AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He still hadn’t really gauged the strong attraction between them. Getting up close and personal with a colleague on a mission, or back home, was entirely different from travelling to a country with a princess about to be made Head of State. If Gabrielle could barely get her head around this, how could he?
She turned towards him. Her smile was nervous, but the gleam in her eye was still there.
She lifted her hand as if she were about to touch his cheek. But her hand froze in mid-air and she glanced behind them towards her security detail. Their gazes connected almost as if the touch had still happened. The buzz that he’d first felt in Narumba was still clearly there.
They’d just never quite reached the place that they’d been heading to.
She pulled her hand back, her dark eyes intense. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for coming with me.’
The reply was easy. ‘Any time.’ He leaned back as they settled back in their seats for landing.
Mirinez. Another country to check off his list on the map he’d had since he was a child. He had no idea what would come next.
* * *
Her stomach couldn’t settle. All the way up the mountain in the limousine her eyes were fixed on the castle.
Sullivan seemed relaxed. He wasn’t demanding her attention, just offering the occasional smile of support. She was secretly glad he’d insisted on coming but she was also confused. The intensity of Paris and Narumba and all the things she’d intended to do with Sullivan seemed so far out of her grasp. Starting something now would be unfair. She hadn’t even had a chance to contemplate what her role would be in Mirinez. They’d only ever spoken of ten days together. A fling. She couldn’t weigh him down with the royal duties that were about to descend on her.
All she knew was that he felt like the one solid thing around her. And that didn’t refer to his muscular stance—though that wasn’t exactly a problem either.
Arun had been furious that the royal security detail of six had been beaten by one unknown quantity. Gabrielle didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
She was furious with Andreas. Furious. She’d never known anger like it.
Her entire life it had been made clear that Prince Andreas would inherit the title and rule the principality. It had never even occurred to her that might not happen. Their father’s death had been a shock to them both, but it had only moved the inevitability of Andreas’s role a little closer.
She’d spent the last few hours in the plane rethinking every conversation, every contact, every text, every email that they’d ever shared.
And she was still furious. It seemed that life in Mirinez wasn’t Hollywood enough for Andreas’s wife. She’d made him choose. And he had.
The last few years out of the spotlight had been blissful for Gabrielle. She liked living under the radar. She liked being a doctor, thinking like a doctor, acting like a doctor. That was the life she had chosen.
As the limousine turned and drove between the stone-carved pillars and through the wrought-iron gates Gabrielle sucked in her breath. She’d loved living here as a child. It was only as an adult she’d felt cloistered by the views and opinions around her.
The limousine door opened and she stepped out. The stones crunched beneath her feet as the cold-tipped air from the mountain swept around her. The cream-coloured palace loomed above her, built on the side of the mountain, looking over the city of Chabonnex below.
The city was stunning. From here it looked like a village built for tiny people, filled with tram lines and townhouses. There were no skyscrapers or tower blocks in Mirinez.
She walked up the steps to the palace entrance. The doors were wide open and the familiar scent of pine, lemon and old oak filled the air. The palace had always smelled like this. She walked across the black and white marble floor. She’d been told that the palace in Mirinez had been based on designs of Blenheim Palace in the UK. Mirinez’s was like a miniature version. Every room had high ceilings with ornate plaster designs, lavish chandeliers and wood-panelled walls.
Her father’s advisor, Franz Hindermann, was waiting. He gave her the briefest of nods. ‘Princess Gabrielle, we have much to discuss.’
She nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Franz, I’ve brought a guest with me. A colleague from Doctors Without Borders, Dr Darcy. Will you show him to my apartments?’
Franz couldn’t hide the blanching of his face. She was surprised. She’d long since been an adult—what did he expect?
‘Ab-bout your apartments,’ he stammered as he handed over a clipboard filled with sheets of paper.
‘Yes?’
‘Well... I’ve moved you.’
‘What?’
So that’s what the hesitation had been for. ‘Why have you moved me?’
