Finding Chris Evans: The Royal Edition (8 page)

Sudden awareness gripped her with icy claws. Dear God. He was a
guest
, is what he was. She’d slept with a
guest
at her
inn
.

LeeAnn threw off the covers, wincing with embarrassment as she rolled out of bed. At least Cris had had the decency to slip away unnoticed before she’d woken. Had he suspected that she’d realized what a colossal embarrassment she was to the entire innkeeping community? Was there such a community? If there was, she was pretty sure they’d have rules. Rules that included
not sleeping with
the hunky foreigner from the third floor of the main lodge.

“Hey!” Children’s laughter rang out from the courtyard, but LeeAnn couldn’t wrap her head around that this morning. There were always children laughing and playing outside as soon as the sun took the chill out of the air, even older kids. She passed her laptop, absently clicking it awake, then went on to the bathroom.

A quick glance in the mirror confirmed she looked no worse for having broken the inviolable code of innkeeper conduct, and she threw her hair into a top knot then brushed her teeth, trying to figure out how she’d approach the Cris when she saw him next. He’d be polite, she was certain. Cheerful even.

She could do polite, and everyone said she was cheerful. She excelled at cheerful, in fact.

“Hi, there!” she said brightly, around a mouthful of toothpaste. She wouldn’t wear makeup. She never wore makeup, not during the day. Only sometimes at night. Like last night. Last night when she
slept with a guest
.

She leaned toward the mirror, still brushing as she eyed herself. Well, maybe a little makeup wouldn’t hurt anyone.

It took LeeAnn another ten minutes to dress in the same outfit that normally required ten seconds—capri khakis, wedge sandals and a Werth Inn polo shirt. She turned back to her laptop, only to be distracted by another burst of laughter. There were a lot of kids outside!

She drifted over to the window, standing back far enough so she couldn’t be seen, though no one was looking her way.

There were easily twenty kids in the courtyard, all of them dressed in soccer uniforms. And in the center of them, wearing a bright blue and white jersey, bouncing a ball off his knee, his foot, his arm—

LeeAnn stepped back, her eyes flaring wide. Cristopoulis?

Sudden dread struck her, and she swiveled again, striking a key to bring up the browser. The site was one she’d never seen before.

Cris had been on her computer this morning, she realized. Deliberately. Intentionally. And he’d left this for her to find.

A picture of a smiling, roguishly handsome Cristopoulis filled the screen, accompanied by an article written in a language she didn’t recognize. Google helpfully offered to translate, and that was the first time the name Cristopoulis
Matretti
registered against LeeAnn’s brain cells.

Matretti, not Evans.

Again, Cris wasn’t the first guest to travel under an assumed name at her little inn. He wouldn’t be the last. She’d made it her policy not to intrude into the past lives of her guests.

Of course, she usually made it her policy not to sleep with them, either.

What was I thinking?

It took her another five minutes, while delighted young soccer fans cheered and chattered below, for LeeAnn to get the true measure of her cluelessness. This man wasn’t some stupid businessman—and she’d known that too, truly. No businessman was that buff. But she would never have suspected he was an internationally known soccer star.

Staying in her inn.

And she’d
slept
with him.

It got worse from there. When she cross referenced the name Matretti with Garronia, she didn’t get a picture of Cris, but a man who looked enough like him to be his older brother. Except of course, he was Cris’s father. As in the ambassador of Garronia and the brother to the
queen
of the
entire damned country
.

Cristopoulis Matretti was routinely referred to as a “royal cousin” to the Andris princes, and the story of him clocking the coach of the Greek national football team was repeated over and over with such relish, she’d memorized it in thirty seconds.

And then, of course, there were the women.

Though Cris hadn’t left any direct links to these stories, they were easy to find. He’d dated dozens of women, it seemed, each more gorgeous than the last, starting from the time he’d been in his late teens. Now in his late twenties, he was the country’s darling, more feted than his royal cousins if only due to his devil-may-care antics. He was quoted as saying that Garronois women were the most charming in the world, the sexiest, the most perfect…

By the time she was finished, LeeAnn didn’t think she’d ever be able to peel her fingers from her mouth, which was probably good since at least the pressure of her hand there kept her from screaming.

How could she have been so
stupid?
How much of a country bumpkin must Cris think she was? No wonder he’d stayed here so long—she had no idea who or what he was, and she’d made absolutely no effort to find out. Her intense need to assure her guests’ privacy had made her the best cover ever.

And he’d only decided to leave after Ellie Mittelstadt had confronted him—Ellie, who also had no idea who he was, or she would have saved LeeAnn from herself, right?
Right
?

“Oh my God,” she murmured, staring at her laptop. “I slept with a royal cousin. And a soccer star. Who was a guest. At my inn.”

There simply was no coming back from that.

“Okay.” LeeAnn returned to the bathroom and reset her hair with several ruthless tugs. “He’s dressed like a soccer guy, he’s surrounded by kids. You’ve just got to get by him and you’ll be good. You’ll be good, of course you’ll be good. He doesn’t even have to talk to you, because you’ll be good.”

She headed back toward the kitchen, then stopped cold when she saw the beautiful swan sculpture sitting on her table. LeeAnn’s heart couldn’t help but flutter, and she let herself stare at the piece another minute more. The necks of the two birds were arched so perfectly, their beaks almost touching, it was as if they were truly in love. And the fact that this sculpture had been sitting lost and forgotten in the stone barn, waiting for her and Cris to find it…it’d seemed, well…it’d seemed almost like fate.

“Knock it off,” she muttered, and refocused on the kitchen counter.

