If Shoshauna wasn’t a princess, if she was just an ordinary girl…Jake cut off the train of his thought. It didn’t matter if she was a wandering gypsy. It was still his mission to protect her.

The truth was, it would be way too easy to forget she was a princess, especially with her standing there in a badly rumpled and ill-fitting dress.

But that was exactly what he had to remember to keep his boundaries clear, his professionalism unsullied, his duty foremost in his mind. She was a princess, a real one. He was a soldier. Their stations in life were millions of miles apart. And they were going to stay that way.

By Royal Appointment

You’re invited to a royal wedding!

From turreted castles to picturesque palaces—these kingdoms may be steeped in tradition, but romance always rules!

So don’t miss your VIP invite to the most extravagant weddings of the year!

Your royal carriage awaits….

Don’t miss future books in this wonderful miniseries!

In August

Marion Lennox

brings us the final story in her royal quartet

of Alpine principalities

Wanted: Royal Wife and Mother

Prince Rafael is heir to the throne

and looking for a family of his own….

Cara Colter
Her Royal Wedding Wish

By Royal Appointment

Dear Reader,

A terrible thing happened as I was writing this story. My cat, Hunter—bossy, beautiful, one of my greatest inspirations—died unexpectedly. It might be easy to dismiss him as just a cat, but to me it seems he was a spark of the universal life force wrapped in a funny, furry, delightful package.

Love finds us in so many different ways. It comes when we least expect it, when it’s inconvenient; it comes as cats and dogs; its message comes through songs and movies and books. All of life pulses with this undercurrent of something so magnificent it makes us pause in our busy lives and whisper “ahhh,” in awed recognition and gratitude.

There is a sense in this story of the exquisite tenderness of love wiggling its way into Jake’s reluctant-warrior heart, and of love giving a princess her first real understanding of how rich life can be. That is the epitome of Hunter. If you pause for just a moment right now, I hope you’ll hear the rich vibration of purring…and of love.

Best wishes,

Cara Colter

www.cara-colter.com

In memory of Hunter

1997–2007

Beloved.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

JAKE Ronan took a deep, steadying breath, the same kind he would take and hold right before the shot or the assault or the jump.

No relief. His heart was beating like a deer three steps ahead of a wolf pack. His palms were slick with sweat.

He was a man notorious for keeping his cool. And in the past three years that notoriety had served him well. He’d taken a hijacked plane back from the bad guys, jumped from ten thousand feet in the dead of night into territory controlled by hostiles, rescued fourteen school-children from a hostage taking.

But in the danger-zone department nothing did him in like a wedding. He shrugged, rolled his shoulders, took another deep breath.

His old friend, Colonel Gray Peterson, recently retired, the reason Ronan was here on the tiny tropical-island paradise of B’Ranasha, shifted uneasily beside him. Under his breath he said a word that probably had never been said in a church before. “You don’t have your sideways feeling, do you?” Gray asked.

Ronan was famous among this tough group of men, his comrades-in-arms, for the feeling, a sixth sense that warned him things were about to go wrong, in a big way.

“I just don’t like weddings,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately hushed. “They make me feel uptight.”

Gray contemplated that as an oddity. “Jake,” he finally said reassuringly, his use of Ronan’s first name an oddity in itself, “it’s not as if you’re the one getting married. You’re part of the security team. You don’t even know these people.”

Ronan had never been the one getting married, but his childhood had been littered with his mother’s latest attempt to land the perfect man. His own longing for a normal family, hidden under layers of adolescent belligerence, had usually ended in disillusionment long before the day of yet another elaborate wedding ceremony, his mother exchanging starry-eyed “I do’s” with yet another temporary stepfather.

Ronan had found a family he enjoyed very much when he’d followed in his deceased father’s footsteps, over his mother’s strenuous and tear-filled protests, and joined the Australian military right out of high school. Finally, there had been structure, predictability and genuine camaraderie in his life.

And then he’d been recruited for a multinational military unit that was a first-response team to world crises. The unit, headquartered in England, was comprised of men from the most elite special forces units around the world. They had members from the British Forces SAS, from the French Foreign Legion, from the U.S. SEALs and Delta Force.

His family became a tight-knit brotherhood of warriors. They went where angels feared to go; they did the work no one else wanted to do; they operated in the most dangerous and troubled places in the world. As well as protecting world figures at summits, conferences, peace talks, they dismantled bombs, gathered intelligence, took back planes, rescued hostages, blew up enemy weapons caches. They did the world’s most difficult work. They did it quickly, quietly and anonymously. There were few medals, little acknowledgment, no back-patting ceremonies.

But there was: brutal training, exhausting hours, months of deep cover and more danger than playing patty-cake with a rattlesnake.

When Ronan had been recruited, he had said a resounding yes. A man knew exactly when his natural-born talents intersected with opportunity, and from his first day in the unit, code-named Excalibur, he had known he had found what he was born to do.

A family, other than his brothers in arms, was out of the question. This kind of work was unfair to the women who were left at home. A man so committed to a dangerous lifestyle was not ready to make the responsibilities of a family and a wife his priority.

Which was a happy coincidence for a man who had the wedding thing anyway. Ronan’s most closely guarded secret was that he, fearless fighting man, pride of Excalibur, would probably faint from pure fright if he ever had to stand at an altar like the one at the front of this church as a groom. As a man waiting for his bride.

So far, no one was standing at it, though on this small island, traditions were slightly reversed. He’d been briefed to understand that the bride would come in first and wait for the groom.

Music, lilting and lovely, heralded her arrival, but above the notes Ronan heard the rustle of fabric and slid a look down the aisle of the church. A vision in ivory silk floated slowly toward them. The dress, the typical wedding costume of the Isle of B’Ranasha, covered the bride from head to toe. It was unfathomable how something so unrevealing could be so sensual.

But it was. The gown clung to the bride’s slight curves, accentuated the smooth sensuality of her movements. It was embroidered in gold thread that caught the light and thousands of little pearls that shimmered iridescently.

The reason Ronan was stationed so close to the altar was that this beautiful bride, Princess Shoshauna of B’Ranasha, might be in danger.

