Capturing the Crown: The Heart of a Ruler

She’d meant to knock him down, to, at the very least, knock the wind out of him. And she succeeded.

Partially.

What she hadn’t counted on was that at the last moment, the man in black would grab her wrist. When he went down, he took her with him.

The air drained out of her lungs as she was yanked down. Her head made contact with his chin. She wasn’t sure who got the worst of it.

Within moments of her hastily devised attack, Amelia found herself sprawled out on top of the intruder, stars swirling through her head, her face a mere three inches away from his. If that.

If the intruder was surprised or dazed, it was for less than a heartbeat. And since hers was beating in a tempo that made “The Flight of the Bumblebee” sound like a tune being played in slow motion, the registry of the intruder’s emotion came and went in something less than could be calibrated by any earthly means.

And then she heard the laugh. Deep, rich, full and completely all-encompassing. A laugh that drenched whoever heard it with liquid waves of warmth. A laugh out of her past.

Amelia blinked. She stared down at the face of the man beneath her. A man who might or might not be an intruder but who definitely was having a reaction, not to what had just transpired, but to what was happening this very moment. The very intimate contact of their bodies.

The ends of her robe were spread out on either side like the giant wings of a bird and the scrap of silk beneath seemed not to be there at all. Every inch of his rocklike body was imprinted against hers. And she was achingly aware of it.

Gastonia’s cool night breeze faded instantly, all but fried in the face of the heat that was traveling up and down her body like white lightning, desperately searching for a target.

“Russell.” Her voice sounded hoarse to her ears.

The smile that slipped along his lips was positively wicked. He made no effort to move or rectify the situation. “At your service, princess.”

As if somewhere someone had magically snapped their fingers, Amelia scrambled to her feet, vainly trying to regain her composure. Not an easy feat when her entire body felt as if it were vibrating like a tuning fork struck against a goblet filled to the brim with subtly aged red wine.

She tugged the ends of her robe together. Her insides were still trembling, but she noticed thankfully that her hands were steady enough.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

Russell rose to his feet in a fluid motion she envied. “Apparently being knocked off my feet by a blazing ball of fire.” He casually brushed himself off. Humor never left his lips. And his eyes never left hers.

The trembling had stopped. But she couldn’t get her body to stop tingling. This was like old times, she thought. Except that instead of a water balloon, she’d been hit by Russell. Sort of.

She was a woman now, not a child. Forming coherent words should not be an insurmountable effort for her.

Taking a breath, Amelia managed to restore a measure of dignity to the moment. “I mean, you weren’t due until tomorrow.”

How had he managed to sneak into the country? Just how lax was security at the airport? She made a mental note to speak to her father.

Her father.

Her eyes widened as she remembered. “My father had a ceremony all in place to greet you at the airport.”

If the information was meant to evoke remorse from the tall man before her, it failed. He gave her his trademark lopsided smile. The same one that had made her adolescent heart secretly flutter.

“Which is why,” he told her, “I came in early this evening.”

She knew what Reginald thought of Gastonia and the crown. Did his chief political advisor and cohort share that view? Her eyes narrowed as a wave of protectiveness passed over her. “To humiliate my father?”

He made no effort at denial. He thought her intelligent enough to know that none was needed. “To avoid attention.”

Still smarting from Reginald’s high-handed snub, she looked for the insult in Russell’s actions. “Why? Are you ashamed to have to come to bring me back to your prince, Lord Carrington?”

She was being formal. Somehow, he hadn’t expected her to be. He’d expected her, he supposed, to be exactly the way she’d been the last time he’d seen her. Sweet. Unassuming. And open.

But nothing in life, Russell reminded himself, stayed the same. Things changed, they evolved or they died. There didn’t seem to be any other choice.

He saw the way her mouth curved, saw the displeasure when she uttered Reginald’s title. It was obvious that the princess was no happier about the union than Reginald was. And in her case, Russell couldn’t blame her. At least Reginald was getting a beautiful woman. All Amelia was getting, beyond a treaty, was an egotistical, self-indulgent, power-hungry, spoiled brat of a man who seemed too besotted with his womanizing way of life to appreciate even marginally what he was being handed on a silver platter.

“No,” he answered her question quietly, “I’m not ashamed to be the one to bring you back to Silvershire. I just don’t care for any kind of unnecessary fanfare. Unlike the prince, I never really liked being in the spotlight, however briefly.”

The moon was full tonight and its silvery light was caressing the man standing before her. Amelia realized that she’d stopped breathing only when her lungs began to ache. As subtly as she could, she drew in a long breath.

“Then perhaps political advisor shouldn’t have been your first choice of a career, Carrington.”

“It wasn’t. But my father couldn’t see his way clear to his only son being a beachcomber. And I liked it better when you called me Russell. No fanfare,” he reminded her.

“No fanfare,” she repeated with a nod, then forced her mind back on the conversation and not on the fact that somehow, during the years since she had last seen him, Russell had come into the possession of a very muscular-looking body. “Beachcomber,” she echoed. “Do they still have that sort of thing?”

He laughed. The moonlight wove through her hair, turning it the color of pale wheat. He caught himself just before he began to raise his hand to touch it. He’d been sent to bring her back, not to familiarize himself with the packaging. “If I had anything to say about it, they would.”

God help her, she could see him, lying on the beach, wearing the briefest of bathing suits, the tide bringing the waves just up to his toes, gently lapping his tanned skin.

She had to swallow twice to counteract the dryness in her mouth. It was a credit to her breeding and training that she could continue without dropping the thread of the conversation.

“Seriously, if you don’t like the attention, Russell,” she emphasized his name and he nodded with a smile in response, sending her pulse up another notch, “there had to be something else that you could have become.”

He shook his head. He knew better. “Not with my lineage. Besides, someone needs to be there to temper the prince.”

She looked at him for a long moment. There was more to the man than just practical jokes and devastating good looks. Or was he ultimately cut out of the same cloth as Reginald and just bragging?

“And you can do that?”

Russell heard the skepticism in her voice. Not that he blamed her. He had no reputation by choice. Reginald’s was international.

“I have a modest success rate, but in comparison, it’s still better than anyone else’s.” He didn’t want to talk about Reginald. Not tonight. There was more than enough time for that later. He looked at her, thinking about what she had just done. “You thought I was an intruder.”

“Yes, obviously.” As she moved her shoulder, the robe began to slip off. She tugged it back into place, aware that he had looked at the exposed area. That he was still looking. She felt naked. And unashamed at the same time.

“Why didn’t you get someone from security?” Russell asked.

Pride had her lifting her chin defiantly. She wasn’t a helpless little girl anymore. “Because I could handle it myself.”

She hadn’t struck him as being reckless, but tackling him like that hadn’t been the act of a intelligent person. “You’re the princess,” he pointed out. “It doesn’t behoove you to take chances.”

Amelia rolled her eyes. Was he like all the rest of them? Why wouldn’t he be? she challenged silently. He was part of Reginald’s inner circle. “Oh, please, no lectures.” And then she sighed. It was a losing battle. “Or if you feel you simply must, take a number. There are a few people ahead of you.”

“Such as?”