By Order of the Prince

Jane’s eyes filled with interest as Antoine held up the envelope but didn’t offer to hand it to her. “We’d like to see if you can pull some fingerprints from either the envelope or the notes inside, but before I give this to you I would like you to promise to keep this strictly confidential between the three of us.”

Jane frowned and raked a hand through her curly light brown hair. “I can’t make that promise without seeing what you have.” There was a hint of steel in her voice.

Antoine held her gaze for a long moment and then offered her the envelope. “What I’m hoping is that you can lift some prints and then give us a little time to do some investigating on our own before letting anyone else know about it.”

Jane didn’t take the envelope from him, but instead opened her office door and gestured them outside. “Bring it into the lab. I don’t want to touch it without gloves. As it is I’ll need to print both you and Beth so we can discount your prints on everything.”

They entered a small lab where Jane grabbed a kit from one of the metal shelves against the wall and then stepped up to a work table and pulled on latex gloves. Only then did she take the envelope from Antoine.

As she read the notes her eyes widened once again and when she finished she stared at first Antoine, then at Beth.

“These need to go to Jake,” she said.

“Eventually I’ll hand them over to him,” Antoine replied. “But let’s be serious here. The local law officials haven’t exactly proven themselves to be good, upstanding people. Even your own boss was proven to be untrustworthy.”

Jane’s face flushed and she looked down at the notes she’d spread out on the table. Amos Andrews, Jane’s boss, had not only tried to screw up her investigation into the bombing of the limo, he’d also tried to kill Jane. When he’d been arrested he’d made it clear that he was just a bit player in a larger conspiracy against the visiting royals, hired by somebody he refused to name.

“So, what exactly is it you want from me?” she asked with a weary sigh.

“Just a little time,” Antoine replied.

“How much time?” she asked.

“Seventy-two hours,” he replied after a moment of hesitation.

Jane said nothing. She opened the kit and withdrew several brushes and powder compounds in small bottles. As she began her work, Beth couldn’t help but gaze at Antoine again and again.

He stood rigid and once again she felt the energy wafting from him. And why wouldn’t he be tense? The stakes couldn’t be higher. Somebody wanted him and the other participants in the COIN coalition dead.

They didn’t know at this time if the people who were behind the conspiracy had already achieved the goal of killing one of them—Amir.

Antoine slid a glance at her and offered her a small smile that shot a hint of warmth in his cool blue eyes. Beth had always believed the term bedroom eyes meant dark and smoky and slightly mysterious, but she now recognized that bedroom eyes could be the cool blue of a mountain lake.

“I hope you find a useable fingerprint,” he said, his focus back on Jane. “When I know the identity of the person who wrote those notes, I will make certain he’s never a threat to anyone again.”

His tone was light and easy, but with a chilling undertone. Yes, he might make a delicious lover, but she had a feeling he’d make an even more formidable enemy.

IT WAS ALMOST NINE when they finally left the lab after being printed by Jane. She’d managed to pull another print that didn’t belong to either him or Beth and hoped that whoever had left it behind was in the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. If they were lucky she would have a name for them sometime the next day.

“I’m too wound up to go back to the suite and sleep.” He turned to look at the woman driving the car. He’d been acutely aware of Beth even as he’d tried to focus on what Jane had been doing.

He knew that to be successful in her position she had to be a strong taskmaster. The resort was known for impeccable guest services and housekeeping. And yet he sensed a softness in Beth that drew the darkness that resided inside him.

And there was darkness.

She cast him a quick glance and then returned her gaze to the road. “I’m a little wired myself,” she admitted.

“Perhaps we could go back to your place, have a cup of coffee and talk about things.”

He could tell he’d shocked her. “Prince Antoine, my home is small and simple. It’s not exactly fit for a prince,” she replied.

“A comfortable chair, some hot coffee and a little company is all I’d like. And please, call me Antoine.”

“Then you can call me Beth. Coffee sounds good and then I’ll be glad to take you back to the resort. My place is only ten minutes from there.”