Since retiring from Excalibur, Gray had taken the position as head of security for the royal family of B’Ranasha. With the upcoming wedding, he’d asked Ronan if he wanted to take some leave and help provide extra security. At first Gray had presented the job as a bit of a lark—beautiful island, beautiful women, unbeatable climate, easy job, lots of off-time.

But by the time Ronan had gotten off the plane, the security team had intercepted a number of threats aimed directly at the princess, and Gray had been grim-faced and tense. The colonel was certain they were generating from within the palace itself, and that a serious security breach had developed within his own team.

“Look at the lady touching the flowers,” Gray said tersely.

Ronan spun around, amazed by how much discipline it took to take his eyes off the shimmering vision of that bride. A woman at the side of the church was fiddling with a bouquet of flowers. She kept glancing nervously over her shoulder, radiating tension.

There it was, without warning, that sudden downward dip in his stomach, comparable to a ten-story drop on a roller coaster.

Sideways.

Surreptitiously Ronan checked his weapon, a 9mm Glock, shoulder holstered. Gray noticed, cursed under his breath, tapped his own hidden weapon, a monstrosity that members of Excalibur liked to call the Cannon.

Ronan felt himself shift, from a guy who hated weddings to one hundred percent warrior. It was moments exactly like this that he trained for.

The bride’s gown whispered as she walked to the front.

Gray gave him a nudge with his shoulder. “You’re on her,” he said. “I’m on the flower lady.”

Ronan nodded, moved as close to the altar as he could without drawing too much attention to himself. Now he could smell the bride’s perfume, tantalizing, as exotic and beautiful as the abundant flowers that bloomed in profusion in every open space of this incredible tropical hideaway.

The music stopped. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the flower lady duck. Now, he thought, and felt every muscle tense and coil, ready.

Nothing happened.

An old priest came out of the shadows at the front of the chapel, his golden face tranquil, his eyes crinkled with good humor and acceptance. He wore the red silk robe of a traditional B’Ranasha monk.

Ronan felt Gray’s tension beside him. They exchanged glances. Gray’s hand now rested inside his jacket. His facade of complete calm did not fool Ronan. His buddy’s hand was now resting on the Cannon. Despite the unchanging expression on Gray’s face, Ronan felt the shift in mood, recognized it as that itching for action, battle fever.

The sideways feeling in Ronan’s stomach intensified. His brain did a cool divide, right down the middle. One part of him watched the priest, the bride. The groom would arrive next. One part of him smelled perfume and noted the exquisite detail on her silk dress.

On the other side of the divide, Ronan had become pure predator, alert, edgy, ready.

The bride lifted her veil, and for just a split second his warrior edge was gone. Nothing could have prepared Jake Ronan for the fact he was looking into the delicate, exquisite perfect features of Princess Shoshauna of B’Ranasha.

His preparation for providing security for the wedding had included learning to recognize all the members of the royal families, especially the prospective bride and groom, but there had never been any reason to meet them.

He had been able to view Shoshauna’s photographs with detachment: young, pretty, pampered. But those photos had not prepared him for her in the flesh. Her face, framed by a shimmering black waterfall of straight hair, was faintly golden and flawless. Her eyes were almond shaped, tilted upward, and a shade of turquoise he had seen only once before, in a bay where he’d surfed in his younger days off the coast of Australia.

She blinked at him, then looked to the back of the room.

He yanked himself away from the tempting vision of her. It was very bad to lose his edge, his sense of mission, even for a split second. A warning was sounding deep in his brain.

And in answer to it, the back door of the church whispered open. Ronan glanced back. Not the prince. A man in black. A hood over his face. A gun.

Long hours of training had made Ronan an extremely adaptable animal. His mission instantly crystallized; his instincts took over.

His mission became to protect the princess. In an instant she was the focus of his entire existence. If he had to, he would lay down his life to keep her safe. No hesitation. No doubt. No debate.

The immediate and urgent goal: remove Princess Shoshauna from harm’s way. That meant for the next few minutes, things were going to get plenty physical. He launched himself at her, registered the brief widening of those eyes, before he shoved her down on the floor, shielding her body with his own.

Even beneath the pump of pure adrenaline, a part of him felt the exquisite sweetness of her curves, felt a need beyond the warrior’s response trained into him—something far more primal and male—to protect her fragility with his own strength.

A shot was fired. The chapel erupted into bedlam.

“Ronan, you’re covered,” Gray shouted. “Get her out of here.”

Ronan yanked the princess to her feet, put his body between her and the attacker, kept his hand forcefully on the fragile column of her neck to keep her down.

He got himself and the princess safely behind the relative protection of the stone altar, pushed her through an opening into the priest’s vestibule. There Ronan shattered the only window and shoved Princess Shoshauna through it, trying to protect her from the worst of the broken glass with his own arm.

Her skirt got caught, and most of it tore away, which was good. Without the layers of fabric, he discovered she could run like a deer. They were in an alleyway. He kept his hand at the small of her back as they sprinted away from the church. In the background he heard the sound of three more shots, screams.

The alley opened onto a bright square, postcard pretty, with white stucco storefronts, lush palms, pink flowers the size of basketballs. A cabdriver, oblivious to the backdrop of firecracker noises, was in his front seat, door open, slumbering in the sun. Ronan scanned the street. The only other vehicle was a donkey cart for tourists, the donkey looking as sleepy as the cabdriver.

Ronan made his decision, pulled the unsuspecting driver from his cab and shoved the princess in. She momentarily got hung up on the gearshift. He shoved her again, and she plopped into the passenger seat. He then jumped in behind her, turned the key and slammed the vehicle into gear.

Within seconds the sounds of gunfire and the shouted protests of the cabdriver had faded in the distance, but he kept driving, his brain pulling up maps of this island as if he had an Internet search program.

“Do you think everyone’s all right back there?” she asked. “I’m worried about my grandfather.”

Her English was impeccable, her voice a silk scarf—soft, sensual, floating across his neck as if she had actually touched him.

He shrugged the invisible hand away, filed it under interesting that she was more worried about her grandfather than the groom. And he red-flagged it that the genuine worry on her face made him feel a certain unwanted softness for her.

Softness was not part of his job, and he liked to think not part of his nature, either, trained out of him, so that he could make clinical, precise decisions that were not emotionally driven. On the other hand he’d been around enough so-called important people to be able to appreciate her concern for someone other than herself.

“No one was hit,” he said gruffly.

