37 Her Highness and the Bodyguard Read online

  To join.

  She opened his heavy jacket and pushed up his sweatshirt. She unbuttoned his borrowed jeans and closed her soft fingers around him and he felt he would die right then and be glad to go.

  He undid her satin jacket, unhooked her lacy little bra, freeing her breasts to his hungry hands. He pulled up her skirt so it was around her waist. And he tore at her tights until they split down the center seam.

  It was awkward and groping.

  And he didn’t care. Judging by her eager moans and breathless, sweet sighs, she didn’t mind, either. They were belly to belly, skin to skin at last, again, after all these years.

  She was the same as he remembered her, the same, only better. Her breasts a little fuller, her skin still warm satin under his hands, her scent enough to drive him gloriously mad.

  At the last, before he finally claimed her, she brought out the condom and rolled it down over him. He blinked, dazed with need for her.

  She gave a low, throaty laugh that seemed to dance along every one of his nerve endings. “I mean it. Don’t ask.”

  He didn’t. He only lifted her on top of him, her legs in their tattered tights folded on either side of his thighs. He gathered the slipping blankets and tarp, tugging them back into place to preserve the wonderful heat they were generating, and he lowered her down onto him. She helped him, sighing, taking him into her by slow, delicious degrees.

  Paradise. He had found it again at last. In the middle of a blizzard, stranded in a ditch on a deserted Montana highway. With Rhia.

  Because wherever she was, there was paradise.

  She rocked him, taking him with her to the edge of the world.

  He went where she led him, all the way, surging into her softness, into the sweet, close, wet heat of her body. Too quickly, he felt the end rolling at him, closing over him, opening him up as it hollowed him out. He tried to hold on, for her sake, so she could go over first. He began to fear he couldn’t last.

  But then he felt her rising, felt the change in her breathing that meant she had caught the wave of her own completion. He knew then that she was close and he set his mind to holding out for her, holding on...

  She cried out and stiffened above him, her hands against his chest, pressing at him, as below, she held him within her, hard and tight. He felt her inner muscles closing on him, the contractions of her climax gripping him, easing, gripping again.

  It was too good. He couldn’t take it. He was going over and there was no stopping it now.

  He surged up hard into her and...something opened. Something gave way and suddenly he was feeling her even more acutely than before. It was perfect. A sensation like no other, as though he had found the secret woman’s heart of her, as though he touched her, knew her in the deepest, most elemental way. He clasped her hips in his two hands and he let his own climax roar through him, turning him inside out as she whispered his name and he pulled her body down to him and claimed her soft mouth in a long, soul-deep kiss.

  There was a time after that, the best kind of time. She rested against him, soft and lazy. He stroked her hair and kissed her forehead and wished those sweet after-moments never had to end.

  Dawn came as they lay there, not talking, easy with each other in a way they hadn’t been since Los Angeles, since their little room at La Casa de la Luna.

  She was the one who finally said it. “I think the storm is over.” He made a low noise of reluctant agreement. She kissed the side of his neck. “I suppose I’ll have to let you up. We’ll have to pull ourselves together and return to the real world.”

  They shared one more kiss. A long one, achingly sweet.

  He didn’t want to let her go. But of course, he had to. He clasped her hips and gently eased her away from him.

  They both looked down at the same time and saw the condom. He was still wearing it, more or less.

  It had ripped wide open.

  * * *

  Rhia hated the silence between them.

  It was back, with a vengeance, as soon as they saw that the condom had broken.

  Not much later, as she was struggling with her ruined tights, buttoning up her jacket and trying to smooth her tangled hair, Marcus leaned over the front seat and opened the glove compartment. He found a pen and a scrap of paper, on which he quickly scrawled a series of numbers.

  “Here.” His breath fogged on the frozen air.

  She took it. “What’s this?”

  “My cell number. Don’t worry, I use an excellent encryption program. No one will know if you call me.”

  For a moment, she actually thought that she’d read the silence all wrong. That he’d reconsidered and wanted to see her again. Her silly heart tried to leap.

  But then she understood. “Oh, seriously. There’s nothing to worry about. I’m not pregnant. The timing’s wrong—plus, you’re being ridiculous. If I were to call you, whatever the reason, I wouldn’t care who knew.”

  “You should care. It’s not fitting.”

  She opened her mouth to argue—and then shut it without a word. Arguing with him on that subject would get her nowhere. True, he had just taken her to heaven in the backseat of a freezing SUV. But that didn’t matter. The barriers between them hadn’t changed. Those barriers were unbreachable, even if they were all in his head.

  She stuck the scrap of paper in the pocket of her jacket, with her permit and the electronic key and the one unused condom. “All right. What next?”

  “We get out of here and up to the road and see if we can flag down a passing motorist.”

  * * *

  The rear door of the SUV opened easily. They went out that way. Marcus insisted on putting her over his shoulder and carrying her up the side of the ditch through new snow that reached almost to his knees.

  At the top, by the roadside, he gently let her down. “Are you all right?”

