FIRSTBORN SONS

PROFILE

FIRSTBORN SON: | Jack “Flash” Dalton
AGE: | 32
STATS: | 6'2"; short, dark hair; slate-blue eyes; lean and hard
OCCUPATION: | Former U.S. Navy Seal
AREA OF EXPERTISE: | Surveillance photography; hand-to-hand combat
PERSONALITY: | A battered knight with rusty manners
FAVORITE SPORT: | Exploring underwater wrecks
MOST CHARMING CHARACTERISTIC: | The ability to give any mission—or woman—his full attention
BRAVEST ACT OF COURAGE: | He and his team did six courageous things every morning before breakfast. But the toughest thing he ever had to do was walk away from his job.
PREFERRED ROMANTIC SETTING: | A cold beer in a warm bar always suited him just fine. So why do moonlit nights on a Montana mountain suddenly have so much appeal?
GREATEST PASSION: | Making the ice princess lose her cool…

Dear Reader,

There’s so much great reading in store for you this month that it’s hard to know where to begin, but I’ll start with bestselling author and reader favorite Fiona Brand. She’s back with another of her irresistible Alpha heroes in Marrying McCabe. There’s something about those Aussie men that a reader just can’t resist—and heroine Roma Lombard is in the same boat when she meets Ben McCabe. He’s got trouble—and passion—written all over him.

Our FIRSTBORN SONS continuity continues with Born To Protect, by Virginia Kantra. Follow ex-Navy SEAL Jack Dalton to Montana, where his princess (and I mean that literally) awaits. A new book by Ingrid Weaver is always a treat, so save some reading time for Fugitive Hearts, a perfect mix of suspense and romance. Round out the month with new novels by Linda Castillo, who offers A Hero To Hold (and trust me, you’ll definitely want to hold this guy!); Barbara Ankrum, who proves the truth of her title, This Perfect Stranger; and Vickie Taylor, with The Renegade Steals a Lady (and also, I promise, your heart).

And if that weren’t enough excitement for one month, don’t forget to enter our Silhouette Makes You a Star contest. Details are in every book.

Enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

Born to Protect
Virginia Kantra

Bound by the legacy of their fathers, six Firstborn Sons are about to discover the stuff true heroes—and true love—are made of.…

Jack Dalton: He takes his job of protecting pampered princess Christina Sebastiani very seriously. But nothing in the rule book prepared this battered warrior on the proper code of conduct to follow when the headstrong virgin tempted him at every turn!

Princess Christina Sebastiani: The last thing she needed was a well-muscled bodyguard with a take-charge attitude distracting her from her research. Especially a sexy ex-navy SEAL who awakened her every feminine desire…

Major Jonathan Dalton: The natural leader of the “Noble Men,” he has a secret agenda when it comes to his disillusioned son.

Princess Julia Sebastiani: Although she is tucked away in an ivory tower in Montebello, Julia and her unborn child could be in grave danger.…

Sheik Ahmed Kamal: He swears that he is innocent of the crimes against the royal Sebastiani clan. So if Kamal’s to be believed, who is responsible for these cold-blooded acts of terrorism?

A note from award-winning writer Virginia Kantra, author of six Silhouette books:

Dear Reader,

Once upon a time…

The first story I wrote—I was nine, I think—began that way. The first stories I loved, about brave warriors and proud princesses and unexpected danger, all did, too. So when I got the call from Silhouette to write my very own fairy tale, in Intimate Moments’ FIRSTBORN SONS continuity series, I jumped at the chance.

Being invited to participate in a series that features some of my favorite authors was another big plus. It’s been a joy coordinating stories and bad guys with them.

This story was meaningful to me in other ways, too. Fathers and sons fascinate me. I have two wonderful sons of my own, themes and variations of their father. And my husband, like the hero of this book, is a firstborn son whose father served in Vietnam.

Of course, my warrior is the modern sort—a U.S. Navy SEAL. And my princess is a microbiologist—or, as she would be quick to correct you, a microbial ecologist—at Montana University. But the themes of love and honor and courage and characters who aren’t quite what they appear to be are timeless.

I hope you enjoy this story of a princess who learns her own worth and a battered warrior who discovers the magic power of love.

Love,

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

Jack Dalton hitched his seabag up on his shoulder. His uninjured shoulder, the one that wouldn’t let him down. On the elevator door in front of him, some college banana with more sense of humor than respect for university property had slapped a bumper sticker: Montana, the Last, Best Place…to Hide.

Jack’s mouth quirked. Funny. And fitting. Not that Jack was hiding, whatever the old man accused him of. Drifting, maybe, but not hiding.

He prowled toward the stairs. The habits of physical conditioning were hard to break. And even the navy docs admitted there was nothing wrong with his legs. He could still climb to the lab before the elevator descended to the science building lobby. He could still run six miles in thirty-nine minutes or less. He could still stand for three hours in fifty-degree seawater without dropping or complaining.

What he couldn’t do anymore was swim.

What he couldn’t be anymore was a U.S. Navy SEAL.

Life was a bitch sometimes.

The ugly concrete stairwell caught every echo and threw it up and down. There was access onto each floor, through the basement and, he guessed, out onto the roof. He’d made only a cursory check of the building. He wasn’t playing at point man. No one was relying on him anymore to spot bad guys and booby traps.

He hiked quickly and quietly up the stairs. Lots of stairs. His seabag rubbed the banister. A line from one of his sister’s bedtime stories came back to him: “Once upon a time, a princess lived in a tower….”

Jack shook his head. Kid stuff. Unfortunately, the woman at the top of these steps was no fairy tale. Christina Sebastiani of Montebello might have fled the palace for life among the books and Bunsen burners, but there was no getting around the fact that she was a real live princess. Montana University was an accredited ivory tower.

And the danger… If his father could be believed, that was real, too.

It was just her highness’s tough luck that Jack was no knight in shining armor.

He exited the stairs and stalked the hall, counting doorways out of habit, noting angles from windows. Security sucked. Any thug with a gun and an agenda could have this floor pinned down in minutes. Not his problem, Jack reminded himself. He was only passing through.

A black plaque on the door identified the biology lab. A pane of frosted glass obscured his view of the room. Silently, he turned the knob and slipped inside.

This was the place, all right. He did a quick scan of shelves packed with bottles, and long black islands cluttered with glassware. Silhouetted against the painted cinder block, with two Bunsen burners flaring and a couple dozen petri dishes laid out before her, stood a single, slender figure in a white lab coat. Female. Blond. His hormones sat up and took notice. Now that was a complication he didn’t need. But it had been a while, a long while, since he’d had a woman under him.

She was a research scientist, his father had said during their brief, tense phone conversation. Jack had immediately pictured some dumpy, frumpy little woman in plastic goggles with her hair piled haphazardly on top of her head.

The goggles were there, pulled down around her neck. The hair was swept back smoothly from her face and caught in a clip. And her face… He sucked in a breath. Her face had the cool, don’t-touch-me perfection of a portrait under glass.

This was Princess Christina Sebastiani of Montebello? Damn.

As he watched, she jiggled open the top of a glass bottle with the tip of her pinkie finger and held it to the flame. The intensity in her eyes—blue?—and the soft absorption of her mouth made his hands itch for his camera.

He wondered why he hadn’t seen her photo splashed on the tabloids in the checkout line. She was as much a looker as the rest of the Sebastianis—the only royal to inherit the queen’s blond beauty. But judging from the media coverage, her older sister, Julia, was the princess in the public eye, her younger sister, Anna, the one with the public’s heart.

He waited while she poured stuff from the bottle into a petri dish, swirled it around and closed the container tightly. No point in making her spill. She recapped the bottle, and he let his bag slide to the floor with a soft thump.

Christina jumped. Straightening her shoulders, she glared at him. Yeah, those eyes were blue, all right. Cool blue and hostile.

“You must be lost,” she said. “The bus station is across from the stadium.”

Jack admired her swift recovery. He even kind of liked her snotty tone. “I know. I just left there.”

She looked him over. He knew what she saw: a big man in his early thirties, his convalescent pallor overlaid by a three-week tan and a day-old beard. His military haircut had mostly grown out. His jeans were creased with travel, his leather flight jacket powdered with dust. Not a reassuring sight for any woman working alone on an almost empty floor, let alone a princess.

“Then can I help you?” she asked.

He raised one eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”

Her full lips pressed together. In annoyance? Or fear? “You obviously don’t belong here. If you don’t leave, I’ll have to call security.”

“Maybe I am security,” he suggested, just to see what she’d do.

“You’re not in uniform. And I don’t see a university ID tag.”

She was cautious. That was in her favor. She was gorgeous. That was in his. For the first time, Jack began to think maybe he wasn’t crazy for listening to his old man’s suggestion that he drop in on the exiled princess of Montebello.

“I don’t work for the university,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Did my father send you?”