“How could you know that? I could hear gunfire after we left.”

“A bullet makes a different sound when it hits than when it misses.”

She looked incredulous and skeptical. “And with everything going on, you were listening for that?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Not listening for that exactly, but listening. He had not heard the distinctive ka-thunk of a hit, nor had he heard sounds that indicated someone badly hurt. Details. Every member of Excalibur was trained to pay attention to details that other people missed. It was amazing how often something that seemed insignificant could mean the difference between life and death.

“My grandfather has a heart problem,” she said softly, worried.

“Sorry.” He knew he sounded insincere, and at this moment he was. He only cared if one person was safe, and that was her. He was not risking a distraction, a misdirection of energy, by focusing on anything else.

As if to challenge his focus, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He had turned it off for the wedding, because his mother had taken to leaving him increasingly frantic messages that she had big news to share with him. Big news in her life always meant one thing: a new man, the proclamation it was different this time, more extravagant wedding plans.

Some goof at Excalibur, probably thinking it was funny, had given her his cell number against his specific instructions. But a glance at the caller ID showed it was not his mother but Gray.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Clear here.”

“Here, too. Aurora—” he named the princess in Sleeping Beauty, a reference that was largely cultural, that might not be understood by anyone listening “—is fine.”

“Excellent. We have the perp. No one injured. The guy was firing blanks. He could have been killed. What kind of nutcase does that?”

He contemplated that for a moment and came up with one who wants to stop the wedding. “Want me to bring her back in? Maybe they could still go ahead with the ceremony.”

Details. The princess flinched ever so slightly beside him.

“No. Absolutely not. Something’s wrong here. Really wrong. Nobody should have been able to penetrate the security around that wedding. It has to be someone within the palace, so I don’t want her back here until I know who it is. Can you keep her safe until I get to the bottom of it?”

Ronan contemplated that. He had a handgun and two clips of ammunition. He was a stranger to the island and was now in possession of a stolen vehicle, not to mention a princess.

Despite circumstances not being anywhere near perfect, he knew in his business perfect circumstances were in short supply. It was a game of odds, and of trust in one’s own abilities. “Affirmative,” he said.

“I can’t trust my phone, but we can probably use yours once more to give you a time frame and set a rendezvous.”

“All right.” He should have hung up, but he made the mistake of glancing at her pinched face. “Ah, Gray? Is her grandfather all right?”

“Slamming back the Scotch.” Gray lowered his voice, “Though he actually seems a little, er, pleased, that his granddaughter didn’t manage to get married.”

Ronan pocketed his phone. “Your grandfather’s fine.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful news! Thank you!”

“I can’t take you back just yet, though.”

Some finely held tension disappeared from her shoulders, as if she allowed herself to start breathing after holding her breath.

Eyes that had been clouded with worry, suddenly tilted upward when she smiled. If he was not mistaken, and he rarely was, given his gift with details, a certain mischief danced in their turquoise depths.

She did not inquire about the groom, and now that her concerns for her grandfather had been relieved, she didn’t look anything like a woman who had just had her wedding ceremony shattered by gunfire, her dress shredded. In fact, she looked downright happy. As if to confirm that conclusion, she took off her bridal headdress, held it out the window and let the wind take it. She laughed with delight as it floated behind them, children chasing it down the street.

The wind billowing through the open window caught at the tendrils of her hair, and she shook it all free from the remaining pins that held it, and it spilled down over the slenderness of her shoulders.

If he was not mistaken, Princess Shoshauna was very much enjoying herself.

“Look, Your Highness,” he said, irritated. “This is not a game. Don’t be throwing anything else out the window that will make us easy to follow or remember.”

She tossed her hair and gave him a look that was faintly mutinous. Obviously, because of her position, she was not accustomed to being snapped at. But that was too bad. There was only room for one boss here, and it wasn’t going to be her.

With the imminent danger now at bay, at least temporarily, his thought processes slowed, and he began to sort information. His assessment of the situation wasn’t good. He had been prepared to do a little wedding security, not to find himself in possession of a princess who had someone trying to kill her.

He didn’t know the island. He had no idea where he could take her where it would be secure. He had very little currency, and at some point he was going to have to feed her, and get her out of that all-too-attention-grabbing outfit. He had to assume that whoever was after her would be sophisticated enough to trace credit card use. Ditto for his cell phone. They could use it once more to arrange a time and place for a rendezvous and then he’d have to pitch it. On top of that, he had to assume this vehicle had already been reported stolen; it would have to be ditched soon.

On the plus side, she was alive, and he planned to keep it that way. He had a weapon, but very little ammunition.

He was going to have to use the credit card once. To get them outfitted. By the time it was traced, they could be a long way away.

“Do you have any enemies?” he asked her. If he had one more phone call with Gray, maybe he could have some information for him. Plus, it would help him to know if this threat was about something personal or if it was politically motivated. Each of those scenarios made for a completely different enemy.

“No,” she said, but he saw the moment’s hesitation.

“No one hates you?”

“Of course not.” But again he sensed hesitation, and he pushed.

“Who do you think did this?” he asked. “What’s your gut feeling?”

“What’s a gut feeling?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“Your instinct.”

“It’s silly.”

“Tell me,” he ordered.

“Prince Mahail was seeing a woman before he asked me to marry him. She’s actually a cousin of mine. She acted happy for me, but—”

Details. People chose to ignore them, which was too bad. “Your instincts aren’t silly,” he told her gruffly. “They could keep you alive. What’s her name?”

“I don’t want her to get in trouble. She probably has nothing to do with this.”

The princess wasn’t just choosing to ignore her instincts, but seemed determined to. Still, he appreciated her loyalty.

“She won’t be in trouble.” If she didn’t do anything. “Her name?”

“Mirassa,” she said, but reluctantly.

“Now tell me how to find a market. A small one, where I can get food. And something for you to wear.”

“Oh,” she breathed. “Can I have shorts?” She blinked at him, her lashes thick as a chimney brush over those amazing ocean-bay eyes.

He tried not to sigh audibly. Wasn’t that just like a woman? Even a crisis could be turned into an opportunity to shop!

“I’m getting what draws the least attention to you,” he said, glancing over at her long legs exposed by her torn dress. “I somehow doubt that’s going to be shorts.”

