Natural-Born Protector / Saved by the Monarch (22 page)

They probably should have gotten dressed, but he couldn’t bring himself to give up the pleasure of watching her like this. When the doctor got here, he’d just tell her to undress anyway, so he could examine her.

The air around them vibrated with raw need. The heat of their encounter left both of them shaken. Her auburn hair was mussed from his raking fingers. Her lips were swollen from his kisses. She wouldn’t look at him.

“Where are we?” she asked after a minute, her voice still not one hundred percent steady.

“At the inn at the village of Vernesa.”

“Have you called for help yet?”

“I radioed. Cell phones don’t work up this high, and the place is too remote to be included in the telephone grid. The village doctor is on his way to check you out.” He sat up and began to pull his clothes on. “We’ll have the royal helicopter up here within the hour, with as many bodyguards as it can carry. You’ll be safe. Just stay put in this room and rest until then.”

Saying the words was beyond awkward, since what he’d been on the brink of doing with her was the opposite of rest. But she was definitely a woman who spoke her mind, so if she wanted to berate him for it, he was sure she would do just that.

So far, she hadn’t.

He was starting to like her a lot more than he had ever expected. He’d been prepared to make the best of their marriage with or without mutual affection, had resolved to be the best husband to her that he was capable of being. The fact that he found himself enjoying her company was an unexpected bonus he was grateful for.

“You know, aside from the circumstances, I like spending time with you,” he said as he dressed.

“We’re not spending time together. We’re running for our lives,” she corrected with a peeved look.

And he liked that especially. That she never treated him like he was some three-eyed curiosity people stared at, or a prize to be won. From the first moment, he’d been just some crazy guy to her. He loved the novelty.

But he understood now that he’d taken the wrong approach with her back at the beginning. Considering the life she had lived until this point, of course she wouldn’t be overjoyed with the idea of an arranged marriage.

“I’m sorry if I pushed. I mean before. And back there.” He glanced at the bed. “I feel like I’ve always known you. I had the chancellor’s reports and the pictures and the expectations that eventually…” He had
no idea how to finish that without sounding inexcusably stupid.

“The expectation that we would eventually end up in bed?” She flashed him a droll look with one eyebrow sharply arched. But the flush in her cheeks told him that she wasn’t entirely unaffected by the thought.

“I just mean—” What in hell did he mean? “I had a lot more time to get used to you, and the idea of the two of us together, than you did. And I tend to forget that.”

She seemed to be waiting for something more from him.

It probably wasn’t the admission that he still wanted her, even now, back in that bed, and not leaving it until at least spring thaw, which up here would be another month yet. Maybe Luigi could slide trays of food under the door.

If only they were two regular people, in regular times.

“Under different circumstances, maybe we could have dated,” he offered.

“It wouldn’t have been a date. It would have been an evaluation of my suitability. You’re a prince.”

He thought of the string of young ladies who were even now being “evaluated” for Arpad. She was right again.

And he was more than aware that he was still only half-dressed and she wasn’t dressed at all, wrapped in a blanket. His body’s response was predictable: heat, heat and more heat. He buttoned his pants and reached for his shirt, shrugged into it.

“At least I’m not a dodgy old prince,” he said, more to himself than to her.

“Give it some time,” she told him dryly.

He had half a mind to give her another way to occupy her smart mouth, but he enjoyed their verbal sparring as much as he enjoyed the physical connection between them. Almost as much.

Someone knocked before he could respond.

“Doctor’s here,” came a man’s voice through the thick panel of wood.

Miklos was heading to the door when he happened to glance out the window and caught sight of a suspiciouslooking man loitering opposite the inn’s entrance, scanning people who were hurrying to get home for the night. The few people out in the biting wind rushed about their business, anxious to be back inside. This guy didn’t seem to be heading anywhere. There was a noticeable bulge in his coat pocket.

He made a move like he was clearing his throat and adjusting his scarf, but Miklos could have sworn the guy was saying something into a radio behind his collar.

