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It was at times like these that she wished she could drink like some of the rowdy Texans she’d grown to know and appreciate since she’d arrived in Royal. A good, stiff shot of straight-up bourbon might settle the demons that had robbed her of yet another night’s sleep.
“Face them,” she whispered into the darkness.
There is no more fear, she reminded herself staunchly and willed the residual trembling in her hands to steady. No more fear. Only decisions that needed to be made. So many decisions—
A sudden pounding on her door shot her heart straight back to her throat. She vaulted to her feet, whirled toward the sound.
“Anna...Anna are you all right?”
Gregory.
Relief was swift and draining as she rushed toward the door, not wanting to wake William who was sound asleep in the other bedroom. When she reached the small foyer, she threw the deadbolt. With both hands clutching the heavy steel door, she opened it a crack and met the dark concern in a pair of hard blue eyes shaded by the brim of a coal-black Stetson.
Since those first few days when Gregory had settled her into this small apartment, he had never again crossed the threshold. The cool message of that statement had not been lost to her. He had come to her aid when she’d needed him, but he’d made it clear as a Texas sky that he wanted no part of her life. So seeing him here now, at this hour, on the heels of the nightmare, was beyond her comprehension.
“What... what are you doing here?”
His expression was as dark as the night, his eyes as cool as chipped ice. “I was on my way home from the Club when the lights on the alarm panel in my pickup lit up like a Christmas tree.”
She sagged against the door, raked the hair away from her face as understanding dawned. When he’d first shown her the apartment, he’d told her with terse words and military precision about the silent alarm he’d installed on all the windows and doors in the event Ivan found her. The alarm was electronically linked to the Texas Cattleman’s Club that he and the rest of the Alpha team frequented to his home in Pine Valley and his personal vehicles.
“I didn’t think. I...I had a bad dream,” she confessed with reluctance. “I needed some air and threw open the window. I’m sorry. I forgot about the alarm system.”
Greg stared down at the woman who had created enough havoc in his life to mount a small uprising. He’d known when he’d answered her call for help last August that he’d been opening up a Pandora’s box full of problems. He’d been prepared for the investment of time, tactics and diplomacy. He’d had to employ plenty of both, not the least of which had been keeping Anna safe and the Alpha team apprised and on the lookout for Striksky when he’d gotten word that the prince had been on his way to the States a couple of weeks ago.
Then there was the adoption and that business with Marcus Dumond’s attorney when he’d ferreted out the truth of Striksky’s role in Sara’s death. And finally, keeping the prince’s suicide hush-hush and arranging for his body to be shipped quietly back to Asterland’s embassy last week had been as tricky as any litigation he’d ever handled. He was damn glad that was behind him and that explaining Ivan’s demise was the government of Asterland’s problem now.
So, no it wasn’t the time that bothered him. It was the emotional investment he hadn’t bargained for. It was the emotional investment that came with the highest price tag.
To cut his losses, he’d kept his distance from Anna. Hell, as much as possible, he’d kept his distance from Royal, flying to Dallas, or Houston and even a couple of trips to Georgia to tidy up some legal ends at the Hunt aircraft plant. Much to his friends’ dismay, he’d also kept his own counsel where Anna was concerned. Seeing her like this though—hovering on the ragged edge of a nightmare, clinging valiantly to a pride that she didn’t realize her vulnerability undercut—the cost of his bid to stay away from her climbed a little higher.
He’d been skirting her like a wolf circling a fire, avoiding all but the most necessary encounters. And even though Ivan was no longer a threat, when her alarm had sounded a few minutes ago, his heart had pumped into overdrive. He’d rammed the gas pedal on his truck to the floor and flown across town to get to her.
He could see now that she was safe. She was safe, but she was far from all right. Her green eyes were wild with residual fear. He had little doubt that if she could manage to pry her fingers off the door, they’d be trembling like leaves in a windstorm.
He’d seen her like this before—on the night the Alpha team had stolen her out of Obersbourg, then a week ago when he’d broken the news that Striksky was dead. He hadn’t been able to turn his back on her then. As much as his better judgment warned him against it, he couldn’t do it now, not and live with himself—a characteristic that may yet prove to be his fatal flaw where Anna was concerned:
Steeling himself against the urge to fold her into his arms and hold her until her trembling stopped or until he initiated something they’d both be sorry about later, he very gently pried the slim fingers that had gone white off the door. Knowing he’d regret it, he opened it wide enough to accommodate his shoulders and slipped inside.
After shutting the door behind him and disarming the alarm panel, he turned back to her. “You got any of that sissy mint tea you managed to get Harriet hooked on?”
Her lips trembled only slightly as she gave him the small smile he’d been hoping for.
“I think I can scare some up.” Brushing her hair back from her face, she headed for the kitchen.
