Protecting the Prince

by Dana Volney

  “Luckily for me, your man isn’t a good shot.”

  Matvey’s gaze wandered to Winter. Eliam laced his hands in his lap. There was no need for pleasantries. He didn’t want to stay a second longer than necessary.

  “Franklin does not have the authority to make deals on behalf of my company,” he said.

  “The deal is done. It will be honored.” He looked over his shoulder and the guy standing behind him disappeared into a makeshift office buildout.

  “It won’t be.” What am I doing? This guy is probably going to kill me where I sit.

  “Then my driver will try harder next time, huh?”

  Maybe you should hire competent people. So far the Russian had proven he could hire a poor driver and marksman. Eliam’s chances of getting out of the deal unharmed were better than he’d originally thought.

  The man returned with a bottle of Kauffman Vodka and six shot glasses. He set them on the table and filled them all, dispersing one to each person. Every person grabbed their glass and held it up, so he did the same. Winter took the cue.

  “To your health.” Matvey drank and set his glass down in front of him.

  Everyone else followed. The vodka burned as Eliam swallowed it down—it was high-quality stuff, but he was a whiskey man.

  “I don’t have the ability to honor the deal.” His heartbeat kicked up a notch. He was riding a line that could snap at any second.

  The two men sitting on either side of Matvey, Vlad and someone he hadn’t met before, had permanent scowls that didn’t hint at messing around. Eliam was glad they were at least all sitting at the table having a friendly conversation with no pointed guns.

  “All of the routes I believe you require are not currently in use. I don’t know how Franklin planned to swing that, but there is nothing I can do.” Lying was the only way out of this. He didn’t want to go to the police.

  “We will have the contents for the first container in three days.”

  I’m getting sick and tired of explaining myself. “I cannot help you.”

  “Make it work.”

  The Russians weren’t his cup of tea. He preferred to deal with people and groups he could control, small deals that didn’t involve whatever the hell these guys needed his back channel routes to move.

  Winter squeezed his shoulder once. He swiveled his head to his right. She briefly met his gaze—her start held a mix of concerned and pissed. By the looks of her tense lips pursed together and the grip on his shoulder, they would have their own private conversation later.

  Matvey’s henchmen looked to him for direction and he nodded. It worked because they didn’t draw their weapons. Thank God. Eliam knew Winter was packing but wasn’t sure of her skills or if they’d make it to a cement pylon before a bullet hit one of them. Now he wished Winter wasn’t there. God only knew how much she charged for an hour of intense life endangerment, or however she would write that up on the invoice.

  “Your woman wants you to cooperate,” Matvey said with a cheery smile.

  My what?

  “Of course.” Winter arched a brow.

  Matvey sat forward, and grabbing the vodka bottle he refilled their shot glasses. She slid her palm over Eliam’s shoulders, causing a chill to spread down his back, and reached across the table, winked, and threw back the shot like she was at a party. What is she doing?

  “Spasibo,” she said directly to Matvey.

  “Pazhalooysta.” He smiled and laughed.

  She speaks Russian?

  Matvey turned his attention to Eliam. “I like her.”

  “She’s…” He had no idea where he was going with the statement. Not my woman?

  All of a sudden, Winter’s lips were on his ear, kissing and nipping. The areas her soft lips touched burned for more. He turned his chin into her. The scent of lavender relaxed him. She smelled good. Way too good. She trailed one more kiss below his ear—his fingers ached to reach out and hold her. Now is not the time to be turned on. She needed to stop before he lost all control of his body—and actions.

  As quickly as she’d started, she stopped. She giggled and straightened, tapping his back to signal it was time to leave. “Someone’s got to keep this one in line. Speaking of which, we have reservations to get to.”

  “Matvey.” Eliam stood and buttoned his jacket.

  “Eliam. We’ll see you in three days.”

  That went well. Apparently he’d see them in three days. How was he going to get out of this deal now? Dammit. He should just hire a hit man for Franklin and give the Russians his dead body. Maybe then they wouldn’t mess with him.

  Right. And Winter wasn’t going to yell at him as soon as they got back to the car.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Calm down. Use your words. She slammed her car door as Eliam buckled himself into the passenger seat—like now he was all concerned for his safety.

  “Russians? Do you know how stupid that was?” Okay, so maybe she should encourage herself to use more productive words.

  “It was a business meeting.” He rested his hands on his thighs, and she resisted the urge to look.

  “I can’t believe I actually let you go in there. Stupid. Stupid.” She started the Durango and got them the hell out of there before they could be followed or shot at again. “No wonder there’s a second hit out on you. It’s obviously them.” Fury raged from her hands to the top of her head; she felt like she was boiling over. Only the target of her madness wasn’t necessarily Eliam, it was herself. She knew better than to let him walk away without her and go into a place she hadn’t cleared. She’d learned better in worse situations. She wouldn’t make this type of silly mistake again, because she wasn’t going to let him out of her sight.

  “Second hit?”