He fixed the guy’s face in his mind and headed for the door. “I’ll be off to get some weapons and check on something. You’ll be in good hands with the doctor and Luigi,” he said. “You’re not to leave the inn without me. Under any circumstances,” he added.

T
HE DOCTOR HAD GIVEN
her a clean bill of health and told her to rest. Judi had slept, eaten pretty much all the food and drunk all the tea. Miklos still hadn’t
come back. The cuckoo clock on the wall showed four in the morning.

“Where are you?” she whispered to the window.

She brushed her index finger against her lips absentmindedly, then grew annoyed when she caught herself.

Yet she had to admit that his kisses had been amazing. And she couldn’t deny that kissing him had very nearly turned into something more. He had the body of a soldier, all hard muscle and strength. And warmth. Oh, how she craved that heat that radiated from him. She could still smell the scent of his warm skin. She felt helpless against whatever drew her to him from the first moment, which was beyond disconcerting.

He was incredibly male, full of sex appeal, powerful in every sense of the word. But he could also be gentle. And he wasn’t full of himself. He had a sense of humor. She had a feeling that if she didn’t fight him tooth and nail, sooner or later the crazy attraction between them was going to do her in.

Dammit.

This was so not why she’d come to Valtria. Was it too much to ask to have some fun and celebrate her birthday without kidnappings and avalanches? Instead, here was Prince Miklos wanting all sorts of crazy and impossible things. Like a marriage of convenience, for heaven’s sake. Well, for the country’s sake, actually. And if she weren’t careful, she could so easily fall in love with him—

Deep breath.

“That’s not going to happen,” she said to the empty room with some vehemence.

She’d been trying to take stock of her situation for the past hour and come to some kind of resolution. A small noise distracted her at the door, and when she looked expectantly to see whether it was Miklos or Luigi coming, she caught sight of the old-fashioned key jiggling in the lock then being pushed in.

Miklos and Luigi would knock if they wanted to come inside.

Something scraped against the door. The short hairs at the back of her neck stood up.

She moved quietly to the wardrobe. The blankets she’d been wrapped in were so warm and cozy that she’d been reluctant to give them up, but now she took the nearest pair of warm pants and a shirt, pulled them on, then shrugged into a pair of fur boots. They were too large, but she didn’t have time to worry about that.

She grabbed a wool sweater next, but didn’t waste time by putting it on immediately. She dashed to the window instead, climbed the writing desk in front of it, managing not to knock anything off, and opened the latch. The next second she was out on a narrow ledge with nowhere to go.

The cold air hit her face like a wall. She so did not want to go out in that again. And that was before she looked down.

Oh God.

The ground was farther away than she had expected. Cobblestones peeked from under slushy snow. Didn’t look like a soft place to fall.

She pulled the window closed as much as she could behind her, teetering on the narrow ledge.

The lock in the door scraped again.

No time to hesitate.

A flagpole protruded from the stone wall about two feet to her left. She stepped on that to be out of sight of the window, and prayed that it would hold her weight. She wished she had known that she would be required to do some high-wire act on a flimsy perch
before
she had scarfed down Luigi’s fabulous food.

She considered her situation, holding her breath. The ground was too far to jump to, the roof too high to reach. She was pretty much at the end of the road.

Where was Miklos when she needed him?

Voices filtered from the neighboring room on her other side.

“It couldn’t have been Prince Miklos. He’s not on a ski holiday, for heaven’s sake. He was kidnapped,” a man said, sounding like he was getting tired of the argument.

“I just know it was him. I only saw his back when he turned down the stairs, but I’d recognize that back,” a woman insisted.

The man groaned.

And Judi very nearly did, too. Next thing they knew, the media would be here before the rescue team, breathing down their necks.

She could hear the door in her room open then close, and that drew her attention from the bickering couple. She was hanging on to the uneven stones, holding the sweater with her teeth, quietly freezing to death once again. She hadn’t had time to grab her gloves.

