Her Cowboy Prince

by Madeline Ash

  “You’re hers,” Mark said. “You and Zara.”

  “Fine,” she said, sounding almost annoyed. “Tell her yes.”

  Mark raised a brow. “I might alter the tone.” He picked up his hat from the end of the desk. “I’ll go and see how she’s feeling.”

  Frankie slid a hand in the back pocket of her jeans and stepped back as Mark passed her.

  “I’ll leave you to it.” Tommy rose and strode from the room in Mark’s wake, closing the door behind him.

  Kris ran a distracted hand through his hair, waiting, knowing the only reason Frankie hadn’t slipped away with the others was because she had more to discuss.

  After a good twenty seconds of silence—roughly the time it would take for Tommy to reach the bottom of the spiral staircase—she eyed him. “I don’t suppose either of you mentioned how good Tommy looked behind that desk?”

  “I thought about it.” His gaze drifted back to the bruise on her cheekbone. “But then he seemed ready to puke at the idea of Mark’s bachelor party down in the city and it ruined his air of authority.”

  She clicked her tongue, then stepped forward to hand him the folder. “We’ve tracked down his attackers.”

  His pulse lurched. Already? Throwing it open, he scanned the first page and looked up in disbelief. “They’ve been stuck in immigration detention?”

  “Morons didn’t have visas to travel to the U.S. in the first place. They worked on a cruise, jumped ship along the coast and must have made their way to Montana. Three days after the attack, they were picked up for speeding outside of Portland. Evidently, they were buzzed on having taken down an heir and got happy with the accelerator.”

  His skin was cold. “That sounds too stupid to be true.”

  “How smart did they seem knocking on your door, asking for Erik Jaroka’s son, then beating the shit out of our boys right down the road?” she asked. “It sounds just stupid enough for people acting under orders of someone else. Someone smart enough to have tracked you down like I did—who believed, like I did, that there was only one of you. Whoever was in charge would have stayed in Kiraly and not given a damn when those guys were caught without papers. All they’d have cared about was whether the job was done.”

  “I don’t know.” Kris tried to think it through. “Those men wouldn’t have stayed quiet. They’d have named whoever sent them, blurted out the whole plan to bring their boss down with them. It all would have unraveled, surely, and Kiralian authorities would have been alerted.”

  Frankie paused, eyeing him. “You think anyone listens to people in immigration detention centers? No papers, no voice. Besides, no one had linked them to the attack. Just speeding. They might be stupid, but they wouldn’t admit to killing a prince.”

  Kris blew out a hard breath. “You’re sure it’s really them?”

  “Turn the page.”

  Flipping over the paper, his blood chilled at identifying photographs of the men who’d knocked on his door three years ago—and gone on to beat his brother and neighbor to near death.

  “Exactly as you described,” she murmured.

  Anticipation spread through him. While he couldn’t forget his involvement in the attack, he wanted justice. “Can they be charged?”

  “It was an act of high treason.” Her frown was grim. “We’ll get them.”

  “So, what happens now?”

  “I’ve positioned security to monitor the local families and friends of these men. We’ll investigate whether any of them assisted with the renovations of the west wing. We’ve already got all workers and suppliers on file. If the incidents are connected, hopefully there’ll be crossover. If not, it was still a lead worth pursuing.”

  “Okay.” Reeling, he closed the folder and handed it back.

  Tucking it under her arm, she said, “Do you want to go out tonight?”

  He blinked, struggling to switch gears from a murder investigation to a date. Then he stepped closer. “Yes.”

  “There’s someone I’ve tracked down,” she said, ignoring his advance. “You have to be discreet. This person can’t know they’re being observed.”

  Not a date, then, but a lead. And was it just him or were her lips paler than usual?

  “No radiating primal energy like last night. Keep it tucked in, okay?”

  Primal energy. He contained his smirk. “Okay.”

  “You can’t wear that. I’ll have clothes brought to your room. Meet you in the entrance hall at seven,” she said, turning away. His gaze raked down her figure, but like a thirsty man trying to lick condensation off the wrong side of glass, the sight of her ass in those jeans only intensified his craving.

