McKinnon's Royal Mission (16 page)

“Do you think I care about that?” she asked intensely. “Do not talk to me about whose job it is to protect whom when I know I am more to you than a job.”

He swallowed hard and turned his back on her so he didn’t have to see her pain. It had to be now—he would never have a better opportunity. But he couldn’t look into her eyes and lie to her. “No,” he said. “You’re a job. One I should have taken more seriously. That’s why I’m angry you risked your life. If anything had happened to you it would be a black mark against me, and I could kiss my career goodbye.”

She hesitated. “And love? Where does that fit in?”

Still with his back to her, he pretended he was staring out at the landscape through the window even though it was nearly too dark to see anything except his own reflection. The face of the man in the glass was the face of a stranger. As if he were standing outside of himself Trace answered, “It doesn’t.”

She moved quickly, coming to stand in front of him, forcing him to look at her. The expression in her eyes was one he’d seen once before, the night she’d struggled to save Suleiman. And he knew she wasn’t giving up without a fight, not when she loved him with every fiber of her being. Exactly what he’d feared. “I love you,” she said in a rush. “You must know. And you love me.”

“That’s what I was afraid you were thinking. That’s why I’ve asked to be reassigned.”

“Reassigned?” She stared at him in shock. “You...you are leaving?”

He nodded. “I’ll finish out this month, but come January someone else will replace me on the team guarding you.” When she didn’t say anything he tried to break it off gently. “What you feel isn’t love, Princess. You would have felt the same toward any man who—”

She cut him off, her voice low and fierce. “No!”

He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Toward any man who showed you what your body was capable of. It just happened to be me. But don’t fool yourself it’s love you’re feeling—you would react the same way with any other man.”

“You cannot believe that,” she whispered, obviously appalled. “I could never...no other man...”

Her expression tore at him, weakening his resolve, and he had to remind himself of all the reasons why they could never be together. “Okay, maybe what we had wasn’t just...sex.” He caught himself before he could reach out and caress her cheek at the stricken look in her eyes. “Maybe it was...special...in its own way. But it was going to end sooner or later. We both knew that. A year from now you’ll look back on this as a pleasant interlude, but not something to build a life on. You’ll meet someone you really love, and forget all about—”

“That is not true!”

He overrode her vehement interruption. “You’ll forget all about the special agent assigned to guard you. Just as I’ll forget about you.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head with determination. “You love me.” She placed her hand over her heart and tapped lightly. “I know it here. You will not forget me any more than I will forget you.”

He schooled his expression into one as hard as his voice. “I don’t love you.”

“You are lying to me.” Her voice broke as she pleaded, “Why are you lying to me?”

“Why can’t you just accept the truth?” he said harshly. “I had a job to do. That’s all. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of your inexperience, but I did, and I’m sorrier than I can ever tell you. I broke a cardinal rule in my line of work—never let yourself get personally involved. Never let yourself fall—” he corrected himself quickly “—get attached to the person you’re guarding. I regret it more than you’ll ever know, and it has to end. I’m moving on. End of story.”

She took a step toward him. “You are not like that,” she whispered on the edge of tears. “I
know
you are not. You are lying and I want to know why.” She stared at him for endless seconds. Then a light came into her eyes, her face. “You are trying to be noble. Yes! That is like you. You think I have not thought it through, loving you, and you are trying to be noble. But you are wrong. I—”

Desperate to convince her, Trace said brutally, “You just don’t get it, do you? Do I have to draw you a picture? The State Department didn’t just
happen
to pick me to be your bodyguard. I’m not a DSS agent like the Jones brothers—they couldn’t just assign me. They had to borrow me from the agency I really work for. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Walker.”

She stared at him. “Why?” She barely breathed the question. “Why did they...”

“Because women find me attractive, damn it!” He threw the words at her like stones, and he suddenly realized he could tell her the truth...the truth that was also a lie, but which just might do the trick. “Because they wanted me to seduce you!”

She stood there pale and still, as if carved in marble. Then she blinked. “Seduce...” She shook her head slowly. “I...I must be very stupid because I do not... Why? Why me?”

“Leverage,” he said, with a cynical twist to his lips. “Zakhar is politically important, and...” He let her fill in the blanks for herself.

“Leverage.” There was no emotion in her voice. No tears in her eyes. Just a face deathly white. “Then...those times at your cabin...?”

“You made my job easy.” Trace bitterly regretted that statement as soon as he’d uttered it, and he wanted to take it back. But it was already too late.

