Royal Wedding Threat

HER ROYAL BODYGUARD

In a tiny Mediterranean kingdom, Ava Wright has her dream job: planning royal weddings. When a killer targets Ava a week before the princess’s ceremony, the captain of the royal guard vows to protect her and keep the royal family safe. Ava knows that Jason Selini—a man of stubborn integrity—doesn’t think she belongs on palace grounds. But when they uncover why Ava is under attack, Jason shows himself to have the heart of a prince. Suddenly Ava hopes she’ll survive long enough to plan her own wedding.

Protecting the Crown: The royal family fights for love and country

“Somebody put a bomb in your car,” Jason said.

“But—that would have killed me.” Ava couldn’t get the image of her charred car from her mind.

The captain met her eyes for just a moment. Instead of hardened anger in his flintlike gray eyes, she saw a hint of sympathy, maybe even apology.

The change shook her as much as the realization that she’d narrowly escaped a horrific end. “They wanted me dead? But why?”

Jason offered her his hand and pulled her up to a seated position. He looked her full in the face, a bit of sadness shimmering in his steel-gray eyes. “Do you have any enemies?”

Ava stared at him for long seconds. Finally she answered, “You?”

“I’m the worst enemy you have?” he asked.

She nodded, no longer trusting her voice.

“Then I don’t know why anyone would put a bomb in your car.” He sucked in a sharp breath and met her eyes again. “But I intend to find out.”

RACHELLE McCALLA

is a mild-mannered housewife, and the toughest she ever has to get is when she’s trying to keep her four kids quiet in church. Though she often gets in over her head, as her characters do, and has to find a way out, her adventures have more to do with sorting out the car pool and providing food for the potluck. She’s never been arrested, gotten in a fistfight or been shot at. And she’d like to keep it that way! For recipes, fun background notes on the places and characters in this book and more information on forthcoming titles, visit www.rachellemccalla.com.

Royal Wedding Threat

Rachelle McCalla

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

—Ecclesiastes 4:12

To Ray, always

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DEAR READER

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

EXCERPT

ONE

“Ms. Wright? Ms. Wright, wait!”

Ava Wright did not wait, but trotted toward the pedestrian gate at the rear of the palace complex as quickly as she dared in her three-inch heels. She made eye contact with the guard inside the gatehouse and gave him her best commanding glare, signaling that she wanted the exit unlocked immediately.

The green light signaled that the gate’s electronic lock had been momentarily deactivated, allowing her to open the gate and pass through. Ava felt a small shiver of satisfaction as she made her escape. Good. Jason Selini might be the head of the Lydian Royal Guard, but she could still get her way, even if it meant giving orders to his men.

But the captain of the royal guard was right behind her. “We need to discuss this further, Ms. Wright. Our conversation isn’t over!” Captain Selini was one of the few people Ava had met who could match her commanding tone note for note, glare for glare.

No way was she butting heads with him any more today. The man was impossibly stubborn and could be completely unreasonable once he’d made up his mind on an issue—and he’d already made it clear that morning that his mind was quite made up about her plans for Princess Anastasia’s wedding.

Captain Selini had refused her location request. How could she possibly proceed with her wedding-planning duties if the location wasn’t approved? Given the princess’s eagerness to marry, Ava was already working on a short timeline. The captain’s refusal was a setback she couldn’t afford. She wanted to scream in frustration.

Instead Ava pulled her keys from her purse and pointed the key fob at her car parked in the distance on the opposite side of the cobbled street. Clicking the button on the key fob, she watched with satisfaction as her headlights blinked, signaling that she’d successfully unlocked the car doors.

Good. Nothing more stood between her and her escape route.

“Ms. Wright, please come back.”

It was the “please” that made her pause, almost against her will, halfway across the empty street, still a couple hundred feet from her car. She wavered there, undecided, for a few long seconds.

“Please,” he repeated, sounding almost pleading.

The pleading note in his voice prompted her to turn back, if only to see the expression on his face. Captain Jason Selini begging? She wouldn’t miss it, not after all the trouble he’d given her over the course of the recent royal weddings.

But when she turned to face him, she found he’d stopped in his tracks still dozens of feet from her and his face had gone nearly white.

“Get down!” he shouted, his words buried by an enormous boom behind her.

Ava ducked slightly, unsure what was happening. Time seemed to slow for a moment, and yet everything happened so quickly. She felt a sudden heat envelop her, blowing past her with a furious gust of hot wind. At the same time, she felt something sting her near her ankles.

The captain of the guard threw one arm up to shield his face as he ducked and ran toward her, still shouting something, though the blast of heat that had come from behind her swept forward and took his words away. That, or she couldn’t hear anything. Her ears began to ring, a distant, tinny sound that further disoriented her.