  “Perfect.” She aimed her chin high and gave him a regal smile. Yes, she did know that she wasn’t a pretty sight. But except for her poor, cold feet in her soggy, stained Manolos, at least she was warm. She wore the blankets for a coat, glad that they covered her to her ankles as she’d had to remove her tattered tights, which she’d tucked into the front of her skirt when he insisted she not leave them behind in the wrecked SUV where anyone might find them.

  He’d kept the torn condom and its wrapper, slipping the evidence of their indiscretion into a pocket for disposal later. Heaven forbid that someone might find proof of what they’d done together during the long, freezing night.

  Marcus’s phone still wasn’t working. He lit more flares and they waited. It didn’t take long. Within five minutes, a snowplow appeared, clearing the drifts of new snow from the highway. Following the plow was a highway patrol car.

  The patrolman pulled over and stopped. He’d been looking for them since before dawn, he said. He put them both in his patrol car where the heater was going strong, and he had a Thermos of hot coffee for them. He called his station on the car radio and reported that he had found the princess and her bodyguard and both were uninjured.

  They told the officer about the accident and described the old man and his brown pickup.

  The officer shook his head. “I would bet my new quad cab that was Loudon Troutdale you almost got killed by.”

  “You know him?” Rhia asked, surprised.

  “Your Highness, everyone in these parts knows Loudon. He’s got some kind of record in the county for reckless driving. I’m thinking he’s had his license for about a week now after the last big suspension.”

  Marcus said, “Last night, after the accident, I got out of the car and walked along the road looking for a sign of him. Judging by his tracks in the snow, he managed to regain control of his pickup and continue on his way.”

  “Can’t tell you I’m surprised,” the patrolman said. “Loudon always ends up in one piece. The people he runs into are generally not so lucky.”

  Rhia asked, “Do you think he’ll lose his license this time?”

 
“That’ll be up to the judge, but I can’t say as how it would be a bad thing if Loudon never got behind the wheel of a vehicle again.”

  They returned to town. Marcus rode in front with the officer, as was proper—because Marcus was all about what was proper, what was fitting.

  Rhia sat in back behind the security grate and tried not to feel like a very bad girl. She probably shouldn’t have seduced Marcus there at the end after putting the poor man through hell the day and evening before.

  To have sex with him on top of everything else? Well, it wasn’t very nice. And it was foolish. Worse than foolish. He had said it himself: it was wrong. But she had kept pushing him, whispering to him, teasing him, until he gave in.

  Because she still had that thing for him. There was just something about him that called to her, something that made her wish there still might be hope for the two of them somehow. Deep in her heart, she feared she would never get over him.

  And yet, she had honestly meant what she said to him, that she knew it was finished between them. Their sad, lost love was never going to be resurrected. She accepted that. She’d had no expectations concerning Marcus for six years, not since their encounter in the South of France, in front of that deserted farmhouse that belonged to some distant relative of her mother’s. Not since she had cried her eyes out right in front of him, throwing away every last scrap of her pride and her dignity, begging him to give them one more chance.

  And he had just stood there, watching her, letting her thoroughly humiliate herself. Before calmly and irrevocably sending her away.

  So, yes. It had been rather a bad idea to have sex with him again.

  A bad idea that had turned out absolutely perfect.

  Something beautiful and real and honest in the middle of a terrible mess.

  She probably should regret it. But she didn’t.

  Instead, she felt, at last, that she and Marcus had reached a certain peace with each other. That something good really had come of that horrible day and night. She felt she could let him go now without resenting him, without the bitterness that had clung to her heart for way too many years.

  Yes. All in all, miraculously, it had been a good thing.

  Well, except for the condom breaking. That was a bit worrisome.

  But the time of the month was wrong. And they had only made love once. That she might become pregnant was very unlikely. Very.

  In fact, she was certain that she wasn’t pregnant. There was no need to worry on that score. She’d behaved badly, but she did have a lovely, wicked memory to cherish. Every once in a while even the most unimpeachable of princesses had to get out and misbehave a bit.

  She had done just that and survived. And now, life would go on.

  Rhia felt downright philosophical about the whole experience.

  Or at least, she did until the next time her period was due.

  Chapter Six

  Two months later

  “Just take the test,” Allie pleaded. “Just get it over with so that you can move on.”

  “So that I can move on,” Rhia parroted wearily. It was a balmy June afternoon in Montedoro. She sat across from her sister on the stone terrace off the living room of her villa. Sipping Perrier with lime, they gazed out over the Mediterranean. “As though taking the test will make everything all right.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What then? Are you saying you think I’m not pregnant?”

  “Er, well...”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “I’m saying I think you have to find out either way, so that you can decide what to do next.”

  Rhia sipped her Perrier. “Tell me. Where, exactly, did you buy those condoms?”

  Allie winced. “In the ladies’ at that little bar in Elk Creek called Charlie’s Place.”

  “When did you have time to go there?”

  “I, um, went in just to have a look, after I rented the red pickup.”

  “And decided to buy condoms?”

  “Because I was hoping to convince you that we might, you know, get a little wild that night to help you forget your troubles. And I went into the ladies’ and saw the condom machine and I thought, well, if we’re going to be wild, we should be responsible about it.”