She blinked again, but that was the only sign she’d heard him. “I...see,” she said eventually, her eyes very dark in her pale, expressionless face. She opened her mouth to speak, and for just a second her bottom lip quivered, but she caught it with her teeth and bit it into submission. There was blood on her lip when her teeth finally let it go, and she asked in a voice barely above a whisper, “Photographs?”

Raw pain savaged him, talons ripping into his heart. He couldn’t have lied to her about that to save his soul. But his silence was enough.

“I see,” she said again. She stood immobile for a moment, her lips parted as if she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t. The thin line of blood on her bottom lip bore mute testimony to the control she had exerted on herself. Then she licked her lips, tasting the blood there, and Trace tasted despair when he saw it.

Mara touched a finger to her lip as if she’d just realized what she’d done, then stared at the blood on her fingertip for endless seconds. She whispered something in Zakharan that sliced through Trace like a razor, but she’d already turned away and didn’t see his reaction.

He fought the overwhelming desire to call her back, to tell her it was all lies, every word, that he loved her more than life itself. That he would
never
betray her love in that degrading fashion. But he’d chosen his course deliberately. He
had
to be cruel in order to drive her away. Now, before it was too late. Before she ended up dead or injured again because of him. Before he took what she ached to give him and he ached to have.

His eyes burned, but at first he didn’t recognize what it meant—it was so long since he’d cried. But he knew he would never forget her last words to him. Would never forget the desolate emptiness in her voice when she said, “I should have known I could not be loved.”

Chapter 15

M
ara stood at her bedroom window, staring out at nothing in the gathering darkness. Wondering why everything seemed so distant. Wondering why the woman reflected in the pane of glass didn’t weep. She touched her right hand to the image on the glass, and wondered why she didn’t feel the cold seeping through the window to her skin. Wondered why she felt absolutely nothing.

She glanced at her bandaged left hand, but it was as if it belonged to someone else—another woman, not her. Some other woman had grabbed at the knife to push it away from the heart of the man she loved. Some other woman had felt the blade slice into her flesh. Some other woman had felt the blood gush, warm and sticky, between the fingers she clenched tightly against the blood and pain. And some other woman had anxiously asked Trace,
You are okay? He did not hurt you?

Some other woman. Not her.

She leaned her forehead against the cold window, and her warm breath misted the glass, hiding her reflection from view. Somewhere beneath her frozen emotions something moved, and memories crowded in. Memories that made her shiver as the cold could not. Memories that threatened her fragile control.

Trace touching her with loving, lying hands, stroking her, making her cry out his name as pleasure burst through her body for the first time.
Click.
And a photograph was taken. Herself bending over Trace, touching him with her hands, her lips, taking him into her mouth and loving him the only way she could think of, the only way he would let her.
Click.
And a photograph was taken. Trace caressing her bare nipples through the veil of her hair, making her tremble with a rolling tide of love and desire.
Click.
And a photograph was taken.

Each click in her head was like a lash against her heart, and she flinched again and again, fighting the memories and what they meant. Fighting to keep the pain at bay. Fighting to keep the ice shield in place. Because what lay on the other side of that shield was too terrible to contemplate.

Click. Click. Click.

Suddenly she knew she couldn’t stay here. Not another day. She would rather smash the window and slash her wrists against the shards of glass than see Trace again, knowing the truth about him...and about herself. The truth her father had tried to teach her. The truth Andre had repeatedly denied. The truth she’d fought against accepting when she’d fallen in love with Trace and resolved to earn his love if she could. Until now.

Worthless. Nothing as herself, just a tool, a means to an end, a way of controlling her brother. A way of insuring his “loyalty.” Just a pawn in someone’s macabre, twisted game of political espionage.

Click. Click. Click.

She darted to the purse she’d dumped with her briefcase on the chair by her bed when she’d come home from work, and fumbled in it until she found her cell phone. She thought for a moment, trying but failing to remember what time it was in Zakhar. Then she realized it didn’t matter, and pressed the one number she had on speed dial.

After a minute a deep voice sounded in her ear in the musical cadence of Zakharan...the sound of home. “Mara?” Andre asked, and though he didn’t say it she knew she had woken him. When she didn’t answer, he asked, “What is it,
dernya
?
Is something wrong?”

The loving concern, the use of the endearing nickname only he used, shattered the ice encasing her. “Andre,” she began, but then tears clogged her throat and she sobbed.

“Mara!” She could hear the anguish in the way he spoke her name, and knew she had to tell him...something.

