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“Keira...” He couldn’t go beyond that one word.
“Alyssa deserves the best. And that’s you.” She cleared her throat. “There’s just one more thing I have to tell you, and then I’ll let you go. Liam told me—he thought it was funny, and it is, in a way, but it’s a little pathetic, too—Mara was taking cooking lessons from her chefs, did you know that?”
“No.”
“Apparently she was trying to make herself more self-sufficient, like me.”
“That doesn’t make sense—you can’t cook.”
“No, but she didn’t know that until Alec told her. What she does know is that you hold me in high esteem. And do you know what she told Alec when he asked her how she’d been injured? She said, ‘I only did what Keira would have done in that situation.’”
Trace uttered a pithy, four-letter word.
“That’s all I wanted to tell you. Okay, that’s not all I wanted to tell you, but I don’t think I need to tell you anything more. You’re a smart man—you’ve never given yourself the credit you deserve, but you were a great teacher and I owe you a lot. The only thing I regret about marrying Cody is losing you as a partner—and if you ever tell him I said I regret anything about marrying him I’ll call you a liar to your face,” she ended with a laugh that had him laughing, too. “He feels guilty enough about it as it is. Oh, and that reminds me,” she said swiftly before he could hang up. “Cody asked me to check on a license plate number for you, along with the make and model of the car it belongs to. He said you thought the New World Militia or the Russian mob might be tailing you.”
“Yeah.”
“You had him so worried he would barely let Alyssa and me out of his sight, and he opened an agency investigation immediately. He even called Callahan to warn him. And that was not a comfortable conversation, let me tell you.”
“Forewarned is forearmed.”
“Yes, but...you were way off base.”
Despite his lack of sleep Trace was suddenly alert. “How do you know?”
“Because that car belongs to—hold on to your hat—the king of Zakhar.”
Chapter 16
“What?” Trace couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.
“That’s what Cody said when I told him. I had to trace it through a couple of shell corporations, but I nailed it down yesterday. So if you were being followed—and I’m not saying you weren’t—it was probably just the king being an overprotective brother.”
“You’re positive?” The princess wasn’t in danger because of me, he thought with an overwhelming sense of relief. I didn’t put her at risk.
“I’m not positive he was just being an overprotective brother, but I am positive the tail didn’t involve the New World Militia or the Bratva, the Brotherhood. Unless the king of Zakhar is a member of the Russian mob,” she added drily.
“You’re the best, Keira. I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably still be saying it when we’re both old and gray. Thank you very much!” After he hung up Trace put the cell phone down and stared at the SIG SAUER still sitting on the coffee table. Thinking about what Keira had just told him.
They weren’t gunning for me, he thought thankfully. Whatever the explanation is, they weren’t gunning for me. Which means I can put that fear for the princess to bed.
Then he thought about the other things Keira had told him earlier—and everything she hadn’t said. He thought about Alyssa, about the sweet, darling girl she was, and the woman she would someday become. His princess would have been just as sweet and darling as a child, and she had grown into a woman who had flown far beyond anything anyone could ever have imagined, knowing her crippling childhood with the father who never loved her. Who besides her brother had given her roots and wings? How had she found the courage to fly? Yet somehow she had.
...I cannot ask you to be less than the man you are. But I can ask you to let me be a woman for you... If you love me, then nothing else matters. If you love me, please do not talk of what I deserve... Since I have known you all I have wanted to be was a woman. Your woman...
His woman. No, that wasn’t true. She didn’t just want to be his woman, his lover. That’s what she’d said, but he knew her better than that. His princess might try to be a modern American woman, but she was old-fashioned in some endearing ways. Cooking lessons? That wasn’t her trying to be self-sufficient. That was her wanting to be his wife in the traditional Zakharian sense.
