw him out of her office. “Pardon?”

  She waved him toward the door. “Go. Vamoose. Scram. Be gone.”

  He chuckled, a laugh that began low in his stomach and tickled its way up his throat. “You don’t believe me?”

  “Duh.” She picked up her keys and stood, eyeing him as if he were no better than a bum.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he told her, not bothering to contain his amusement and realizing he hadn’t had so much fun in weeks.

  “It won’t be my first mistake. Or the last.”

  “But why give up such a lucrative commission,” Alex coaxed, “when you could simply check your computer to see if I am whom I claim to be?” He crossed his arms over his chest, finding that he was enjoying this verbal sparring with Taylor Welles much more than he should have. She was so not interested that he couldn’t wait to see her expression when he proved his identity.

  “You’re wasting my time.”

  The more she dug in her heels, the worse she would feel when she realized her mistake—which could work in his favor. “Take just one moment more. Punch my name into your search engine. I’m frequently in the tabloids. A picture shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  She threw down her keys. “Fine. But when your face doesn’t match—”

  “It will.”

  “—then you’ll go?”

  He nodded. “And if I am who I claim, you’ll agree to take the case?”

  “Sure.”

  “On contingency?”

  Her glance went from the cut at his neck to his watch and ring. “Why not pawn the jewelry?”

  “The ring belonged to my mother. The watch was a gift from my father. I will never willingly part with them.”

  He thought her eyes might soften when he mentioned family but the opposite occurred. She stared at him, her eyes gray chips of ice flickering in a stormy sea.

  Without another word she sat behind her desk and this time her fingers flew across the keyboard. She kept looking from him to the images on her monitor, her face hardening with resolve as the realization struck.

  “So you are the prince of Vashmira.”

  “Yes.” He’d expected an apol
ogy, a change of attitude.

  Instead she practically glared at him. “You weren’t kidding when you said you were popular in the tabloids.”

  There was not the slightest hint in her tone that she was impressed with his title or his position. She obviously found the headlines and pictures distasteful, barely glancing at them—or maybe she realized how much of those stories were pure fabrication.

  Fascinated by the range of expressions on her face—wariness, suspicion, resignation—he noted just minor irritation as she flicked off the computer—not exactly what he’d been hoping for. But any emotion was a start.

  She drummed her fingers on her desk and stared at him. “I suppose you can’t phone home for funds since any calls to the palace might be traced back to you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hiding you is going to be tough. I suggest you lose the ring and the watch right away.”

  Good. She was taking his case. Although total failure had never entered his mind, he had never expected her to hold out this long. She was tough and apparently a woman of her word.

  He hadn’t been in the States long, but he understood that she’d mentioned the jewelry because she intended to conceal his identity. Carefully he tucked the ring and watch into his pocket.

  “Better.” She stood and placed her keys in her purse. “I’ll need more information before I can plan my investigation. How about lunch?”

  She’d offered the invitation without a hint of coyness in her tone. There was no flirtation. No innuendo. She couldn’t have made it clearer that he was simply another client. Perhaps he should have been insulted. But after a lifetime of women flirting with him, he found her attitude refreshing. She expected nothing from him, not smiles, not charm, no grand effort to make her comfortable with his title.

  And because she didn’t require him to think of these things, he could focus on her while she stared at him, her head cocked at an angle, her lips pursed. “From those tabloids—” she spoke as if tabloid was a dirty word “—I’m going to assume that you aren’t as popular as Britain’s princes and that maybe only half the female population will recognize you.”

  She’d obviously tried not to reveal her distaste for the party-boy behavior portrayed in the tabloid articles. But her disapproval ran too deep. A slight hitch in her tone had given her away.

  He tried to reassure her. “I don’t believe my face is well known here.”

  “We can’t take that chance.” She opened a closet and tossed him a Redskins cap.

  He caught it, adjusted the plastic snaps and placed it on his head. “Better?”

  “You have any sunglasses?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t stop to pick them up while the assassin was shooting at me.”

  “Not funny.” She opened her purse, plucked out a pair with a slight scratch across one lens and handed them to him.

  He tried to put them on, but they weren’t wide enough. “Perhaps you have another?”

  “I’ll buy you a pair from a street vendor.”

  They walked out of her office and into the overcast morning casually, not drawing attention to themselves, but she had checked out the pedestrian and vehicular traffic before heading through the door with a professionalism that he found reassuring.

  They hadn’t gone a block before she stopped at a street vendor and bought him a pair of sunglasses. He slipped them on, appreciating that the darkness at the top of the lenses would protect his eyes from the bright sunlight while the almost-clear view at the bottom would allow him to read even indoors. He recalled from movies that Americans tended to wear sunglasses because they were considered cool, often indoors and even at night. He turned to her for approval.

  She didn’t comment on the sunglasses. “Ready for some lunch?”

  “My first meal in America outside the embassy.”

  “I should warn you. We have to stay out of ritzy restaurants where someone is more apt to recognize you. Besides, my budget won’t stretch that far.”