She sank to her knees beside the chair, her legs no longer able to support her, and fought the sobs wracking her body until she could speak coherently. “I need to come home,” she managed in a voice that shook with grief. “Please, Andre. Please send a plane for me. Now. Tonight. I cannot stay here. I need to come home.
Please.
”

How long she knelt by the chair after she’d hung up the phone she never knew. But her body was stiff and aching when she finally stood up. There were no more tears. Tears were a luxury she couldn’t afford. She needed to start preparing to leave, needed to mobilize her household, needed to think of everything that had to be done. And to do that she needed to be strong. Strong...like Keira.
No, not like Keira.
Keira made her think of Trace. And she couldn’t think of Trace. Not now. Not ever again.

Click. Click. Click.

* * *

Trace keyed in the electronic code to open the estate’s driveway gate, and thrummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel until the gate was open and he could drive through. Then he electronically closed the gate securely behind him. He drove up the winding driveway and parked his truck in front of the guest house, noting absently that the four-wheel drive Alec drove was already parked there, but Liam’s wasn’t. His brows drew together in a frown.
Liam’s supposed to be on duty today,
he thought.
Did he and Alec switch and they forgot to tell me?

He rubbed his hand tiredly over his face—he hadn’t slept much the past few nights away. His conscience had been brutal, denying him sleep. He’d finally reached a decision this afternoon, and had hightailed it back here determined to make things right with the princess. To take back the lies he’d let her believe. Even though they still had no future, he’d hurt her more than he’d ever believed he could hurt a woman, and he would have no peace until he begged her forgiveness.

He jumped out, headed straight for the main house and rang the bell, but no one answered the door. He rang again, but still no answer. Wondering, but not really worried, not yet, he pulled out his key ring to unlock the door. But just as he was reaching for the doorknob he heard footsteps crunching in the snow behind him, and he swung around.

Alec stood there bareheaded, his jacket hanging open as if he’d just shrugged it on and hurried outside when he heard Trace’s truck. “She’s gone.”

“Gone?” Trace asked blankly, staring at the other man. “What do you mean? Why didn’t you call me? She wasn’t supposed to leave until Christmas Eve.”

“They left Saturday. Not just the princess, her entire household. And I don’t think she’s coming back. She had her horses shipped by rail to the coast and then by sea to Zakhar—her groom accompanied them.”

An icy, empty feeling settled over Trace, but Alec wasn’t finished. “She left you something,” he said, his voice as cold as Trace felt. “Liam and I drew straws to see which of us got to be the one to tell you—and I won.”

“Tell me what?”

“That whatever you did to her, we hope you’re satisfied.” Contempt mingled with repressed anger in Alec’s face and voice, and was reflected in the rigid tenseness of his muscles. “Because Liam and I—we just wanted to cry.”

Trace’s right hand slowly clenched into a fist. “Just spit it out, damn it,” he grated.

Alec shook his head. In a soft but deadly voice he said, “See for yourself. She left it in your room.”

Trace held Alec’s gaze for a minute, then stalked toward the guest house, his footsteps in the crisp snow the only sound in the stillness. Foreboding clutched at him, and a fear such as he’d never known filled his chest. When he reached his room he pushed the door open. And froze.

Alec’s words reverberated in his mind.
Liam and I—we just wanted to cry.
Now he understood what Alec had meant. Because he wanted to cry, too. Strewn across his bed was the gift she’d left him. Her hair. Her glorious honey-brown hair.
If Eve had looked like you,
he’d told her when he’d seen her naked except for those cascading waves,
Adam would have gladly left Eden.

He took two steps toward the bed, and then stopped short as her message hit him like a physical blow. She’d left it all behind. For him. Because he’d made her feel ashamed. Ashamed of every intimate moment they’d spent together. She’d hacked it off and discarded it, as if she couldn’t bear the reminder of the times he’d caressed her body through the silk of her hair, as if she couldn’t bear the reminder of how he’d wrapped her hair around his throat and breathed in the scent of her. As if she couldn’t bear any reminder of
him.

A slight sound alerted him to Alec’s presence behind him before the other man spoke from the doorway. “What the
hell
did you do to her, McKinnon?” he asked, the rage in his voice even more a challenge than his words. And a threat.

Trace didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He didn’t even turn around. He just pushed the door shut in Alec’s face and locked it. Locked himself in with his anguish. “I’m sorry, Princess,” he whispered in a ravaged voice, his eyes squeezing shut as the enormity of what he’d done washed over him. “Oh God, I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” There was no answer except the harsh sound of his tormented breathing.

