AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You miss him a lot, don’t you?” The question popped out before he realized he was going to ask it.
“More than anything in the world,” she said simply. She blinked several times, then looked at Trace, and there were tears in her eyes. “He is...special. And so precious to me. I cannot explain. He is my king, yes. But he is my brother, first and last. He would give his life for me, and more no man can give. If not for him...” She wiped the tears from her eyes unashamedly. And what she said next took his breath away. “You remind me of him. So very much.”
“Me?” he asked ungrammatically, not believing he’d heard correctly.
“Yes. I cannot explain, not with words. It is something in here,” she said, raising a hand and pressing it to her heart. “I know I am safe with you. Alec and Liam—they guard me well. Do not think otherwise. But they do not remind me of Andre.” She drew a deep breath, sighed and said softly, “I just wish you did not dislike me.”
Trace didn’t know what to say. He didn’t dare tell her the truth, that he liked her far too much for comfort. Far too much for safety. Hers...and his. “I don’t—” he began, but she cut him off.
“When I saw you with Alyssa, I saw the man you really are. Gentle. Loving. So very protective. And she is not even your own daughter.”
“Any man would feel that way about a child,” he said, not quite understanding what she was getting at. “Especially a sweet little girl like Alyssa.”
She went very still, as she had once before, and at first her face was like a blank, emotionless slate. This time, however, he saw a struggle in her eyes instead of that passive acceptance, and he knew he was on the verge of some cataclysmic revelation. But then she said no, ducked her head and turned away. “It is late. Thank you again for saving Suleiman.”
She walked out of the stables, her head held high. But there was something about the gallant figure she made as she walked away that tore at his heart. Something about the way she’d said that one word, No. Something that made him feel like crying.
He wanted to call her back, to ask her what in God’s name she meant by it. But he was afraid. Afraid that if he knew the answer, his defenses against her would be irrevocably breached.
Chapter 8
September segued into October. The aspen groves displayed the bright golden color for which they were justly famous, drawing flocks of tourists, and though the sun still shone the average temperature dropped by ten degrees. Snow fell in the mountains west of Boulder, and jackets became the norm.
Trace sat in the guest house living room on the first Sunday night in October, toasting his feet in front of the fire in the fireplace. The one beer he allowed himself when he wasn’t on duty was sitting half forgotten on the end table beside him as he reviewed the meticulously prepared case reports from the Jones brothers covering the past week. Nada. Zip. Zilch. There was nothing in their reports worth funneling upward to the State Department. And his own reports weren’t any more informative. Still, the reports would be filed as they’d dutifully been filed every week since the assignment began. The State Department’s bureaucracy demanded it.
Not for the first time Trace thanked his lucky stars the agency he really worked for was free of that monotonous bureaucracy and paperwork. If there was nothing to report, there was nothing to report, and you didn’t have to go into excruciating detail while saying it. That wasn’t to say his fellow agents didn’t prepare periodic case reports. Sometimes the absence of something was just as important to the overall picture as its presence, so case reports were still required. But the agency trusted its agents to make the judgment call on what and when. The agency had better things to do than drown in needless paperwork.
Trace tossed the last report aside with a little sound of frustration, picked up his beer and drained it in one long swallow. For a minute he longed for his real job with the agency, missing the never-ending challenge, the excitement of pitting his wits against terrorists and criminals. Even without Keira as his partner he missed it. Then he cradled the empty bottle in his hands as he stared into the dancing flames, his thoughts turning inevitably to the princess who was never far from his thoughts, waking or sleeping.
His obsession with her had been bad enough before she’d begun what he called her campaign to deliberately attract him. In any other woman he’d have thought it laughable, but that wasn’t the emotion her attempts to gain his attention aroused in him. Far from it. Each attempt merely made him feel more protective of her...and at the same time drawn deeper under her spell. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain his distance.
