Romancing the Crown: Nina & Dominic

Somehow, he had to find a way to distance himself even while keeping her within reach at all times. How the hell was he supposed to do that?

Nina hurried toward the grand staircase, her high heels clicking on the beautifully veined marble. She had made it halfway there when a large hand closed around her arm. Oddly enough, it did not surprise her all that much to find herself staring into the furious blue-gray eyes of Ryan McDonough.

After all, the possibility of running into him was the reason she was in such a hurry. If only she hadn’t taken the time to interview those two guards, she might have made it upstairs to the residential wing before he finished his business in the royal office. Without a doubt he would object to what she was doing just because it was her idea and not his.

His long, strong fingers burned right through the sleeve of her beige linen suit. Every time he touched her, apprehension swept through her like fire in her veins. Not that he frightened her physically. Her own reaction to him as a man was what caused her fear. She worried what she might do if his touch gentled again as it had last night. No danger of that at the moment, she thought with a sigh. Right now he looked livid.

Though he wasn’t hurting her, she knew better than to resist his grip. Maybe if she didn’t act as guilty as she felt, he wouldn’t frog-march her out of here like a prisoner. Nina smiled her friendliest smile. “I take it the audience with the king is over?”

“What the hell are you doing here?” His voice, though he kept it low, seemed to echo in the cavernous entry.

Nina knew he was about to read her the riot act for leaving the lab when he’d ordered her to stay put. She decided to brave it out rather than cower. “Asking questions. Something you—” she accused, poking him in the chest “—have obviously been neglecting to do around here!”

He grabbed her finger and removed it from the indentation her nail had made in his tie. “And how would you know what I’ve done or not done?”

“I asked!” she hissed. “The two people I’ve spoken with already were very eager to help. I’m on my way to request an interview with the princesses’ staff.”

“Oh, no you’re not,” Ryan assured her. “Even you have to observe protocol.”

He started for the main entrance, still clutching her upper arm. She had no choice but to follow or be dragged. “So make an appointment!”

“I have. Now shut up and come on!”

“Where?” she demanded, taking two steps to his every one in order to keep up.

“Out of here before you get yourself shot. How’d you get past the guards?”

Nina hated to tell him, but she knew he wouldn’t let it go. He’d be reaming someone out about lack of security. “Well… I showed my ID, told them I was Desmond’s sister and, uh, that I had your permission.”

“Damn,” he muttered, shaking his head. He glared at the nice young guards with the big holstered weapons and all but shoved Nina through the doors leading outside.

He glanced around. “How did you get here? Taxi?”

She nodded, almost tripping in her attempt to match his haste as he ushered her around the arts wing to the parking lot to his car.

“How did you know I was here?”

Her smile was smug. “Saw the number you left Franz. Public Affairs office, the same one I called after I arrived at the airport yesterday. You came here to see the king and get me kicked on a plane, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Only when they were out of the palace grounds and he was occupied driving through the noon day traffic did Nina risk a question. “So, what did the king have to say about it?”

He shot her a dark glance, then trained his eyes on the street again. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

Nina bridled. “Don’t be an ass, McDonough. Apparently it didn’t work, since you’re so mad.”

“When do you collect on your brother’s insurance?”

She frowned at the abrupt change of subject. “What?”

“Have you made the claim yet?”

Nina almost laughed. “You’ve got to be joking! There’s no insurance.”

“A policy for half a million, all paid up, plus the capital in the trust fund that paid the premiums,” he snapped.

She was astounded. “How could… But that couldn’t possibly… I know nothing about anything like that! Who—?”

“Don’t play dumb, Nina. Your father insured you both and made certain the premiums were taken care of.”

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose, trying to ward off the headache that was rapidly growing to gigantic proportions behind her eyes. “I swear I didn’t know. There was nothing like that in Dad’s papers after he died.”

“And I suppose you knew nothing about Desmond receiving half your father’s estate? Get real, Nina, you couldn’t help but know.” He scoffed.

“Yes, of course I knew about that.”

“And resented the hell out of it, I bet,” Ryan commented.