* * *

Trace spent Christmas Day holed up in his cabin in Keystone. He hadn’t wanted to go back there—memories of the princess at the cabin would haunt him until the day he died—but he had nowhere else to go. His condo was sublet until June; he couldn’t possibly stay at the estate now that he was no longer guarding the princess; and although he’d long since been invited to spend Christmas with the Walkers, he couldn’t envision himself making convivial small talk with the Walkers’ other guests. Especially since two of them—Keira’s brothers, Alec and Liam—would be staring at him with the contempt decent men reserved for rapists and child molesters.

He’d brought a bottle of Johnny Walker Black along with the intention of getting wasted, but he couldn’t even bring himself to break the seal. The bottle sat unopened on the counter in the cabin’s tiny kitchen. Nor could he bring himself to start a fire in the fireplace, so he stoically sat on the sofa in the main room, staring at the cold, empty grate, huddled in his ski jacket and woolen scarf until the heater warmed up the room.

He was exhausted. His body craved the respite of dreamless sleep, but for the past five nights he’d only slept in snatches. Every time he dozed off he dreamed of the princess as he’d last seen her, her eyes huge in a face from which all color had fled. All except for that thin line of blood on her lip, crimson as she whispered her worst nightmare come true.
Photographs?

How could he have let her believe him capable of such a vile act, such a desecration of her love? She’d cried atop Mount Evans and told him
, I would turn around, and there they would be—the paparazzi.
Click. Click. Click.
I used to have nightmares when I was young...I honestly believe if I were being raped or murdered and the paparazzi were there, instead of trying to help me they would just photograph it.
He’d been desperate to break it off with her, but...he should have found another way. With the crystal clarity of hindsight he realized it would have been better to have just walked away without a word than to let her think...

And as if that memory wasn’t enough to rob him of sleep, there were her last words to him—
I should have known I could not be loved.
How did a man live with that on his conscience? How could he live with that memory and still call himself a man?

Despair ate at him. Not just the despair of knowing he’d destroyed her fragile confidence in herself as a woman. The despair of knowing he’d lost her trust, something precious, something so rare in his life there weren’t words to describe it.

It was easy to say he’d done it to protect her from his enemies. But if he was honest—
by all means, let’s be honest at last,
he told himself ruthlessly—that wasn’t the only reason. Long before he’d noticed he was being followed, he’d unilaterally decided there was no future for them.

Who gave you the right to make that decision for her...without discussion?
He would never have dreamed of doing that with his former partner. Why had he done it with Mara?

The answer, when it came, was brutal in its self-assessment—he’d judged himself as unworthy of her. Because of that, he’d callously ignored her feelings in the matter, and had determined he wouldn’t let her throw away her life...and her love...on a no-name bastard no one had wanted. Not his father. Not his mother. Not his grandparents.

No one had wanted him—the man he was inside—except her.

Pain returned in waves.
There is no such thing as a bastard child,
she’d told him with fierce determination that first time at his cabin. Was that when he’d realized it was already too late? That the battle against loving her was lost? And when she’d touched him with loving hands, giving to him so selflessly, healing him when he hadn’t even known he was wounded—was that when he’d surrendered his heart?

But not his trust. He’d never surrendered that.

Trust. His princess had freely given him her trust, but he hadn’t given her his in return. He hadn’t trusted her love, hadn’t trusted she knew what she was doing. She’d seen something in him that had torn down the barriers in her heart that had stood for most of her life. But he hadn’t believed she could see the man he really was and love him. No one else ever had, not in thirty-six years. Why should she be any different?

Harsh reality deluged him like an icy rain.
You weren’t protecting
her,
you were protecting
yourself.
That’s the real truth here. You were desperate to protect yourself from being hurt, so you hurt her instead. You drove her away so you could fool yourself you were being noble. But that was as much a lie as telling her you seduced her on command.

Like an old, old man, Trace removed his ski jacket and let it drop unheeded on the floor. He reached for the SIG SAUER nestled in his shoulder holster, drew it out, and laid it on the coffee table in front of him. Then stared at it for several long minutes. He’d known men who had taken that way out, when the pain of living had made it seem the only escape. No one he was close to, thank God, but men he’d worked side by side with in Afghanistan, men he
knew.

He’d always told himself it was the coward’s way out. Had always felt that a
real
man could tough it out, could take the worst that life dished out. He hadn’t understood. Now he realized that if he’d been a better friend, maybe those men could have confided in him. Maybe he could have made a difference. Even if only one man had changed his mind... But he had shielded himself from feeling too much all his life. Had shielded himself from getting too close to just about everyone...including his ex-wife.