Claimed: Gowns & Crowns, Book 3 (3 page)

And what was Stefan’s attraction to her about, anyway? He had a way of seeming simultaneously interested and oppressive, and she thought more about that kiss. She hadn’t been imagining his interest, had she? Was this all truly some weirdly obscure strategy to allow him to keep tabs on her?

Well he could go spin in small circles if he thought she was going to put up with that. Regardless of what Emmaline and Kristos’s upcoming wedding plans were, she would need to come up with an excuse to get out of Garronia. Otherwise, she was going to go crazy.

If Nicki Clark didn’t leave the peaceful kingdom of Garronia soon, Stefan vowed silently, he was going to go crazy.

He watched her jog across the sand as if she owned the entire beach, his attention fractured between her sun-browned legs and Cyril’s pre-emptive throat clearing. “You are doing yourself no favors by displaying your interest in her,” Cyril said, the words so blunt that Stefan swung his gaze back to him.

“My interest?” he scowled. “Since when do you care about any woman I speak to?”

“Since the queen has become fixated on the romantic lives of every one of the four young women presently under the royal roof. And don’t think she hasn’t noticed the way you and the American seek each other out. You would do well to be more circumspect, if you don’t want to find yourself in Queen Catherine’s sights.”

“Seek each—” he glanced toward Nicki then back toward Cyril. “Cyril, half the time I’m trying to track her down, not meet up for a chat.”

“Half the time, yes,” Cyril gestured to the dune where Stefan had most assuredly found Nicki…and for more than a chat. “The queen has eyes in the back of her head when it comes to ferreting out presumed romantic entanglements. Because you have not been careful, and given the woman’s apparent connections in Alaçati, the queen is giving serious thought to assigning Miss Clark to you when you go to—”

“No,” snapped Stefan, so sharply that Cyril frowned at him in surprise. It was not his place to rebuke the chief advisor, but he didn’t care. Almost against his will, Stefan let his gaze snap once more to where Nicki was haggling with a body board vendor in front of one of the posh hotels along the beach. A small crowd had gathered around her, as small crowds tended to do. Again, not because she was beautiful, in the traditional sense…she was merely irresistible.

She was also a menace.

“She is untrained to go on any sort of mission, diplomatic or otherwise,” Stefan snapped. “She also has no sense of decorum, of her limits, of—”

Cyril’s lifted hand cut him off.

“I’m not the one you have to convince,” he said. A cheerful horn beeped behind them, and they both turned. Stefan’s eyes narrowed as Cyril merely sighed.

“As I said,” Cyril murmured.

Rolling up to them in a golf cart was none other than Queen Catherine of Garronia, wife to King Jasen and mother to the crown prince Kristos…and the late crown prince Ari. She appeared thoroughly delighted to be out on the beach, and it was early enough that there were not enough tourists who understood the significance of a lead cart surrounded by three attendant carts, each with men holding guns below the sight line of the vehicles’ dashboards.

For her part, Queen Catherine appeared to be unarmed, but Kristos rode with her. Dimitri Korba, bodyguard to the royal family, rode in the closest cart to the queen’s, and Stefan grimaced. “What’s happened?”

“The final interviews with the man found with Ari’s watch were reported this morning,” Cyril said quietly. “I’d hoped to work out a strategy with you before the queen was made aware of the information.”

“It appears we’re too late on that.”

“It seems so.” Cyril nodded. “And given her state of excitement, the news supports her desire to find Ari alive.”

“And do you believe he is?” Stefan asked. “Still alive?”

Cyril managed a pleasant expression, but spoke through his teeth. “I do not. At this point, however, we have to find something other than a few bits of debris scavenged by fishermen in order to put the queen’s mind to rest. Otherwise, I fear she will never get past this.”

Stefan schooled his expression into polite interest. He understood Cyril’s concern. When Prince Ari had crashed his plane over a year ago, flying into a dangerous storm that he had no business trying to weather on his own, the entire royal family had been devastated. King Jasen had seemed to age a decade overnight, while the queen had held on to a fleeting hope that Ari was—somehow—still alive. A hope that was fanned with each new discovery of some missing piece of wreckage offered up by the Aegean Sea.