  Rhia watched a sailboat gliding smoothly on the wind-ruffled, turquoise-blue water of the harbor and softly advised, “I would not depend on the condoms from the ladies’ at Charlie’s Place again.”

  Allie made a sad little sound. “Oh, Rhia. I’m so sorry. I know this is all my fault and I’m...I’m just so sorry.”

  Rhia relented. “Oh, of course it’s not your fault. I didn’t have to run off to Rowdy’s Roadhouse. And I certainly wasn’t forced to seduce poor Marcus just because we ended up stranded overnight in a wrecked SUV in a Montana blizzard and I happened to have a couple of condoms.”

  Allie reached across and squeezed her arm. “You’re a darling not to blame me. But I do see my part in what happened. And I’m turning over a whole new leaf, I promise. In the future, I’m giving up all my wild and ill-considered schemes.”

  “Oh, please, Allie. Your wild, ill-considered schemes are part of your charm. And everything I did that night, I did by my own choice.”

  “Still, I feel terrible...”

  “Well, stop. Sometimes things just happen. You get in an accident and the condom breaks. You pick up the pieces and you go on.”

  Allie squeezed her arm again. “Just take the test. Please. You’ll feel better once you know.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Rhia took the test.

  The result should not have surprised her. After all, her breasts had become extra sensitive in the past few weeks and already that very morning she’d had to eat five soda crackers to settle her stomach. Also of late, just the smell of coffee or asparagus had her feeling queasy. She’d always heard that pregnant women developed sudden, strange aversions to various foods and beverages they used to enjoy.

  No, the results should not have been a surprise. Since the day several weeks before, when her period was due and didn’t come, she had known in her heart that she was going to have Marcus’s baby.

  Still, as she stared down at the result window of the test wand and saw that she actually, factually was pregnant, she had the strangest feeling of complete unreality.

  She was shocked, after all. Shocked, stunned and very much surprised. Even though she’d already known. Because somewhere deep inside she’d been secretly expecting to find out that she wasn’t expecting, after all.

  That whole day, she walked around in a daze. At 9:00 a.m.

  as usual, she and her assistant, Leanne Abris, met in Rhia’s office at the National Museum complex to go over Rhia’s calendar and touch base on the progress of various projects. Leanne took one look at her and asked, “Ma’am, are you ill?” Rhia made some excuse about not sleeping well and they got on with business.

  But then later she had a long conference with Claudine Girvan, the museum’s brilliant director. They were planning an upcoming exhibit of the works of the great Montedoran-born Impressionist painter, Adele Canterone. Three times during that meeting, Claudine asked in a worried tone if she was feeling all right. Rhia just kept smiling vaguely and replying, “Of course. Yes. I am fine.”

  And she was fine. In a pregnant sort of way.

  Allie came by that night as she’d been doing just about every night for the past three weeks or so. They shared dinner on the terrace.

  Once Rhia’s housekeeper had served the main course and left them alone, Rhia told her sister that she’d taken the test. “I’m having a baby.”

  “Oh, my darling.” Allie jumped from her seat—and then just stood there, her hand at her throat. “What will you do now?”

  Rhia straightened her shoulders and tried on a smile. “Have this baby. Live my life—only now, I’ll be raising a child.”

  “Oh, Rhia...” Allie came around the table then, her arms out. Rhia got up and Allie grabbe
d her in a hug.

  In a whisper, as she held on tight to her sister, Rhia confessed, “I don’t think I even really believe it yet. But I always did want to have a family, to have children. And now I will. I’ll just be doing it without a husband.”

  Allie took her by the shoulders and met her eyes. “You will have to marry eventually. We all do.” She referred to the Prince’s Marriage Law, which required all the Bravo-Calabretti princes and princesses to wed by the age of thirty-three or lose it all—their titles and the large sums of money and various properties that were their birthright. The Prince’s Marriage Law was controversial. Many believed it wrong, in any circumstance, to set a schedule for marriage. The law had been abolished in the past. But then Rhia’s grandfather had reinstated it. He had been the last Calabretti heir and then managed to produce only one child, Rhia and Alice’s mother, Adrienne. The Calabretti family had held the throne of Montedoro for centuries. The Prince’s Marriage Law made it much less likely that they would lose the throne for lack of a legitimate heir.

  Rhia shrugged. “I have seven years left to find the right man and keep my titles and property. I don’t think I need to borrow any trouble right now. I have more than enough to deal with as it is, thank you.”

  “Mother and Father—”

  “—will support me in my choice. You’ll see.”

  “And Marcus...?”

  Rhia chuckled. It wasn’t a cheerful sound. “Don’t look so worried. Of course I will tell him.”

  “When?”

  “Right away.”

  * * *

  At nine the next morning, Marcus entered the locker room from the training yard, dripping sweat and ready to hit the showers. He stripped down and grabbed a towel.

  His cell rang. He scooped it off the bench in front of his locker and answered. “Captain Desmarais.”

  “Hello, Marcus.”

  Rhia. There was only one reason she would be calling him.

  His knees went to jelly. He sank to the bench. This couldn’t be real.

  But it was real. “Marcus, are you still there?”