Jack considered awarding her another point for swiftness and then decided against it. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that after the recent attack on his eldest daughter, Julia, King Marcus would want to protect his family. His entire family. Including emancipated Christina.

“Not your father. Mine. He’s a…” Now, how the hell was Jack supposed to describe Jonathan Dalton? Decorated war hero. Mercenary soldier. Texas tycoon. Consultant to kings, and lousy dad. “…a friend of your father’s,” he finished lamely. “He knew I was going to be in the area and asked me to look you up.”

“Really?” Christina’s tone was dismissive. Disbelieving. “And who is your father, exactly?”

“Jonathan Dalton.”

Her blue eyes widened. “Uncle Jonathan?”

Jack felt poleaxed—whether from the impact of that suddenly warm blue gaze or the notion of the old man as anybody’s benevolent uncle, he really couldn’t say. “You must have him mixed up with somebody else. Jonathan Dalton,” he repeated. “Thick white hair, little white beard, tall—”

“Yes,” she said impatiently. “I remember. He used to give Anna candy. And he taught our brother, Lucas, how to fieldstrip and fire a gun.”

It was more than Major Dalton had ever done with his own children. Hell. Jack had never liked trading on his father’s influence. But just talking about the guy had brought a sparkle to the princess’s eyes, a lilt to her voice.

He rubbed his jaw. “You see a lot of him growing up?”

“Not a lot. I know he and his friends fought side by side with my father during the rebellion.”

That fit. Jack had heard those stories, too, about the young king of Montebello and the band of renegades and heroes who had served with Jonathan Dalton in Vietnam.

More fairy tales, he figured. His dad never did anything without an eye to the almighty dollar.

“Yeah, well, they’re back in touch,” he said.

Princess Christina nodded. “Because of the threat from Tamir,” she said. “Father always said he could trust Uncle Jonathan.”

“Oh, he trusts him,” Jack agreed. “In fact, this time he’s trusting him into supplying you with a bodyguard.”

The princess angled her chin, her eyes speculative. “You?”

“Me,” Jack confirmed.

“No,” she said flatly.

The major had told him to expect a refusal. Princess Cupcake here had resisted all the palace’s earlier attempts to provide her with protection. But Jack still felt a lick of irritation. Maybe he wasn’t the type to inspire confidence in a pampered royal, but he was good at what he did, damn it. Had been good at what he did. Had been the best.

“Relax. I haven’t agreed to take the job yet.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Recon,” he answered. No SEAL team undertook a mission without assembling a target folder.

He was no longer a SEAL.

He heard the crack as she set down the glass bottle she still held in her hands. “You’re checking me out?” Her voice was ice over outrage.

He shrugged. “Your father wants you protected twenty-four-seven. It’s only reasonable to see if we can stand each other long enough for me to get the job done.”

Christina gave him a frosty look. His stupid body reacted as if a bar girl in Bolivia had just given him the eye. Definitely, he’d been out of action too long.

“Very well,” the princess said. “Now that we’ve established that we can’t, as you say, stand each other, you can refuse your father’s money with a clear conscience.”

But that was the problem. Jack couldn’t. Not until Christina had some understanding of exactly how much danger she was in. Not until he did. No matter how little he relished playing baby-sitter, no matter how satisfying it would be to tell the major to go to hell, no matter how often Jack told himself he wasn’t a warrior anymore, his own stubborn need to protect wouldn’t let him walk away from a situation. He at least needed to report to the old man that the princess was working long hours alone with no security.

Frustrated, he stuck his hands deep in his pockets. “Forget the money. Look at where things stand. You’ve got your older brother missing and presumed dead. You’ve got bombs going off in your homeland. You’ve got some sheik guy—”

She crossed her arms across her shielding white lab coat. “Ahmed Kamal of Tamir.”

“Whatever. Some Sheik Kamal trying to claim the kingdom and kidnap your big sister, and your parents are worried sick about you. Don’t you think you ought to take some precautions?”

She lifted her eyebrows. “I have taken precautions. I live in Montana.”

Her dry tone, her unexpected humor, slipped under his guard like a knife. He rubbed his jaw with the back of one hand to wipe off his answering grin. “Your father doesn’t think that’s good enough.”

Christina sighed. “Mr. Dalton, my parents don’t think anything is good enough for their children. I honor them for that. I love them. But I am not going to sacrifice my privacy, compromise my focus and interrupt my work by accepting the services of a completely unnecessary bodyguard. I assure you, I am quite safe here. No one can find me.”

Despite his frustration, he liked the aloof, precise way she had of speaking. Not that he accepted for one minute what she was saying, but she sounded really smart. “I found you,” he pointed out.

“I’m sure you had directions.”

“So will Kamal’s men.”

“Assuming I’m a target. I have only your word for that. And I don’t even know you. For all I know, you could be working for Sheik Ahmed.”

Jack regarded her grimly. “Are you always this pissy?”

Her lips curved. “I’ve been told so. Yes.”

He had a sudden urge to back her up against the counter and bite into that regal, smiling mouth. Hell. He really had been out of action too long. He fished in his back pocket for his wallet, ignoring the slight pull in his shoulder, and tossed his identification onto the table. His gaze dared her to pick it up.

After a moment’s hesitation, she did. Cautious, he thought again, with approval. She looked first at his Texas driver’s license and then at the white plastic card issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Her brows drew together. “‘Senior Chief’? You are U.S. military?”

“Former military. Navy SEAL, retired.” Forced out, he thought. He for damn sure hadn’t quit. Navy SEALs weren’t quitters.

“You are young to be retired.”

Bitterness flooded his mouth. “Medical retirement,” he said evenly.

“Ah.” The soft sound could have signaled anything. Acceptance. Pity. Dismissal.

Jack hated all three.

“I can still function, your highness,” he snapped.

She regarded him steadily. He wondered how much of his rage and desperation he’d given away by that one stupid remark.

“I wasn’t questioning your qualifications, Senior Chief,” she said quietly. “You are obviously able to protect me. Assuming I needed your protection, which I do not.”

“Your father thinks you do.”

“My father is a warm and sentimental man who is still grieving the loss of his only son. It is natural for him to overreact.”

“Yeah? Well, my father is a cold and calculating son of a bitch who wouldn’t waste time or manpower on a dead-end assignment. If he says you need a keeper, then you do.”

Christina recoiled. No one talked to her that way. No one. Her heart was beating way too fast. She felt threatened—by his warning, yes, but even more by his attitude. She was a Sebastiani. She did not need this hard, unshaved stranger to remind her of the world she’d left behind. She did not want him invading her sanctuary.

She met his gaze and almost shuddered at the raw energy that burned in those bitter blue eyes. She should not have to deal with this. She was woefully unequipped to deal with him.

And she could never let him know.

Years of training supported her head and stiffened her spine. “Mr. Dalton, I have made a life and a career quite separate from my family. It is highly unlikely that terrorists are traveling across nine thousand miles and ten time zones to kidnap an inconsequential member of the royal house of Montebello.”

His jaw set. Even through her agitation and the shadow of darkening beard, she noticed it was a very nicely squared jaw.

“And what if you’re wrong?” he demanded. “You’re not inconsequential to your father. What if Kamal decides to use you for leverage in this land dispute?”

“I am not without friends—or defenses. This is Montana. Strangers are noticed here.”

“Nobody noticed me. Or stopped me.”

No one would dare, she thought. He looked dangerous. Alien. His tough, lean physique was more than a match for most university types, even the outdoorsy breed attracted to field sciences in Montana.

And she had no excuse for inspecting his physique. Her cheeks grew warm.

She turned off the gas burners before the combination of their heat and her inattention set fire to the lab. “Perhaps they noticed and decided not to say anything. The other benefit to living in Montana is that people here tend to mind their own business. And if you would go back to yours, I could continue with mine.”

It was a nice line. She was proud of it. Unfortunately, he was less impressed.

He stuck his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans, the pose emphasizing his blatant masculinity. “What if I decide to make you my business? What are you going to do about it?”

“I have no idea,” she admitted frankly. “You’re too big to ignore. If you are also too rude to leave, I suppose I would call my father and tell him to have you dismissed.”

“Do all the men in your life do what you tell them to, princess?”

There were no other men in her life.

A royal princess—even an “inconsequential” one from a tiny island kingdom like Montebello—had to be careful if she wanted to keep her name and picture out of the tabloids. Christina had long ago accepted that meant no dance club dates or midnight walks or tender dawn partings that could be captured by a telephoto lens. Since coming to America, she had tentatively tried to take part in the safer aspects of university life. But her rank excluded her from the grad students’ beer-and-pizza parties, and her age made her an oddity at the faculty’s wine-and-cheese mixers.

And so she was careful, and safe, and alone.

None of which was any of his business.

She lifted her brows and said, in her mother’s most regal tone, “If they’re smart, they do.”