  “Frankie,” he said, stepping after her.

  She glanced back, features guarded.

  “Why don’t you wear the uniform of the royal guard?”

  Confusion tugged on her brows. “Would you prefer that I did?”

  “I don’t care how you dress,” he said. “But as head of personal security, you’d wear navy blue with something extra, right? Gold stripes or piping to mark your position.”

  “Probably,” she said, looking down and tapping at the ends of the papers that stuck out of the folder. “Why?”

  “For someone so determined to remind me that you’re my inferior as a member of palace staff, it seems odd that you wouldn’t use the uniform as a visual reminder of our differences.”

  She didn’t react. Just eyed him with a bland expression that seemed to ask, your point?

  “You want to know what I think?” he asked.

  “Probably not.”

  “You don’t believe you deserve to wear it.” As the words left his mouth, the full truth of the theory hit him. If she couldn’t even accept her role in the palace, no wonder she fought being paired with a prince. “You don’t believe you deserve to be here.”

  Frankie’s features revealed nothing—but he’d bet her heart was beating with panic.

  “When you and Tommy were talking in the car last week,” he said, “you mentioned you didn’t work for the royal guard before you came to Montana. Philip’s thrown you in the deep end, hasn’t he?”

  She glanced out the window at the mountains. “So?”

  “So why won’t you accept that you’ve risen to the challenge?”

  Now he was sure her lips were too pale. “Can we save this conversation until we get back tonight? I have work to do.”

  “Swear it,” he said, waiting until she looked at him. “Swear you’ll explain this.”

  After a moment of impossibly wide green eyes, she swallowed. Her expression hardened. “I swear.”

  “Thank you.”

  She left without another word, and he sank back onto the sofa, still wishing he was home again, but with her by his side as they drove through the wild expanse of Montana. Instead of sitting in silence or playing ‘Would You Rather’ as they’d done on past road trips, he would ask her questions about her life, gently nudging her open, because his current ignorance was his fault as much as hers.

  He’d always respected her space, steered clear of conversations that caused her silence and stillness. He’d thought that was being a good friend—but as her friend, he should have pushed a little more, trying to understand what caused her to shut down, rather than acting as if her life had begun when she’d moved to Sage Haven.

  Tonight, that would change. She was nervous about what she had to tell him, but he’d take it all. He’d finally make sense of her. The reasons she pushed and pulled. Understanding her past was the last barrier between them and his stomach balled in anticipation. Once he knew it all, he could tell her with conviction that there was nowhere else they belonged than by each other’s sides.

  And finally, she would believe him.

  Frankie stood staring at her reflection. The mirror didn’t lie—it had always confided the truth behind her charades. A hollow-hearted stare beneath her fine false lashes. The pinch of scruples around her rose-painted mouth. The curl of self-loathing at he
r top lip. A heaviness to her head, forcing her pearl-strung collarbones to catch the weight that bore down on her neck.

  She’d never posed or played a part to fool herself. Never smiled or pouted or practiced lines. Her ability to fall into character had never been something she’d wanted to watch.

  At sixteen, she’d sworn she’d never do it again—dress or behave like someone else.

  Yet here she was, proof that old habits could rise swift and sharp to the surface like the pair of brass knuckles her fingertips never quite left alone in her pocket.

  She shouldn’t be surprised.

  It was in her blood, after all.

  The restaurant was in an expensive part of the city that Kris hadn’t visited before. It was one of the many establishments surrounding a large square, cobbled and bustling, with a sparkling fountain at its heart and the last stalls of a daily market making way for nightlife.

  He and Frankie sat outdoors at an elegant patio table, overlooking the piazza with a platter of canapes and two glasses of fizzing wine. A busker played violin nearby, accompanied by a pair of contemporary dancers who moved like ribbons caught in a current. Chatter was light with laughter in the warm summer evening—sounds to suit the strings of tiny lights and flickering candles in this busy hub of fine dining. If Kris hadn’t spent the past few months acclimating in a palace, he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in such a wealthy setting.

