by Cara Colter
She refused to give him the satisfaction of asking him how far twelve kilometers was in miles. Instead, even though her feet already hurt, Sophie gave him a withering look that let him know where he could put his sensibleness. He didn’t say another word.
He walked her all the way back to the castle—and twelve kilometers was a long way. If he hadn’t been there, she would have flagged down a cab partway, but with him walking stoically and silently beside her, pride prevented it even as her feet screamed their protest.
It started to rain. Her sweater began to feel like a wet clump of toilet tissue. She was pretty sure her feet were bleeding.
Lancaster did not say another word to her. He never even once mentioned that now he’d have to go back—or send someone else back—to retrieve the vehicle because of her stubbornness.
A reminder she was his job, and not a very pleasant one at that. She tried, once, feebly, to remind herself what her mission for today had been.
Something about his happiness.
Sod that, a voice inside her said.
CHAPTER NINE
THERE WAS NOTHING on God’s green earth, Lancaster thought, quite as indecipherable as a woman. Every other creature—including most men—was nearly completely predictable in its nature and patterns.
Sophie was angry.
So angry she was walking home despite the fact he was pretty sure her feet were causing her agony inside those shoes. The shoes were not made for walking, by the way, built like a pair of slippers.
Not that he was crazy enough to weigh in on that with her. The truth was, halfway there, when it was obvious to him that she was carrying on based on her stupid rather-die-than-admit-an-error stubbornness, he had to fight a desire to pick her up, throw her over his shoulder and carry her the remainder of the way.
With a man, Lancaster would be pleased that they were experiencing the natural consequences of a poor decision. With a man, he might reluctantly admire that level of stubbornness. But with Sophie, he found his feelings almost as indecipherable and as illogical as her behavior.
Pick her up and throw her over his shoulder? Picturing it gave him grave satisfaction, even as he recognized it as a primal desire, not the kind of thought he ever indulged in.
He turned his thoughts elsewhere. Why was she angry, exactly? He couldn’t very well ask her, when she had denied being angry.
He cast about in his mind for something he might have said or done, but came up blank. Basically, he had barely seen her once they’d arrived at his aunt’s house.
Was that it? He’d neglected her? It wasn’t as if he was her date, and, in fact, he hadn’t even wanted to go. For exactly the reason that had unfolded, thanks to her.
Swarmed by his well-meaning family. Children—some the same age as his son would have been—adoring him for no reason at all.
It pierced his preoccupation with the indecipherable woman beside him, that those children had not caused him pain this time.
It was a first.
And somehow, it felt as if he was not ready for that particular first—to not grieve his son in every baby he held, in every child’s face that he saw.
And the girls, most of whom he’d known his entire life, all thinking they wanted to save him from something. A life of loneliness? His own company? His sadness? He hated that.
It started to rain, ever so lightly, and then harder. Her sweater was getting plastered to her. Since he had ruled out picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder, Lancaster shrugged off his jacket.
“Here. Take this.” It was a command, not a request, but naturally Sophie was not going to be commanded.
“Quit being so coat-over-the-puddle chivalrous. It belongs to a different time. I’m fine.”
She wouldn’t think he was so chivalrous if she knew what he was thinking. What belonged to a different time was throwing her over his shoulder. He took a deep breath. He took his jacket and draped it lightly over her shoulders.
“You’ll freeze,” she said ungratefully.
“I’m used to hardship.”
She cast him a look, and for a moment he thought her curiosity had been piqued, but if it had, she resisted the temptation to ask him, which was good because, remembering how he had felt when she had taken his hand the other night, he did not want to be discussing the hardships of his life with her.
Finally, in the near dark, their journey completed in silence, they arrived at the palace door. He’d had twelve kilometers to think about it, but he found Sophie as indecipherable as when the trek had started. She was no quitter, though. He had to grudgingly give her that.
“You needn’t worry about me tonight,” she said, stiffly, taking his jacket off and handing it back to him. He was glad he had insisted: she was shivering despite having had it. “I won’t be going out. At all. So you can go dry off—”
Her eyes lingered for a moment on the shirt that clung transparently to him, but then her nose went back in the air. “Or you can figure out what you’re going to do about the car. Or whatever.”
There was something about the way she said that—her casualness just a little too deliberate—that put him on red alert. He went from being a man who found all women—and one woman in particular—indecipherable, to being 100 percent pure soldier. Every soldier he’d ever known who was worth their salt had a “hinky” sense—a strange knowing when things were about to go down.
And so Lancaster knew that instead of going home, having a hot shower—or maybe a cold one, if he thought about her eyes on his wet shirt—and turning on the TV to watch a nice, uncomplicated, completely decipherable soccer game, he would be doing something else entirely.
He wished he’d eaten more at the ceilidh. And that he wasn’t soaked to the skin. But he was not a man given to mourning wishes that did not come true.