He nearly smiled, and the heat in her cheeks climbed several degrees. “I must not be very smart then,” he drawled. “Because I just may stick around.”

Dumb, Dalton. Very dumb.

He did not want to work for the major. Princess Cupcake had made it more than clear that she did not want him working for her.

But even as he acknowledged his mistake, Jack punched a number into the motel phone. He listened to the ring, stretching his legs over the ratty print spread on the room’s one double bed. So it was a dive. To a guy who’d stayed in huts in Colombia and tents in Kuwait, these were luxury accommodations.

A woman answered the phone. In the background, Jack could hear a baby fretting. “Hello?”

He settled back against the squeaky headboard, trying to ease his injured shoulder. “Hey, Janey,” he said.

“Jack?” Warmth suffused his sister’s voice. “Jack, how are you? Where are you? Daddy’s been trying to get in touch with you.”

“I’m in Montana. I’m looking into doing a job for him.”

“Oh, Jack.” Real worry vibrated down the line. The major’s “jobs” had hung over their childhood like storm clouds on the Texas horizon. Jack had shrugged and shouldered the job of man of the house, first accepting and later welcoming their father’s frequent absences from home. But Janey was different, he thought with affection. Janey believed in home and family, had married young and borne her adoring husband two kids already. “Is it dangerous?”

“Hell, no. He just wants me to baby-sit.” Jack wouldn’t give her details that could endanger her, and she wouldn’t ask. They had both grown up with that, too.

“Well, you’re a good baby-sitter,” his little sister said. She added, “He said to tell you he had a package for you. If you wanted it.”

And by leaving word with Janey, the old man had neatly deprived Jack of the chance to turn him down. Smart, Jack acknowledged. “Fine. Tell him to send it. I got a post office box today.” He gave her the number.

“Jack…” Janey’s voice was soft and hesitant. “Are you sure you want to take orders from the major?”

He didn’t resent her asking. She’d witnessed enough battles growing up to know the likelihood of combat. “It beats a desk-puke job, Janey. It beats doing nothing. And the lady I’m assigned to has a body worth guarding.”

“Oh, well, then…” He could almost hear her smile. She was cheered, as he knew she would be, by the thought of her big, bad brother falling for some home-and-hearth skirt. He didn’t disillusion her. “As long as you know what you’re getting into.”

“That’s me,” he said, working hard to keep the bleakness out of his voice. “Always prepared. Now that I’ve washed out of the SEALs, maybe I can become an Eagle Scout.”

The department secretary ripped a sheet off her pink message pad and slapped it onto a stack.

“Dr. Sebastiani isn’t in the lab today,” she said.

Jack knew that. The lab had been empty. He’d come to the biology office to find her.

“Does she have a class?” he asked.

“No.”

“Office hours?”

The secretary, a young woman whose short dark hair and long silver earrings emphasized her Native American features, regarded him impassively. “Not on Tuesdays.”

Okay. Jack was beginning to appreciate Christina’s reliance on her Montana neighbors. As a first line of defense, the biology secretary was remarkably hard to shift. But she was no match for a terrorist with an AK-47. Or a SEAL with a mission.

Abruptly he switched tactics, offering the young woman his hand and his best smile. “Sorry to make such a pest of myself. I’m Jack Dalton,” he said, as if the name would be familiar to her.

She blinked. Blushed. And reached cautiously across her desk to take his hand.

“I still don’t know Chris’s schedule very well,” Jack said sheepishly, giving her hand a little squeeze before releasing it. “But we had kind of a misunderstanding last night, and I was hoping I could catch her. To apologize.”

“Oh.” The young woman’s eyes brightened, as he’d hoped they would, at the prospect of a romance. But she still didn’t roll over completely. “Have you two known each other long?”

“Our families go back forever.” Jack sat on a corner of her desk, broadcasting clean-cut reassurance, glad he’d taken the time to shave that morning. “But you know how it is with these long-distance relationships. The last couple years have been tough. I mean, she’s here, and I’ve been—” he checked himself, as if recalling the need for discretion “—overseas,” he finished with another smile.

This time the secretary smiled back. “I can see how that would be difficult. I’m sorry you missed her.”

Jack shrugged. “That’s okay. Do you know when she’s expected back?”

“It’s hard to say.” The woman adjusted the silver eagle pendant around her neck, showing it and her cleavage off to their best advantage. “Dr. Lyman called in sick today, and Dr. Sebastiani agreed to take her tour down to Bald Head Creek. Those things can go on all day.”

Jack felt a lurch of unwelcome fury, of unfamiliar fear. Christina had chosen to go out in public. Unprotected. A potential kidnapping target, with nothing to defend her but a bunch of scientists and her own snooty attitude.

“Guess I’ll do my groveling later then,” he said easily, and stood. “Thanks for your help.”

“No problem,” the secretary said. She lowered her voice confidingly. “I hope you two can work things out. She’s a really nice lady.”

Jack managed not to snarl. Nice was not a word he was tempted to apply to Princess Tall, Cool and In Control. But he didn’t have to stay and argue. He didn’t have to do anything but find her.

“Oh, we’ll work something out,” he said.

Or he would be forced to tie her up and sit on her while he figured out what to do next.

Chapter 2

Bald Head Creek glittered like a promise between banks canopied by cottonwood and lush with long grass. The winding water reflected glimpses of wide, blue Montana sky.

So beautiful, Christina thought, breathing deeply of the damp, cool air. More beautiful than anything but home. Regret brushed her. She ignored it.

“Everyone have their counting trays?” she called cheerfully.

The eighth grade science class from Meriwether Lewis Middle School, assembled on the banks around her, nodded and waved shallow plastic trays in response.

“Let’s go hunting then,” Christina said, and dipped her net into the stream bed.

Water sparkled as she scooped up her load and swung it toward the bank.

A girl in a blue sweater scrambled away from the dripping net of creek muck. “Eeeww!”

Other thirteen-year-olds crowded closer as Christina emptied her catch, mud and pebbles and creepy crawlies, into her collection bucket.

“Cool.”

“Gross.”

“Yuck.”

“What’s that?”

Smiling, she ladled samples into the students’ collection trays, describing what they were likely to see, explaining how to identify and count the tiny aquatic insects and record their finds on their clipboards. Downstream, she had another student team measuring water temperature. Later, they would calculate the creek’s flow using a stopwatch and a stick.

Like Pooh and Piglet, she thought fancifully, racing twigs from the bridge in the Hundred Acre Wood. A.A. Milne’s classic was one of her mother’s favorites. The Queen, a former governess, had always taken the time and care to read to her own children at bedtime. Christina remembered snuggling with her sisters while her brother, Lucas, lounged male and superior in the doorway.

Christina cleared her suddenly constricted throat and focused, as she always focused, on the work. On work and on the bright, interested faces of the students bending toward her as she knelt on the muddy bank.

“All right now.” She plunged her hand into the muck, winning groans and giggles from her audience. “This little fellow here…” Gently, she separated out a caddis worm with her thumb. “Can anyone tell me what he’s called?”

She wasn’t sure at what exact moment she felt the change, like a rise of temperature in the air around her. Like the kiss of a branch on the back of her neck. Like the glide of the sun on her cheek. As the students scattered with their counting trays, she rinsed her hands in the cold stream. Under the splash and calls of the children, she heard the whisper of her own breath.

She stood slowly, her gaze scanning the opposite bank. Nothing.

She paused to correct a clipboard entry and stop the girl in the blue sweater from tipping the contents of her collection tray down a boy’s back.

And when Christina straightened, when she turned to check on the other group of students taking water temperatures downstream, she saw Jack Dalton standing above her on the bank.

For a moment she couldn’t think, move, breathe. She froze like a doe in a hunter’s sights as he stood watching her, lean and tough and out of place in his light T-shirt and leather jacket. His face was hard. His eyes were slate-blue and unreadable.

Her blood drummed in her ears. And then her mother’s training kicked in. Chin up. Eyes straight. She drew a shallow, careful breath. You are a Sebastiani.

“You frightened me,” she said with dignity.

“Good.” He came down the bank, his boots slipping slightly on the wet gravel. “You should be frightened. What the hell are you doing out here?”

She raised her chin another notch. “Conducting a field trip on riparian ecology and the importance of the water-shed.”

From downstream, she heard a couple of yells, a yelp and a splash.

Fascinated, she watched as a corner of Dalton’s hard mouth kicked upward. “And here I thought you were under attack,” he said.

She smiled back reluctantly. “That may come later. Excuse me, I’d better go see what’s going on.”

He fell into step beside her. “I can tell you what’s going on. Somebody got pushed into the water. And you shouldn’t be out here alone, miles from town, miles from the university.”

She resented him setting limits on her activities. If she’d wanted to live by palace rules, she would have stayed in Montebello. If she could have stomached the constant scrutiny, she would have stayed at UCLA.