  “You aren’t going anywhere without me anymore. I’m going to be right there when you open the refrigerator to get a bottle of water. I’m going to be at your elbow when you throw a load of laundry in the dryer, assuming you do your own laundry. No more surprises or secrecy. Period.” If she could tie him to her, she would. Better yet, she could lock him up until she figured out how to nail Franklin. And apparently deal with the Russians. And then Holland. Shit. The list was growing.

  “Wait. Back up.” Eliam shifted in his seat, and she could feel his stare burning into her skin even though she refused to look at him.

  “I mean, they could’ve just killed you right there. If their sniper hadn’t sucked, your cousin would be at the mortuary right now discussing a gold casket or black lacquer and whether or not to have a calling or just a short prayer service at the cemetery.” Her voice rose and she tried to keep her hands on the steering wheel, but instead she waved them around like she was deranged. He’d made her a crazy person. He could be dead right now, three times over. Just like Brenn, Malcolm, and Wes. No way would she ever relive that day. She’d rather die herself.

  “Winter.” His voice boomed in her SUV. “What second hit?”

  She blew out a long puff of air and gripped the steering wheel at ten and two. Do I tell him? Maybe then he wouldn’t be so careless. On the other hand, he’d probably fire her. No, now was not the time to tell him she held the first contract out on his life.

  “As I said last night, there’s more than one group after you. Matvey all but just admitted to the car incident. The issue is, who else do you conduct shady business with or have made angry?” She was proud of how calmly she was able to ask him the last sentence.

  “Wow, how very PC of you to word my impending death that way.” He shook his head and looked out his side window. “Matvey is a complication, but in all reality, he needs me alive.”

  “Doesn’t seem like he’s trying very hard to keep you breathing.” Dumbass was going to get himself killed without even trying, and she was going to have to try even harder now not to let that happen.

  He swiveled to sit forward in his seat and started mumbling in a Middle Eastern language.

  “What?” she asked, annoyed she couldn’t understand wh
at he was saying. She knew bits and pieces of many languages but didn’t speak any fluently. “What language is that?”

  “I’m still in Franklin’s deal. A deal that is a jail sentence for sure.” He pushed the button on the car door and the window slid halfway down. “Hebrew. I am fluent in Hebrew, courtesy of my parents.”

  It was intoxicating. If she’d met him in another setting, she’d be putty in his hands and on his sexy, foreign-language lips.

  “The Russians are not a great group to mess with, especially the Primack family.” For fuck’s sake, what was she babbling about? She didn’t know any bad guys who were great to mess with. “They are merciless.”

  “I didn’t. It was Franklin.”

  More Hebrew. There was more to this story. Eliam knew Matvey; they hadn’t been strangers in there.

  “But now that Franklin got the ball rolling…” she thought out loud.

  “They aren’t too keen on people backing out of done deals.” He finished her thought.

  Eliam rubbed the back of his neck.

  She squelched her smile at Eliam’s unhappiness about the illegal dealings. Eliam wasn’t a bad guy.

  Who do I know at Interpol?

  She pulled into her garage and closed the door before they got out. Once inside her entryway, she kicked off her boots. “You should’ve told me who we were meeting and why.”

  “I was going to take care of it today.” He hung his suit jacket on the coatrack—if only he’d shrug out of this fantasy that he could go all badass on international mobsters just as easily.

  “What do they want?”

  “I am going to handle it.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” She turned to face him. With her boots off, their height difference was striking. If she were closer to him, she’d have to tip her head back just to look into his eyes.

  Exacerbation flitted across his face.

  “We’re in this together now. Keeping crucial information from me, or anything actually, will not help this problem get solved and will put you in more danger.” She rubbed the heel of her palm between her eyes. Her client was exhausting. She’d been right—he had been, in fact, hiding something. Now the question was whether the Russian deal was the only secret he owned.

  She moved into the kitchen, not caring if he followed or stayed there to sulk. She’d unloaded the groceries earlier, marinated the chicken, and cleaned the asparagus while Felix and Eddie had both been on guard at Eliam’s office.

  Eliam rolled up his sleeves to the middle of his forearm, unbuttoned the top two buttons of his dress shirt, and sat at the bar while she organized the chicken on a baking sheet. It would need to bake for a while before she started steaming the asparagus and cooking the rice.

  “Why didn’t you tell them you were my bodyguard?”

  “So if something bad goes down, they won’t see me coming.”

  His hearty chuckle made her glance up from the silverware drawer. His eyes were closed and the edges of his face seemed softer.

  “This humors you?” she asked. Leaping across the counter and sucker-punching him held high appeal. Then maybe planting her lips on his. Her thoughts were confusing. The one thing she knew was that kissing his neck had been exhilarating and really hard to stop.

  “Absolutely. On many levels. You did a great job, taking that shot in the sexy way you did. It was terrific.”

  Sexy? Had he really said that? She loosened her grip on the plates. She’d been ready for a fight of sorts, not a compliment—or his using the word sexy.

  She opened her fridge so she didn’t have to look at him in case he could read her mind. “What would you like to drink?”

  “Water, please.”

  She grabbed two bottles of water, the only actual thing she had to drink in her fridge besides alcohol. “I take it you have to see them again.”

  “In three days they’ll be delivering what needs to ship.”