“No,” she argued. “I didn’t resent it at all. Desmond sold the property he inherited, which he was perfectly entitled to do. I guess he spent all the money.”

That got Ryan’s attention. He stopped at a red light and turned to face her. “What makes you think so?”

Nina hesitated, but guessed it didn’t matter now what anyone thought of Des. Lots of people were not that great about managing their money. “He called a couple of weeks ago wanting to borrow a bit from me.”

“A bit? How much?” Ryan asked, creeping ahead as the light turned and no longer pinning her with that laser glare.

Nina shrugged. “Twenty thousand. He said he would repay me with interest when he received his next quarterly allowance from the crown.”

“Good God.” Ryan coughed a laugh of obvious disbelief. “So you’re here for repayment? King Marcus won’t authorize you a nickel if your brother didn’t sign a note, and even then—”

“No,” Nina interrupted the tirade, “I didn’t loan Desmond anything. My assets are mostly tied up in investments and CDs, so I didn’t have access to that much cash at the moment. Besides, I never make loans, especially not to friends or family. I believe it eventually causes bad feelings.” “You’re right. It really is very bad business to loan money unless you’re a bank. Why did he need it?”

“He didn’t say. I told him I was sorry, that it wasn’t possible, and asked him if he was in trouble of some kind. He said no, of course he wasn’t.”

“Was he angry? How did he react to your refusal?”

Nina shrugged. “He said never mind, then goodbye and hung up.”

“Nothing else? Did he ask how you were doing? Tell you anything about how things were going with him?”

Nina felt embarrassed to have to admit that her own brother had no interest in her life at all and hadn’t been inclined to share what his was like. “He sounded as if he was in a hurry. I guess he didn’t have time for small talk.”

“Interesting indeed. Did he ever have time?”

Now she felt defensive, as if Ryan were attacking Desmond or something. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

But she couldn’t, of course, especially now that he had made a big thing of it. Desmond hadn’t really cared much. Maybe not at all. So why the hell was she here? Nina blinked back tears.

Ryan reached over and took her hand without looking directly at her. “Hey, I get carried away sometimes. It’s no big deal, okay?”

“Okay.” But it wasn’t okay. Now she was questioning not only Desmond’s feelings for her, but hers for him. Maybe she harbored a deeply buried resentment after all and had never admitted it, even to herself.

“Let it go, Nina,” he suggested softly, squeezing her hand. “Think about something else.”

At least the change in topic had taken Ryan’s mind off her ignoring his orders earlier. His anger seemed to have lessened. She suspected that he rarely held on to it for long anyway, thank goodness. She wasn’t up to a fight in her present frame of mind.

She was getting to know Ryan better now. He found vulnerable spots with unerring accuracy, that was for sure. He also gave good advice. Picking apart her relationship with her brother wouldn’t do anyone any good now. He’d been killed, and she was here to find out what happened. It was that simple. Reasons no longer mattered.

She would concentrate on Ryan for the moment. Figuring him out might make the difference in her success or failure in this venture.

His bad temper popped like firecrackers and just as quickly disappeared, the residual smoke dispersing a bit more slowly, but even that was clearing with the breeze of diversion. All she had to do to diffuse a situation with Ryan was to sidetrack him.

“So, how about if I buy you lunch?” she asked, forcing a lilt into her voice.

“You make me crazy, you know that?” he asked.

Nina decided the question was about as rhetorical as questions ever got, so she didn’t answer it. Instead, she made an observation. “You really ought to work on your adaptability, McDonough. Did you go through this trauma every time you hired an assistant?”

“You are not an assistant,” he said, only pretending anger now and not doing it very well, either. “You’re a serious liability is what you are. All I want is to do my job, and now I have to divide my time between that and keeping you out of trouble.”

Nina clicked her tongue in sympathy. “King’s orders, huh?”

“Yeah. King’s orders.” He heaved a gruff sigh. “You want this murder solved or not?”

“That’s why I came here,” she told him, exerting her best effort to sound patient and companionable.

“Yeah, well, I hope that’s why.” He risked another glance even as he wove through the traffic. “If it is, then you owe me some cooperation. You have to do exactly what I tell you and quit taking off on your own the way you did last night and today.”

