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Chapter Twenty-Four
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This wasso not a great idea.
It was Saturday night. And I was not parked on the terrace of my suite, with a paperback in hand, where I’d vowed—and made very clear to everyone, down to the girl from food services who’d brought my dinner—that I’d be remaining. All night. As in, not moving. Butt on the mattress. Nose parked in the newest Steve Berry book. He was a great alternative to my normal steamy romances, which were not a wise choice for the night. No melty panties tonight. No thinking of melty panties tonight. I’d been good on every damn front.
Except that now…I wasn’t.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I rasped, while hurrying as fast as I could down the hallway in the Palais’ south wing. Yeah, that south wing. The one containing all the royal family’s apartments.
The apartments located directly over the Altor Ballroom.
I yanked off my flip-flops and attempted deep Zen breaths. Okay, attempted. That shit never worked for me even in yoga class, and this stress far outweighed whether I’d accomplish tree pose without falling over.
Fifteen minutes. That was all it’d taken for all my good to get scrapped in this pot of crazy. Fifteen damn minutes.
As the night had begun, with media helicopters circling the Palais for their aerial shots, I’d practically felt my spirit in the skies with them. It had been a damn good week, at least for staying busy and dodging two bullets named Shiraz and Crista. Not that I hadn’t been grazed, especially during an afternoon visit to Crista’s cottage. One minute the two of us were chatting, the next Shiraz’s advance security team had swept in, announcing the prince was on his way for a “quick stop” on his way to checking the repair progress at the tarmac. I’d successfully slipped free the second he’d arrived, climbing into the Mini Cooper on loan from the court auto pool as he’d climbed out of his royal Bentley.
Not before he’d gotten in a good, long, skewer of a stare across the road. A thunderstorm inside an instant…a look confirming exactly what my heart already dreaded and my soul already knew.
Our “goodbye” at Endigoh hadn’t been the finish. For either of us.
But looking for that ending was also useless.
The two of us would never be finished.
Meaning I really needed to do what I came over here to do, then get the freaking hell out.
The urgency needed no enforcement but got one anyway. From the ballroom below, the strains of an orchestra surged into the air. It wasn’t standard dancing fare. The Arcadian national anthem, majestic and official, swelled through the whole building.
Freaking great.
I wasn’t just going to get caught this close to the “forbidden” party, dressed in nothing but my sleep tank and a pair of drawstring shorts. That bombast of a song alone was going to turn my apprehending soldiers into bloody national heroes.
“What the hell. Go big or go home.”
Why had it sounded so much better in my head?
And how much further until I got to Jayd’s damn apartment?
I didn’t want to stop but did. My sense of direction in this small city of a building had already been established—at next-to-nil. Quickly, I keyed in a message at the bottom of the thread, fifteen minutes old, between Jayd and me.
::I’m here. Where are you?::
Thank God for her three bouncing dots, appearing immediately.
::Still in the ballroom. I cannot get free yet. This dress is going to pop any second!::
As she’d already told me, in shouty-caps texts above.
With her seamstress on loan to Ambyr, as she’d also relayed above.
Meaning she needed someone to sew her back into the dress. Perhaps someone who’d done the same thing for half a dozen brides before…?
Hence, the reason I was here, trembling like an escaped convict from Alcatraz, fingers shaking as I managed to respond.
::I’m directly over the ballroom. How much further to your rooms?::