“Am I going to wear a disguise?” she asked, thrilled.

She was determined not to get how serious this was. And maybe that was good. The last thing he needed was hysteria.

“Sure,” he said, going along, “you get to wear a disguise.”

“You could pretend to be my boyfriend,” Princess Shoshauna said, with way too much enthusiasm. “We could rent a motorcycle and blend in with the tourists. How long do you think you’ll have to hide me?”

“I don’t know yet. Probably a couple of days.”

“Oh!” she said, pleased, determined to perceive this life-and-death situation as a grand adventure. “I have always wanted to ride a motorcycle!”

The urge to strangle her was not at all in keeping with the businesslike, absolutely emotionless attitude he needed to have around her. That attitude would surely be jeopardized further by pretending to be her boyfriend, by sharing a motorcycle with her. His mind went there—her pressed close, her crotch pressed into the small of his back, the bike throbbing underneath them.

Buck up, soldier, he ordered himself. There’s going to be no motorcycle.

“I’ll cut my hair,” she decided.

It was the first reasonable idea she had presented, but he was aware he wasn’t even considering it. Her hair was long and straight, jet-black and glossy. Her hair was glorious. He wasn’t letting her cut her hair, even if it would be the world’s greatest disguise.

He knew he was making that decision for all the wrong reasons, and that his professionalism had just slipped the tiniest little notch. There was no denying the sideways feeling seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his stomach.

Shoshauna slid the man who was beside her a look and felt the sweetest little dip in the region of her stomach. He was incredibly good-looking. His short hair was auburn, burnt brown with strands of red glinting as the sun struck it. His eyes, focused on the road, were topaz colored, like a lion’s. As if the eyes were not hint enough of his strength, there was the formidable set of his lips, the stubborn set of his chin, the flare of his nostrils.

He was a big man, broad and muscled, not like the slighter men of B’Ranasha. When he had thrown her onto the floor of the chapel, she had felt the shock first. No man had ever touched her like that before! Technically, it had been more a tackle than a touch. But then she had become aware of the hard, unforgiving lines of him, felt the strange and forbidden thrill of his male body shielding hers.

Even now she watched as his hands found their way to his necktie, tugged impatiently at it. He loosened it, tugged it free, shoved it in his pocket. Next, he undid the top button of his shirt, rubbed his neck as if he’d escaped the hangman’s noose.

“What’s your name?” she asked. It was truly shocking, considering how aware she’d felt of him, within seconds of marrying someone else. She glanced at his fingers, was entranced by the shape of them, the faint dusting of hair on the knuckles. Shocked at herself, she realized she could imagine them tangling in her hair.

Of course, she had led a somewhat sheltered life. This was the closest she had ever been, alone, to a man who was not a member of her own family. Even her meetings with her fiancé, Prince Mahail of the neighboring island, had been very formal and closely chaperoned.

“Ronan,” he said, and then had to swerve to miss a woman hauling a basket of chickens on her bicycle. He said a delicious-sounding word that she had never heard before, even though she considered her English superb. The little shiver that went up and down her spine told her the word was naughty. Very naughty.

“Ronan.” She tried it out, liked how it felt on her tongue. “You must call me Shoshauna!”

“Your Highness, I am not calling you Shoshauna.” He muttered the name of a deity under his breath. “I think it’s thirty lashes for calling a member of the royal family by their first name.”

“Ridiculous,” she told him, even though it was true: no one but members of her immediate family would even dare being so familiar as to call her by her first name. That was part of the prison of her role as a member of B’Ranasha’s royal family.

But she’d been rescued! Her prayers had been answered just when she had thought there was no hope left, when she had resigned herself to the fact she had agreed to a marriage to a man she did not love.

She did not know how long this reprieve could possibly last, but despite Ronan telling her so sternly this was not a game, Shoshauna intended to make the very most of it. Whether she had been given a few hours or a few days, she intended to be what she might never be again. Free. To be what she had always wanted most to be.

An ordinary girl. With an ordinary life.

She was determined to get a conversation going, to find out as much about this intriguing foreigner as she could. She glanced at his lips and shivered. Would making the most of the gift the universe had handed her include tasting the lips of the intriguing foreigner?

She knew how wrong those thoughts were, but her heart beat faster at the thought. How was it that imagining kissing Ronan, a stranger, could fill her with such delirious curiosity, when the thought of what was supposed to have happened tonight, between her and the man who should have become her husband, Prince Mahail, filled her with nothing but dread?

“What nationality are you?”

“Does it matter? You don’t have to know anything about me. You just have to listen to me.”

His tone, hard and cold, did not sound promising in the kiss department! Miffed, she wondered how he couldn’t know that when a princess asked you something, you did not have the option of not answering. Even though she desperately wanted to try life as an ordinary girl, old habit made her give him her most autocratic stare, the one reserved for misbehaving servants.

“Australian,” he snapped.

That explained the accent, surely as delicious sounding as the foreign phrase he had uttered so emphatically when dodging the chicken bicycle. She said the word herself, out loud, using the same inflection he had.

The car swerved, but he regained control instantly. “Don’t say that word!” he snapped at her, and then added, a reluctant afterthought at best, “Your Highness.”

“I’m trying to improve my English!”

“What you’re trying to do is get me a one-way ticket to a whipping post for teaching the princess curse words. Do they still whip people here?”

“Of course,” she lied sweetly. His expression darkened to thunder, but then he looked hard at her, read the lie, knew she was having a little fun at his expense. He made a cynical sound deep in his throat.

“Are women in Australia ever forced to marry men they don’t love?” she asked. But the truth was, she had not been forced. Not technically. Her father had given her a choice, but it had not been a real choice. The weight of his expectation, her own desperate desire to please him, to be of value to him had influenced her decision.

Plus, Prince Mahail’s surprise proposal had been presented at a low point in her life, just days after her cat, Retnuh, had died.

People said it was just a cat, had been shocked at her level of despair, but she’d had Retnuh since he was a kitten, since she’d been a little girl of eight. He’d been her friend, her companion, her confidante, in a royal household that was too busy to address the needs of one insignificant and lonely little princess.

“Turn here, there’s a market down this road.”

He took the right, hard, then looked straight ahead.

“Well?” she asked, when it seemed he planned to ignore her.