“I’m yours to command,” she said primly, folding her hands in her lap.

He laughed and shook his head. She couldn’t help noticing the creases beside his mouth that could almost be called dimples. His teeth could be a toothpaste ad and his long-lashed eyes crinkled just right at the corners. The laugh was infectious, but she resisted the urge to laugh with him since he was laughing at her.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded, but he didn’t answer. Once his laughter subsided, they rode in silence. He was still holding her hand while they both pretended not to notice.

Just when she thought she had him figured out, another side of him would emerge to confuse her. About the only thing she had locked down about Ryan McDonough was his firm determination not to act on his attraction to her. Oh, it was there, as surely as hers for him, but he resented it as much as he resented her helping him with the case.

She didn’t care, Nina told herself. It was just as inconvenient for her as it was for him. The man was not her type at all. The chemistry between them was a purely physical thing that sometimes happened for no good reason at all. Pheromones or something equally ephemeral. An accident of nature in this case.

When the two people involved had nothing at all in common and no way in the world to make a personal connection work, they should simply ignore it. Or fight it tooth and nail, if it turned out to be this strong. That’s what he was doing and helping her to do, she assured herself.

His strategy was working for the most part. She should applaud that and thank him for attempting to be a jerk so she could keep her distance and he could keep his.

She ought to develop some kind of defense herself instead of testing their attraction at every turn, of analyzing it and rationalizing it and wishing it could somehow work.

God, where had that thought come from? She didn’t wish it would work. Did she? No, certainly not with a man like McDonough, who admitted he had no time or inclination to involve himself in anything but his job.

One thing she definitely had to do was to stop questioning his ability to do that job. At first she really had believed he was shirking his duty with regard to Desmond’s case, but now she knew better. She had seen the collection of files and realized the vast amount of work he and his men had accomplished in a very short period of time. She knew that she could leave today and rest assured that Ryan would eventually solve her brother’s murder for her if it could possibly be solved. So why didn’t she simply go to the airport and leave it to him?

Nina honestly couldn’t answer her own question. She liked to think she owed it to Desmond to have a hand in bringing his killer to justice. But a small voice inside her head warned her that her original reason for being in Montebello had evolved into another that had an even less certain outcome.

Ryan parked half on the sidewalk, half in the street just outside Pietro’s. Pete served the juiciest hamburgers on this side of the world and the greasiest fries anywhere. Nina could have her blasted oatmeal when she craved comfort food. He hit Pete’s place when he needed a brief shot of home. Today was turning out to be one of those days.

God only knew what she’d try next if he left her anywhere so he could get some work done. He’d just have to haul her with him everywhere he went, he supposed.

Maybe his stopping for the junkiest food available in Montebello had a little revenge attached to it. She definitely looked like a yogurt-and-bean-sprout kind of girl. Damned yuppie. Graphic designer? What kind of job was that? Probably did those so-called subtle ads with tons of blank space for products that were unidentifiable to the average guy.

He hadn’t asked her about her job because he didn’t want to know. The less he knew about her, the better. But then again, he had to find out as much as he could to determine whether he was right about her being innocent. God, he hoped he hadn’t misjudged. The king would never trust him with another assignment if he screwed this up.

Ryan shoved the car into Park and got out. By the time he had gone around and reached her door, she was already standing on the narrow cobbled sidewalk.

“Where are we?” she asked, slamming her door and adjusting her shoulder bag. She raked her hair behind her ears, baring those model’s cheekbones and strong, square chin.

“This way,” he ordered, taking her arm. He knew he shouldn’t touch her. Hell, just looking at her messed with his mind, and even through her sleeve, he felt the soft sweetness of her. The warmth. It made him remember how she felt without sleeves. Without clothes. This was not good. It was nonprofessional, and it was wrong.

When she recoiled a little, he held on, knowing it wasn’t wise. Knowing he couldn’t help himself and would use any excuse for continued contact. “The walking’s hazardous in those shoes,” he muttered. Lame reason, but better than none. He tightened his grip and endured—no, enjoyed—the resulting heat that suffused him.