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked, eager to experiment and to see where she would choose to eat, curious to finally walk on American streets. His parents had lived in this country for years before his father returned to Vashmira to lead the revolution. Alex had learned English from his mother as she’d told him stories about America. Now, he could finally see for himself.

  “How about a hot dog? We can eat in the park.”

  “A hot dog. That’s a sausage on a bun?”

  “Close enough.” She stopped on the next corner in front of a wiry man who spoke very little English. The enticing scents wafting to Alex’s nose made his stomach rumble.

  Without deferring to him, Taylor ordered three hot dogs that smelled heavenly, handed him two, wrapped in paper, and kept one for herself.

  “What would you like to drink?” she asked.

  “Water?”

  “Two waters please.” She paid, then scooped green stuff onto her hot dog and sprinkled the meat liberally with onions while he examined two clear containers, one filled with red sauce, another with yellow.

  She squirted the yellow sauce on top of her hot dog, which was already slathered with onions. “What are you waiting for? You don’t want to eat it naked, do you?”

  She couldn’t possibly have said what he thought he’d heard. “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t you want ketchup or mustard? If you don’t garnish with onions, you’ll be sorry.”

  He had no idea what she meant. “Why?”

  “Because if you don’t eat onions, then you’ll have to smell them on my breath.”

  “Oh.” She’d just made it clear that she intended to eat her onions and had pointed out the consequences, then left the final decision to him—either eat onions with her, or suffer from her breath. He grinned. He happened to like onions and garlic and this very forthright woman who would eat her lunch the way she wished.

  Unconsciously he’d been waiting for her to fix his hot dog. In fact he’d expected her to hand him the one she’d prepared, but America was more a do-it-yourself country than Vashmira. Actually the preparation didn’t appear too difficult—after all, the meat came already cooked.

  He copied her and was quite pleased with the results. Until he bit into his hot dog and half the relish and onions fell out. A glob of the red sauce plopped onto his shirt. But the multitude of tastes swirling over his tongue more than made up for the mess. Either he was hungrier than he’d thought, or he could become addicted to hot dogs.

  He couldn’t recall the last time he’d eaten while walking down a street, which only added to the marvelous experience. The French had their cafés, the English their pubs. He supposed the closest thing Vashmira had to this outdoor eating was a bazaar or a country fair.

  “These are delicious,” he complimented her.

  “If you say so.”

  He’d expected her to be pleased with his compliment, but she wasn’t. The woman never quite reacted the way he expected. He told himself it wasn’t because he was in a new country, or because he didn’t know her well. She didn’t care whether she’d pleased him, and he found the idea so astounding that he had to mull it over while he swished down the delicious hot dog with cold water.

  Was he so accustomed to people trying to please him that when someone didn’t he considered them eccentric? Had his titled world been so skewed that he no longer knew what was normal? He didn’t know. But for a man on the run, a man whose life was in danger, he felt remarkably alive and carefree. This American woman who had just bought him lunch had given him something most precious—a new perspective.

  Even this part of the city captivated him. He’d never seen brick row houses in a palette of pastels. Lilliputian gardens and mature trees seemed to create an oasis in the urban setting of Foggy Bottom. And almost every other person seemed to be walking quickly as if in a tremendous hurry. He found the frenetic pace both intoxicating and confusing—but not as perplexing as the woman by his side.

  When a teenager on a skateboard h
ad rolled close, Taylor had stepped between him and the kid. When a truck backfired, she shoved him around a corner. When he’d reached out to steady her, she’d jerked back, her eyes showing a flicker of fear before she once again cloaked her emotions in a cool gray pool—one that didn’t let him see beneath the surface.

  Alex realized that she might carry a weapon, she might chase down liars and cheats, but not only didn’t she flirt, she didn’t like to be touched.

  Chapter Two

  Taylor needed to hear more about Prince Alexander and his country before she decided what to do with him. From past experience she knew celebrity cases tended to have a broader scope than those of the average client. She’d taken on the cases of an opera diva who had been stalked by a rabid fan and a senator who had been blackmailed by an ex-lover. She’d solved both cases quietly, without the press ever mentioning the names of her clients in the news. While she still took on the occasional job for the senator, mostly low-key investigative work, Taylor had never before worked for royalty and hoped that she wasn’t taking on an assignment that was beyond her capabilities.

  So before she blew next month’s rent, before she got in any deeper, she wanted specifics. In this town, where confidential conversations in restaurants could be overheard by undercover reporters looking for a scoop, she didn’t want to risk having anyone eavesdropping on their discussion. So she led Alex into a park and found them a bench shaded by a towering oak.

  “Who do you think is trying to kill you?” she asked. She’d found the clue to solving a case could often be learned with her clients.

  “I have no idea.” In contrast to his almost bored tone, with boyish enthusiasm Alex tossed a piece of his leftover hot dog bun to a squirrel.

  “Your father was assassinated last year and now your brother rules the country?”

  “Correct.”

  “You are second in line for the throne?”

  “Until Nicholas and Ericka have children. Then I’m off the hook.”