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Options clicked through Hawk’s mind. One, he could prevent her from making the meeting at all. Two, he could scuttle any chances she had of going on the trip with a single phone call. Or he could follow his instincts and go on the trip with her.
Her obvious attraction to him would make it easy to arrange for her to miss the meeting, but this woman would probably find a way to sign up for the trip regardless. Lina Marwan, as she called herself, was nothing like the shy, quiet, studious, nineteen-year-old he had been led to expect.
Did anyone in the princess’s life know who she really was and how she amused herself?
The answer was no doubt in the negative, which was why he also did not want to scuttle the trip entirely.
He’d been hired as extra security during a time of increased risk for the Royal Family of Marwan. However, if his interaction had the benefit of allowing him to help her security detail enhance her overall safety—so much the better. He had to identify the ways she circumvented it in order to prevent her from doing so in the future.
Letting her make the trip while he accompanied her to ensure her safety, would give him the opportunity to see what measures she took to avoid her security detail.
He made all these determinations in the space of seconds.
“Lead the way,” he said with a smile.
She nodded, but instead of increasing her pace, she stopped, her dark brown gaze fixed on his lips.
“Lina…”
“Uh, yeah, right…go.” She made a visible effort to look away. Flipping her long black ponytail over her shoulder, she started jogging toward the University Center. “The meeting was supposed to be upstairs.”
His long strides matched her speed with little effort, but his body heated in reaction to the enticing bounce of her feminine curves. The attraction was definitely mutual, which should make his job that much easier. He wouldn’t have to pretend an interest to stay close to her. Though his original intention had been to strike up a friendship, being just slightly more than friends would be an even better “in” to the princess’s life.
However, he would only take it so far. He didn’t do long-term and for so many reasons, Lina was not a candidate for a short-term affair. Not only was she the daughter of a client and herself his ignment, but she was a princess from a part of the world that placed a lot of importance on a woman’s ity. It wouldn’t be fair to the princess to take their ociation beyond friendship and mild flirting.
Although he had a sense of honor that would not allow him to use the innocent, he was not above using her attraction to him.
Lina stopped in front of an athletic-looking blond man who had been coming down the steps in front of the U.C. “Hey, Bob. Did we miss the meeting?”
“Yeah, but no biggie. All we did was pass out info sheets and take names.”
“Can we still sign up?” she asked enthusiastically.
The jock put his hand on Lina’s shoulder and squeezed, his smile practiced and more than a little flirtatious. “Anything for you, sweetie.”
Another curse fought for release from Hawk’s mouth. Did she have a boyfriend her family didn’t know about, too?
“Great.” The diminutive princess bounced on the balls of her feet. “Sebastian’s a new kayaker. I’d like him igned with me…” She turned to look at Hawk. “I mean if you don’t have an issue with a woman teaching you.”
“No, I’d like that.”
“Hey, Wayne could train the newbie and then you could be my partner,” Bob suggested.
“The newbie would prefer to partner his new friend.” It was the only way the princess was getting out on the water. A bodyguard could hardly do his job from the shore or another boat.
“Oh, I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to talk about you like you weren’t there.” Lina’s doelike eyes shone with genuine repentance. “I hate it when people do that to me.”
He supposed, considering the strongly conservative and male centered family she came from, she’d had a lot of experience with it, too. “No problem.” But the look he gave Bob told the other man not to mess with him.
From the expression on the college boy’s face, he got the message, but didn’t look happy about it. Again Hawk wondered if the relationship between Bob and Lina was closer than merely friends with a mutual interest in kayaking.
“Look, I’ll sign you both up, but I’ll need your contact details,” Bob said to Hawk. “I’ve got Lina’s. In fact, I already signed you up, babe. I was going to bring you the info sheet in World Politics.”
Lina smiled at Bob, her eyes lit with gratitude and excitement. “You’re the best. Thanks.”
Bob slipped his backpack off his shoulder and dug out a notebook. “Here, just put your stuff in here.” He didn’t let go of the notebook when Hawk reached for it, though. “You are a student here, right? This trip is only open to students at the university.”
Lina frowned, but her expression cleared when Sebastian said, “I’m in the MBA program across the street.”
“Oh. Okay then.” Bob let go of the notebook.
Hawk took it and flipped through the pages until he came to a list of names under a handwritten title, “Kayaking Trip.” He pulled his pen out of his pocket and took pictures of the list of names under the guise of clicking the pen open. He added his name and cover contact information to the bottom of the list.
He would have someone at Hawk Investigations run a report on the names on the list to make sure none of them represented a threat to Lina’s safety.
He wondered how she planned to dupe her bodyguard for an entire weekend, but he had no doubt, whatever her plan was, she would succeed. A princess who had managed to become an expert kayaker while going to the exclusive boarding school she had attended without her family’s knowledge was adept at getting around their strictures for her life.
Bob looked at his watch and then at Lina. “We’ve got almost an hour before class. Do you want to get coffee with me at the Starbucks on State Street?”
She bit her bottom lip and looked sideways at Hawk, then nodded. “Can we get our coffee at the cafeteria, though? I need to pick something up at the library before class.”
Hawk almost laughed out loud. She had to pick something up all right…her bodyguard. “You don’t mind if I tag along, do you?” he asked. “I could use a cup of coffee myself.”
Lina’s mouth curved into another blinding smile. “No, of course not. You’ll have to let me buy, though. It’s the least I can do after running into you in the quad.”
“You’re the one that ended up on the floor. I think I should buy.”
Bob shook his head. “Whoever wants to buy, let’s go. I need my fix of caffeine.”
“Were you up studying late again last night?” Lina asked him.
“You could call it that.”
She smacked his arm lightly. “You are so bad. Who was it this time? The sexy sorority girl with a boyfriend at a different school or the gymnast?”
“I’m not seeing the gymnast anymore. Her coach told her one more late night and lack of focus the next day and she was off the team.”
So, Bob was a player. And Lina knew it. The question was, did he plan on adding Lina to his list of conquests? Not on Hawk’s watch, he wouldn’t. Her family had hired his agency to see to her safety and he would do so. On every front. What she and the jock-boy did when Hawk finished with the case was not his problem.
He studiously ignored the tightening in his gut that occurred at that particular thought.
The student cafeteria coffee wasn’t bad. They even had an espresso machine. Not that Hawk drank specialty coffees, but both Lina and Bob did and from the hum of pleasure Lina emitted as she took her first sip, Hawk umed it was good. He’d won the argument about him paying, but then he had expected to.
He wasn’t in the habit of losing—at anything.
“Are you going to the environmental demonstration tonight?” Bob asked Lina as he leaned back in his chair, his gaze following a curvy coed cross the dining room.
“I’m not sure, but I’ll try to be there.”
“There’s a rumor the Young Republicans are going to show up to heckle us.”
“Well, if they do, they’ll be heckling half their membership. Environmentalism isn’t the partisan issue big politicians say it is. There are conservationists on both sides.”
“If you say so.”
“You know I do.”
“Are you a political science student?” Hawk asked Lina, already knowing the answer, but wanting to get her to tell him more about herself. How much honesty was she willing to give?
“We both are,” Bob answered for her. “Lina’s a fence-sitter, though. She won’t identify with either of our major parties.”
Lina simply shrugged, but didn’t mention what Hawk umed was her real reason for not identifying with either party. She was a citizen of Marwan, not the United States.