  He’d assumed Frankie wouldn’t last two.

  Yet she perched on the front half of her chair, ankles crossed and tucked beneath her. Leaning forward with a straight back, she picked up her glass in one hand and rested the forearm of the other arm with casual elegance on the tabletop, her fingers falling just over the edge. Her expression was soft with delight as she watched the dancers.

  Shock had silenced him since they’d left the palace.

  He’d assumed that tonight she would make sense to him. Reveal the nature of her spikes so he’d finally understand how to hold her without hurting either of them. But instead, she’d . . . instead—

  She’d become someone else.

  She wore a sundress with the ease of a woman long-used to such fashionable, fitted things. Green with a cream floral pattern and a square neckline, and despite the flowy hem that sat halfway up her thighs, he hadn’t noticed her tug at it once. Her hair was slicked back, gel turning it a dark brown, while a green-blue silk scarf wrapped snug around the base of her head and was tied in a bow at the front. Her makeup was different—finer and wider somehow, as if the shadows and sweeping black lines exposed the innocence in her eyes. She wore lipstick and a pearl necklace, and sipped her flute like she had a lifetime of experience in indulging her expensive tastes.

  It was intensely unnerving.

  He’d put on the chinos and button-up white shirt she’d sent to his room, and even jammed his hair beneath the Harvard University branded cap, but all that had done was change his clothes.

  She’d changed everything.

  “Stop staring,” she murmured, and sipped again.

  Not knowing where else to look, he picked up a crescent of flaky pastry with a salty, tangy filling. Peripherally, she didn’t even scan as Frankie. Normally she held herself like a concealed yet firmly gripped cudgel: straight-bodied, tight, a small swing to her movements. Instead, her posture and body language were cultivated, polished with the gleam of high society. The discord sat uneasily inside him, and as he chewed, his gaze returned to her.

  She sensed him watching. “I told you in the car, I don’t want to be recognized.”

  “I don’t even recognize you.”

  Her shoulder curled forward in a demure flirtation as she smiled at him. “At least look like you do.”

  She was utterly convincing. The trick in transforming herself so completely seemed to lie in changing what he’d believed was her innate behavior. Her bearing, gestures, gait, expressions. If he’d passed her on the street, he wouldn’t know it unless he looked straight at her, and even then . . . Yet more disturbing was that she was behaving like the kind of person who’d be comfortable receiving the attention of a prince.

  And he hated it.

  He watched as she set her glass down and tightened the knot of her headscarf, looking around a little as if expecting—and privately hoping—someone was watching and admiring her.

  Kris’s jaw dropped. “How are you doing that?”

  “Don’t look,” she said, ignoring his question as she rested her chin in her hand, elbow featherlight on the table. “But shortly, a man is going to exit the hotel across the square. Pretend you’re watching the dancers. He’ll be with a woman in her middle years, and he’ll leave suddenly, cutting their evening short.”

  What? “How could you possibly know that?”

  Smiling, she gestured, flicking her fingers to the twilit sky as if commenting on the temperate evening. “Just wait.”

  Baffled, he leaned back in the uncomfortable chair and watched the performance. Within a minute, he noted the hotel doors swing around as a couple emerged. The man had a hand on the woman’s back and he absently raised his other hand to check his watch. Jolting in alarm, he drew away, and after a brief exchange, moved in to kiss his companion. Kris risked a proper look, noting the kiss turn from gentle to hungry—like the man was being torn from his beloved—before he pulled back and rushed out of the square. The woman stared after him, disappointment in every line of her perfect posture.

  Kris gaped after the retreating man. “I’m so confused.”

  Frankie stood, tucking more than enough money to cover their meal beneath the platter. “We follow him.”

  Alone and on foot, because Frankie had given his guards the night off and didn’t call the car around. In the twenty minutes it took to tail the man uphill to the center of Kiraly, Kris reached several conclusions.