Now that hope had flared into a brilliant beacon of light.

“Stefan!” Queen Catherine said, jumping lightly out of the cart as Kristos slowed the vehicle. “Tell me I’ve not come too late and that Cyril hasn’t spoiled my update.”

Cyril bowed. “Not at all, your majesty—”

“Oh, please.” She waved off the honorific. “There is no one around. Dispense with the formality, I beg you.” She turned to Stefan. “Our plans are moving forward. We have additional information about Ari’s watch, and where it was located.”

“Near Alaçati.” Stefan nodded. Ari’s custom flight and dive watch had been spotted by Dimitri and the American Lauren Grant while Dimitri had been traveling with her to a nearby island. Dimitri had nearly leveled the fisherman who’d been wearing the watch before he’d agreed to let the interrogation be handled by less invested souls. Ari had been his best friend—and his responsibility.

“Yes, Alaçati—which is fully invested in its summer windsurfing season,” the queen beamed. “So there are tourists there, people, outsiders. It will be easier for you to blend.”

Stefan didn’t dispute her words. “What is the new information?” he asked.

Behind the queen, Kristos grimaced, his face unusually grim compared to his mother’s excitement. The prince’s eyes were fixed on the open water, however, not the queen, and Stefan angled himself carefully to allow a wider view as the queen spoke again.

“There’s a whole network of scavengers along the Turkish coast. Small wonder, given the state of the economy and lack of military protections there outside the main cities,” she sniffed.

“Your highness,” Cyril said mildly. “They are our neighbors and allies.”

“And we are here, in Garronia, among friends,” the queen shot back with an uncharacteristic snap to her tone. “Anyway, the fisherman who bought the watch told us there were other debris as well—a gold chain, journals, shoes—but that the watch hadn’t come directly from the ocean, according to the man who sold it to him. It’d come from its owner.”

“Its owner!” Stefan’s exclamation had the queen straightening. “When was this?”

“He wasn’t clear—months ago.” Her mouth tightened but she pushed on. “But the man was alive, the scavenger had said. Disoriented, confused—the scavenger apparently thought he’d sustained some sort of head injury.”

“Possibly concussed,” Kristos put in.

“Dressed in rags but he had the watch. He’d been exposed to the elements. Hadn’t showered.” The queen’s lower lip began to tremble, and Kristos stepped forward.

“Mother—”

She ignored him. “Bottom line, we need to act. The fisherman had that watch since January—January! And here it is June, and Ari could have been wandering this whole time.”

“You don’t know that the man who sold the scavenger the watch in the first place was Ari.”

“And you don’t know that it wasn’t!” she retorted. “There are windsurfers currently in the city of Alaçati, some exhibition, and we should be there too, finding out whatever we can.”

A cheer went up from the crowd gathered at the edge of the beach. The queen glanced up—and her excited exclamation made Stefan turn as well. The reason behind that exclamation made him groan.

Out on the open waters of the Aegean, Nicki Clark stood balanced on a thin board, her arms locked on the cross beams of a brightly colored sail. Flipping and twirling, she was doing an almost acrobatic job of angling the sail to capture the most wind it could, resulting in her leaping over the small whitecaps offered up by the gusting winds over the azure water.

“Emmaline tells me that Nicki is a champion windsurfer, and her work as an adventure blogger makes it perfectly reasonable that she would take a side trip to Alaçati while she is so close,” the queen said triumphantly. “And of course, we would not want her to travel alone in a foreign country with such rapidly changing safety concerns. A small group of NGSF soldiers and you, Stefan, will go with her.”

“We have already discussed this, your highness—” Stefan began, but the queen barreled on.

“Look at her! This is not an idle queen creating a fit where none exists. Nicki is clearly skilled, and if her reputation in the windsurfing community checks out as Emmaline indicates, she is the perfect choice to travel with you, and the perfect excuse for us to encroach on our neighbor despite the fact that we’re not agreeing on much of anything these days.”

