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“You’ve got this, Kylee.” Chandler’s voice.
“I do,” she whispered back.
One more person in front of her, but her grandmother was the first one she would reach, and she suddenly glanced her way. “Kylee,” she muttered, her voice more snarky and mean than ever.
Kylee put on her most radiant smile. “Hello, Grandmother,” she drawled out.
“It’sMimi,” her grandmother all but shrieked.
People looked their way.
Mimi put on a fake smile and stepped around the person in front of Kylee, grabbing her arm. “What are you doing here, you ungrateful brat?” Before Kylee could answer, she looked her over. “All squeezed into that dress, aren’t you? Good heavens, darlin’, try out a salad and the treadmill for once in your lazy life.”
Kylee heard a growl in her earpiece, then a warning of, “Chandler.”
She smiled to herself. He would stand up for her, but it was time to stand up for herself. “Ah,Grandmother.” She looked her up and down as outrage filled Mimi’s dark gaze. “I know how jealous you are of my beauty and my shape.” As she said the words and looked into her grandmother’s hate-filled gaze, she realized it was true. Her grandmother was so stuck trying to be the most beautiful woman around that she couldn’t even handle her own granddaughter being beautiful. Mimi’s insane jealousy had fueled all the hateful and belittling words throughout the years.
“That’s right,belle,” Chandler said in her ear, giving her even more strength.
Mimi gasped, but Kylee wasn’t done. They were gathering a crowd. She didn’t care.
“I am finished with you trying to belittle me and finished with you sending your man to kill me. I am a beautiful and successful adult … and I am through with you.”
Mimi’s eyes narrowed but Kylee pushed past her, easily shoving her too-thin, plastic-face and silicone-parts grandmother out of the way.
“Hallo, König Frederick.” Kylee greeted him with a huge smile, as if he was the most important man in her world.
“Schön,” he drawled outbeautifulin German. Frederick was a short but powerfully built man. He looked like a square tank. He had thick dark hair, piercing dark eyes, and a full beard. He appeared much taller on television.
She put out her right hand for him, catching a glimpse of her grandfather on the other side, begging her with his gaze to run. She could feel her grandmother fuming on her right. She smiled at her grandfather when she wanted to tell him off as well. He was too weak to waste her time on.
Frederick grasped her hand and brought it to his lips. His beard tickled her fingers, but not in a good way. Her stomach turned over as he kissed her hand, and then he trailed his tongue along her knuckles. Gross. It was all she could do to not pull her hand free and smack him.
He straightened, staring deeply at her as if he could possess her with his eyes. “I have bowed to your beauty,” he said in heavily accented English. “I have not seen your equal in this country. Who are you, and how can I convince you to come home with me?”
Kylee heard a very loud growl in her ear and another reprimand of “Chandler.” She teetered on her heels but focused on heavenly protection and all the Deltas being close at hand.
“I am Admiral and Olivet Seamons’ only granddaughter, Kylee,” she said, her head erect and her smile in place. She stepped in close, lifting her left hand as if to embrace him.
He tugged her closer with his right hand that still held hers. She all but fell against his powerful body. With her heels on, she was only an inch shorter than him.
Resisting the urge to vomit, Kylee ran her fingertips through his hair and then leaned close to his ear, she blew air into his ear at the same time that she pushed the small contraption hidden in her left palm against the back of his head and then ripped it back.
He jerked in surprise at the tug to his hair, but she tried to keep his focus as she stayed close to him and whispered in his ear, “Come find me after you’re done greeting people. We’ll chat about what’s in store for our future.”
She eased back to see him beaming at her. Apparently her words and her closeness had kept him from thinking the tug to his hair was anything more than her playing with him. Her stomach was pitching so hard she had to swallow to keep the vomit down. She smoothly cupped her left hand around the hair.
“I will find you,” he said. “That is a promise,meine liebe.”
Thankfully, he released her before she used her new self-defense moves to prove to him she would never be “his love.”
She winked at Frederick and said, “Bis gleich.”See you soon. Not. Then she tilted her chin to her grandfather as if he were below her. “Grandfather.”
Spinning on her heels, she strutted away from the three of them. She quickly slipped the hair catcher back into the attachment and into her purse, zipping it shut. The crowd parted for her to go.
“Get out of there,” Papa instructed her in her ear. “Klein, Reed. Close in on Kylee’s location.”
She needed no prodding.