“Have a good evening,” he said smoothly, as if she hadn’t alerted him at all.
He got it. He got it entirely. She wanted to go get rid of the chill, and soak those aching feet, and she wanted to do it in privacy.
So, she’d never even know he was there. He pulled his jacket back on. It provided zero warmth over his wet shirt, but it smelled tantalizingly of her.
He alerted the guard on the door, but then went and waited, scanning the wall of the castle for the ground-floor window he knew was hers. He watched the light go on, briefly, and then back off. The window creaked open, and she slid out it, backward, feeling carefully for the ground with one foot.
She found the ground, then turned and scanned the area. She did not see him, and she obviously thought he had taken her at her word. She was wearing a long raincoat, and had a bag in one hand, sneakers on her feet. The outfit looked like something a midnight peeper might wear. It was obvious she had not expected anyone to see her. She had a torch and she turned it on only when she was out of sight of the castle, and on the wooded path that led to the hot springs.
Sticking to the trees, Lancaster kept her in sight. It was obvious she was nervous out here by herself, and yet determined at the same time. The rain had dampened the leaves, and he moved soundlessly. It was ridiculously simple, given the circle of light that was illuminating the path in front of her.
He should, he thought, give her at least some rudimentary lessons in how to detect if she was being followed, and how to make it a whole lot less easy to follow her.
However, wouldn’t that just be making his job more difficult? Maybe before she left Havenhurst, when she was outside the circle of his protection, he would make sure she had the skills she needed to protect herself. Some rudimentary self-defense would be good, too.
But Lancaster was aware that he didn’t like thinking of her leaving Havenhurst, and certainly not of her being outside the circle of his protection. This current threat to her would come and go, of that he was certain. But her proximity to the royal family would not change, and it
seemed only a matter of time before another threat leaped up to take its place.
This was life’s hardest lesson, one he seemed destined to repeat over and over again. Sometimes he was helpless to protect those he—
What? a voice asked him, its tone faintly mocking. Those you what?
Feeling things for people just made his life more complicated. Though, without warning, he was not sure how his life could become more complicated. The job of protecting Sophie went from simple to difficult in the blink of an eye.
Because she had entered the glade.
Havenhurst was covered in hot springs. Secret little grottos could be found all over the island.
And yet this one was special.
The pool was not large, not much bigger than the koi pond the queen loved. Two strokes would carry a good swimmer right across it.
But it was magical, especially on a night like this. Its own steam, combined with the darkness of the rainy night, created a sense of an enchanted place that a veil of fog was parting to reveal. The water of the springs danced with its own light, a light turquoise around the worn-smooth rocky edges, turning to pockets of indigo where the water was deeper.
The moist, warm air created an ideal environment for plants, and though no one knew how they had gotten here, exotic ferns and greenery that one expected to see only in the tropics dipped their fronds in the water and grew with lavish abundance.
Sophie paused on the edge of the water.
Lancaster ordered himself to turn around.
But in his head he could hear her saying, after he had assured her none of his guardsmen would ever sneak a peek, They’re just men.
And it turned out, he was just a man, too. Because he did not turn around. He held his breath as the raincoat slid down off her shoulders.
Now who was the midnight peeper?
Was she naked under there? When she didn’t know who might be in these woods watching her?
He felt furious at her lack of caution in the face of her own vulnerability.
And even more furious at his own vulnerability.
The raincoat slid down farther. He was appalled that he was not sure if he was thankful or disappointed that she had on a bathing suit, underneath. She stepped out of the puddle of the raincoat, and he saw it wasn’t a bathing suit, at all.
It was one of those confections from Top Secret. Which begged the question: When had she gone back there?
Did it matter? This inability to turn away—to be so mesmerized by her beauty that he was powerless over himself—was proving he was a complete failure at his job. His perspective was gone. The shield of his professionalism had been broken. His walls had been breached. His mission—her protection—was as foggy as the night-darkened mist that swirled around the pool and around her.
Suddenly, he could not do this. The dishonesty of watching her when she did not know she was being watched grated on his sense of honor. It felt as if it would be a lie between them, forever, that he had watched her without her knowledge, and he could not bear it.
He stepped out of the shadows of the trees.
She caught the movement out of the corner of her eye, and turned slightly, tilting her head toward him.
Maybe he was not nearly as good at this job as he had given himself credit for, because if Sophie was surprised to see him, she did not let on. She did not scrabble to put her raincoat back on. She did not try to fold her arms over herself.
The whiteness of her body appeared illuminated against the backdrop of night and fog. She looked like a goddess, and Lancaster had never been more aware of his own mortality.
She did not speak, and neither did he.
She regarded him with calm interest, and then she turned her back to him, as though he were not there, and slipped into the turquoise waters of the pool. She swam out to the center, its deepest point, and then ducked her whole body under.
