AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’d messed up. She’d known it from almost the first moment they met, certainly as they got more and more involved. When he started telling her things: secrets, private matters about his family, she knew she should have bailed. Or at least had the decency not to write them down.
But her journalistic training had been hard-fought and completely-ingrained. What harm could come from taking notes, in any case?
What harm, indeed!
“It was a mistake,” she blurted out. “The whole thing. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“No, Eleanor. You shouldn’t.” His lips were a grim slash in his stony face. “But you did. So? What now? I presume this is another ruse?” He gestured to the outfit she wore and heat suffused her face.
“I…”
“Yes?” He crossed his arms over his chest, drawing her attention to his broadly muscled physique.
She’d never seen him naked – their relationship had been surprisingly old-fashioned, and she’d liked that. She’d liked that he had wanted to cosset and adore her. He’d made her feel like the most precious item in all the universe. And she’d become addicted to that feeling, so she could no longer think straight.
“I’m working,” she said, turning her face away.
“You’re writing another article,” he muttered, and when she didn’t answer, he seemed to grow at least another inch. “Tell me the damned truth, Eleanor.”
She winced at his harsh tone. “I did.”
“No, you’re being deliberately evasive.”
“I’m working. I have credentials.” She reached into her pocket, curling her fingers around the laminated card that had granted her access into the palace. It was her photo, though the name on it was her mother’s maiden name – a precaution she always used when on assignment.
Apollo took it and gave it a cursory glance, before jamming it into his own pocket. “And if I look here?” He pressed his palm to her hip, his eyes holding hers as he felt confirmation of what he’d suspected. “A voice recorder?”
Eleanor’s eyes swept shut. “It’s not what you think.”
“I think you’ll find you have no credibility with me, but give it a try, Eleanor. Explain what you’re doing here with a fake identification tag, and a spy device. Tell me why you’re in a top-security location at an event that is most firmly invitation-only?”
“I’m not writing a gossip piece,” she said, her throat thick with shame. How mortifying the whole exposé story had been! She should never have taken the job with that particular paper, but she’d been desperate. She’d needed the money.
She still did. Her sister was counting on her, and everything Eleanor did was for Elizabeth’s sake. She would walk through fire to make sure her twin didn’t have to worry about her future: a risky pregnancy had been hard enough, and Eleanor had done what she could to help. Now that ‘pregnancy’ was an adorable two year old, and the father was still conspicuously absent, it was up to Eleanor to help. And she wanted to help. She worked herself tirelessly, writing articles for magazines, newspapers, anything she could, she did.
And this piece had been no different – except in one way. The pay was much better than usual. The inherent risk of going undercover in a middle eastern kingdom had meant the promised fee would cover their rent for almost a month. But she had to finish the damned thing!
“It’s not gossip,” she said again, clearing her throat. “This is a proper political piece. That’s what I write now.”
Apollo’s expression grew grimmer by the moment. “So you’ve come to Ras el Kida, somehow obtained a false identification tag, posed as a servant, and all so you can snoop around my sister and her husband who, by the way, happens to be King?”
Eleanor swept her eyes shut. “It’s not snooping. I’m a journalist.”
“Semantics,” Apollo disputed. “You are looking to prize open doors that have been pulled closed for a reason.”
“This is just politics,” she said, knowing she had no right to claim the moral high-ground but clinging to it in any case. “And you can’t just drag me out of a crowded room to berate and interrogate me.”
His harsh laugh was a contradiction in and of itself. None the less, he responded with a soft and dangerous denouncement. “You are very lucky I dragged you from that room rather than alerting my brother-in-law to your presence.”
At this, Eleanor froze, her heart throbbing painfully inside her chest. “You would have no reason to do that.”
“No reason? You wrote an article that directly led to my father’s death and you dare come within a hundred yards of my family? Of my sister? Her son? And on a day such as this?”
“I told you, I’m not looking to cause trouble…”
“Looking for it or not, the result is the same. Give me the tape recorder.”
She shook her head mutinously, thinking of the deep background research she’d been doing for a fortnight, the documents she’d uncovered, all of which were notarized on the digital machine in her pocket.