  One, Frankie must have done extensive research to believe the man was worthy of observing personally—which presumably connected him to the investigation. Adrenaline nicked Kris’s pulse as they climbed a winding set of mosaic steps through the arts precinct. She was closer than he’d realized.

  Two, it explained why she didn’t want them to be recognized. As royal security, her presence could alert the man that he was a suspect.

  And three, Kris couldn’t wait for the night to be over so he could get his Frankie back. Even her walk was different, kind of pulled in, a shorter stride and quicker steps. He didn’t like it. Any of it.

  Less than a block away from the bar the man had entered, she paused to admire a shopfront window display of women’s clothing. She raised a hand, the fingernails of her thumb and pinkie flicking against each other delicately. “Give it a minute.”

  “Frankie—”

  She pointed at a violet sun hat wreathed in a yellow ribbon and angled her head with a questioning smile. “Don’t use my name.”

  “What do you want me to call you?” he asked, doing his best not to frown. Frankie smiled so rarely that he wanted to bask in this moment. But it wasn’t right. It was too . . . sweet. Soft and open. That wasn’t how Frankie smiled. She revealed her amusement with a hard grin, quick and sharp, leaving a bite mark on his heart.

  “Don’t call me anything. It won’t matter.” She reached out, bottom lip disappearing between her teeth as she made a show of tentatively tugging the brim of his cap lower and sliding her fingertips up into his hairline, pressing escapee strands out of sight. Then she pulled back and eyed him beneath her lashes. “I listen every time you speak.”

  “Are you—?” He ran a hand over the back of his neck. Had that admission been part of her act? “This is so weird.”

  “Can you do it?” Her expression was composed, attention idly following an evening cyclist that rode past, but the question was quiet, fierce, cutting through her façade. “We’re not going inside if you’ll give us away.”

  Resolve formed a band around his chest. If she believed the hotel guy was worth all this effort, Kris wasn’t going mess it up. “I can do
it.”

  “Don’t act like a prince. Don’t act like a cowboy. Don’t act like you’ve never seen me before. We’re on a date. You know me. Got it?”

  “Of course, sweetheart,” he murmured, and reaching out, he laced his fingers through hers and drew her hand up to his mouth. Her wide, thick-lashed eyes darted to his as he slowly kissed each of her knuckles, his tongue sliding over her skin. “It’ll be easy—you taste exactly like the woman I want to date.”

  He pretended not to notice the pain that flashed in her eyes.

  She withdrew her hand to adjust her necklace as they made their way to the crowded bar. Once they were seated at a table for two against the far wall, she angled her chair to sit with her back to the room, and Kris let the shadows of this rear corner conceal his features beneath the cap. Instead of beer, he ordered a whiskey on the rocks and Frankie ordered a white wine—after she’d confirmed the region and vintage.

  Once again, her posture was faultless, shoulders settled just so and her spine an elegant line. Her forward lean granted him permission to admire her breasts, an unspoken flirtation that betrayed the date was going well. Picking up her glass and smiling across at him, she said, “This is nice.”

  Forcibly reminding himself it was an act, he did his damnedest not to look and replied, “One word for it.” His smile was slow as he leaned back, stretching one leg out so his polished black shoe was beneath her chair and his knee brushed against hers. “Where did you get that dress?”

  “Hanna. She made it herself.” She angled her head, patting the back of her headscarf. “And she borrowed this from Gul.”

  “I like that color on you. It makes the green in your eyes look darker.”

  Setting her wine on the table, she ran a fingertip along the glass lip. “You might have noticed that he’s sitting in a booth by the window. With a different woman.”

  Resting his head against the wall behind him, Kris swung his gaze toward the front of the bar and took a moment to assess the man properly. Roughly in his early fifties, he was of average build but in great shape. Easily good-looking, handsome really, with a kind face and ginger hair that was greying around his temples. The man laughed, effused with warmth and affection, and then raised a hand to his chest in apparent surprise as he glanced across at his companion. Surprised to be laughing?