“People get married all over the world, for all kinds of reasons,” he said. “Love is no guarantee of success. Who even knows what love is?”

“I do,” she said stubbornly. It seemed her vision of what it was had crystallized after she’d agreed to marry the completely wrong man. But by then it had been too late. In her eagerness to outrun how terrible she felt about her cat, Shoshauna had allowed herself to get totally caught up in the excitement—preparations underway, two islands celebrating, tailors in overtime preparing gowns for all members of both wedding parties, caterers in overdrive, gifts arriving from all over the world—of getting ready for a royal wedding.

She could just picture the look of abject disappointment on her father’s face if she had gone to him and asked to back out.

“Sure you do, Princess.”

His tone insinuated she thought love was a storybook notion, a schoolgirl’s dream.

“You think I’m silly and immature because I believe in love,” she said, annoyed.

“I don’t know the first thing about you, what you believe or don’t believe. And I don’t want to. I have a job to do. A mission. It’s to keep you safe. The less I know about you personally the better.”

Shoshauna felt stunned by that. She was used to interest. Fawning. She could count on no one to tell her what they really thought. Of course, it was all that patently insincere admiration that had made her curl up with her cat at night, listen to his deep purring and feel as if he was the only one who truly got her, who truly loved her for exactly what she was.

If even one person had expressed doubt about her upcoming wedding would she have found the courage to call it off? Instead, she’d been swept along by all that gushing about how wonderful she would look in the dress, how handsome Prince Mahail was, what an excellent menu choice she had made, how exquisite the flowers she had personally picked out.

“There’s the market,” she said coldly.

He pulled over, stopped her as she reached for the handle. “You are staying right here.”

Her arm tingled where his hand rested on it. Unless she was mistaken, he felt a little jolt, too. He certainly pulled away as though he had. “Do you understand? Stay here. Duck down if anyone comes down the road.”

She nodded, but perhaps not sincerely enough.

“It’s not a game,” he said again.

“All right!” she said. “I get it.”

“I hope so,” he muttered, gave her one long, hard, assessing look, then dashed across the street.

“Don’t forget scissors,” she called as he went into the market. He glared back at her, annoyed. He hadn’t said to be quiet! Besides, she didn’t want him to forget the scissors.

She had wanted to cut her hair since she was thirteen. It was too long and a terrible nuisance. It took two servants to wash it and forever to dry.

“Princesses,” her mother had informed her, astounded at her request, “do not cut their hair.”

Princesses didn’t do a great many things. People who thought it was fun should try it for a day or two. They should try sitting nicely through concerts, building openings, ceremonies for visiting dignitaries. They should try shaking hands with every single person in a receiving line and smiling for hours without stopping. They should try sitting through speeches at formal dinners, being the royal representative at the carefully selected weddings and funerals and baptisms and graduations of the important people. They should try meeting a million people and never really getting to know a single one of them.

Shoshauna had dreams that were not princess dreams at all. They were not even big dreams by the standards of the rest of the world, but they were her dreams. And if Ronan thought she wasn’t taking what had happened at the chapel seriously, he just didn’t get it.

She had given up on her dreams, felt as if they were being crushed like glass under her slippers with every step closer to the altar that she had taken.

But for some reason—maybe she had wished hard enough after all, maybe Retnuh was her protector from another world—she had been given this reprieve, and she felt as if she had to try and squeeze everything she had ever wanted into this tiny window of freedom.

She wanted to wear pants and shorts. She wanted to ride a motorcycle! She wanted to try surfing and a real bathing suit, not the swimming costume she was forced to wear at the palace. A person could drown if they ever got in real water, not a shallow swimming pool, in that getup.

There were other dreams that were surely never going to happen once she was married to the crown prince of an island country every bit as old-fashioned and traditional as B’Ranasha.

Decorum would be everything. She would wear the finest gowns, the best jewels, her manners would have to be forever impeccable, she would never be able to say what she really wanted. In short order she would be expected to stay home and begin producing babies.

But she wanted so desperately to sample life before she was condemned to that. Shoshauna wanted to taste snow. She wanted to go on a toboggan. She felt she had missed something essential: a boyfriend, like she had seen in movies. A boyfriend would be fun—someone to hold her hand, take her to movies, romance her. A husband was a totally different thing!

For a moment she had hoped she could talk Ronan into a least pretending, but she now saw that was unlikely.

Most of her dreams were unlikely.

Still, a miracle had happened. Here she was beside a handsome stranger in a stolen taxicab, when she should have been married to Prince Mahail by now. She’d known the prince since childhood and did not find him the least romantic, though many others did, including her silly cousin, Mirassa.

Mahail was absurdly arrogant, sure in his position of male superiority. Worse, he did not believe in her greatest dream of all.

Most of all, Shoshauna wanted to be educated, to learn glorious things, and not be restricted in what she was allowed to select for course material. She wanted to sit in classrooms with males and openly challenge the stupidity of their opinions. She wanted to learn to play chess, a game her mother said was for men only.

She knew herself to be a princess of very little consequence, the only daughter of a lesser wife, flying well under the radar of the royal watchdogs. She had spent a great deal of time, especially in her younger years, with her English grandfather and had thought one day she would study at a university in Great Britain.

With freedom that close, with her dreams so near she could taste them, Prince Mahail had spoiled it all, by choosing her as his bride. Why had he chosen her?

Mirassa had told her he’d been captivated by her hair! Suddenly she remembered how Mirassa had looked at her hair in that moment, how her eyes had darkened to black, and Shoshauna felt a shiver of apprehension.

Before Mahail had proposed to Shoshauna, rumor had flown that Mirassa was his chosen bride. He had flirted openly with her on several occasions, which on these islands was akin to publishing banns. Shoshauna had heard, again through the rumor mill, that Mirassa had asked to see him after he had proposed to Shoshauna and he had humiliated her by refusing her an appointment. Given that he had encouraged Mirassa’s affection in the first place, he certainly could have been more sensitive. Just how angry had Mirassa been?

Trust your instincts.

If she managed to cut her hair off before her return maybe Prince Mahail would lose interest in her as quickly as he had gained it and Mirassa would stop being jealous.

Being chosen for her hair was insulting, like being a head of livestock chosen for the way it looked: not for its heart or mind or soul!