“Hardly alone, Mr. Dalton. I am surrounded by thirteen-year-olds.”

“Yeah, and they’d be big protection if Kamal’s guys decided to snatch you now, wouldn’t they? If you won’t think about your safety, you should think about theirs.”

Her mouth firmed. “I am thinking of theirs. Dr. Lyman was ill, and someone needed to come down here with the class. I assure you, the students are at greater risk of drowning than I am of being kidnapped.”

They rounded a bend in the stream and saw one of her charges floundering knee-deep in icy water while his friends laughed on the bank.

“Eric Hunter!”

The laughter subsided into fits and sniggers.

Eric looked up warily, all freckles and false innocence. “Yes, ma’am?”

Christina swallowed a bubble of amusement. “Get out of that water this instant.”

“I can’t.” He sounded pained. “My sneaker slipped, and I’m stuck. My ankle.”

She frowned. She hoped it was only stuck. The boy could walk the half mile back to the bus in wet shoes, but not with a sprained ankle.

“All right,” she said, unzipping her nylon field jacket, preparing to wade in after him. “Stand as still as you—”

But before the words were out of her mouth, Jack Dalton was in the stream. Pushing his sleeves back to his elbows, he bent down.

“Put your hand on my shoulder,” he ordered.

The boy’s mouth dropped open. Christina suspected hers did, too.

“For balance,” Jack explained, plunging his arms into the water. “Your hand on my shoulder. Now.”

Tentatively, Eric obeyed.

“Okay, your sneaker’s wedged under this rock,” Jack said calmly. “I’m going to shift it, and I want you to pull your foot out. Got it? On three. One, two, three.”

Christina glimpsed Jack’s mask of concentration and the boy’s hand clutching the brown leather of his jacket. The clear, dark water surged and splashed. And then Eric, supported by Jack’s arm, staggered out of the stream and collapsed onto the bank.

“Let’s take a look,” Jack said.

But Christina was already kneeling, the gravel sharp and cold through her twill slacks. She was picking at the boy’s sodden laces when she noticed the water streaming from Jack’s boots. His jeans were soaked to the knee.

She looked up ruefully. “You got wet. I’m sorry.”

“This isn’t wet. You should have seen me in BUD/S.” Her face must have betrayed her lack of comprehension, because he grinned sharply. Her breath caught. He really was most attractive when he smiled.

“SEALs training. Basic Underwater Demolition,” he explained.

Christina nodded, still not really understanding. “Can you wiggle your foot?” she asked Eric.

“He won’t have a fracture,” Jack said as the boy moved his foot cautiously from side to side. “Ligament will give before bone.”

“Which means what?” Christina asked, pushing down the wet, sagging sock. She pressed her lips together. The ankle was already puffy.

“If the ligaments are stretched, it’s a strain. Partly torn, it’s a sprain. Either way, all you can do is elevate the ankle and ice it.”

“I don’t have ice.”

“Did the kids pack lunches?”

She frowned. “I—yes, I believe so.”

“We put our drinks in coolers,” Eric volunteered, leaning back on his hands. “Ow. There’s ice in the coolers.”

Jack shrugged. “There you go, then.”

“The coolers are on the bus.” She sat back on her heels, looking up at him. “I can’t leave the children unsupervised. Could you…?”

“Sorry. I can’t leave you unsupervised, either.”

Her pleasure at his quick, practical response vanished. “I am not thirteen, Mr. Dalton. I am well able to take care of myself.”

“That’s what you think. You two.” The boys still on the bank straightened abruptly. “Can you find your way back to the bus?”

They looked at him. At each other. Back at him. They were little boys, Christina thought. Not soldiers. But as instinctively as any palace flunky, they responded to his tone of command.

“I guess.”

“Sure.”

“Do it, then. Take one of those tray things and bring back ice.”

“It’s half a mile to the parking lot,” Christina objected. “Besides, they’re responsible for measuring—”

“They’re responsible for seeing that their buddy is all right after landing him on the rocks. Go on, now,” Jack ordered, and they went, crashing and sliding along the trail.

Christina drew a tight breath. She would not be dictated to like one of the children. “We should move Eric up the bank. And raise his foot.”

“Right,” Jack said, surprising her by his cooperation. “I’ll take care of it. You do the teacher stuff. Measuring, was it?”

“Temperature and current flow,” she confirmed. She studied Eric, his freckles stark in his pale face. Uncertainty fluttered in her stomach. He was her responsibility. Should she cancel the field trip now?

“We’ll be okay,” Jack said quietly. “I’ll keep cold water on the ankle till the kids get back with the ice. Is there something this guy can do in the meantime? You got another of those clipboards?”

Christina seized the idea thankfully. Activity would distract Eric from his discomfort and make the wait easier. “He can record times for the rest of the class when they measure currents. I’ll go wrap up the water life project, and bring the kids here.”

“Don’t be gone long,” Dalton warned.

Irritation pricked her. Outdoors in Montana, she didn’t need anyone to tell her what to do. This was her place, her area of expertise, and no fish-out-of-water seaman with blue eyes and big muscles was going to order her around.

Still, she was obliged to him. She stifled a sigh. Queen Gwendolyn had instilled in all her children a very strong sense of their obligations.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said, and made her escape.

She was as good as her word, Jack thought.

Christina strode back within five minutes, her charges strung out behind her like a bunch of baby ducks, wading and wobbling off course. And instead of doing her princess-in-a-tower routine, all distant and aloof, she laughed and listened and encouraged them, and splintered his perceptions. Again.

He’d been wrong about her. Once upon a time that kind of misjudgment could have gotten him killed. Now it got him interested.

There were grass stains on the knees of those fancy catalog pants and a streak of mud on her cheek. Her eyes were bright. Her face was flushed, and she smiled often. She looked like one of the damn kids.

And then, in response to the slowly rising temperature, she took off her nylon jacket with all the pockets, and his whole body tightened.

Okay, not like one of the kids, Jack acknowledged. Those were bona fide adult female curves under that plain T-shirt in an expensive fabric blend. But she was no less off-limits than one of the munchkins.

Yeah, she was a blonde, and he dug blondes. Her legs, in tailored khaki, tempted a man to imagine them naked or wrapped around his waist or resting on his shoulders.

But Jack knew his limitations. He didn’t “do” good girls. He didn’t go after the chardonnay and postgraduate degree type. And if he’d ever had any fantasies about making it with a princess, they hadn’t gone beyond tenth grade, when he’d wrestled off Valerie Hardison’s bra after the Boone High School production of Once Upon a Mattress.

Christina Sebastiani was a job. Maybe not even that, if he didn’t like the look of the intelligence packet the old man put together.

Still, Jack could watch and admire and, in his own fashion, pay tribute.

He eased his camera from his pocket. It was a nice little Nikon, light and compact. Nothing like the sleek, inconspicuous numbers he’d carried on missions, with their high-speed film and low-light capabilities, but he’d left his toys, his cameras and guns, behind. Now he shot pictures with a thirty-five millimeter aperture and shot targets with a nine.

He played for a moment with framing and focus and then let his lens see for him. Whir and click on Christina, her profile sharp and perfect as a queen on a silver coin. Click on the slant of sunlight drifting through the trees. Whir and click to catch Eric, fingers cramped and tongue stuck out in concentration as he printed on a chart. Click on Christina again, her blond head bent forward as she conferred with two girls. Click on a willow, leaning down from the bank to trail pale leaves in the dark water. On Christina, laughing. Christina, stretching. Christina… glaring at him.

He lowered his camera.

She stalked toward him, her long legs making a statement of their own. “What are you doing?”

He couldn’t figure what had tweaked her tail. But she was definitely upset. He answered honestly. “Taking pictures.”

“Why?”

“Habit?” When she didn’t smile, he shrugged and elaborated. “I used to be a photographer’s mate. Only then it turned out the Teams needed a photography specialist, so I graduated to intelligence ops.”

Her eyes widened. “You were spying on me?”

“Princess, if I were spying on you, you wouldn’t catch me at it. I was taking pictures, that’s all.”

“What kind of pictures?”

“Trees. Water. Kids. What difference does it make?”

Her gaze slid sideways toward Eric, hunched over the clipboard a few yards away. His right ankle was stretched in front of him, propped on Jack’s jacket and draped with a cold, wet sock.

“I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I don’t like having my picture taken.”

So, maybe now was a bad time to confess that he had more than one shot of her. “Yeah, I could have guessed that,” Jack drawled.

She blushed. He didn’t know many women who still did that. He would have bet princesses didn’t. “How is he?” she asked.

Jack tore his attention from the pretty pink color in her cheeks. Who? Oh, yeah. The kid. Eric.

“Not bad,” Jack said. “Hard to tell how much damage was done until the swelling goes down. It hurts, and his toes are getting cold, but that’ll teach him not to mess around near water.”

“Will he be able to walk back to the bus?”

