The Royal Collection. Rebecca WintersЧитать онлайн книгу.
created. He had tried to fill all the spaces within himself: with discipline, with relentless strength, with purpose, with the adrenaline rush of doing dangerous things.
But now he saw that, just like Shoshauna, he had been brought to this place to find what was really within himself.
He was a man who wanted to be loved.
And deserved to be loved.
A man who had come to know you could fill your whole world, but if it was missing the secret ingredient it was empty.
With the fire warm against their faces and the blanket wrapped around them, they slept under the winking stars and to the music of the crashing waves. He had not felt so peaceful, or so whole, for a long, long time.
But he awoke with a fighting man’s instinct just before dawn.
For a moment he was disoriented, her hair, soft as eiderdown, softer than he could have ever imagined it, tickling the bottom of his chin, her head resting on his chest, her breath blowing in warm puffs against his skin.
The feeling lasted less than half a second.
He could hear the steady, but still far off, wop-wop-wop of a helicopter engine, beneath that the steady but still-distant whine of powerboats.
He sat up, saw the boats coming, halfway between the island and the mainland, three of them forming a vee in the water, the helicopter zooming ahead of them to do reconnaissance.
The fire, he thought, amazed at his own stupidity. He’d been able to see the lights of the mainland from here, how could he have taken a chance by lighting that fire?
Because he’d been blinded, that’s how. He’d forgotten the number-one rule of protection, no not forgotten it, been lulled into believing, that just this once it would be okay to set it aside. But he’d been wrong. He’d broken the rule he knew to be sacred in his business, and now he was about to pay the price.
He knew that emotional involvement with the principal jeopardized their well-being, their safety. And he had done it anyway, putting his needs ahead of what he knew was right.
He’d acted as if they were on a damn holiday from the moment they’d landed on this island. Instead of snorkeling and surfing, he should have spent his time creating a defensible position: hiding places, booby traps, a fallback plan.
He felt the sting of his greatest failure, but there was no time now for self-castigation. There would probably be plenty of time for that later.
He eyed their own boat, the tide out, so far up on the sand he didn’t have a chance of getting it to the water before the other boats were on them, and he didn’t like the idea of being out in the open, sitting ducks. He could hear the engines of those other boats, anyway. They were far more powerful than the boat on the beach.
“Wake up,” he shouted at her, leaping to his feet, his hand rough on her slender shoulder.
There was no time to appreciate her sleep-ruffed hair, her eyes fluttering open, the way a line from his own chest was imprinted on her cheek. She was blinking at him with sleepy trust that he knew himself to be completely unworthy of.
He yanked her to her feet. She caught his urgency instantly, allowed herself to be pushed at high speed toward the cottage. He stopped there only briefly to pick up the Glock, two clips of ammo, and then he led the way through the jungle, to where he had chopped down the tree earlier.
He tucked her under the waxy leaves of a gigantic elephant foot shrub. “Don’t you move until I tell you you can,” he said.
“You’re not leaving me here!”
He instantly saw that her concern was not for herself but for him. This was the price for letting his barriers down, for not maintaining his distance and his authority. She thought listening to him was an option. She did not want to understand it was his job to put himself between her and danger.
She did not want to accept reality.
And his weakness was that for a few hours yesterday he had not accepted it either.
“Princess, do not make me say this again,” he said sharply. “You do not move until you hear from me, personally, that it’s okay to do so.”
Three boats and a helicopter. He had to assume the worst in terms of who it was and what their intent was. That was his job, to react to worst-case scenarios. There was a good chance she might not be hearing from him, personally, ever again. He might be able to outthink those kind of numbers, but their only chance was if she cooperated, stayed out of the way.
“My life depends on your obedience,” he told her, and saw, finally, her capitulation.
He raced back to the tree line, watched the boats coming closer and closer, cutting through the waters of the bay. His mind did the clean divide, began clicking through options of how to keep her safe with very limited resources. Not enough rounds to hold off the army that was approaching.
The boats drew closer, and suddenly he stood down. His adrenaline stopped pumping. He recognized Colonel Gray Peterson at the helm of the first boat, and he stepped from the trees.
Ronan moved slowly, feeling his sense of failure acutely. This was ending well, but not because of his competence. Because of luck. Because of that thing she had always seemed to trust and he had scorned.
Gray came across the sand toward him.
“Where’s the princess?” he asked.
“Secure.”
Of course she picked that moment to break from the trees and scamper down the beach. She must have left her hiding place within seconds of Ronan securing her promise she would stay there.
“Grandpa!” She threw herself into the arms of a distinguished-looking elderly man.
Ronan contemplated her disobedience—the complete disintegration of his authority over her—with self-disgust.
Gray looked at her, his eyebrows arched upward. “Good grief, man, tell me that’s not the princess.”
“I’m afraid it is.”
But Gray’s dismay was not because she had broken cover without being given the go-ahead.
“What on earth happened to her hair?”
The truth was Ronan could only vaguely remember what she had looked like before.
“She’s safe. Who cares about her hair?”
Gray’s look said it all. People cared about her hair. Ronan was glad she had cut it if it made her less of a commodity.
“She is safe, isn’t she?” Ronan asked. “That’s why you’re here? That’s why you didn’t wait for me to come in?”
“We made an arrest three days ago.”
“Who?” He needed to know that. If it was some organized group with terror cells all over the place, she would never be safe. And what would he do then?
Peterson lowered his voice. “You gave us the lead. Princess Shoshauna’s cousin, Mirassa. She was an old flame of Prince Mahail’s. You’ve heard that expression ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ but in this case it was more like high school high jinx gone very wrong.”
Ronan watched Shoshauna, felt her joy at being with her grandfather and felt satisfied that her instincts had been so correct. If she had that—her instincts—and now the ability to capture the power of the wave, she was going to be all right.
“You went deep,” Gray said, “if I could have found you I would have pulled you out sooner.”
Oh, yeah, he’d gone deep. Deep into territory he had no right going into, so deep he felt lost even now, as if he might never make his way out.
“But when one of the villagers saw the fire last night and reported it to her grandfather he knew right away she’d be here.” Gray glanced down