The prince had taken his interest to her father, and she had felt as if her father had noticed her, really seen her for the very first time. His approval had been drugging. It had made her say yes when she had needed to say no!

Ronan came back to the car, dropped a bag on her lap, reached in and stowed a few more on the backseat. She noticed he had purchased clothing for himself and had changed out of the suit he’d worn. He was now wearing an open-throated shirt that showed his arms: rippling with well-defined muscle, peppered with hairs turned golden by the sun. And he was wearing shorts. She was not sure she had ever seen such a length of appealing male leg in all her life!

Faintly flustered, Shoshauna focused on the bag he’d given her. It held clothing. A large pair of very ugly sunglasses, a hideous hat, a blouse and skirt that looked like a British schoolmarm would be happy to wear.

No shorts. She felt like crying as reality collided with her fantasy.

“Where are the scissors?” she asked.

“Forgot,” he said brusquely, and she knew she could not count on him to make any of her dreams come true, to help her make the best use of this time she had been given.

He had a totally different agenda than her. To keep her safe. The last thing she wanted was to be safe. She wanted to be alive but in the best sense of that word.

She opened her car door.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“I’m going the hell in those bushes, changing into this outfit, as hideous as it is.”

“I don’t think princesses are supposed to change their clothes in the bushes,” he said. “Or say hell, for that matter. Just get in the car and I’ll find—”

“I’m changing now.” And then I’m going into that market and buying some things I want to wear. “And then I’m going into that market and finding the restroom.”

“Maybe since you’re in the bushes anyway, you could just—”

She stopped him with a look. His mouth snapped shut. He scowled at her, but even he, as unimpressed with her status as he apparently was, was not going to suggest she go to the bathroom in the bushes.

“Don’t peek,” she said, ducking into the thick shrubbery at the side of the road.

“Lord have mercy,” he muttered, whatever that meant.

CHAPTER TWO

RESIGNED, Ronan hovered in front of the bushes while she changed, trying to ignore the rustling sound of falling silk.

When she emerged, even he was impressed with how good his choices had been. Princess Shoshauna no longer looked like a member of the royal family, or even like a native to the island.

The women of B’Ranasha had gorgeous hair, their crowning glory. It swung straight and long, black and impossibly shiny past their shoulder blades, and was sometimes ornamented with fresh flowers, but never hidden.

The princess had managed to tuck her abundant locks up under that straw hat, the sunglasses covered the distinctive turquoise of those eyes, and she’d been entirely correct about his fashion sense.

The outfit he’d picked for her looked hideous in exactly the nondescript way he had hoped it would. The blouse was too big, the skirt was shapeless and dowdy, hanging a nice inch or so past her shapely knees. Except for the delicate slippers that showed off the daintiness of her tiny feet, she could have passed for an overweight British nanny on vacation.

As a disguise it was perfect: it hid who she really was very effectively. It worked for him, too. He had effectively covered her curves, made her look about as sexy as a refrigerator box. He knew the last thing he needed was to be too aware of her as a woman, and a beautiful one at that.

He accompanied her across the street, thankful for the sleepiness of the market at this time of day. “Try not to talk to anyone. The washrooms are at the back.”

His cell phone vibrated. “Five minutes,” he told her, checked the caller ID, felt relieved it was not his mother, though not a number he recognized, either. He watched through the open market door as she went straight to the back, then, certain of her safety, turned his attention to the phone.

“Yeah,” he said cautiously, not giving away his identity.

“Peterson.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“How did Aurora take the news that she’s going to have to go into hiding?”

“Happily waiting for her prince to come,” he said dryly, though he thought a less-true statement had probably never been spoken.

“Can you keep her that way for Neptune?”

Neptune was an exercise that Excalibur went on once a year. It was a week-long training in sea operations. Ronan drew in his breath sharply. A week? Even with the cleverness of the disguise she was in, that was going to be tough on so many levels. He didn’t know the island. Still, Gray would never ask a week of him if he didn’t absolutely need the time.

Surely the princess would know enough about the island to help him figure out a nice quiet place where they could hole up for a week?

Which brought him to how tough it was going to be on another level: a man and a woman holed up alone for a week. A gorgeous woman, despite the disguise, a healthy man, despite all his discipline.

“Can do.” He let none of the doubt he was feeling creep into his tone. He hoped the colonel would at least suggest where, but then realized it would be better if he didn’t, considering the possibility Gray’s team was not secure.

“We’ll meet at Harry’s. Neptune swim.”

Harry’s was a fish-and-chips-style pub the guys had frequented near Excalibur headquarters. The colonel was wisely using references no one but a member of the unit would understand. The Neptune swim was a grueling session in ocean swimming that happened at precisely 1500 hours every single day of the Neptune exercise. So, Ronan would meet Gray in one week, at a British-style pub, or a place that sold fish and chips, presumably close to the palace headquarters at 3 p.m.

“Gotcha.” He deliberately did not use communication protocol. “By the way, you need to check out a cousin. Mirassa.”

“Thanks. Destroy the phone,” the Colonel said.

Every cell phone had a global positioning device in it. Better to get rid of it, something Ronan had known all along he was going to have to do.

“Will do.”

He hung up the phone and peered in the market. The princess had emerged from the back, and was now going through racks of tourist clothing, in a leisurely manner, hangers of clothing already tossed over one arm. Thankfully, despite the darkness of the shop, she still had on the sunglasses.

He went into the shop, moved through the cluttered aisles toward her. If he was not mistaken, the top item of the clothing she had strung over her arm was a bikini, bright neon green, not enough material in it to make a handkerchief.

A week with that? He was disciplined, yes, a miracle worker, no. This was going to be a challenging enough assignment if he managed to keep her dressed like a refrigerator box!

He went up beside her, plucked the bikini off her arm, hung it up on the closest rack. “We’re not supposed to attract attention, Aurora. That doesn’t exactly fit the bill.”

“Aurora?”

“Your code name,” he said in an undertone.

“A code name,” she breathed. “I like it. Does it mean something?”

“It’s the name of the princess in ‘Sleeping Beauty.’”

“Well, I’m not waiting for my prince!”

“I gathered that,” he said dryly. He didn’t want to feel interested in what was wrong with her prince. It didn’t have anything to do with getting the job done. He told himself not to ask her why she dreaded marriage so much, and succeeded, for the moment. But he was aware he had a whole week with her to try to keep his curiosity at bay.