“Comfortably? Probably not. We’ll see how he does once we get some ice on that ankle.”

She nodded absently, her smooth, blond brows drawing together.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jack said. “It was an accident. Could have happened on anybody’s watch.”

“I know that. It’s just the children are my responsibility, and I feel…”

“Guilty?”

She frowned. “Concerned.”

Jack leaned against the tree trunk at his back, satisfied he’d provoked her into forgetting all about his camera and her worries. “I didn’t want you to fret about what I was thinking, that’s all.”

She looked at him like he was something scraped off the bottom of her royal shoe. “I am completely indifferent to what you think.”

He grinned. “You don’t look indifferent. You look—” he paused, enjoying her frost “—annoyed.”

Another woman would have blown up at him. But Princess Cupcake held it together, held it in. Training, he thought. Not his kind of training, but he could still respect her discipline.

“Not at all. I appreciate your help with Eric.” Her smile glinted, cool as water over rock. “And if he can’t walk, I’ll appreciate it even more.”

An hour later, it was time for the kids to return to the bus for lunch and the ride back to school. And Eric couldn’t walk.

Shouldn’t walk, Jack told Christina. The pain was his body’s way of warning him against putting weight on that ankle.

“All right.” She didn’t argue. He liked that about her, too. “Can you get him to the parking lot?”

Jack wanted to tell her it would be a piece of cake. He used to run holding a one-hundred-seventy-pound rubber boat over his head. He used to do sit-ups cradling a two-hundred-pound section of telephone pole. But then he’d been able to rely on his swim team. Then he’d been able to rely on his shoulder.

He looked at the white-faced Eric. One hundred thirty pounds, tops. “I can try.”

“What can I do to help?”

“Stay out of our way.”

Jack dumped ice by the side of the stream and retrieved his jacket from the ground. The kid couldn’t hobble half a mile, even with support. A piggyback ride was out of the question. The docs who had stitched Jack together had carved a nice chunk from his back to replace the missing muscle in his left shoulder. But if he took the kid in a fireman’s hold, he wouldn’t need to rotate the shoulder. He could distribute the weight over his back and hips.

He lowered himself to one knee. “You’ve got to put your arms around my neck.”

Standing behind him, Eric hesitated. “Maybe I could walk.”

“Don’t be a hero, kid. You’ll regret it in the morning.”

He heard his own tone, harsher than he intended, and saw Christina’s eyes narrow. Watch it, Flash. Christina was sharp. Too sharp. He didn’t want her guessing what was wrong with him. He didn’t like her knowing there was anything wrong.

“Tell you what, next time you can carry me,” he suggested lightly.

He was rewarded when Christina relaxed and Eric leaned against his back. Jack gripped the boy’s arms against his chest and pushed to his feet.

And the first part of the trail was easy. He’d been working out, hadn’t he? Lifting weights, just like the physical therapist had told him. Developing his damn range of motion. His legs were strong. And he was pumped to be in action again.

After they passed the quarter-mile mark, though, he could hear Eric puffing in discomfort. The hold put pressure on the boy’s chest. It had to be pulling on his arms, too. He hung, a dead weight on Jack’s back, his left foot occasionally bumping Jack’s legs. Jack felt the stretch reach deep into his shoulder as scar tissue gave. Despite the cool temperature under the trees, he tasted sweat on his upper lip and felt it at the base of his spine.

Don’t quit. Don’t be a quitter. The words had kept him going during weeks of training on the beach at Coronado, during months of physical therapy in a well-lit room that stank of antiseptic and pain. And they’d worked then, because then he had believed that if he didn’t quit he could be everything he wanted to be. He could be a SEAL.

He knew better now. He wasn’t working for anything now. But he still didn’t quit.

“Can we stop a minute?” Eric huffed in his ear.

Jack unclenched his jaw. “Sure, kid. Let me get to that log up there…” Fifteen steps, he thought. He could do another fifteen steps. No problem. “…and we’ll take a break.”

It was twenty-two steps, and when Jack lowered the big eighth grader onto the fallen tree, pain knifed from his shoulder to his hand. “Referred pain,” the therapist called it. Jack had another word, but he couldn’t use it in front of the kid.

He glanced down at the boy. Eric’s face was really red. His mouth worked as he struggled not to cry.

Reluctant sympathy moved in Jack. “Breathe in through your nose,” he instructed.

The kid, near tears and embarrassed, kept his head down, focusing on his wet, bare ankle.

“Come on,” Jack urged. “In through your nose for a count of four, hold it for seven, breathe out for eight.” He demonstrated. “Helps with the pain,” he explained.

“How would you know?” the boy muttered. His eyes were wet.

“It worked when I was shot.”

Eric looked up, diverted from his sulks and his swollen ankle. “Really?”

“Yeah. Try it. In, two, three, four. Hold…and out slow, six, seven, eight. Good. Again.”

They matched breaths a couple more times, until the kid’s shoulders relaxed and his unhealthy color faded.

“That’s it,” Jack encouraged. “Never let ’em see you sweat.”

The boy swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “You’re sweating.”

“Yeah, well, that’ll be our secret, okay?”

Eric gave him a shaky smile. “Okay.”

“Is everything all right?”

Princess Cupcake had backtracked along the straggling line of students. Intent on the boy, Jack had not heard her approach. God, he really was slipping.

Concern warmed her big blue eyes. Jack stiffened. He didn’t want her pity.

And he wasn’t sacrificing the kid to her compassion, either. He remembered too well what it was to be thirteen and afraid that your voice or behavior would let you down, to have a man-size ego and feet, and a child’s need to please.

“I needed a breather,” he said. “So we stopped.”

She studied them both, still with that gooey look in her eyes. How much had she heard?

“Is he too heavy for you?” she asked.

Jack would not be offended. She was being responsible, and he was—well, okay, he was a little offended. No SEAL had ever left behind a dead or wounded comrade. “What, are you going to carry him? He outweighs you by twenty pounds.” He shook his head. “We’re doing fine.”

“We could make a chair of our arms and carry him that way.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. She probably could have gotten Eric out like that, changing bearers, if Jack hadn’t happened along. But they were almost at the bus now. And a forearm carry would put a hell of a lot more stress on his shoulder than the fireman’s hold.

“I told you, we’re fine. I don’t need your help.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Very well. I certainly wouldn’t want to interfere with you flexing your very impressive set of muscles. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

She swept up his jacket and stalked down the trail, leaving him behind to admire her classy comeback and her heart-shaped rear end.

Chapter 3

The man was impossible.

And nearly impossible to get rid of.

Christina marched into the office she shared with three other postgraduate fellows and snatched her mail from her cubbyhole.

Jack Dalton strolled through the door behind her, exuding pheromones and disapproval. “You should lock your door.”

She would not let him see how he rattled her. “Would it do any good?” she asked sweetly.

He grinned, that sharp, attractive grin that hooked her insides. “Trying to get rid of me, princess?”

She barricaded herself behind her battered metal desk. “Not very effectively, obviously. I haven’t had this much difficulty shaking my bodyguard since I was thirteen years old and had to climb the garden wall.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets, taking a slow survey of the shabby room. “What were you running away from that time?”

What harm could it do to tell him? “A British film crew. They were making a documentary about my mother.”

“Did you get caught?”

She lifted her chin. “Not until they finished filming for the day.”

He eyed her appraisingly. “That must have gone over big with your parents.”

“My mother was very understanding. Besides, the crew got what they came for. My parents were gracious, my brother was dashing, Anna looked adorable and Julia impressed the interviewer with her grasp of public affairs.”

“The perfect family.”

“The perfect royal family. Yes.”

“And where do you fit in?”

She almost said, “I don’t.” She shrugged instead. “Is it necessary to fit in?”

“For most kids, yeah. Julia… That’s your older sister, right?”

“Two years older and wiser and prettier.”

“Jealous?”

“No. Not really. When I was thirteen, perhaps. Julia had so much more poise. And breasts,” she added, surprising both of them with her honesty. “Julia had breasts.”

He laughed, sharp and quick, and heat surged to her face. What had she been thinking, to blurt that out?

“You’ve got breasts,” he drawled.

She looked down at the mail on her lap. “I didn’t then. What I had was baby fat.”

“I bet you were cute.”

She shook her head. “Thirteen-year-old girls do not want to be cute.”

“What do they want?”

She didn’t want to remember. She was beyond that now. She was a respected member of the academic community, with a purpose and identity that reached far beyond the confining walls of the palace. The awkward, pudgy princess had morphed into cool, assured Dr. Sebastiani. And she did not discuss old dreams, old hurts and her breasts with her father’s hired keeper.

“This is an inappropriate discussion,” she said stiffly.

“Why? What did you want, princess, when you were thirteen?”

She straightened her shoulders and told him part of the truth. “To be left alone.”

He hooked a chair from behind an empty desk and straddled it, his blue gaze steady on her face. “So, some things don’t change.”