It was only a matter of time before whoever was inside the room would realize that the window was open a crack and would look out and spot her.

So when a canvas-top truck pulled up in front of the restaurant, Judi offered a brief prayer toward the snow clouds in the sky. Other than the truck, the street was deserted. She waited until the driver went inside, then jumped.

And got the wind knocked right out of her. Hitting the top of the truck felt pretty close to what it would have been like to hit the sidewalk. Apparently, she’d miscalculated.

Crates had been packed from top to bottom in the van. Hard, wooden crates that had no give in them whatsoever. She lay there for a minute, her hip and shoulders pulsing with pain, wishing she’d thought a little more before she’d leaped. Canvas-top jumps always worked out fine in the movies.

“Morgen habe ich wieder Freizeit,”
someone coming from a side alley said in German.

“Das weiss ich nicht…”
another man responded as they walked out of hearing distance.

She didn’t have much time to contemplate, so she ran through her options as she pulled on the sweater then painfully climbed down and thumped into the snow on the street. For a second, she leaned against the van’s side, against the sign that advertised Fresh Breads of Sacorata, and gasped to catch her breath. Sacorata was the next bigger town, according to Miklos, fifty miles into the valley.

She could stay and trust his protection. Except that
he had his family to worry about. She would be nothing but an added handicap, slowing him down, putting him into even more danger.

Or she could get out of town on her own, out of the country before anyone realized that she was gone. She shouldn’t have come to Valtria in the first place, that much was becoming increasingly clear.

Regardless of the fact that she was attracted to Miklos. More than attracted. She had nearly made love with him, might have if he hadn’t pulled back.

She kissed him, when she had sworn she wouldn’t. She was losing all good judgment. If she stayed with him, he’d somehow talk her into going along with the whole arranged-marriage insanity. She would have been willing to give him her body, just minutes ago, after having known him for only days. And he wanted so much more than that. He wanted her to honor some archaic agreement and become his wife, a princess.

Basically, he wanted her entire life. She would have to give up everything that was familiar to her, everything she had achieved so far. She couldn’t do that. She thought of the gilded prison her life had been before her father’s death. Receptions and protocols, never a moment allowed to let her guard down. Her family represented Valtria in a foreign land. And if that wasn’t bad enough, there’d been that…

She didn’t even want to think about the political enemy her father had unwittingly made, the one who’d begun a nasty media war against them, not sparing any member of the family. And since her stepmother decided to run for local office after her father’s death,
the spotlight had remained on them. Judi had grown up hating public life with a vengeance.

If she stayed in Valtria and let the prince work his magic on her, if he kissed her a few more times…She had a feeling that if she didn’t leave right now, it’d be all over save for the wedding bells.

Best thing to do was to go with her screaming instinct of self-preservation.

She had to get out of Valtria before she did something foolish like fall for the prince. She had to get out of the village before whoever had broken into the room upstairs came out and discovered her.

The van’s driver was coming through the front door, a burly looking young man, although that could be just the down coat he wore against the cold. Judi wished she had something like that.

She approached him carefully, ready to turn tail and run at the first indication of trouble, aware that he could be allied with the men who pursued them. “Hi, are you going back to Sacorata?”

The young man’s handsome face split into a grin, innocent pleasure that could not be faked. “I should be. This is my only delivery up here. But I can stay if you wish,” he said with a slight accent and stepped closer, his gaze warm on her face, a playful glint in his eyes.

“Actually, I was hoping for a ride.” She gave him a look that said pretty please. She was shivering inside. She should have grabbed a coat before she left the inn.

His smile widened. “Are you visiting up here? Do you have any ski gear?” He glanced toward the inn. “I
can help you bring it out. There’s not much room in the back, but we can probably squeeze your gear in.”

She could hear voices from inside the entryway. Somebody would be coming out in a second. Could be the same men who were after her and the prince.