“Oh,” she said, looking down at the rough paving, then back up at him with a bright little smile. “Thanks.”

Chapter 6

He led her two doors down to the hole-in-the-wall pub, identifiable only by a weathered wooden sign about the size of a car tag sticking out of the stones about ten feet up. Pete didn’t believe in advertising much. Word of mouth brought him about as much business as he wanted to handle.

They entered the dark cavern lit only by candles on the occupied tables and a long fluorescent Bud sign over the bar.

“Wow, this is some place,” she whispered, taking in all the details of the humble little pub’s interior. Some might call it picturesque with the beer signs, names carved into the walls with pocket knives and tables covered with mismatched tablecloths.

Pete looked up from his task of wiping down the bar and grinned, showing a missing eyetooth and the wide, wicked scar on his neck. “Hey, Mac! What’s up?”

“Not a lot, Pete. Bring us the usual and two iced teas, would you?”

“I’ll have coffee,” Nina piped up.

“No, trust me, you don’t want to do that,” Ryan advised. “Tea,” he reaffirmed, looking at Pete.

“Gotcha, Mac,” the man said, then called their order through the door to the kitchen which lay directly behind the bar. “Grab that corner over there,” he told Ryan. “More romantic,” he added, wiggling his bushy gray eyebrows suggestively. “Who’s the babe?”

Ryan winced, then made the introductions. “Nina Caruso, Pete Jones, a fellow Yank.”

She smiled and gave a small wave. “Hi, Pete. Nice place.”

And thereby won Pete’s heart, Ryan thought, unsurprised by it. Reckless as she could be at times, the woman did have class to spare.

He guided her to the table Pete had indicated and pulled out the chair for her.

Pete brought over two tall glasses of tea, floating three ice cubes each. On the tray with those sat a long-necked bottle of the off-the-wall brew Pete preferred. He dragged out a chair, sat down with them, pulled a matchbook out of his pocket and lit the candle on the table.

The candlelight threw a soft glow over Nina’s features. Ryan realized he was staring at her and blinked to break the spell. “A singular honor when the proprietor joins you at table,” he told her.

She grinned and nodded, racheting his respect for her up another notch and solidly cementing her new relationship with Pete. She didn’t look down that aristocratic nose at the humble surroundings the way he’d thought she might.

Ryan wasn’t sure he was glad about that. It would have thrown up another obstacle between them, and God knows he needed a few of those after last night.

Pete shifted his three hundred pounds around on the stout oak comb-backed chair to get comfortable, indicating he meant to stay awhile. So much for “romantic.”

After another gap-toothed smile of appreciation accompanied by a closer check of Nina’s visible assets, he turned to Ryan. “The sister.”

Desmond Caruso’s murder was headline news and Montebello a small island. No doubt most everyone knew who she was by now since the article in the paper yesterday.

“Half sister,” Ryan clarified, reaching for his tea and taking a long swig. Sweet enough to pour on pancakes and only a shade above lukewarm, it tasted almost like home, as close to Savannah fare as he could get here.

“Too bad, what happened,” Pete said to Nina, who merely nodded in reply.

Ryan set his tea glass down and began to turn it round and round slowly in the puddle of condensation that was forming. “Any scuttlebutt I need to know about, Pete?”

There was a massive clearing of throat and a marked hesitation.

“Nina’s helping me on the case. You can talk.”

“My girl Jonet says Desmond made a play for Princess Samira Kamal. Succeeded, too. You know about that?”

“Pete’s stepdaughter Jonet works at the palace,” Ryan explained to Nina, then answered Pete. “Yeah, we know about Princess Samira. Anyone else?”

Pete cast a wary eye at Nina. He took the time to down half his beer before answering. “He was seeing somebody else on the sly.”

“Got a name or where she hangs out?” Ryan asked.

“Nope. Could be somebody just saw him with a pros,” he added with a shrug.

“A pros?” Nina questioned, then seemed to suddenly realize Pete was using street slang for prostitute. “Oh.” She blushed.

“Thanks, Pete. You get anything else, you’ll call me?”

“Natch. If I run across anybody knows who she was, I’ll give you a buzz.” He upended the bottle and chugalugged.