Jason was at her side in an instant, one hand firmly propping her up by her elbow. “Let’s get you out of here. Are you all right? Can you walk?”

Ava wanted to tell him not to be absurd, that of course she could walk, but as she took half a step forward in an attempt to prove it, the pain at her ankles bit into her furiously.

She looked down at her legs.

Far below her knee-length skirt, blood trickled down her ankles from half a dozen shards of glass that had embedded themselves in her skin.

Ava could only stare at her legs, wondering what had happened. Black smoke billowed toward her and she coughed, turning halfway around to see her car engulfed in flames. “What happened?”

“Car bomb. We’ve got to get you off the street.” The captain’s words echoed numbly against her throbbing eardrums.

“My car?” Ava blinked several times, but the smoke and heat stung her eyes, making it difficult to see, and she felt too stunned to think clearly.

“I’ll have to carry you,” the captain muttered as he bent to inspect the injuries on her legs.

Ava looked at him, horrified at the thought of him carrying her. Determined to prove she was perfectly capable of walking on her own, she tried to take another step forward but wobbled unsteadily, the ringing in her ears messing with her sense of balance. Fortunately she’d been on the far periphery of the blast, and what few shards of glass had flown that far had already fallen low, reaching only to her ankles. Other than the ringing in her ears and the injuries near her Achilles tendons, she didn’t think she was hurt.

“I’ve got to get you off the street in a hurry!” The captain glanced up and down the cobbled path, though Ava saw no further sign of danger, just a bunch of uniformed royal guards pouring out from the pedestrian gate and a car farther up the street pulling out from the curb and driving away.

“What do you mean?” Ava started to ask, but before she’d half spoken the question, the captain had plucked her up with his arms around her waist and tossed her over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes. Her feet stuck out in front in a most undignified manner, and her head bobbed behind him as he trotted quickly back toward the gate to the palace courtyard.

“Sorry. I’ll have you down in a minute,” he apologized as he ran.

Ava yelped. She wanted to demand to be put down, and yet it had occurred to her that perhaps she didn’t want to be on the street, not if cars were going to be exploding. And she wasn’t nearly fit to walk, not with the sharp glass digging into her skin with every twitch of her legs and her ringing ears making her feel like a bobblehead doll.

Besides that, there was something oddly thrilling about being carried by the captain of the guard. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was but attributed it to all the trouble he’d given her and some peculiar sense of justice that he should have to carry her, running and giving orders to his men all at the same time.

In a moment he had her back through the door of the royal-guard headquarters, the building she’d only just left short minutes before. He settled her in a seated position on a hard sofa in the waiting room, with her injured legs sticking stiffly out in front of her. She didn’t dare twitch a muscle for fear of being further injured by the glass.

The captain called out to a guard seated behind a bulletproof glass panel, “Oliver, toss me the first-aid kit, will you?”

“Do you need me to assist you?” Oliver asked as he came around by way of a side door and delivered a large cross-emblazoned metal box.

“No. Keep an eye on those security screens and let me know if anything else blows up. And call the Sardis police. Tell them to send over their bomb squad. That car was on their side of the street.” As he spoke, Jason Selini gingerly touched Ava’s leg, then made a disgusted sound.

“How bad is it?” Ava asked.

“From the looks of it, they’re just surface scratches, nothing very deep, but I can take you to the hospital if you’d prefer.”

Ava grimaced. She liked to think of herself as a tough, independent woman. She had work to do. Prince Alexander’s wedding to Lillian Bardici was to take place in eight days, and she was already in the early stages of planning his little sister Princess Anastasia’s wedding, scheduled for just a few months later. Hospital visits were time-consuming, weren’t they? “I’m sure it’s fine. I can tend to them myself if you need to go out and see to your men.”

“You can tend to them yourself?” Jason challenged her, the firm set of his lips bent upward in grim amusement.

Determined to prove her statement, Ava leaned forward, ignoring the pain caused by the movement as her leg muscles stretched.

“Stop that. Now you’re making it worse,” the captain chided her, snapping on a pair of gloves before tearing open a few small packets.

“What are those?” Ava asked warily. She didn’t trust this man, not after the way they’d been arguing mere minutes before. In her mind, Jason Selini was nothing more than an obstacle to her goals. He’d never helped her before.

“Just a little antiseptic.” He bent over the cuts on her legs and gingerly plucked out the glass. Finally he looked satisfied with his work. “I believe I got all of the glass out. Once I clean off the blood, I can see what else is there. You’re fortunate you weren’t any closer to your car—these bits didn’t have the full force of the blast behind them. Any closer and you could have been seriously hurt. There.” He daubed a bit more with the antiseptic-soaked gauze. “It really wasn’t bad at all—just a bit of blood that made everything look worse.”