“No,” she agreed, and ignored the pang at her heart. “Some things never change.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“We don’t.” She began to sort her mail, stacking the first-class envelopes on her desk, setting aside the department memos to be dealt with later. “There is no ‘we.’ I expect you to report back to my father that you found me well and safe and happy, and that your services are not required.”

“I don’t report to your father. I report to mine. And until I hear from him, I don’t know what’s required.”

Christina fidgeted with the neat stack of envelopes. There was one from the Harborside Hotel in San Diego, which she hoped held her conference confirmation, and a plain white envelope with no return address. Responding to either seemed preferable to dealing with Jack Dalton right now.

She tore open the white envelope and unfolded the single sheet inside. A newspaper clipping fell into her lap. She scanned the headline, her heart thumping unpleasantly.

And all her brave assertions turned bitter in her mouth.

Something was wrong.

Jack felt it in his gut.

And yet Christina hadn’t moved, hadn’t said a word. She breathed slowly, in and out, and her spine and her eyes were straight. But there was tension in her shoulders, and her gaze did not focus on the paper she held. The edges trembled in her tightened grip.

Inside him, something lurched in acknowledgment, both of her distress and her determination to hide it. But Christina had already made it clear she didn’t want his sympathy. Or his admiration. Or anything to do with him.

“Somebody die?” he asked.

She stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He gestured toward the letter she still held. “Something’s upset you.”

She gave him one of those “Me, princess. You, peasant” looks she was so good at. “You’ve been upsetting me since you got here.”

He almost grinned. “Something else.”

“It’s nothing.” She grimaced slightly. “Fan mail.”

He held out his hand. “Let me see.”

When she didn’t respond, he leaned forward and tugged the paper away.

U.S. Embassy Bombed, the headline read.

It was an undated Associated Press wire clipping from Montebello. Jack read it carefully, comparing what the reporter knew with what his father had told him. No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing, although several terrorist organizations in the region are known to be hostile to the U.S. military presence in Montebello…

Right. Jack’s dad had said Sheik Ahmed Kamal of Tamir was the most likely suspect. King Marcus was convinced of the neighboring ruler’s guilt. And Kamal was well known for his anti-West sentiment.

Jack read on. A source close to the palace reveals that the bombing could have been a diversion to cover a kidnap attempt on Princess Julia.

Oh, boy. A leak at the palace must have made the old man unhappy, Jack thought. But he was going to be really ticked about the straggling line of cut-out letters pasted below the article, like a ransom note in a B movie: THIS COULD BE YOU.

Hell.

“We’ve got to get this tested,” he said.

Christina raised her eyebrows. She had her emotions in check again. He couldn’t help wondering what it would take to shatter that calm control. “Tested for what?”

“For fingerprints. ID. To find out who’s threatening you.”

She sighed. “No one’s threatened me.”

Exasperation spiked his voice. “What do you call this?”

“An unfortunate consequence of my family’s fame. I get them all the time, Mr. Dalton, even here. Requests for autographs, marriage proposals, nude videos, pleas for money… I refuse to get rattled by one more crank who likes to cut things out of the newspaper.”

But she had been rattled. He’d seen it in her eyes.

“You better start calling me Jack,” he said. “I have a feeling we’re going to get to know each other pretty well.”

“No. I told you, I don’t need a bodyguard.”

“And I don’t need a princess with attitude. But it looks like neither one of us is going to get what we want. Will you at least cooperate until we establish whether or not you’re a target?”

She bit her lip. He couldn’t tell if she was responding to his jibe or considering his offer. “How long would that take?”

“You want the truth?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know. I’ve got a report from the major hitting my post office box, maybe today. Background stuff. Probably an update on the bombing investigation. I can go over that and tell you what kind of risk I think you’re taking. And then we get lab results on your little love letter here. If we establish a tie to Kamal, I’d say you’re in real danger. After that, it’s up to you whether you accept help or not.”

“Your help.”

He shrugged, trying not to care that he was being judged and found wanting. Trying not to care whether he saved her pretty neck or not. He was out of the save-the-world business. “Doesn’t have to be me. Get yourself a nice professional with a suit and a shoulder holster, if you want. Maybe a woman. I’m just passing through.”

“On your way to where?”

Nowhere, he thought.

“Does it matter?” he asked bleakly. His shoulder ached, a promise of pain tomorrow. “All you need to know is whether I’m available and if I’m qualified.”

She tipped her head to one side, showing off the long, elegant line of her throat. “I believe we determined your qualifications yesterday. And you have made yourself annoyingly available.”

He grimaced, thinking of what that availability had cost him. Damn near everything. “Oh, I’m available, all right.”

She nodded. “Very well, then.”

“Very well, what?”

“I accept your protection until my danger is disproved.” His surprise must have registered, because a small, remote smile touched the corners of her mouth. “I’m not stupid, Mr. Dalton…Jack. Just stubborn. I don’t want to get kidnapped, and I don’t intend to be used as a bargaining chip in whatever feud Sheik Ahmed has with my father.”

“So, you’ll…cooperate?”

“Yes. With the understanding that you will not interfere with my work.”

He looked at the neat stacks of paper on her desk, the sharpened pencils and a hunk of glittering rock. “What kind of work do you do? You’re a microbiologist, right?”

A brief gleam appeared in her blue eyes. Amused, but not malicious. “Microbial ecologist. My research focuses on isolating and identifying microorganisms—bacteria—in the soil that could help plants thrive in metal-contaminated areas.”

“Yeah, I can see how you couldn’t let that slide for a few days,” he drawled.

“Actually, microorganisms are crucial to ecosystem function. An understanding of their role in plant success could have huge implications in developing land-reclamation strategies.”

Her enthusiasm was kind of cute. He wasn’t going to argue with her. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he understood her.

“Fine. You do that. After we go to the post office. I want to pick up the report from the major so I can read up on the situation. And we need to send this letter in for prints.”

“Send it where?”

“To my old man. Might as well use the connections we’ve got. Do you have plastic bags in that lab of yours?”

She nodded. “I use sterile bags to collect soil samples.”

“Great. We’ll bag this and the envelope it came in. I’ll need to send our prints, too, so they can eliminate them.”

Her eyes widened. “You carry fingerprint equipment?”

“No, but any unglazed paper will hold prints, and they can lift them with ninhydrin.”

“How do you know that?”

“You have your area of expertise, I’ve got mine. You pick up a lot on counterterrorist ops.”

“I’m sure you do,” she said dryly. “Excuse me if I don’t have your experience.”

He couldn’t resist. It was a knee-jerk reaction to the challenge of her, the precision of her speech and the delicacy of her scent and the angle of her chin.

“Princess, anytime you want experience, I’m your man.”

Jack pushed open the door to his motel room. The trapped air rushed to greet them, smelling like mildew and pine cleaner and sex by the hour.

Christina recoiled.

He looked over his shoulder impatiently. “Problem?”

Her nerves jangled. She took a deep breath and a step forward. Chin up. “Not really. I’m just not in the habit of accompanying strange men to their motel rooms.”

He grinned and tossed the package from Uncle Jonathan onto the cheap dresser. “Well, that’s a relief.”

She lifted her eyebrows in question.

“As long as I’m responsible for your safety, it’s good to know you don’t indulge in high-risk behavior.”

She couldn’t think of anything riskier than this close association with Captain Experience. Except maybe getting herself kidnapped by Ahmed Kamal.

Jack Dalton was too much. Too big, too blunt, too muscled and far too sure of himself. He made her feel like a trembling virgin. The feeling wasn’t helped at all by the depressing knowledge that she was a virgin and far too close to trembling….

“I’ll leave the risk taking to you.” She looked around for someplace to sit. There were clothes folded on the room’s only chair. She felt it would be presumptuous to move them, to handle his pants and his socks. Primly, she sat on the very edge of his bed. “From now on, you can catch all the bullets and infectious diseases.”

“You’ve got the wrong idea about my lifestyle, princess.”

“It’s possible.” She crossed her legs, enjoying a faint, unfamiliar thrill when his eyes followed the movement. “It’s also possible you have the wrong idea about mine.”

“Maybe we both have something to learn.”

His rough voice snagged all her nerve endings. Maybe. Maybe Jack Dalton could teach her all the wild, wonderful, wicked things other women learned from men.

And maybe she should take a rock and knock some sense into her head first. It would be equally painful and ultimately less destructive.

“Not from each other. This situation is difficult enough without our playing at some ill-judged sexual attraction.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Ill-judged, huh?”

“Extremely ill-judged,” she answered firmly.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. But, princess—” he waited until she dragged her gaze up to his “—if and when I do make a move, I won’t be playing.”

He disappeared into the bathroom. “I’m going to pack my kit,” he called. “Make yourself at home.”

Well.

