1
KATIE
Parties make me itchy. I lean against the wall of the ballroom of Crownhaven’s main house and run through the security checks in my head, half my attention on the clusters of sparkling guests grouped around the Prince siblings and half on the entrance, where a drunk guest is stumbling toward the valet.
I frown.She better not be driving—good. One of the door guys I hired for the night steadies her with a hand and then gestures for her to sit. He’ll have a car come around and take her home.
It’s Tristan Prince’s twenty-ninth birthday, and so far, everything has gone off without a hitch.
Trouble comes when everything seems calm.Never let your guard down.
My fingers tap out a rhythm on my leg through the stretch wool of my suit. I can sprint in this thing. Faster than Tristan can, much to my best friend’s eternal dismay. My shoes look like dress shoes, but they have a running sneaker sole. My shirt has light compression, just like its twelve identical cousins that live in my closet, and my shoulder holsterslides smoothly over the material. I tested at least four similar shirts before deciding on this one. It sits nicely under a suit. My hair is dyed a plain brown and braided off my face. I’ve been dyeing it for so long that I barely know the natural color anymore.
Never draw attention to yourself. Bodyguards belong in the background.I’ll break that rule in five seconds flat if Tristan or one of his siblings is in danger.
The party is in full swing. Four hundred and seventeen guests drift from bar to terrace and back again. We are at least four cases into the thirty-three cases of champagne we ordered. Tongues are loosening. Heads tip back in laughter or tilt closer to gossip. The two-hundred-year-old chandelier sparkles above art-covered walls and diamond-laden necks.
Theoretically, everything is in place.But where the hell is Tristan?
This is his party, and tonight he’s supposed to start the process of looking for a spouse. Of all the old money families in Hart’s Hill, Rhode Island, who have the arrogance to call themselves Houses, the Princes are the most influential. The richest. The ones with the biggest property and the largest privately owned liquor company in the world.
They’re a big, fat prize, and while others see a potential love match, I see a disaster waiting to happen. Kidnapping. Extortion. Break-ins on the property. Stalkers.
I check my watch again.
Tristan was supposed to be here at eight p.m. It’s 8:16.
He knows full well if he’s gone for more than twenty minutes, I have to send someone after him. It’s part of the security procedures we established when I started. And he might have been traveling for the last two months, but I know damn well he remembers.
Tristan Prince is trouble. Too smart for his own good. Takes the rules as mere suggestions, and even then, only when it suits him. He’s too charming to face consequences.
I’ll show him consequences.
I swipe on the screen of my smartwatch. Each of the siblings has an app on their phone that will alert me to an emergency. It’s two taps and it bypasses the lock screen.
Four min—
“Come here often?”
I whirl at the amused voice from my left.
Tristan Prince grins at me, backlit by golden candles and looking like he just got done doing something naughty. He always looks like that. He has a perpetually crooked smile and a troublesome twinkle in his grass-green eyes.
“You.” The word escapes on a breath.
“Me.” His smile grows. “Miss me?”
I can’t help the happy laugh I let out. My feet are already carrying me toward him and he’s striding for me. We land in a collision of limbs that ends with my head pressed to his chest and his hands molding me to him like he wants to memorize the contours of my spine. I relax for two long heartbeats.
“I think you got bigger,” I mumble into his shoulder.
He squeezes me. “They put me to work.”
“I know. You complained about it constantly.” My voice is muffled by his tux.
He did get bigger. There are slabs of warm muscle pressed against me. I can feel their heat even through the fine wool. Must be from all the work he was doing while he was gone. He texted me incessantly about physical labor and early mornings, but it definitely didn’t hurt him.
Something warm winds through my stomach as he slowly lets me go and steadies me on my feet.