He’d congratulated himself a hundred times for deploying Harriet Sherman—“Tank” to those who had worked with her before she’d retired from the military—next door to Anna in the role of watchdog in the guise of nosy neighbor, motherly confidante and baby-sitter. With Harriet nearby the past four months, he’d slept a little easier knowing Striksky had very quietly launched a worldwide search for Anna. In this last dark week since Striksky, faced with international humiliation when his underhanded scheme had failed, had committed suicide not five miles from Royal, he’d been doubly glad to have Harriet in place to help Anna through that ugly mess.
It was obvious to him now, however, that she was still struggling with the backlash. Standing in the arched doorway of her small kitchen, he set his jaw, told himself he’d stay long enough to make sure she was steady again. Then he’d get the hell out of the combat zone.
In the meantime, he had to work hard at snuffing out a hundred intimate details that made up the immediate moment: Like the fact that he was alone with her—something he’d managed to avoid until now. Like the fact that it was the middle of the night, the hour of shared beds, shared warmth and shared bodies. Like the damnable itch on the palms he clenched as tight as his jaw to keep from reaching out to touch her milk-white shoulder. A shoulder that was bare beneath the thin silk strap of her short, clingy nightgown. Skin that radiated a honey scent, which beckoned, enticed and clung to the midnight air like fragrance on a rose.
He knew what that skin felt like beneath his fingers, against his tongue. He knew how she tasted. What it felt like to lose himself deep inside her—like drowning in heated silk, like sinking into sweet, tight oblivion. And every night since she’d been in Royal—her safely tucked away in her apartment, and him wherever his nocturnal wanderings took him—he’d remembered every intimate detail of the love they had made.
He bit back a low growl of frustration at the turn of his thoughts. Yet when he saw that her hands were still trembling violently in the aftermath of her nightmare, he took two stalking strides toward her.
“Sit,” he demanded and made himself grip her shoulders at arm’s length. In a no-nonsense motion, he guided her to a chair and sat her down. “How often does this happen?”
She sat as still as a block of wood, her hands clutched tightly in her lap. “Just...not often.”
Not often, my ass, he thought with a dark scowl. He’d bet his portfolio this was a nightly occurrence. Swearing as much at the clench of sympathy he felt in his chest as at his body’s reaction to the way her deep breath stretched the pale-blue silk tight over the softness of her breasts, he turned back to the counter and slammed around filling the teakettle.
When he’d set it on to boil and settled himself, he turned back to her. Leaning his hips against the counter, he crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands under his armpits, where they wouldn’t lead him into trouble.
“You don’t lie worth a damn, Your Highness.”
Immediately regretting the angry edge he’d let creep into his voice, he worked at gentling his tone. “You want to talk about it?”
Eyes downcast, she gave a small, tight shake of her head.
Fighting a crushing awareness of her vulnerability, he stared at that tumble of blond hair a long time before he was able to speak again. “You’ve been through a lot, Anna. Maybe you ought to consider seeing someone...a doctor or someone to help you through this.”
“I don’t need a doctor,” she bristled, lifting her chin and gracing him with a valiant, aristocratic smile. “Besides, how would it look? A von Oberland in therapy? It wouldn’t do. Appearances at all costs you know. Wouldn’t want the world to get wind that the royal blood was anything but true blue.”
He narrowed his eyes, studied her long and hard. A little starch looked good on her. It was a sign she was still fighting. Suddenly he didn’t feel so bad about baiting her with the “Your Highness” crack, even though anger had provoked it. The fact was, like it or not, he had a lot of anger built up inside where Princess Anna was concerned. He’d held it in check for four years, but ever since he’d brought her here, he’d felt it escalating.
It seemed like forever instead of mere months that he’d been fighting feelings he didn’t want to admit to and blaming her for being the cause. He’d done his duty. He’d gotten her out of Obersbourg, then watched from afar, made sure she was safe. Just like he’d made sure she was set up in this apartment in his own building, that she was absorbed into the small community of Royal as Annie Grace, a distant cousin of some city father too far removed for anyone to question in any depth. He’d seen her dressed in her hot-pink waitress uniform, with her hair pulled back into a nondescript pony tail, waiting tables at the local greasy spoon—a job he’d set up for her. A job he’d secretly hoped she would find appalling and so far beneath her she would have stomped her regal foot and thrown a royal tantrum.
In retrospect, he wasn’t too proud of himself for stooping so low as to want to humiliate her. Not that his plan had worked, anyway. She hadn’t done one damn thing he’d expected.
What she’d done was adjust. Without comment. Without complaint—and he’d been the one left feeling devalued.
She’d taken to the waitress role as if she’d been born with an order pad in her hand instead of a gilded rattle. She’d waited tables, laughed with the locals and looked and acted like she’d enjoyed every minute of it.
Act is the key word here, he told himself, working hard to reinforce his cynicism where she was concerned. He didn’t dare forget that she was a consummate actress—had played the role of her life when she’d made him fall in love with her.
He rolled a shoulder, shook it off. That was then. This was now. And love—whatever the hell that was—didn’t have anything to do with what he was feeling for her now. What he was feeling for her now, he told himself, was a grudging tolerance that had gotten tangled up in a misplaced sense of responsibility. And a leftover sexual obsession that he had no intention of indulging.