Christina sat on the shiny motel spread, her knees crossed, and wondered if she should be flattered by his near pass or run screaming from the room. Neither, she decided. Dalton was probably just trying to sweet-talk her into going along with whatever he wanted. And if Sheik Ahmed were after her, running away was the worst thing she could do.

She needed facts. A scientist did not draw conclusions before compiling all her data. She needed information to assess her own danger. And the information she needed was sitting in an overnight mail envelope on the dresser three feet away.

She uncrossed her legs and stood. She picked the packet off the maple laminate and weighed it in her hand. Jonathan Dalton’s name was on the return label, along with an address in Texas. She turned the envelope over. Tape sealed the flap. She was testing it with her fingernail when she got that feeling again, the warm sensation of being watched.

She looked up.

Jack stood in the bathroom doorway, one shoulder propped against the jamb. His face was expressionless. His eyes were annoyed. “Was that addressed to you?”

Heat swept up her cheeks. She lifted her chin.

“If it’s about me,” she said, “then it’s my business.”

He prowled forward and tugged the envelope from her grasp. “Wrong. You told me you didn’t want me interfering with your work. Well, don’t interfere with mine.”

“I have a right to know what your father has found out. I should know if the situation warrants my taking precautions.”

“You don’t have the experience to judge that. I do. But if there’s anything in there you need to see, I’ll show it to you.”

It was more than she expected. Better, perhaps, than she deserved. She sat again, cautiously, on the bed.

Jack sat beside her. She tried not to notice how his jeans pulled across his thighs, how the mattress sank under his weight and rolled her toward him. Ridiculous. She was twenty-seven years old, and she’d never sat with a man on his bed before. She inched away.

“Uncomfortable?” he murmured.

“No,” she lied.

“Because we can wait till we get back to your place to do this.”

“I can’t.” She laughed shakily at herself, at the whole situation. “I couldn’t even wait for you to get your things together. Besides, if we find out you’re mistaken—if there is no real danger—then there’s no need for you to come to my place.”

“Right, then.” He ripped the envelope open.

She saw a dark blue portfolio with her name on the cover and an eight-by-ten glossy of the formal portrait commemorating her twenty-first birthday. The girl in the photo wore a long white gown and a glittering tiara and what Christina thought of as her “public” face: eyes straight, chin up, mouth bent in a smile.

Jack studied it. “You tick off the royal photographer, princess?”

She was surprised. “No.”

“Because a portrait is supposed to engage the viewer with the subject. This shot is dead. You look like you’re posing for the five-dollar bill.” He turned the glossy over. “No wonder you don’t like having your picture taken.”

He didn’t know the half of it, she thought ruefully. He had no idea how hard she worked on that invulnerable, plastic, public pose. She didn’t want him to know.

“I’ve got your bio here,” he said. “You don’t need to see that. Transcripts—UCLA, Montana, very impressive—physical description, distinguishing marks…” He grinned suddenly. “No tattoos?”

Reluctantly, she smiled back. “No. But I have a scar on the inside of my elbow from playing Saracens and Crusaders with my brother.” She twisted her arm for him to see. Concentrating on an old hurt to conceal the fresh pain of her brother’s disappearance.

“Nice,” Jack said. “When we get to know each other better, I’ll show you mine.”

She wondered where under his clothes he carried his scars. And blushed again. She cleared her throat. “You were wounded?”

“Yeah.” He riffled through more papers.

“Recently?”

“Four months ago.”

“Where?” she asked, and then held her breath at the inappropriateness of her question.

But Jack didn’t appear to notice. “Philippines,” he answered briefly as he continued to scan the contents of the envelope. “Here we go.”

She breathed again. “What?”

“An account of the bombing. This guy they caught in conjunction with the embassy bombing, this Muhammad Oman, is some kind of freelance terrorist.”

“And?”

“And when he was interrogated, he fingered Sheik Ahmed Kamal as his boss. Which means your father has good reason for his suspicions.” He fell silent, eyes and fingers skimming the page.

“What are you reading now?”

“Background on the feud between Montebello and Tamir…real soap opera stuff, isn’t it?”

She drew herself up. “You can say that. But Sheik Ahmed’s claim to our land raises issues of natural resources and regional stability. And your government in Washington agrees, or they would not be so anxious to keep the peace.”

“Plus there’s the little matter of a U.S. military base on the southeastern end of the island,” Jack drawled.

She didn’t back down. “Precisely.”

“Look, I’m not getting paid to worry about national security anymore. I’m supposed to worry about yours.”

“Unless there’s a connection, you’re wasting your time.”

He flipped over another page. “Time’s one thing I’ve…” His voice failed.

“What? What is it?”

He was staring at the portfolio on his lap. The angle of the cover hid its contents from her, but she saw a corner of newsprint and knew, suddenly, sickeningly, what he had found.

The other picture taken the year she turned twenty-one.

She couldn’t see the headline. It didn’t matter. The same enlarged, grainy image had appeared on the front cover of every tabloid and on the inside pages of every entertainment rag in the world. Six years later, it still had the power to freeze her stomach and make a man look at her with hot speculation in his eyes.

Jack didn’t look at her at all, and that was almost worse. “More background,” he said tersely, and closed the folder.

Damn, she was beautiful.

Even when she was swathed in a white lab coat, with her hair pulled back and plastic goggles around her neck, Christina had what it took to make Jack sweat.

But the image he’d just seen—Christina topless, emerging from a lake at dawn, with every fantasy-inspired curve gilded by the sun—was enough to make him drool.

To make him ache.

To make him beg.

The shot must have been snapped with a zoom from a distance and then blown up to meet tabloid requirements. But picture quality wouldn’t have been the first thing on the photographer’s mind, or the mind of any man who saw the final product. Christina stood knee-deep in the dark water, proud head lifted, legs apart. She looked like a pagan goddess rising from the lake to claim a human lover. Her full, proud breasts glistened. Her wet hair poured down her back like sunshine. Her wet bikini bottoms clung to her like skin. And the water was obviously cold.

Jack’s tongue felt too big for his mouth. His jeans felt too tight.

Christina was saying something. Asking him something. “What is it?”

“More background.” He closed the folder before he embarrassed himself.

Confronting Christina’s sheer physical perfection made him sharply aware of how much he had lost. The sniper in the Philippines had blown away more than his shoulder and his career. The terrorist bastard had hacked at his confidence.

He could still walk away, he thought. He was just passing through.

“Let’s go to your apartment,” he said. “I need to call my old man.”

Chapter 4

It figured that the exiled princess of Montebello didn’t live in an apartment. Jack realized his mistake as soon as Christina swung her new-model pickup truck onto a private road flanked by stone columns. A discreet plaque identified the entrance to Eagle’s Nest Residential Community. No Soliciting, the sign said. Not Welcome.

The truck swooped down curves and up hills. Through stands of tall, dark trees, wide windows flashed. Jack glimpsed piles of rock and spires of wood, some natural, some man-made.

They sure didn’t look like any graduate student digs he’d ever seen.

He was way out of his league here, he thought grimly. What had Christina called it? Some ill-judged sexual attraction. Yeah.

And yet every time he looked at her—hell, even when he didn’t—he got this brain-fog image of her rising out of the lake, her magnificent body covered with water and sunshine and not much else. She had great breasts. He looked across at her aristocratic profile and imagined her wearing one skimpy nylon triangle. He looked out at the scenery and imagined her naked.

And the pictures in his head were making him cross-eyed.

He rubbed the back of his neck, where the muscles cramped as his shoulder stiffened. Focus, he ordered himself. Before he’d left the SEALs, his survival and the survival of his team had depended on his ability to concentrate. Now…well, hers might.

That realization cleared his brain, at least temporarily. He sat up as Christina maneuvered into a sunken driveway and shifted the truck into Park. Her garage was buried in the side of a hill. A stone walk wound from the drive to the house, all angles and cedar and glass.

Whoa. Jack climbed out. Looked up. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

Christina’s face got that frosty look he was beginning to realize covered self-consciousness. “The house was one of my father’s conditions for my remaining at the university. It has a state-of-the-art security system.”

He bet it did. Not that that would stop a terrorist. Not that it could stop him or Merlin or Crack or any of the SEALs, if they had time and the inclination to break in. Jack followed her up a hill landscaped with ferns and wild-flowers. She had a nice…walk. The soaring windows overhead reflected back the red and gold of the afternoon sun.

Once upon a time there was a princess who lived in a tower….

She unlocked the massive door. The foyer was flagstone, paneled in some light wood and pierced with windows. She pressed a security code into the keypad by the door.

“No armed guards at the gate?” Jack asked dryly.

Her eyes gleamed with humor. He liked that, liked that she was able to laugh at herself. “The only communities in Montana with armed guards are survivalist compounds. Even my father drew the line at my living in one of those. Please.” She stepped forward briskly, like a White House tour guide. “Make yourself at home.”