  Great, so I’m keeping you alive only to get thrown in jail later. “And that would be?” She put the plates, drinks, and silverware on the bar and joined him on the second bar stool.

  “Didn’t ask.” He shook his head one too many times. “Don’t want to know.”

  “Reasonable.” Reasonable doubt and deniability. “What are you going to do?” She drank from her water bottle.

  “I don’t know.”

  The change was subtle in his demeanor—his jaw was a little tighter and his movements stilted. Eliam was in one hell of a bad situation with the Primack family and he knew it. She felt a little bad for him.

  “Can you turn them in without getting in trouble?” Long shot, but what the hell. She had no idea what his options really were, didn’t know how the shipping world worked as far as transport deals went. She did know they were regulated and there was a chance of him being caught. And she had an idea in her world of what could be done to get him Russian-free. After their more pressing issue was resolved, she’d make a couple of calls.

  “Not likely.”

  Yeah, that path was hard to come back from after a paperwork trail told the bad guys who was responsible for their legal entanglement. And it usually involved a short lifespan or blood on innocent hands. But why did she care? It’s not like she really gave a rat’s ass if he died young or old, as long as it wasn’t on her watch. Don’t fall for clients. It’s the number-one rule. After this assignment she needed a vacation. Somewhere tropical and warm and non-violent.

  So, asking more questions about his company was out, as she really didn’t want to know anything that didn’t pertain to his life being in danger. Grr. She wasn’t feeling very chatty toward a man who was supposed to be open with her yet was actively keeping her out of the loop.

  “So, Hebrew, huh?”

  “My parents preferred to speak in their native tongue. It comes in handy more than you’d think. I can pick up other languages fairly easily. You speak Russian?”

  “Not really. I can get by on a handful of languages, but I’m not fluent in any.”

  “How does that happen?”

  “Military. Spent lots of time overseas and picked up stuff from fellow soldiers.” She went back into the kitchen to start the rest of dinner. She was hungry and possibly slightly buzzed from the two shots of vodka.

  “How long were you in again?” he asked.

  Maybe if she talked about herself, then he’d open up, too. Earlier she’d thought his dealings with the Russians was the secret, but now she got the feeling maybe there were layers to Eliam she was going to have to peel back. She definitely had a challenge in front of her—subtlety had never been her strong suit.

  • • •

  “I was in for ten years.”

  Winter was acting a little off. She’d been on edge ever since the incident at the warehouse—her eyes weren’t as happy as they usually were. She tried to come off as tough, and she was—as he’d witnessed steadily in the past twenty hours—but she was also tender. She felt things deeply, and that wasn’t such a bad trait.

  “Did you enlist straight out of high school?”

  “Yep. It was the right road for me.”

  “Hard teenage years?”

  “Yeah, I don’t want to get into that.” She added rice to the pot of boiling water on the stove.

  He could relate. His teenage years had not been the best with his dad suddenly gone and his mom always at the office. The formative years could definitely leave a mark.

  “Ha.” He laughed at the irony.

  Her brows knitted together. “What?”

  “We both have touchy subjects.”

  She took a bowl of asparagus out of the fridge and added it into the steamer on the other burner. “My secrets won’t get me killed.”

  “We have a funny lady on our hands.”

  She braced herself on the counter with two hands and hung her head. The back of her neck was exposed and looked creamy to the touch. “I want to hear it all.”

  “What?”

  She grabbed a bottle of w
ine out of the fridge, two glasses from the cupboard, and set them on the counter in front of him.

  “Your story. Let’s hear it.” She poured two glasses and gave one to him.

  “Yours first.”

  Her eyes bore into him, but he wasn’t about to give in and speak first. With Winter he had to stand his ground or he’d lose all of it.

  “My teenage years were rough. Mom was not in the picture and Dad was doing what he could to survive. My story is not unique; we’ve all heard it a bunch of times. So, when I graduated high school I enlisted and never looked back. I was in for ten years. Spent the last five under Louis’s command.”

  This was definitely the first time he’d ever seen her unsure. He felt bad for bringing up a past she clearly wanted to forget.

  “I got out. Moved back here and tried to find a job.” She sipped from her glass.

  “What line of work?” He couldn’t picture her doing any other type of work.

  “I didn’t really care. I’ve only ever known the army as a career and I don’t have a college degree.”

  One minute she was engaged in their conversation and the next it was as if she’d gone to sleep with her eyes open because she was no longer seeing him.

  “I had coffee with Louis one day and I was having a really hard time adjusting. He suggested I wrangle some of the guys and put together a business. I guess they were having a hard time, too. I started Wyn Security and here we are.”

  “They didn’t want to start it with you. They work for you?”

  “You’ve met Felix and Eddie. Amelia Roe and Mieko Noor were in different units we met along the way. We all got together and they volunteered me for all of the paperwork and non-bodyguard duties like collecting the money, so I volunteered myself to be boss. It works. We all think pretty much the same anyway, so there isn’t a lot of arguing. We all have our strengths.”

  She clearly had rejoined the present.

  “Yours is?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I’m the diplomat.”

  “You’re the most diplomatic?”

  “I am.” She chuckled, and the apples of her cheeks were more prominent, drawing him into her smile.