“Do you have a code name?” she asked.

He tried to think of the name of a celibate priest, but he wasn’t really up on his priests. “No. Let’s go.”

She glanced at him—hard to read her eyes through the sunglasses—but her chin tilted in a manner that did not bode well for him being the boss. She took the bikini back off the rack, tossed it back over her arm.

“I don’t have to wear it,” she said mulishly. “I just have to have it. Touch it again, and I’ll make a scene.” She smiled.

He glanced around uneasily. No other customers in the store, the single clerk, thankfully, far more interested in the daily racing form he was studying than he was in them.

“Let’s go,” he said in a low voice. “You have enough stuff there to last a year.”

“Maybe it will be a year,” she said, just a trifle too hopefully, confirming what he already knew—this was one princess not too eager to be kissed by a prince.

“I’ve had some instructions. A week. We need to disappear for a week.”

She grabbed a pair of shorty-shorts.

“We have to go.”

“I’m not finished.”

He took her elbow, glanced again at the clerk, guided her further back in the room. “Look, Princess, you have a decision to make.”

She spotted a bikini on the rack by his head. “I know!” she said, deliberately missing his point. “Pink or green?”

Definitely pink, but he forced himself to remain absolutely expressionless, pretended he was capable of ignoring the scrap of material she was waving in front of his face. Unfortunately, it was just a little too easy to imagine her in that, how the pink would set off the golden tones of her skin and the color of her eyes, how her long black hair would shimmer against it.

He took a deep breath.

“This is about your life,” he told her quietly. “Not mine. I’m not going to be more responsible for you than you are willing to be for yourself. So, if you want to take chances with your life, if you want to make my life difficult instead of cooperating, I’ll take you back to the palace right now.”

Despite the sunglasses, he could tell by the tightening of her mouth that she didn’t want to go back to the palace, so he pressed on.

“That would work better for me, actually,” he said. “I kind of fell into this. I signed up for wedding security, not to be your bodyguard. I have a commanding officer who’s going to be very unhappy with me if I don’t report back to work on Tuesday.”

He was bluffing. He wasn’t taking her back to the palace until Gray had sorted out who was responsible for the attack at the church. And Gray would look after getting word back to his unit that he had been detained due to circumstances beyond his control.

But she didn’t have to know that. And if he’d read her correctly, she’d been relieved that her wedding had been interrupted, delirious almost. The last thing she wanted to do was go back to her life, pick up where she’d left off.

He kept talking. “I’m sure your betrothed is very worried about you, anxious to make you his wife, so that he can keep you safe. He’s probably way more qualified to do that than I am.”

He could see, clearly, that he had her full attention, and that she was about as eager to get back to her prince as to swim with crocodiles.

So he said, “Maybe that’s the best idea. Head back, a quick secret ceremony, you and your prince can get off the island, have your honeymoon together, and this whole mess will be cleared up by the time you get home.”

His alertness to detail paid off now, because her body language radiated sudden tension. He actually felt a little bit sorry for her. She obviously didn’t want to get married, and if she had feelings for her fiancé they were not positive ones. But again he had to shut down any sense of curiosity or compassion that he felt. That wasn’t his problem, and in protection work, that was the priority: to remember his business—the very narrow perimeters of keeping her safe—and to not care anything about what was her business.

Whether she was gorgeous, ugly, unhappy at love, frustrated with her life, none of that mattered to him. Or should matter to him.

Still, he did feel the tiniest little shiver of unwanted sympathy as he watched her getting paler before his eyes. He was glad for her sunglasses, because he didn’t want to see her eyes just now. She put the pink bikini back, thankfully, but turned and marched to the counter as if she was still the one in charge, as if he was her servant left to trail behind her—and pay the bills.

Apparently paying had not occurred to her. She had probably never had to handle money or even a credit card in her whole life. She would put it on account, or some member of her staff would look after the details for her.

She seemed to realize that at the counter, and he could have embarrassed her, but there was no point, and he certainly did not want the clerk to find anything memorable about this transaction.

“I got it, sweetheart,” he said easily.

Though playing sweethearts had been her idea, she was flustered by it. She looked everywhere but at him. Then, without warning, she reached up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thanks, Charming,” she said huskily, obviously deciding he needed a code name that matched hers.

But a less-likely prince had never been born, and he knew it.

He hoped the clerk wouldn’t look up, because there might be something memorable about seeing a man blushing because his supposed lady friend had kissed him and used an odd endearment on him.

Ronan didn’t make it worse by looking at her, but he felt a little stunned by the sweetness of her lips on his cheek, by the utter softness, the sensuality of a butterfly’s wings.

“Oh, look,” she said softly, suddenly breathless. She was tapping a worn sign underneath the glass on the counter.

“Motorcycles for rent. Hour, day, week.”

It would be the last time he’d be able to use this credit card, so maybe, despite his earlier rejection of the idea, now was the time to change vehicles. Was it a genuinely good idea or had that spontaneous kiss on the cheek rattled him?

He’d already nixed the motorcycle idea in his own mind. Why was he revisiting the decision?

Was he losing his edge? Finding her just too distracting? He had to do his job, to make decisions based solely on what was most likely to bring him to mission success, which was keeping her safe. Getting stopped in a stolen car was not going to do that. Blending in with the thousands of tourists that scootered around this island made more sense.

Since talking to Gray, he wondered if the whole point of the threats against the princess had been to stop the wedding, not harm her personally.

But he knew he couldn’t let his guard down because of that. He had to treat the threat to her safety as real, or there would be too many temptations to treat it lightly, to let his guard down, to let her get away with things.

“Please?” she said softly, and then she tilted her sunglasses down and looked at him over the rims.

Her eyes were stunning, the color and depth of tropical waters, filled at this moment with very real pleading, as if she felt her life depended on getting on that motorcycle.

Half an hour later, he had a backpack filled with their belongings, he had moved the car off the road into the thick shrubs beside it and he was studying the motorcycle. It was more like a scooter than a true motorcycle.

He took a helmet from a rack beside the motorcycles.

“Come here.”

“I don’t want to wear that! I want to feel the wind in my hair.”

