The Star Princess (7 page)

"This is such a Cinderella tale! Would you be willing to appear on the show? We'll do an interview, tour your home." Rose turned to her cameraman. "We'll need a shot of her in the kitchen, cooking a romantic, alien dinner for two," she suggested.

Ilana's vision blurred, either from hunger or from shock. Linda was inching her toward her car door.

"We look forward to having you on the show, Ms. Hamilton," Rose called. She winked. "And to finding out who your lucky guy is."

"But there is no— "

Before Ilana could finish, Linda shoved her into the Lura, locking her in and scurrying around to the other side. Linda leaped into the passenger seat.

Ilana looked at her. "Aren't you going to buckle my seatbelt, too?"

"Drive," Linda ordered. "Before you talk yourself into trouble."

"With you or them?"

"Drive."

Ilana started the engine. As she pulled into the street, she tried to smile at Rose, though she suspected it looked more like a grimace.

"Why did you have to say that, Linda— that I've been instructed on what to say? No one has instructed me in anything. That's only going to whet their curiosity."

"It's already whetted, Ilana. It has been for months. Only now that the guests have been invited to your brother's wedding, the pressure from the press is going to heat up. You're the only one in your family who lives on Earth. And the only one who's single. You're a natural target."

Ilana felt the unfairness of it all overwhelm her. "I don't want to be a target. I just want to live my life. And you didn't let me tell them that."

"You're whining."

Ilana gripped the steering wheel. "Damn right, I'm whining. I deserve to whine." The flying clinic, the invitation, and now this? All she wanted to do was crawl home and hide, order Chinese and listen to the surf. "Besides, I've always been able to whine to you," she added with a pleading smile.

Linda pushed aside Ilana's hair so she could see her face. "And you always can," she agreed. A second later she added, "I'm sorry about the whetting. I just said the first thing that popped into my mind. I'm a book reviewer and your personal assistant. A retired teacher. I never said I was a press agent."

Keeping her eyes on the road, Ilana shook her head. Then she reached across the seat and squeezed the woman's hand. "I'll drive around a bit, give the news folks a chance to clear out. Then I'll take you back to your car."

"Whatever it takes. I'm in no hurry."

Ilana gave Linda's hand one last squeeze. "Thanks."

They drove up and down the backstreets. She merged onto the freeway, heading back in the opposite direction, blankly, as if she were driving on autopilot.

Her heart skipped a beat. Autopilot. Airplanes. Spaceships.

Stop!

The beginnings of a headache pressed behind her eyes. Cheesecake and a glass of Chardonnay were hell on an empty stomach. The last thing she needed was a carb overdose when she was stressing.

Her thoughts swung back to the news people. "She called me Earth's Cinderella-heiress."

"Well, you are, technically, an heiress, Ilana. To the galaxy's richest family."

Ilana frowned. She'd never thought of herself as an heiress. It wasn't denial, exactly; she just hadn't made that mental leap with regard to her identity. Heiresses were people whose names ended in Woolworth or Rockefeller, not women who bought supermarket shampoo and used those dryer sheets to save on dry cleaning bills.

She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "Word on the street. The reporter said that, too. What the heck did she mean? I haven't heard anything."

"Neither have I, if it makes you feel better."

Ilana had been combing newspapers, magazines, TV, and the Web, looking for inspiration for a new film, but nothing had yet sparked her interest. She'd felt so… uninspired. Scriptwriters suffered writer's block. This must be filmmaker's block. But if there had been gossip about her, she would have seen it.

She hoped tonight's incident didn't mean that her privacy had come to an end. Other than an unlisted number and an assumed name on her mailbox, she hadn't needed to do much to stay anonymous, despite her family's high profile. Had that now changed?

A strange suffocating sensation enveloped her.

"Are you okay?" Linda asked.

Ilana huffed, "If they think they're going to discover any gossip-column tidbits about my social life over the next six months, they're going to be very disappointed."

And if they expected to see her hanging on some alien prince's arm, they were dreaming.

It was after eleven when Ilana finally pulled into the carport below her building, across the street from the beach in Santa Monica. Twenty condominiums had been salvaged from what used to be an old office complex. Although the building had a chronological age of seventy years, remodeling had made its age feel closer to five. Ilana had lived in her condo for three.