“It’s not safe, and she could be placed in danger. She isn’t trained.”

“No, but you are,” the queen said. “And I would trust you with my life, Stefan. Can you really tell me that Nicki Clark couldn’t?”

Stefan followed her gaze, following the tiny form of Nicki as she crested one wave and swooped into the curl of another, drawing more applause and cheers as a line of tourists formed at the vendor’s stand to try the windsurfing boards for themselves. Nicki, oblivious to all of it, watched the wind and the water, her body taut, her energy focused. She was in her element, and she took his breath away.

There was no way he was going to endanger her life, however, no matter what the queen commanded.

But the queen wasn’t finished yet.

“Give me one good reason—one—that she isn’t the ideal cover for you, and I’ll consider relenting,” she said. “Otherwise, the yacht is already being prepared, Stefan. I expect you to be on it tomorrow—with Nicki Clark.”

Chapter Three

“Nicki, I really don’t know about this.”

Nicki kept her head beneath an enormous bath towel for a second more, schooling her expression. By the time she emerged, and was ready to face the three scowling women who sat around her suite, all of them girded for battle.

Well, girded might be overstating it. Lauren, the one who spoke, was standing by a chair, as if sitting was out of the question during such an important conversation. Lauren Grant was the heiress to an international hotelier fortune, and had grown up used to running the show. She and Nicki got along because Nicki usually let her—or ignored her if her opinions were inconvenient. But Lauren was serious this morning, and Nicki knew why. She’d confided in Lauren about her possible heart condition a week ago, when Lauren had questioned her usage of beta blockers. It would have been foolish not to disclose the worst possible scenario—that Nicki might possibly have a slowly dying heart—but she’d told Lauren not to worry, that there’d be lots of notice if anything was truly wrong.

This wasn’t exactly true of course, but Lauren hadn’t pressed before. She did now.

She’d clearly told the others too.

Emmaline sat with her hands earnestly folded in her lap. Earnest was what Emmaline did best. Nicki couldn’t help thawing a bit as she caught her friend’s eye and smiled, watching her brighten with the strength of the connection. Across the room, Fran also caught her attention. She tilted her head and Nicki held up a hand to forestall whatever she was going to say.

“No need to shrink me, Fran. I know what you’re thinking—what you’re all thinking. And you’re right. This is a simple trip but it could turn crazy at any moment. And not even for any grand reason, but the simple reality of going to a foreign country and running into all the problems that could entail. But seriously, this is not that big of deal. It’s not like we’re going to have people chasing us with guns.”

“You could,” interjected Lauren darkly.

“I won’t,” Nicki shook her head. “Have you seen the royal yacht? It’s practically a cruise ship. We’re going to sail down to Alaçati big as life, and give our validation to the windsurfing expo they’ve got going on. It’s good PR for Garronia, a nice goodwill gesture for Turkey, and the guards they’re sending along are going to ask all the questions they need to ask while Stefan squires me around as if I’m some sort of VIP. Which is hilarious, but that’s beside the point.”

Emmaline bit her lip. “He’s not especially happy about you going, you should be aware.”

Nicki snorted. “I think the ‘No, absolutely not, she can’t go,’ to Jasen at lunch was a good indicator of that. But honestly, that’s for them to figure out.” She gave her best “I don’t really care” shrug, perfected after years of being denied opportunities by her hypochondriac mother, who’d perfected the art of the flop sweat before anyone in the family had actually fallen ill. Once she reached her senior year in high school she’d shed a lot of those restrictions, but then her father’s heart attack and brother’s later diagnosis had threatened to close her in once more. She couldn’t live the way her brother and father did. Wouldn’t. And she wouldn’t back down from this opportunity.

Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t throw her friends a bone. “If they decide it’s too dangerous, then of course I’ll abide by that. With Stefan out of the country and no longer up in my grill, I’ll be able to explore some of the mountain trails he’s constantly warning me about.” She grinned. “So it’s a win either way.”