arranged marriage. In this day and age? Who was he kidding?
Maybe he was crazy. Not a raving lunatic, but slightly off. Madness ran in the royal bloodlines of several European countries; she remembered that from history class. Just her luck. A whole, perfectly fine country, and the first person she ran into was their off-his-rocker prince.
They slowed for a sharp turn. She opened her mouth to talk some reason into the two men, but what happened next froze her. She watched the scene unfold, her body immobile from the terror she felt.
Two cars plowed through traffic and pulled to a screeching halt next to their motorcade. Two men got out. One pointed a grenade launcher at the limo behind them that was supposed to carry her entourage but was empty instead, save for the driver. The guy blew it to pieces.
Just blew it up without warning.
Fire shot to the sky.
Car parts rained to the pavement.
She might have screamed. She couldn’t hear her own voice, deafened by the explosion.
The guy pointed the grenade launcher at their car next.
If she’d had command of her limbs, she would have been hiding under the seats by now.
The prince opened the door and got out with murder on his face to confront the armed men. He stood tall and straight, focused on the attackers. “This is not necessary. I will come of my own will and listen to your demands.” His voice was clipped, betraying the restraint it took for him to just stand there.
He let himself be disarmed, but with enough tension radiating from him that she thought his control might break at any second and he would attack. She felt disconnected from the whole scene as if she were watching it on a movie screen. Her mind was numb with shock.
“No further violence is necessary.” His voice was tempered steel.
And for a moment, she wasn’t sure whether he was trying to convince the attackers or himself.
“I’ll go with you. We leave them here,” he stated.
“Everyone’s coming.” One guy kept his gun trained on the prince while another reached in and yanked Judi from the safety of the limo.
Faced with a grenade launcher, she didn’t have it in her to resist. She went like a rag doll.
The chancellor scampered to the far end of the expansive seat and wedged himself in. They would have needed a crane to move the man. The attacker pointed the grenade launcher at him.
She caught the prince shift on his feet and get ready to make his move, so she prepared to duck, knowing all hell would break loose in a second. But then, unexpectedly, the ceremonial army guard opened fire. Bullets pinged off the pavement and the cars.
The kidnappers gave up on the chancellor, and Judi was unceremoniously shoved into the back of a van, along with His Highness. Then the van took off, the attackers returning fire, swerving all over the road so badly that she banged against the van’s side.
She grabbed on to the one thing available for leverage—the prince. She could feel the flexing of an impressive amount of muscle under his military jacket, but there was no time to appreciate that now. The van swerved as bullets exploded all around it.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
She’d been wrong, she thought. The prince wasn’t the only nut in the place. The whole country was insane.
She so should not have come here. She yelped as the gunfire intensified. She could see little in the dim van, the prince’s wide chest pretty much filling her field of vision. She prayed that the bullets wouldn’t break through the back door and hit them. She hung on even tighter as he put an arm around her and braced them with his feet to stop from bouncing. He held them both safe by sheer strength and will.
She was not impressed. All she could think of was that she should have gone with her first idea and celebrated her twenty-ninth birthday in Puerto Vallarta instead.
HIS HANDS WERE TIED behind his back and he was blindfolded, but his feet were free, so Miklos walked his prison to get a sense of it. When he bumped into something, he turned around to feel it. A chair. Which he catalogued as a possible makeshift weapon before he moved on.
“Where are we? It’s freezing,” Lady Judit asked from somewhere nearby.
“Up in the mountains.” He had no idea beyond that. The van had had no windows, and the men had blindfolded them before taking them out of the vehicle and into a building. He figured about two or three hours had passed since their kidnapping.
“The country’s security forces are out in full force looking for us. And probably most of the army. General Rossi would see to that,” he said to reassure her. “Lady Judit—”
“For heaven’s sake, can you at least call me Judi?” she snapped.
She really did have a difficult nature. “Judi. Please do not fear. I’m going to protect you.” A prince remained valiant under all circumstances. A lesson drummed into the six Kerkay brothers from early childhood by the chancellor.
She snorted.
Which drew him up short. He didn’t think a true princess would snort. Yet he couldn’t deny that he kind of liked her irreverent, spirited nature. Heaven help him. He would have been able to appreciate—he corrected himself—an irreverent and spirited nature in about any other woman, but not his bride, who would be a princess of the kingdom.
He moved forward and bumped into a table, thought about Chancellor Hansen. Worry filled him for the old man. There’d been a gunfight after he and Judi had been thrust into the van. He wondered how the chancellor had fared.
“Why did they bring us here?” she was asking.
He wasn’t sure he should tell her. But the fact was, she was here now, her life in jeopardy because of him. She deserved to know. He finally reached a wall and moved alongside it, turned his back to feel for a window with his tied hands.
“I was informed this morning that there’s an assassination plot against my brother, the crown prince.” As if Arpad hadn’t had a rough-enough month already. His chopper had nearly gone down two weeks before, due to malfunction. He’d been on his way to a ceremonial troop inspection. He was lucky he was still alive.
In hindsight, fresh suspicion arose that the accident could have been planned. But no, a special investigative team had gone over every last screw of the chopper after the incident. Miklos had read their report. Thoroughly.
“I’m in the army. Of the six princes, I’m the most involved with security. Could be whoever is behind the plot wants me out of the way so it’d be easier for him to get to Arpad.”
A long silence followed his response. Then, “Why am I here?”
“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said with regret.
“Funny, but I’ve had that feeling ever since the plane landed,” she said in a droll tone.
The corner of his mouth twitched up.