Stone-faced, he turned toward the whistle of the kettle, set it off the heat and snagged a pair of mugs from her cupboard. As he held the chunky stoneware in his hand, he worked hard to convince himself that the princess was no doubt missing the delicacy and the elegance of her seventeenth century fine bone china and the servants who all but drank her tea for her. Yet when he set the mug in front of her, she cupped it gratefully between her small hands, absorbed the welcome warmth, first through her fingertips then with her mouth, as she touched the mug to her lips.
A knot of tension that was becoming all too familiar when he was around her coiled tight in his gut.
“I’m fine now.” She made a forced attempt to sound more steady, more centered. “You don’t have to babysit me. People have bad dreams. It’s not a big deal.”
A muscle in his jaw worked involuntarily and he stated the facts as he saw them. “And you don’t have to put on some brave front. This has been hard on you. There’s no shame in admitting it.”
The stunned look in her eyes as she reacted to his unexpected empathy momentarily silenced them both.
“Right,” she said finally. “No shame.”
Her voice so full of the shame she was trying to deny, it made his chest hurt.
She sat so still. Her slender fingers were wrapped around that mug like it was her only anchor. Her gaze was focused on something much further away than the clock on the far kitchen wall. And her voice, when she finally spoke, sounded as weary as time.
“I wanted Ivan out of my life,” she all but whispered into a silence that had grown heavy and thick. “I’d prayed he would be made to pay for whatever part he played in Sara’s death, for holding Sara’s babies hostage.” She lifted eyes glittering with unshed tears, stared at a time and place far away from Royal, Texas. “God help me, I wanted him dead.”
The guilt etched on her face clogged his throat with emotion. He swallowed it back. Waited.
Haunted eyes flicked to his then quickly away. “I’m glad he’s dead. For everything he’d done, everything he tried to do. I’m glad he’s dead,” she repeated and once again, met his eyes. Once again, she looked away as if she was ashamed. “What does that make me? What kind of monster does that make me?”
Everything she wouldn’t let him see in her eyes was manifested in those self-indicting words, in the thready hopelessness of her voice. He wanted to drag her into his arms and hold her so she wouldn’t splinter in a million pieces. Yet he sensed that if he touched her now, she would shatter. Like a beautiful spun glass swan. Like a priceless crystal vase.
Since he didn’t think that both of them together could gather all the pieces if she fell apart, he made his voice as gentle as he knew how.
“What it makes you is human, Anna. It makes you human—nothing more. Nothing less. The prince was an opportunist. He was a murderer. And he was a coward—he proved it when he jumped off the bridge south of town. You had no part in that. You had no part in anything he did.”
Despite the sense of his argument, her silence told him she felt she had played a very huge part in it. The next words out of her mouth confirmed it.
“If I had married him he’d be alive, though, wouldn’t he? Sara might even be alive—”
It galled him to hell and back that she would take even an ounce of blame on her slim shoulders. He drew a deep breath, laid a hand on her arm. “Look—”
She jumped as if she’d been burned. “It’s all right,” she insisted abruptly. So abruptly he could only stare as she shook off his touch and rose. “I’m sorry...I’m sorry the alarm bothered you. I’m sorry I laid all this on you. But it’s all right now. I’m all right now.”
She was out of the kitchen and racing for her front door so quickly he was left standing flat-footed in his anaconda boots and a scowl. He glanced at his raised hand, curled his fingers slowly into a loose fist.
Fine, he decided, accepting that his touch had set her off. Obviously, she didn’t want him here any more than he wanted to be here. And as sure as hell was fire, he didn’t want to get all tangled up in caring about her again.
“Call Harriet if you need anything,” he said gruffly and headed for the door. Shouldering past her, he swung it wide.
He wouldn’t have thought anything could have kept him from barreling out of her apartment. Not her tears. Not her guilt.
He hadn’t counted on her touch.
It stopped him cold. It stopped his heart.
Very slowly, he turned his head, looked down at the small hand that lay so tentatively on his arm, then into the eyes of the one woman who could turn hard muscle to yearning flesh, turn simple heat to complex need.
Through all of this, if there had been contact—as minimal and necessary as it had been—he’d been the one to initiate it. He hadn’t initiated this. Just like he hadn’t initiated the explosion of memories her singular act had stirred. Slender hands trailing down the arch of his bare spine, delicate fingers tracing the point of his hip, tangling in his hair, caressing him, urging him closer, demanding him deeper.
He closed his eyes, clenched his jaw so tight he heard a dull pop. Then her whispered, “I’m sorry, Gregory. I’m so sorry for everything,” as her fingers drifted slowly away.
For a long moment he stood there. Struggling for something to say. Reaching for something to do. The better part of wisdom, however, overrode either instinct.
“Lock the door behind me,” he ordered in a rusty voice and strode into the hall without a backward glance. He hit the apartment stairs at a jog and bounded down them and into the night. The urgency of his need to get away from her was suddenly more powerful than the one that had had him shooting across town to get to her.
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