“Then it’s settled, coffee at your house.” He leaned back against the seat and stared out the side window into the darkness. You’re a cliché, he thought ruefully. He was a prince who was afraid to trust anyone, with an aching depth of loneliness inside him and the mantle of power weighing heavily, definitely a cliché.

For the past three weeks Antoine had done nothing but worry and wonder about the attack, about what danger might come from what unexpected source.

He’d had long dialogues with the other men in the COIN coalition. Prince Stefan Lutece, Sheik Efraim Aziz, Sheik Amir Khalid and Antoine and his brother had all come here in the hopes of trade agreements with the United States that would benefit their small countries and instead had found nothing but treachery, danger and betrayal.

At the moment Antoine was sick of it all. The resort had become a place of intense stress, of people yammering at him and palpable tension that filled the air the moment he stepped out of his rooms. He was looking forward to a little more time away from the luxurious surroundings.

Beth turned off the road they had been traveling and onto a narrower road with deep embankments and thick trees on either side. “You drive this every night after dark?” he asked.

“It’s the only way for me to get home. It’s not too bad as long as you make sure you stay on the road.”

A small laugh escaped him. “That would be an understatement. I’m sure it gets quite dangerous in the winter.”

“I call this car my little engine that could.” She tapped the steering wheel with a long slender finger. “Although I have to admit more than once in the winters somebody from the hotel has had to come to get me because I don’t have four-wheel drive.”

He could tell she was beginning to relax with each minute they spent together. He wanted that. For just a little while he wanted to be treated like an ordinary man and not like a prince.

“This feels very isolated,” he said as the trees on either side of the road seemed to crawl closer.

“It is. It’s a pretty big spread but most of it hasn’t been cleared or anything. My grandfather bought the land years ago, long before there was a resort. My father and mother chose to make it their home after my grandparents died and I’ve always lived here. I like the isolation, the beautiful nature that surrounds me when I step outside my front or back door. Is your country beautiful?”

“White beaches, blue seas, lush flowers…yes, Barajas is very beautiful, but I find Wyoming to be as beautiful, just different.”

She turned off the road and onto a driveway that led to a small cottage. A light shone from the front porch, a welcome beacon in the darkness that had fallen. Colorful flowers spilled from boxes under the windows. It looked like something from a fairy tale, an enchanted cottage in the middle of the wilderness.

“It’s not much,” she said with a touch of defensiveness. “But it’s all mine and I love it here.” This time her words held an obvious sense of pride.

The sense of welcome that the porch light had emitted continued on into the house. As Antoine stepped inside the living room the earthy burnt orange and browns of the décor instantly put him at rest.

“Please, have a seat.” She gestured him toward the overstuffed sofa. “I’m just going to get out of my uniform. I’ll be right back to start the coffee.”

She disappeared down the hallway and Antoine sank into the comfortable couch cushion and gazed around the room. Like subtle facial features that could give away internal emotions and weaknesses, he knew a room could speak volumes about the person who lived in it.

A bookcase stood against one wall, one of the shelves filled with framed photos of Beth with an older woman who appeared to be her mother. The television was small, as if watching it wasn’t a top priority. A paperback lay on the end of the coffee table, the couple’s clinch on the cover letting him know it was a romance novel. A wind chime tinkled a lovely melody from someplace outside the windows.

A lonely romantic who loved nature, he thought. There was no sign of a man’s presence anywhere in the room. An old record player sat next to a stack of ancient LPs and it was easy for him to imagine her curled on the sofa with a book in hand while old, romantic music filled the house.

He looked up as she returned to the room, clad in a pair of jeans that looked slightly worn and hugged her long slender legs to perfection. Her mint-green T-shirt fit a little big but not so much that he didn’t notice the press of her full breasts against the material.

He suddenly wished he was in a pair of jeans, on the back of a horse with her, her arms wrapped tightly around him as they rode carefree across a pasture. It was a vision that brought the first burst of pleasure he’d felt since arriving in Wyoming.

“Let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll make the coffee,” she said.