“You’re sure you don’t need to be outside with your men?”

The captain dug into a package of bandages. “They know what to do. They’ll secure the area and then hand things over to the bomb squad as soon as they arrive.”

“So this sort of thing happens all the time?” Ava had been in the tiny Mediterranean kingdom of Lydia for ten months—long enough to plan two royal weddings, a handful of titling ceremonies and a royal marriage-renewal ceremony. In that time, she’d heard rumors of violence and danger, and once had her reception hall locked down because of gunmen on the loose within the walls of the palace grounds. But this was the first car bomb she’d ever heard about.

“We haven’t had a vehicle explode since the royal motorcade was ambushed last June—almost a year ago now. But those were grenade hits, not bombs.”

“Ow!” Ava shrieked before he was quite finished. “Could you be more careful?”

“Sorry. That little piece of glass was hiding.”

“Are you sure I don’t need stitches?”

Jason held up his gloved hand in front of her, a slender shard of glass perched on one finger. “That’s all it was. I’m almost done. There’s nothing that needs stitching.”

Feeling slightly embarrassed that she’d shrieked for such a tiny piece of glass, Ava mustered up her pride. “I think you’re taking far too much satisfaction at seeing my pain, after all the trouble I’ve caused you,” she accused him.

Jason sighed and pasted another adhesive bandage above her ankle. “So you admit you’ve caused me plenty of trouble.”

“No more than you’ve caused me.” She bit her lip as the captain applied more antiseptic, dabbing roughly at her injuries. “You know, you could try to be gentle.”

The captain was silent for a moment, but his movements became more precise, with less pressure.

“You know,” Jason echoed her as he stuck another bandage carefully in place, “you could thank me.”

“For what? You threw me on this couch like you were tossing a sack of kittens in the river.”

She expected Jason’s sharp retort but instead heard snickering from the doorway, and looked up in time to see a group of royal guards filing back into the building.

“Report,” Jason commanded, not sounding the least bit amused.

The men sobered. “All’s clear. The Sardis Police Bomb Squad has taken over the crime scene. They’ve got their bomb-sniffing dogs working the entire perimeter of the palace grounds, three blocks deep. If there’s another bomb in the area, they’ll find it.”

“Good work, men. Back to your stations.”

The men filed out in silence, but before the door closed behind them, a voice carried clearly from the hallway. “He would like to toss her in the river like a sack of kittens.”

A chorus of guffaws agreed with the statement.

“You didn’t hear that,” Jason stated bluntly as he spread antiseptic on the last of her cuts.

“Yes, I did,” Ava informed him. “And I felt the sting.”

The captain applied the last bandage, but that hadn’t been the sting she was referring to. Did Jason Selini really want to be rid of her that badly that he’d toss her off a bridge? The captain seemed to be a man of integrity and perfectly upright character, but she knew his resentment toward her ran deep. They’d been in opposition since the very first ceremony she’d planned at the end of the previous summer. She’d ignored his attitude all these long months, just as she habitually ignored anyone who didn’t like her. Hadn’t she learned her lesson long before? She couldn’t please everyone. Best to focus on doing her job and giving her brides the weddings of their dreams. That much she could do.

But the image of her burning car had seared itself into her mind. Why had her car exploded? Had someone placed a bomb inside to hurt her? What if they’d killed her?

“It’s all right. I’m done.” The captain handed her a tissue.

Only then did Ava realize she’d started sniffling, her near brush with death somehow penetrating her usually impervious armor. “Why do you think my car blew up?” It took all of her resolve to keep her voice steady.

“Somebody put a bomb in it. From what I saw, they probably had it set to go off a certain number of seconds after you unlocked your door—the idea being that you’d be very near or inside the car at that moment. If you hadn’t stopped and turned around, that’s where you would have been.”

“But—that would have killed me.” Ava couldn’t get the image of her charred car from her mind—nor could she quite grapple with the idea of what would have become of her if she’d been inside.

The captain met her eyes for just a moment. Instead of hardened anger in his flint-gray eyes, she saw a hint of sympathy, maybe even apology.

The change shook her as much as the realization that she’d narrowly escaped a horrific end. “They wanted me dead?”

The captain closed the box of bandages and tucked them away in the first-aid kit, not meeting her eyes. “That’s the only reason I can think of for what I saw.”

“But why?”

Jason looked her full in the face, a bit of sadness shimmering in his steel-gray eyes. “Do you have any enemies?”

Ava stared at him for long seconds, her stunned mind taking longer than usual to process her thoughts. Finally she answered, “You.”