He grimaced. “Right.”

Home had never looked like this.

It wasn’t that the Daltons didn’t have money. Jonathan Dalton may have been a lousy husband and father, but he was a great provider. His wife, Clara, had filled her empty days with shopping, her empty home with velvet sofas and walnut tables and china doodads.

Jack parked his seabag at the bottom of the curving staircase and pivoted slowly, taking in Christina’s wide-open living room: cordovan leather couches and deco lamps, bleached wood floors and rich carpets. Paintings hung like jewels on the high white walls. He didn’t know a whole lot about art, but that one over the fireplace, all curving blues and greens, looked like a Chagall. And he’d bet the ranch it wasn’t a copy.

Oh, yeah. Out of his league and in over his head. He stuck his hands in his pockets.

“I’m sorry if it’s not…” Christina hesitated. “I don’t have time to spend on housekeeping. And my cleaning service won’t be in until Monday.”

She wasn’t serious. Was she? What did she think—that he was going to order her to stand inspection?

“I left the white gloves behind with the uniform, princess. But if you’re looking for compliments, you’ve got a really nice place here. Classy. You want me to take off my shoes?”

She tipped her chin up. “Of course not. I…the phone’s in the kitchen,” she said, and escaped across the Oriental carpet.

The red sun bled through the tall windows on either side of the fireplace. Jack glanced out on a tumble of rocks and plants. Plenty of cover for a sniper there. He wondered if her glass was bulletproof.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Whiskey? Wine? Tea?”

He cradled the receiver between his neck and shoulder, fishing in his wallet for his father’s number. “Got any beer?”

“I’m sorry. No.”

For a princess, she sure was quick to apologize. He shook his head. “Never mind. Water is fine.”

He listened to the phone ring on the other end of the line.

And ring. Jonathan Dalton wasn’t home. Well, that figured. For sixteen years, the old man had never been around when Jack wanted him. Of course, a couple of months after Jack’s mother died, the major had decided to take a stab at fatherhood, and that had been even worse.

Jack depressed the phone hook and dialed again, aware of Christina pulling glasses from the cupboard behind him.

“Global Enterprises,” the receptionist chirped. “How may I direct your call?”

“Jonathan Dalton, please.”

“May I tell him who’s calling?”

“Jack Dalton.”

“Who?”

He heard his teeth snap together. “His son.”

Christina put his water on the counter by his hand. Her warm fingers left imprints on the cold glass. He nodded thanks and picked it up as a different female voice came on the line.

“Mr. Dalton? This is Elizabeth Landry, your father’s executive assistant. He’s not available to take your call right now. May I help you?”

Jack put the water down untasted. “No. Thanks. Tell him he can reach me at this number, please.” He rattled off the number on Christina’s phone. “Got that? Yeah. Anytime tonight. Thanks.” He hung up the phone and found Christina watching him, her mermaid hair and wide blue eyes like something out of a sailor’s fantasy.

His fantasies. Smooth, dark water around long, pale thighs…

Don’t go there, Flash.

“I can’t reach the old man. Looks like we’ll have to wait for him to call us.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“No.” He couldn’t decipher the faint question in her eyes. Surprise? Disapproval? “We’re not exactly close,” he said.

“Why is that?”

He didn’t want to go into it. Not ever, and especially not with Princess Perfect here. But given that he’d just been drooling over the illustrated story of her life, it seemed only fair to give her a quick and dirty rundown on The Daltons: the Dysfunctional Years.

“When my father decided he’d finally had enough of selling his services to the highest bidder, I was sixteen years old and full of myself. I was used to being the man of the house. Nobody was going to tell me what to do, especially not some guy I didn’t set eyes on more than once a year. We had a couple of years with him playing the heavy father and me acting like the jerk son before he decided to ship me off to West Point and let the army turn me into an officer and a gentleman.”

She regarded him steadily. Her interest warmed him, made him awkward. “And was your army up for this enormous task?”

He shrugged. “We’ll never know. I ran off and enlisted in the navy.”

“Your father—he was upset?”

“He was a hypocrite. He was enlisted. Went mustang in Korea.”

Her blond brows drew together. “What does that mean? ‘Mustang’?”

“It’s a term for an enlisted man who comes up through the ranks and makes the jump to officer. It doesn’t happen often.”

“And because he did it, you wanted to do the same. You wanted to make him proud of you.”

Jack shrugged uncomfortably. “It wasn’t that. I just didn’t want him using his money, his influence, to get me an officer’s berth. I didn’t want what he could do for me.”

Christina smiled ruefully. “Yes. I understand. Still, to give up your chance for a college education…”

“When I was eighteen, my head so stuffed with big ideas, a college education would have been wasted on me.”

“Learning is never wasted,” she said firmly.

She would think that. She was a microbiologist. Microbial ecologist, he corrected himself. She probably had enough letters after her name to qualify as a government program.

“I went back for it six years later,” he said, surprising them both by his need to explain. “Night school. I had the discipline for it then.”

“You got your degree while you were a SEAL?”

The disbelief in her voice made him wince. He should have kept his trap shut. “It’s not that unusual. When you’re a SEAL, you’ve got to be the best.”

“You make me a little ashamed,” she said softly. “I never had to combine classes with work. All I’ve ever done is study.”

“Well, you must be good at it. Made good grades. Got a good job.”

“Yes.” She gave him a small, twisted smile that sneaked inside him. “I’m a much better scientist than I am a princess.”

Oh, no. He was not going to fall for that poor-little-princess routine. He was not going to fall for her. “What kind of cook are you?”

The smile froze. “I beg your pardon?”

“Dinner. We’re stuck here till the phone rings, and we have to eat. Do you cook?”

Christina blinked, bewildered by his abrupt change of subject. One minute she’d been having a real conversation, basking in the uncommon intimacy of actually talking with a man in her kitchen, and now he expected her to feed him? She reached for her dignity.

“Not well. I can offer you some eggs and toast if you’re hungry.”

“I’m more hungry than eggs and toast. Do you mind if I see what else you’ve got?”

She stepped back, waving a hand in a gesture she hoped would look royal, and probably came off as royally ticked. “Please. Be my guest. But don’t expect to find anything. I told you, I’m no cook.”

He was already rummaging through cupboards without regard to her privacy or her warning. She stifled a protest.

He flashed a grin over his shoulder. “Yeah, but I am.”

She was still trying to take it in. “You cook.”

“You bet.”

“That’s very…evolved of you.”

“Not really. Cooking is just another way to be self-sufficient. I did a lot of the cooking growing up.”

Trying not to resent his intrusion, she watched him pile things on her counter, her clean, bare counter, like testaments to her sad, bare life: an unopened box of macaroni and cheese, a flat tin of anchovies she used to spice up pizza, two cans of tuna and a small bottle of cocktail olives with a Montebello label. He dug deeper, unearthing her lonely bottle of olive oil and the dried herbs she’d bought to make salad dressing.

“Your mother didn’t cook?” she asked.

“My mom liked to go out. She was the uncrowned benefit queen and committee chair of Highland Park, Texas.” He squatted to dig in a cupboard for a stainless steel pot. “My sister and I got pretty tired of heating things in the microwave, so I taught myself the basics.”

After filling the pot at the sink, he set it on the stove. Christina sipped her water, watching him. He poured olive oil into a skillet and peeled garlic with a no-fuss ease that was impressive. His T-shirt stretched over his biceps. His forearms were muscled. She found herself watching them, and the movement of his hands, and flushed.

“That doesn’t look very basic,” she said.

“I had an XO—executive officer—who liked to cook. I learned a lot from him.”

He scraped slivered garlic into the hot oil. The scent rose and made her mouth water.

“It always seemed a waste of time for me to cook,” she said. “It’s not like I was ever going to be called on to whip up a formal state dinner, and here…most of the time, I eat alone.”

He chopped anchovies with brisk competence. “All the more reason to make sure you eat properly, then. Weren’t you the woman who said learning is never wasted?”

“I guess I did,” she admitted. Whatever he was making smelled too good for her to take offense. But she’d never taken kindly to being told what to do, and she couldn’t resist teasing him a little. “But in this case it would still be superfluous. I have you to take care of me now. At least temporarily.”

He slid her a dark, unreadable look. “I didn’t sign on as your houseboy, princess.”

“No.” She was embarrassed. And it served her right, for trying to flirt with a man like Jack Dalton. “I didn’t mean—I don’t expect you to wait on me.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I—I very much doubt my father wants to hire you because you’re a good cook or can run errands. I may need a bodyguard, but I can live without servants. I prefer to live without servants.”

“So you moved to Montana to get away from it all.”

She hesitated. “Something like that.”

He added salt to the boiling water and then threw in the uncooked noodles from the box of macaroni and cheese. “You said you had wine. White?”

Here, at least, she could demonstrate her expertise. “I have a bottle of 1997 Laspiro Classico.”

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