way clear to his only son being a beachcomber. And I liked it better when you called me Russell. No fanfare,” he reminded her.
“No fanfare,” she repeated with a nod, then forced her mind back on the conversation and not on the fact that somehow, during the years since she had last seen him, Russell had come into the possession of a very muscular-looking body. “Beachcomber,” she echoed. “Do they still have that sort of thing?”
He laughed. The moonlight wove through her hair, turning it the color of pale wheat. He caught himself just before he began to raise his hand to touch it. He’d been sent to bring her back, not to familiarize himself with the packaging. “If I had anything to say about it, they would.”
God help her, she could see him, lying on the beach, wearing the briefest of bathing suits, the tide bringing the waves just up to his toes, gently lapping his tanned skin.
She had to swallow twice to counteract the dryness in her mouth. It was a credit to her breeding and training that she could continue without dropping the thread of the conversation.
“Seriously, if you don’t like the attention, Russell,” she emphasized his name and he nodded with a smile in response, sending her pulse up another notch, “there had to be something else that you could have become.”
He shook his head. He knew better. “Not with my lineage. Besides, someone needs to be there to temper the prince.”
She looked at him for a long moment. There was more to the man than just practical jokes and devastating good looks. Or was he ultimately cut out of the same cloth as Reginald and just bragging?
“And you can do that?”
Russell heard the skepticism in her voice. Not that he blamed her. He had no reputation by choice. Reginald’s was international.
“I have a modest success rate, but in comparison, it’s still better than anyone else’s.” He didn’t want to talk about Reginald. Not tonight. There was more than enough time for that later. He looked at her, thinking about what she had just done. “You thought I was an intruder.”
“Yes, obviously.” As she moved her shoulder, the robe began to slip off. She tugged it back into place, aware that he had looked at the exposed area. That he was still looking. She felt naked. And unashamed at the same time.
“Why didn’t you get someone from security?” Russell asked.
Pride had her lifting her chin defiantly. She wasn’t a helpless little girl anymore. “Because I could handle it myself.”
She hadn’t struck him as being reckless, but tackling him like that hadn’t been the act of a intelligent person. “You’re the princess,” he pointed out. “It doesn’t behoove you to take chances.”
Amelia rolled her eyes. Was he like all the rest of them? Why wouldn’t he be? she challenged silently. He was part of Reginald’s inner circle. “Oh, please, no lectures.” And then she sighed. It was a losing battle. “Or if you feel you simply must, take a number. There are a few people ahead of you.”
“Such as?”
She saw his lips curving. Was he laughing at her? Having fun at her expense? Try as she might to take offense, she couldn’t. There was something about his smile … But then, there always had been.
“Such as my father. His advisors. It seems these days, everyone feels they have to tell me what my duty is.”
“I won’t,” he promised, dropping the subject for now. And then he looked at her, compassion filling his eyes. “You’re not having an easy time of it, are you, princess?”
She thought of denying it, of saying everything was fine and that she had no idea what he was talking about. But everything wasn’t fine and, very possibly, never would be again. Not once she left for Silvershire and married Reginald.
With a feeling of longing wrapped in futility, she thought of the past. “Things were a lot simpler when all I had to worry about was ducking out of the way of water balloons and checking my bed half a dozen times to make sure I didn’t find any surprises in it before I got in.”
He laughed. He’d been a hellion back then, all right. The thing was, he couldn’t really say he regretted it. Teasing Amelia was the one way he had of making her notice him. He had no crown in his arsenal, but he had been clever and he’d used his wiles to his advantage. He remembered how wide those violet eyes could get.
“These days, I’m sure the surprises in your bed are far more pleasant,” he told her. “And come with less legs.”
The moment the words were out, he waited for the anger to gather in her eyes, the indignation to appear on her face. Without meaning to, he’d crossed a line. But he’d always had a habit of being too frank and with Amelia, he’d felt instantly too comfortable to censor himself.
She surprised him by exhibiting no annoyance at his assumption. “The only thing my bed contains, besides sheets and blankets, is me.”
The moment was recovered nicely. “The prince will be very happy to hear that.”
As if she cared what made that thoughtless ape happy, Amelia thought darkly. “Speaking of the prince, why didn’t he come himself?”
He’d expected her to ask and shrugged vaguely. “He had business to attend to.” If it were him, he added silently, nothing on heaven or earth would have kept him from coming for her.
Amelia laughed shortly. “What is her name? Or doesn’t he know?”
Russell looked at his prince’s intended bride for a long moment. For all his wealth and fame, he’d never envied Reginald. Until this moment. “You’re a lot more worldly than I remember.”
“You remember a thirteen-year-old girl who was afraid of her own shadow.” Her eyes held his. “I’m not afraid of my shadow anymore.”
He rubbed his jaw where her head had hit against it just before recognition had set in for her. For him, it had been immediate, because he’d followed the stories about her that appeared in the newspapers. Stories that were as different from the ones about Reginald as a robin was from the slug it occasionally ate. While stories about Reginald went on about his various less than tasteful escapades, hers told of her humanitarian efforts.
“I noticed,” he replied with an appreciative, warm laugh.
Amelia felt the laugh traveling straight to the center of her abdomen, before it seemed to spread to regions beyond, like a sunbeam landing on a rock, then widening as the sun’s intensity increased.
She cleared her throat and looked back toward the palace. It was obvious that he had to have come through there to wind up here. “How did you get into the palace?”
She watched as a smile entered his eyes, shadowing a memory. “Remember that old underground passage you once showed me?”
Amelia’s eyes widened. He was referring to something that was forever burned into her memory. She’d slipped away from her nanny, leaving the poor woman to deal with Reginald, while she took it upon herself to share her secret discovery with Russell. It was the one bold incident she remembered from her childhood.
Remembered