Franz cleared his throat. ‘Prince Andreas moved out rather quickly. And he took all of his belongings with him. His last instructions were to move you into the royal apartments.’
A chill spread through her. So this was real. This was actually happening. The apartments that had housed her mother and father, and then her brother and his wife, were now hers.
She’d spent years with a view that looked out over the mountain and stables. A view she’d loved.
Now it would consist of something else entirely. ‘Oh, okay,’ she said quickly. ‘Put Dr Darcy in the rooms next to mine.’
Franz nodded and hurried away.
Sullivan appeared at her shoulder, holding his bag. ‘You okay?’
She turned towards him. Right now she wanted to turn back the clock twelve hours. She wanted to go back to the bar in Paris where there was wine and laughing and a really hot guy in the corridor. She wanted to close her eyes, take his hand and let him lead her to the promised hotel suite where she could peel off the clothes that had kept them apart for the last two weeks.
She didn’t want to think about being a princess. Her country. A brother who had abdicated and disappeared. She didn’t want to think about the responsibility. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how this would affect the life she wanted to live.
She rested her palm against his chest, feeling his defined muscles and warm skin through the thin cotton of his T-shirt. Somehow being around this man grounded her. Focused her.
It let her think about the things she really wanted to do. Patients. Medicines. The next mission. Dark nights. Tangled sheets and so, so much more.
‘No, I’m not,’ she said clearly. ‘But I will be.’
Sullivan’s eyebrows rose for a second and his familiar grin spread across his face. ‘Let me know what you need.’
He leaned forward and whispered in her ear, ‘In every sense.’
The tight feeling in her belly unwound, spreading warmth that blossomed outwards. She pulled back, staring at her hand. She shouldn’t have touched him. It was confusing things. For her and for him. She couldn’t meet his enquiring gaze. She just gave the briefest of nods towards Franz and watched Sullivan follow him up the main staircase.
* * *
After twenty-four hours Sullivan felt as if he was having an out-of-body experience. People didn’t move around this palace—they glided. The volume control seemed to be in a permanently muted state. He wondered what would happen if he went back to the main entrance, stood with arms and legs apart and let out some kind of jungle scream—or maybe even, in keeping with Europe, a kind of yodel.
He wasn’t used to being around so much quietness. Quietness reminded him of a few occasions he’d been out retrieving wounded casualties in Helmand Provence and he’d had the signal from the one of other soldiers to keep absolutely quiet. Those days were long past and he had no real desire to go back there.
Or to the silence of his father’s house.
Plus, he was bored. The wonder of living in a palace was for five-year-old girls in pink fluffy dre
sses. Not for guys used to living out of a backpack for three months at a time in places where running water wasn’t always available.
He wasn’t working. And if he wasn’t working he had time to think.
Time he neither needed nor wanted. Thinking might take him down a road he didn’t want to travel.
Someone had bought him a suit. Last time he’d worn a suit had been at a job interview long ago. There hadn’t been much call for one since.
He’d picked it up, held it against himself and laughed. It was designed to fit a man of much smaller proportions. He doubted he could even fit a thigh into those trousers.
There was always a member of palace staff floating around outside the rooms. ‘Why do I have a suit?’ he’d asked a small nervous-looking individual.
‘Mr Hindermann th-thought you might n-need one,’ he stammered, ‘if you were accompanying the princess to any official events.’
Sullivan raised his eyebrows. The thought hadn’t even entered his mind. He wasn’t here to do anything like that. That would make him—what—some kind of man candy? He shuddered as wicked thoughts crossed his mind.
‘Get me a kilt.’
‘Wha-at?’ The man looked even more nervous.
‘A kilt. I don’t wear suits. I have Scottish heritage. I’ll only wear a kilt.’
He was doing his best not to laugh. He had no more Scottish ancestry than an American apple pie, but it would teach them to ask and not to presume.
‘Do you know where Arun is?’
Redness was creeping up the smaller man’s face. ‘Mr Aliman will be in the security headquarters.’
‘And that is?’ Sullivan pointed down the corridor and took a few steps in that direction.