Then she resurfaced, her midnight-dark hair as slick as an otter’s skin, water streaming like mercury down the luscious curves of her body. Gracefully, like a dancer in a dream, she made her way through the pool and sat on a rock ledge submerged in the water. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, temptation enough, then she stuck out her tongue, ever so slightly, to catch the rain that fell.
Lancaster frowned. Was he trembling?
Perhaps. He was hungry and he was wet. She knew he was here, now. He had done the honorable thing. He would fade back into the trees now. He would—
“Connal.”
He froze, the sound of his name on her lips, again, felt like a benediction he had waited for without knowing he waited.
“Come get warm. I can see you shaking from here.”
He could feel his frown deepen. She wasn’t even looking at him. How could she possibly see him shaking? And yet, he was, and it was not exactly the manly impression he wanted to be making on her.
When had he started wanting to make any kind of impression on her?
“Do you have to be so strong, all the time?” she asked, still not looking at him, her face lifted to the rain that ran down it in silver droplets. Her tone as soft as a touch.
Yes, something in him cried out, but the word did not make it from his tormented mind to his lips.
“No,” she answered for him. “Lay down your shield, Connal. Lay down your sword.”
No, that voice within him cried.
“Come on,” she said, her voice soothing, a voice a mother would use on a reluctant child. And at the very same time, the voice of pure seduction.
He could not get in that pool with her.
“Come,” she said.
He would, he realized helplessly, do anything she asked him to do.
He would lay down his shield and his sword for her. He walked to the edge of the pool. With his eyes locked on hers, he shrugged out of his soaked jacket, peeled off the wet shirt underneath it. Slowly, aware of her eyes on him, his hand went to his belt. He undid it, and then his zipper. He expected to feel weak, giving in to temptation like this.
He was putting aside his job, what he’d been trained to do his entire life. He was giving himself over to the pleasure that the pool promised.
That Sophie’s eyes promised.
He let the trousers drop, and stood before her in nothing but his boxers. Her eyes drank him in, darkening with unapologetic appreciation.
Connal Lancaster waited for that feeling he feared and hated the most to come over him. That feeling that happened when a man surrendered the only thing he really had. Control generally, and self-control, specifically.
Failure. He waited for it to wash over him, to remind him what a puny thing a man was in the face of larger forces.
Instead, standing there before her, her gaze unflinching on his near nakedness, Connal Lancaster felt something he had very rarely felt.
Freedom.
He dived cleanly into the shallow, turquoise waters.
CHAPTER TEN
“YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE come here by yourself.”
Despite the softness in Lancaster’s tone, it was so apparent to Sophie he was a man who was used to giving commands and accustomed to being obeyed.
Shouldn’t have sounded like shouldna and it was impossibly sexy.
Lancaster was sitting on the rock ledge beside her, the water lapping at his powerful pectoral muscles and his broad chest. His eyes were closed and his head was tilted back, revealing the strong column of his neck, the jut of his Adam’s apple. Water was dotted like tiny diamonds in the stubble of his whiskers, and in the thickness of his lashes. Sophie watched the raindrops slide down his perfect features and could, unfortunately, picture all too clearly her fingertips following their path.
“You said it would be good for my feet,” she reminded him.
“That’s not the part I’ve a prob
lem with, lass.”
Lass. His voice felt like a touch whispering along the back of her neck.
“I’ve never felt safer in my life than I do here on Havenhurst, Connal. It feels as if this is the land where nothing bad could ever happen.”
She realized, instantly, what a terrible and insensitive thing that was to say. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Bad things happen everywhere. I think you know that.”
“Wh-what do you mean?” she stammered.
“Has something happened to you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You have an exaggerated startle reflex. I’ve noticed it a couple of times. When that guy grabbed you on the way out of the pub the other night, you looked truly frightened. Did your fiancé do something to you?”
Sophie looked at him. His voice was measured, but there was a contained fury in him when he suggested that. He had noticed so much about her. There was also a feeling of being seen in a way she had not experienced before.
“He didn’t hurt me physically, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I guess I’m asking who did.”
She scanned his face, then sighed. He had told her so much about himself. Trusted her with it. Now, she felt as if she could trust him with one of her own secrets.
“When I was a little girl, my mother was attacked,” she said, her voice catching. “My mom was born in Mountain Bend, the most beautiful girl in town. She won beauty contests—”
“Ah, so that’s where you get it.”
The admission that he found her beautiful somehow made this story even easier to tell.
“As silly as that seems now, she still has those banners on her dresser. My dad came to town as a mill manager, a university-educated office guy. As different from the local boys in Mountain Bend as night is to day. She fell hard for him, and left the guy she’d been going steady with cold. She married my dad, who ended up firing the old boyfriend for showing up to work at the mill drunk.
“My dad traveled a lot on mill business. One night, the old beau and some of his pals broke into our house. Well, not broke into exactly, because we never locked the doors before that. I was about six or seven at the time, and remember waking up to the sound of my mom screaming.