It was early for a Friday night. Most of the other tenants' spaces were empty. Ilana gathered her purse, slipped her shoes back on. Then she noticed an unfamiliar car parked by the curb.

Its engine was off. Its interior lights were on. A lone man sat inside, watching her.

Darkness shadowed his features. Cole? No. Cole didn't drive a black Porsche. Neither did any of the other men she'd dated recently… that she knew of. She had no idea who this dude was, only that his unwavering attention was doing a bang-up job of giving her the creeps.

She shoved her hair out of her eyes. Great, just great. A stalker would be the perfect ending to a perfect day.

Keeping an eye on the Porsche, Ilana slipped her hand into her purse and closed her fingers over a cold, metallic tube. With the can of pepper spray armed and ready, she opened the car door and stepped out.

The stranger's car door opened, too.

Shit. He was dressed from head to toe in black. The self-important way he carried himself spoke volumes about his confidence in his strength and purpose. And he was tall and solid enough to assure her that he could kick some butt if he wanted to.

Stop it. She was letting her thoughts run away from her. She did that when she was nervous. Nervous, yes. Not scared. She wasn't scared.

She slammed her car door behind her, locked it, and strode toward her front door as if she meant business. A salty sea breeze caught her hair and blew it around her face.

Her condo was two flights up. She reached the alcove where the stairs began, paused to see if the man had followed her.

He had.

Her heart lurched, dumping a bucketful of adrenaline into her bloodstream. Yet her mounting fear didn't come close to what she'd experienced in Flying Without Fear for Dummies. While flying was a no-go, stalkers she could handle.

Yes, she acknowledged silently— stalker. As far as she was concerned, this guy was a threat. Anyone who dressed in black and followed women in the middle of the night qualified.

Adding to her heebie-jeebies were the sunglasses she could now see that he wore.

Shades? At night? Worse, they were mirrored wraparounds. But he hadn't tripped over the trashcan; nor had he stepped on any of the dog mines littering the wide swath of grass that separated the sidewalk from the building. He was obviously able to see.

Smooth. He was definitely smooth. He reminded her of a highly paid hit man— not that she'd ever seen one, but she had a good imagination. Too good, and it was freaking the daylights out of her. Not that anyone she knew could afford a professional— they'd have hired some guy named Eddie, a down-on-his-luck ex-con with a potbelly and type-H diabetes.

But what if someone she didn't know wished her harm?

Her thoughts sped off in a new direction. She was an heiress now. If the reporter saw her that way, others did, too. Heiresses got kidnapped and held for ransom. Her address was private, but it wouldn't be too hard to figure out.

Enough! She dropped a roadblock in front of her racing thoughts and hurried up the stairs. Halfway to the landing she whirled around, dismayed to find that in only a few, long, determined strides the man had reached the bottom of the staircase and was now half-hidden in the shadow of her building.

Her grip on the can of pepper spray didn't relax.

"Ilana Hamilton," the stranger called.

His voice was accented, almost monotone. It was Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, to a tee. A robotic assassin from the future, the Terminator had hunted down all the Sarah Connors in the Los Angeles phone book, each time asking, "Sarah Connor?" as confirmation before he blew their brains out. In Ilana's opinion, the similarities to this situation were not funny.

"This is a joke, isn't it?" she replied.

The stranger looked confused. Ah, he was good, really good— probably an actor, making some weekend money while he looked for work.

"Come on," she guessed. This is Flash's idea, right?" Her friend had a habit of practical jokes, most that only he thought were funny. The year she moved in, he'd paid a Mexican trio from a local restaurant to sing cheesy love songs— she wasn't fluent in Spanish and took his word regarding the lyrics— under her balcony. One birthday, he'd sent a male stripper who'd peeled off his clothes right down to the cluster of prettily curled ribbons he'd tied on his—

She gave her head a shake. The neighbors had loved it.

But, delivering a dark stranger to scare her late at night when he knew she was alone? Flash wouldn't do that.

"Flash… ?" The stranger brought his hand to his chin.