He had noticed hardly anyone on the island did wear motorcycle helmets, probably because the top speed of these little scooters would be about eighty kilometers an hour. Still, acquiring the motorcycle felt a bit like giving in, and he was done with that. His job was to keep her safe in every situation. Life could be cruelly ironic, he knew. It would be terrible to protect her from an assassin and then get her injured on a motorbike.

“Please, Charming?” she said.

That had worked so well last time, she was already trying it again! It served him right for allowing himself to be manipulated by her considerable charm.

She took off her sunglasses and blinked at him. He could see the genuine yearning in her eyes, but knew he couldn’t cave in. This was a girl who was, no doubt, very accustomed to people jumping to make her happy, to wrapping the whole world around her pinky finger.

“Charming isn’t a good code name for me,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not. Charming. And I’m certainly not a prince.” To prove both, he added, sternly, “Now, come here and put on the helmet.”

“Are you wearing one?”

He didn’t answer, just lifted his eyebrow at her, the message clear. She could put on the helmet or she could go home.

Mutinously she snatched the straw hat from her head.

He tried not to let his shock show. In those few unsupervised minutes while he had talked to Gray on the phone, she had gone to the washroom, all right, but not for the reason he had thought or she had led him to believe. Where had she gotten her hands on a pair of scissors? Or maybe, given the raggedness of the cut, she had used a knife.

She was no hairdresser, either. Little chunks of her black hair stood straight up on her head, going every which way. The bangs were crooked. Her ears were tufted. There wasn’t a place where her hair was more than an inch and a half long. Her head looked like a newly hatched chicken, covered in dark dandelion fluff. It should have looked tragic.

Instead, she looked adorable, carefree and elfish, a rebel, completely at odds with the conservative outfit he had picked for her. Without the distraction of her gorgeous hair, it was apparent that her bone structure was absolutely exquisite, her eyes huge, her lips full and puffy.

“Where’s your hair?” he asked, fighting hard not to let his shock show. He shoved the helmet on her head quickly, before she had any idea how disconcerting he found her new look. His fingers fumbled on the strap buckle, he was way too aware of her, and not at all pleased with his awareness. The perfume he’d caught a whiff of at the wedding tickled his nostrils.

“I cut it.”

“I can clearly see that.” Thankfully, the mysteries of the helmet buckle unraveled, he tightened the strap, let his hands fall away. He was relieved the adorable mess of her hair was covered. “What did you do with it after you cut it?”

Her contrite expression told him she had left it where it had fallen.

“So, you did it for nothing,” he said sternly. “Now, when we’re traced this far, and we will be, they’ll find out you cut your hair. And they’ll be looking for a bald girl, easier to spot than you were before.”

“I’m not bald,” she protested.

“I’ve seen better haircuts on new recruits,” he said. She looked crestfallen, he told himself he didn’t care. But he was aware he did, just a little bit.

“I’ll go back and pick up my hair,” she said.

“Never mind. Hopefully no one is going to see you.”

“Does it look that bad?”

He could reassure her it didn’t, but that was something Prince Charming might do. “It looks terrible.”

He hoped she wasn’t going to cry. She put her sunglasses back on a little too rapidly. Her shoulders trembled tellingly.

Don’t be a jerk, he told himself. But then he realized he might be a lot safer in this situation if she did think he was a jerk.

When had his focus switched from her safety to his own?

Rattled, he pushed ahead. “I need you to think very carefully,” he said. “Is there a place on this island we can go where no one would find us for a week?”

He tried not to close his eyes after he said it. A week with her, her new haircut and her new green bikini stuffed in the backpack. Not to mention the shorty-shorts, and a halter top that had somehow been among her purchases.

He could see in her eyes she yearned for things that were forbidden to her, things she might not even be totally aware of, things that went far beyond riding on motorcycles and cutting her hair.

Things her husband should be teaching her. Right this minute. He had no right to be feeling grateful that she had not been delivered into the hands of a man she’d dreaded discovering those things with.

Instead she’d been delivered into his hands. One mission: keep her safe. Even from himself.

Still, he was aware he was a warrior, not a saint. The universe was asking way too much of him.

He turned from her swiftly, got on the motorcycle, persuaded it to life. He patted the seat behind him, not even looking at her.

But not looking at her didn’t help. She slid onto the seat behind him. The skirt hiked way up. Out of his peripheral vision he could see the nakedness of her knee. He glanced back. The skirt was riding high up her thigh.

It was a princess like no one had ever seen, of that he was certain. On the other hand, no one would be likely to recognize her looking like this, either.

“Hang on tight,” he said.

And then he felt her sweet curves pull hard against him. Oh, sure. For once she was going to listen!

“I know a place,” she called into his ear. “I know the perfect place.”

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He slowed, checked the caller ID. His mother. He wrestled an impulse to answer, to yell at her, Don’t do it! Instead he listened to her leave yet another voice mail.

“Ronan, call me. It’s so exciting.”

They were crossing over a bridge, rushing water below, and he took the phone and flung it into the water.

He was in the protection business; sometimes it felt as if the whole world was his responsibility. But the truth was he could not now, and never had been able to, protect his own mother from what she most needed protecting from.

Herself.

Shoshauna pressed her cheek up against the delicious hardness of Ronan’s shoulder. His scent, soapy and masculine, was stronger than the scent of the new shirt.

Alone with him for a week. In a place where no one could find them. It felt dangerous and exciting and terribly frightening, too. She pressed into him, feeling far more endangered than she had when the gun had gone off in the chapel.

Some kind of trembling had started inside her, and it was not totally because he had hurt her feelings telling her her hair looked terrible. It wasn’t totally because of the vibration of the motorbike, either!

“Go faster,” she cried.

He glanced over his shoulder at her.

“It doesn’t go any faster,” he shouted back at her, but he gave it a hit of gas and the little bike surged forward.

Her stomach dropped, and she squealed with delight.

He glanced back again. His lips were twitching. He was trying not to smile. But he did, and his smile was like the sun coming out on the grayest of days. That glimpse of a smile made her forget she had only a short time to squeeze many dreams into, though a week was more than she could have hoped for.

Still, it was as if his smile hypnotized her and made her realize maybe there was one dream he could help make come true. A dream more important than wearing shorts or riding astride or touching snow. A dream that scorned people who pretended all the time.

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