The captain turned away and began plucking up the bandage wrappers he’d left lying about. “I’m the worst enemy you have?”

She nodded, no longer trusting her voice.

“Then I don’t know why anyone would put a bomb in your car.” He sucked in a sharp breath and met her eyes again. “But I intend to find out.”

His words hit her with such cold force he might as well have tossed her in an icy river. His statement was part vow, part threat. What would it take to find out who’d tried to kill her? Discussing past relationships? Analyzing all the hurts she’d put behind her, including the ones that had made her who she was? She tried to return the captain’s determined gaze, but she found she couldn’t keep her head up, not at the prospect of rooting through the skeletons in her closet. That wasn’t a place she wished to explore, certainly not with this man who hated her.

But what other choice did she have?

TWO

Jason Selini felt the tiniest glimmer of sympathy toward this woman who’d caused him so many headaches over the past several months. Ava Wright was impossibly stubborn, sharp-tongued and utterly unreasonable once she’d made up her mind to have her way.

And she always got her way. Jason had never been able to override her wishes except for a few times when he’d been able to prove her plans would cause imminent danger to royal life and property. The rest of the time she was a steamroller, exerting her will in spite of all his efforts to make her see reason.

And yet, as he glanced at her now, perched on the edge of the hard sofa in the waiting room of the royal-guard headquarters, she looked shaken. More than that, she looked like a scared little girl, and for the first time he realized she was almost certainly younger than his thirty-three years, in spite of her international success as a wedding planner.

Though the woman usually looked as impeccable as the weddings she planned, the incident had marred her facade. Her hair, which was dyed a harsh red and usually styled in jagged spikes shooting out from her head, now looked as limp and dazed as the rest of her. And her makeup, which had always been flawless, if a bit fierce, was now smeared, making her look eerily like a homeless street urchin, save for the expensive suit and shoes.

With the last of the first-aid items tucked safely away in the case, Jason realized he could delay the inevitable conversation no longer. “I’d like you to come to my office.”

“Why?” She blinked up at him, dark smudges outlining her eyes, highlighting the fear that glimmered above the green of her irises.

“I need to get your statement about what happened while everything is still fresh in your memory.” He didn’t add that he wanted to grill her on possible attackers and motives. Though the crime had technically occurred on the Sardis police side of the street, given the proximity to the palace and Jason’s duty to protect the royal family, Jason considered it his job to root out the reasons behind the attack—and prevent anything similar from happening again. He appreciated the expert help of the Sardis bomb squad, and he’d be sure to keep them in the loop with everything he learned, but he wasn’t about to sit back and wait for them to do his job for him.

Ava scowled. “You think that’s a moment I’m likely to soon forget?”

“Or suppress. It happens all the time. The more violent the incident, the bigger the wall the victim puts up.” He extended his hand as a gentlemanly gesture, fully expecting her to refuse it.

To his surprise, she placed her palm in his and leaned against him as she levered herself up from the sofa. It occurred to him that, prior to throwing her over his shoulder moments before, he’d never touched the woman. Her hand felt small and shaky as she held tight to him. From what he knew of her, he was certain she wouldn’t have leaned on him at all unless she’d had no other choice. Ava was too independent for that. Her first steps were cautious, but then she walked beside him with increased confidence.

“Your legs okay?”

“Better now, thank you.”

Surprised at her thanks, Jason almost smiled. “You’re welcome.”

He led her back through to his office, where her plans for Princess Anastasia’s wedding to Kirk Covington still lay atop his desk. Her requested location was fraught with hazards, even under the best circumstances. Given the explosion that could have killed them both, the plan was all the more unthinkable. He helped her into a chair, then shoved the stapled pages to the side of his desk.

Jason opened up a fresh incident-report template on his computer. “Now, tell me your version of what happened.”

Ava sat up straight, looking less shaken already. “We were in here, discussing the plans for Princess Anastasia’s wedding location.”

Jason did his best to accurately type her words, though he very nearly switched out discussing for arguing about but caught himself before he hit the wrong keys. The way his screen was angled, Ava might be able to see his words. Best not to upset her further—he knew how obstinate she could be when angered.

“And then?” he prompted once he’d entered all she’d said.

“Well—” she looked at him bluntly “—you were being completely unreasonable—”

“That’s not relevant—”

“It’s an island.” Ava rose on her seat and picked up her previous argument right where she’d left off before stalking out in a huff earlier. “If anything, it’s more secure than the Sardis Cathedral and just as safe as anything within the palace walls.”

“The palace complex is the most secure location in Sardis.” Jason would have directed Ava back to her statement, but the security of the palace complex wasn’t something he could let come under question. Along with ensuring the safety of the members of the royal family, his primary duty was to keep the palace grounds secure at all times.