It was a suave, almost aristocratic-looking gesture. There was something vaguely familiar about it. Maybe she had dated this guy. No, he exuded sophistication, confidence. And sex. She would have remembered him.

He dropped his hand slowly. His mirrored glasses glinted. "My apologies. I don't have all my English yet."

"Well, good luck in finding it," she called cheerily and clicked the digital keypad on her keychain. Her front door unlocked with a sharp click. Her escape route was ready.

"Wait. Please."

Breathless, she turned back to the man who stood too few steps below her. She'd bolt into her condo if he made any attempt to charge up the stairs, but he didn't.

A porchlight made a circle of brighter illumination near the base of the stairs, and the stranger stepped slowly into it. Ilana squinted at him, trying to discern features, scats, tattoos— any identifying characteristics that she could pass along to the police when they asked.

He had an angular jaw and sculpted cheekbones. His smooth skin reminded her of the color one turned when one overdid sunless tanning cream. But there were no streaks. His was the real thing. In contrast to his bronzed skin, his hair was blond, but warm and dark like cinnamon sticks.

Exactly the color of her stepfather Rom's hair.

Her heart rate picked up. With those glasses covering his eyes, he could pass for a Vash Nadah.

She almost snorted. Right. Vash Nadah didn't bebop around Santa Monica on a Friday night. Or any night.

Despite the ridiculousness of the idea, Ilana took a closer look at him.

He was dressed expensively and well— Armani, if she wasn't mistaken— in a black, conservatively cut suit. But it was more than the clothing that unnerved her; the stranger carried himself with the aloof arrogance characteristic of galactic royal men.

Or rich sheiks from Arabia. Hmm. Good point. That he was a wealthy foreigner was more likely, though no less bizarre. No Vash Nadah would chase her down at night, alone, unless his intent was to assassinate her— a theory too far-fetched for even her worst-case-scenario mind to consider. She wasn't a threat to the Vash Nadah; she wasn't even a blip on their xenophobic radar. Unlike the rest of her family, she stayed out of politics and galactic affairs. She lived anonymously on Earth, and intended to continue doing so. The Vash would have figured that out by now.

Oblivious to the fact that she'd just processed five hours of mental information in 3.0 seconds— "thought warp," her brother Ian called it— the rich sheik/highly paid assassin/garden-variety creep wrapped his hand around the banister.

Ilana aimed her pepper spray. "Talk to me from down there."

He obeyed with the utmost deference. "Ilana Hamilton." He sounded less sure now. "She lives here, yes?"

"Why?"

"She is to assist me."

"I am? "You have fifteen seconds to tell me why you're here and what you want, and then I'm shutting the door."

He hesitated long enough to worry her. "You are Ilana. Ian did not tell you?"

Tell me what?" She gripped the pepper spray so tightly that she briefly wondered if she'd explode the can. Women had been known to lift cars off injured children. It could happen.

The man rubbed his face as if he were exhausted. Well, that made two of them. If it weren't for him, she'd be in bed by now.

"Ah. I see this problem now," he said.

"What freaking problem?" Her patience was shot.

"You did not expect me. My apologies."

Off came the glasses, revealing a pair of startlingly pale gold eyes. She wanted to suck in a breath, but her diaphragm didn't seem to be working.

Pressing one fist over his chest, the man bowed his head. "Ché, firstborn prince of the Vedlas," he introduced himself.

Ché? Ilana's finger convulsed over the can of pepper spray. A burst of orange-red gas hissed out.

"Oh— !" She released the button, dropping the can, but too late. The cylinder bounced down the stairs toward Ché, a gust of wind pushing the small, rapidly dispersing cloud of mist in precisely the same direction.

Chapter Five

"Move away! That way!" Her eyes wide with alarm, Ilana Hamilton ran down the stairs. "It's… "

She continued speaking English so rapidly that Ché lost the meaning of her words. But he knew enough to turn his head and close his mouth as the mist passed by.

Ilana shoved him away from the staircase and onto the turf. "I'm so sorry," she cried, throwing her weight into him.

He inhaled when she thumped into his ribcage. A whiff of her scent— subtle, sweet— came to him, chased by a bitter odor that burned its way down his throat.