Pete was upward of sixty and had come here straight from ’Nam back in the seventies. Ryan felt he had a lot in common with Pete despite totally different backgrounds and the generation gap. Both had run from dreaded reminders of the past and settled in a place that bore no resemblance to home.

Neither had talked about it much, but they’d made enough oblique admissions in the past couple of years to establish they shared a motive for transplanting here.

Pete was the only American in residence on the island that Ryan called friend. He had also proved to be a valuable source of information, since he had stepchildren and children by Sophia, his Montebellan wife, working in just about every occupation on the island. There were thirteen of them in all, not counting a slew of grandchildren. Quite a network.

Pete excused himself, bowing slightly to Nina after he got up. “Pie’s on the house,” he declared, making the first offer of free food Ryan had heard in the two years he’d been frequenting the place.

“You made quite an impression,” Ryan told her. “Free pie.”

“I like him,” Nina said, watching Pete’s pillowy frame squeeze through the opening to the back of the bar. Then she dropped the smile. “This woman he mentioned that Desmond was seeing. You think she killed Desmond?”

“Possibly. We’ll need to talk to Jonet and see if she can give us a description or tell us who might.”

“I still want to see that statuette,” Nina said.

Ryan smiled. “You want to check the angle of that projection against the wound, right?”

Her mouth dropped open. Then she recovered, propping her elbow on the table and resting her chin in her palm. “That’s why you’re the detective, I guess.”

“I already calculated and confirmed it with Doc. We agree the angle of the blow, combined with the force of it, probably indicates the perp was around five-six or -seven and not very strong.”

“Ah, a small wimpy guy or a woman. Is that what you’re saying?” She sounded insulted for some reason, but she was right on the money.

Ryan inclined his head in agreement. “It was a lucky blow. Because of that and the choice of weapon, I really don’t think the murder was premeditated.”

Nina huffed. “Maybe not, but last night’s fire certainly was.”

“Maybe whoever set it didn’t know you were in there. Could have been to destroy any trace evidence.”

“Then why wait until you’d already made the sweep?” she argued. “They knew I was there, all right. I had the distinct impression I was being followed all the way to the guesthouse.”

“Later.” Ryan shushed her when Pete’s son, Jack, started over with their food.

Ryan attacked his burger immediately, amazed that Nina did exactly the same.

“Umm,” she crooned, the look on her face one of ecstasy as she chewed a mouthful of the juicy fat hamburger.

A smudge of mustard dotted her lower lip, enticing him the way mustard never had before.

The frosty attitude he’d worked up against her that morning had thawed down to acceptance, then warmed up to something he didn’t even want to name.

Ryan reached for the sugary tea, grasping at any kind of reassurance that his life hadn’t changed all that radically. He was in trouble here. Even his ice cubes had melted.

When Ryan took her back to the lab over the police station, Nina didn’t bother apologizing to Franz Koenig for her earlier escape. As for Franz, he didn’t even seem aware that she had been gone.

Ryan got right down to business, asking Franz to produce the murder weapon from the evidence vault downstairs. Nina felt edgy about seeing the thing that had killed Desmond, but also eager to check out what had occurred to her about it. Ryan remained quiet while they waited, ostensibly reading over a page of notes Franz had been writing when they arrived.

Once she had the statuette in her hands, she turned the small bronze figure this way and that, holding it by the marble base while she examined the arm of it through the plastic bag. The sculpture depicted a standing nude, one arm fused to the side of the body, the other raised with the hand buried within the hair at the nape of the neck.

“The bent elbow there inflicted the killing blow,” Franz mumbled, pointing clumsily at it.

“It had been wiped, but we found traces of blood and skin particles in the crevices of the arm where the bronze is textured,” the tech related in a monotone with just a hint of a German accent. “We also have isolated a half print, not yet identified.”

She wondered what sort of person would have the presence of mind to wipe off the makeshift weapon after bashing Desmond with it and watching him die. Somehow she couldn’t believe it had been someone so stricken with outrage they didn’t know what they were doing. Whoever had done it must have recovered their senses pretty quickly after the so-called crime of passion.