Beneath the wire mesh mail file was the letter she’d been ignoring this whole week, especially once she’d gotten caught up in her infatuation with
Cristopoulis Matretti
. But that was done now. They were done. There was nothing to stop her from calling the property manager and signing herself up for another five years with the inn. Her father and grandfather expected it of her. Depended on her.

And, she owed them that much. She could give a little more of her life to reaching their dreams—especially since she clearly wasn’t responsible enough to start reaching for her own.

Shaking her head, LeeAnn pocketed the paperwork in her messenger bag, the momentum of her self-mortification carrying out of the house and a quarter of the way across the courtyard.

Then everything fell apart, of course.

“LeeAnn!” boomed Jake Donaldson’s voice across the wide space. “Your secret is out!’

She lost a good two years off her life as she turned. Good thing those years were probably going to be at the end and not worth much. But LeeAnn’s smile remained fixed in place as the kids parted like the Red Sea, leaving Jake and a completely unabashed Cristopoulis Matretti in the center, holding a soccer ball.

“Hey, Jake,” she managed. “How’s your morning going?”

“Do you know how famous this guy is?” Jake demanded. “And he tells me this has been his base of operations this whole summer! How did we miss that?”

“Well, maybe because he needed to stay quiet?” LeeAnn said with such easy-going candor she even believed herself. “People don’t come to Minnesota to publicize themselves, they come here to get lost. Right?”

She swung her gaze to Cristopoulis, who didn’t bat an eye.

“Werth Inn has been the perfect way to get lost, as you say,” he said. There was an unusual timbre to his voice, but LeeAnn could hear only the cutting words. Her smile began to hurt, so she refocused on Jake.

“You guys can keep him busy I bet, yes? He’s only here for a little while longer. Maybe he can show you some moves. I hear he’s got a great fake.”

That sent the kids to clamoring again, and LeeAnn wheeled away, her resolve cracking the moment her face was turned. It only took a few minutes for her to reach the stone barn and open the door, and she yanked the leather jacket off the peg. The old Italian motorcycle turned over on the first try.

She had work to do. Starting with the chalets. Never mind that she’d checked them yesterday afternoon. She’d call Mr. Prentiss once she’d pulled herself together and get an appointment to sign the lease papers—maybe get him to come see her newly-refurbished barn with all her grandfather’s treasures, figure out a way to cut the lease term shorter. These were smart plans. Responsible plans.

Her
plans.

Despite the logic of her thoughts, LeeAnn’s heart sank as she roared away from Werth Inn and up the long mountain road. The bike felt good beneath her body, but not comfortable. She wasn’t the kind of person who should be riding such an old and coveted motorcycle. It made her feel like she was borrowing someone else’s dreams.

She held it together through the first four checks. By the time she reached Swan Cottage, however, the bike apparently had picked up on her mood. It started running rough as she pulled into the chalet’s private lane—and quit entirely as she puttered up to the door of the empty building. She turned the starter once, twice…no dice. The thing was dead in the water.

“Perfect,” she muttered.

Not even bothering to go in through the front door, she headed around the cottage to the pond in the back. She’d stay there only a few minutes, get centered, then she’d call Mr. Prentiss. The man would be overjoyed to hear from her. She’d been putting this conversation off too long.

LeeAnn hadn’t quite reached the pond when the sound of heavy fluttering wings filled the air. Coming to an abrupt stop, she watched as with an exultant surge, two majestic birds launched themselves upward out of the pond. Their wings were outstretched, their necks extended, and their heads turned to the south as the stiff breeze lifted them higher and higher above the treetops.

They were leaving. Today of all days, the swans were flying away. Searching for their dreams over the next horizon, while she remained rooted to the ground.

“No,” she whispered, her gaze tracking the beautiful creatures. One of her hands half-lifted, but she couldn’t stop the swans any more than she could stop the wheel of time—a wheel that would grind her down beneath it for another five long years.

LeeAnn sank to the bench at the side of the pond, and let the tears flow.

It took Cristopoulis another hour to pull away from the kids. He felt bad, now—he could have been hosting camps all summer for these boys and girls, teaching them whatever skills he had, talking about life as a foot…well, soccer player.

Of course, that would have defeated the whole point of his efforts to hide himself away at the back edge of nowhere.

And Haralson, Minnesota really
was
nowhere. He knew that. He didn’t want to stay here. He certainly didn’t want to stick around for winter, which was already dropping hints in the crispness of the air despite the balmy midday sunshine.

He also knew that spending one night in LeeAnn Werth’s bed ultimately meant nothing. Not to him, not even to her, especially now that she’d figured out who he was. He hadn’t made that too difficult, admittedly. With his little browser maneuver. He wanted her to know who he was…he simply hadn’t been man enough to tell her himself.

Maybe when he’d first arrived at Werth Inn the secret had been worth keeping from LeeAnn. But he’d spent four
months
at her inn. He could have trusted her to be discreet at any time. And certainly the moment their relationship had turned a touch more serious, it would have been the perfect time to explain his situation in full. It would have been easy. Simple. Natural.

Instead he’d played things fast and loose, the way he’d always done.

And it had never felt so wrong as it did now.

“Sir.” The urgency in Rico’s tone underlined the honorific, and Cristopoulis blinked, refocusing. His bodyguard eyed him oddly.

“I know, I know,” Cristopoulis said, waving at the now-dispersing kids. “But we’re leaving, right? And it’s not like there’s media here.”

“There’s the internet.”

“And I’m a news story from four months ago. No one will care. It’s not going to be a thing.”

Rico shook his head. “It’s already a ‘thing,’ as you say. I received a call from Queen Catherine. She apparently pays a good deal more attention to Facebook than she should.”

He turned his tablet toward Cristopoulis, and shook it. “See what she’s seen, then you are to call her.”