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While pretty amazed that she actually got that out even if she had it wrong, I had to chuckle. “Yep, definitely time for a little princess to get some sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy!”
“You are practically asleep on your feet, and, babe, it’s tit for tat, not that. Also, you should be thanking me for stopping you. Otherwise, I’d have to turn this truck right around, go back to the club, strip you naked, put a crop in your mouth, and?—”
“What the hell?”
“Whoa, watch the language, tired or not…”
“No, seriously, Max. Look!”
I followed her finger that was pointing to something outside the window. When I saw what had to be an entire fleet of police cars at the end of the block, red and blue domes flashing to light the night sky, I forgot my own warning. “What the fuck?”
“I hope whatever happened, nobody got hurt,” Mia said as we continued to stare at the array. Any sleepiness she’d been experiencing had definitely disappeared.
“Isn’t that your hotel?” I asked.
“Oh my god, you’re right!” She unbuckled her seatbelt and scooted up to the edge of the seat, gripping the dash, her eyes as large as a startled doe’s caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. “Do you see smoke? What if the hotel caught on fire? Oh god, Deanna and David are in there!”
“Hey, hey,” I said, drawing her away from the door when she tried to slide across the seat. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I don’t see any smoke or any firetrucks. The only cars are those belonging to the police.”
“Then why are there so many? There has to be at least a dozen. Wouldn’t something major have to happen to call out that many policemen?”
A sinking feeling filled my gut. I was a total news junkie, had been since I was a toddler. I kept informed as much as I could, and since I wasn’t aware of any presidential visit, and while the meetings Mia’s brother-in-law was attending included some very influential financial ambassadors from around the world, I didn’t think the conference warranted such a turnout. I could only think of one thing that would involve that hotel on this particular night, and she was seated right beside me.
“I think you’re busted.”
“What? No, that can’t be. Deanna swore she’d not tell! And I’m only a little later than I’d promised.”
“She might not have had to say anything. Did anyone else know your plans?”
“Are you kidding? I don’t have a death wish! No! The only people who knew I was even in Texas were Deanna, her husband, David, and, of course, I had to beg my mother and fath…”
She didn’t finish her sentence but really didn’t need to. A worried sister might draw the hotel manager’s attention, who would most likely alert his security team to do a discreet search for a missing guest. But to require the magnitude of personnel I could now discern milling about the front of the hotel, and the separate small groups of people standing in front of various news vans, I was pretty sure the King and Queen of Emberly Isles had decided to surprise their youngest daughter on her birthday only to discover she was nowhere to be found.
A sharp honk drew my attention to the rearview mirror. The driver lifted his hands and shrugged in the universal gesture of ‘WTF’ without the need for words. Looking out the windshield again, I realized the light had turned green. “Put your seatbelt back on,” I instructed, not waiting for her to do so as I eased through the intersection only to immediately flip on my signal and move to the right curb. Coming to a stop, I could hear metal against metal as well as a soft whimper when she tried to connect the two ends of her seatbelt.
“Oh, babe,” I said, shutting off the engine and putting my arms around her shaking body. “It’s going to be okay.”
“No, it’s not. They are going to murder me.”
“No, they’re not. I’m not going to lie and say they won’t be angry, but I promise they aren’t going to skin you alive.”
“You can’t know that! Have you forgotten the castle has an actual dungeon?”
“I haven’t forgotten, but, Mia, they can be as mad as they want at me, not you. When you accepted my marriage proposal, the responsibility for you transferred from them to me.” Seeing the fear and disbelief still in her eyes, I quipped, “I promise you, the only dungeon you’ll ever be in is mine.”
When her eyes almost popped out of her head, I cupped her face in my palms. “Sorry, I was just trying to make you smile. What I’m saying is that as your future husband, I swear, if they so much as lay a finger on you in anger, they’ll have to deal with me.”
“You’ll always be my hero, but I don’t know what you can do when they go ballistic. What are you going to do? Threaten to paddle them? They are royalty.”
“Princess, so are we.”
Her eyes rounded and her mouth formed a perfect little “O”. “Wow, I-I sort of forgot that.” She looked out the window again and then back to me. “So what’s our plan, Prince Picard?”
While I hadn’t expected to take my first steps into becoming a ruler tonight, I would take on the world if it meant keeping Mia safe. Giving her a long hug and an even longer kiss, I moved her back and buckled the belt around her. “First, we need to get this over with before it gets totally blown out of proportion.” When she didn’t so much as nod but started to nibble her bottom lip, I traced my finger down her cheek to gently remove the flesh from between her teeth. “All you have to do is trust me. Think you can do that?”
She gave me a long look, then nodded. “Yes, I can do that, Sir.”
