searched her eyes. Jazmine’s panic grew as he seemed to be looking past her projected calm. Seeing more than she wanted him to.
‘Of course, Your Highness. I’m at your service.’ Just as slow, seeming almost insolent, he rose from the chair, stood and held an arm out to her as he’d seen Max do.
He was a quick learner when he wanted to be…but the challenge in his eyes told her the changes would come only in his time and way.
This man definitely had hidden depths—and, as he’d said to Grandfather, it was a mistake to underestimate him.
‘Do the goons get in line every time you move?’ he said in a conversational tone as they headed to a parlour, and four Secret Service people followed at a discreet distance.
‘Actually, two of them are yours. They’re here to protect you.’ Resisting the urge to pull her arm from his—the Secret Service would report the disharmony to Grandfather—she checked his reaction.
Bad mistake. The brows were up over laughing, derisive eyes. ‘Protect me? A little, five-foot-four Miss Perfect is going to take me down? I need help handling you?’
She nodded at their combined minders to step outside, then closed the parlour door behind them. ‘I’m five-foot three,’ she retorted, intensely aware of keeping her dignity. ‘And, though we both know it isn’t me you need protection from, I have a green belt in karate.’ She could also fly a jet and combat swim: they were basic requirements for the royal heirs of Hellenia.
She wondered if that would pique his interest; he was a man of action after all. How would he take it if he knew that both she and Max, whom he saw as pampered royals, could do all he did and then some?
Charlie grinned. ‘Are you going to bring me to the mat? Want to know how many ways I could take you down, princess?’
She shook herself. This half-sexual banter put her in a ridiculous situation; it was beneath her. ‘We’ve just come out of ten years of civil war. There were ten million people in Hellenia fifteen years ago. We’re down to eight million. Lord Orakis tends to eliminate competition in violent ways, and you and I both stand in his way. The king doubled the protection of all the royal family three years ago.’ After the palace attack. And she intended to change the over-the-top protection levels, too, if—when—she became queen. He had to listen to her. He had to.
Charlie’s brows lifted again, and she guessed he was digesting another facet to his unwanted elevation in status.
She sat down. ‘We should get comfortable. There are things you need to know.’
‘Shake out the list, it’s miles long.’ His tone was as dry as new wine as he sat opposite her. It seemed he was a man who liked his personal distance. ‘We might need to ask the goons to bring in dinner and breakfast while they’re out there doing nothing.’
The words made her hesitate; he was already on edge, and obviously didn’t want to belong here. She abandoned her original, perhaps too harsh, words. ‘Life is very different here—’
He laughed, hard-edged. Words couldn’t adequately describe the wealth of half-repressed emotions it held.
Trying again, she forced herself to hold to her resolve. He’d been here less than an hour and he’d been threatened, had been given veiled bribes, and told he had no rights. A man like Charlie was bound to react badly to that. ‘No doubt you’ve been brought up very differently to those of us within the royal family, but you’re no longer in Australia.’
‘Gee, thanks, Dorothy. If I could find my red shoes I’d disappear back to my life and career, and make everyone’s lives easier.’ He cocked his very handsome head back in the general direction of the door. ‘His Furious Majesty’s less than impressed with the new heir.’
Strange that his speech sounded so arrogant, yet she heard rough exhaustion, and his acceptance that Grandfather was right to be unimpressed. ‘I’m trying to help you, but you’re not making it easy,’ she said, repressing the urge to grit her teeth.
At once his face and deep, velvety eyes softened, and again Jazmine felt that odd loss of emotional equilibrium. She felt less princess, and more…
‘I’m sorry, princess. I’m sure you’re as unhappy with this situation as I am.’ He swept a hand over the suit. ‘Even in the borrowed threads, I’m nobody’s idea of a prince. Believe me, I know. I’ve had enough ex-girlfriends informing me of the fact.’
Oh, but you could be, she almost said, but he was obviously uncomfortable in his new skin. Showing him possibilities, or ordering him around, it would be alienation to him.
No, just alien. He can’t be expected to see life as I’ve been bred to do.
Charlie had grown up ignorant of his heritage, in a modest four-bedroom brick home he’d occupied with his sister and friend until two days ago. Instead of years of royal training and sterling education at an international school and Oxford, or perhaps Yale or Harvard, he’d gone to a local high-school and had gone into fireman and paramedic training. He was a Marandis only in name. No, in Charlie’s mind, he was a fireman from the backblocks of Sydney. He’d had no time to adjust, saw no reason to adjust.
Grandfather had made a tactical error in his peremptory summons and enforced extraditions of this pair. He expected Charlie to obey orders he didn’t understand, to see his expected future as an honour, and accept his position when he had no idea what that future and position entailed. He’d made a mistake in expecting Charlie to bow to the royal will without full knowledge of why he and Lia were so necessary to the continuation of the Marandis royal family.
And, to Jazmine’s mind, wanting him to be a traditional Marandis was as impractical as it was counterproductive to the future she had planned.
‘Do you mind?’
Startled out of her plans, she looked at the cause of her hope and confusion. He’d shrugged off his jacket, and was tugging at his tie.
To her surprise, she smiled. ‘Only if I can take off these heels. You have no idea how much they hurt after a couple of hours’ standing.’
He grinned. ‘Go for it. I won’t tell.’ He tugged at his tie and pulled it off, then undid the top three buttons on his shirt, and rolled up his sleeves. ‘Hasn’t this place got air-conditioning?’
‘This house is almost four hundred years old.’ Charlie’s untamed golden masculinity, exposed in the open column of his shirt, emptied her head of everything but the need to stare her fill; to cover her pounding heart she added with would-be calmness, ‘The real palace does, but we haven’t lived there in a few years. It’s still being repaired.’ She half-expected him to ask why it was taking so long, or make a caustic comment on spoiled royals wanting everything perfect.
Instead, he said gently, ‘I’m sorry.’
Confused again, she lifted her brows in query.
He smiled at her. ‘Lady Eleni told us about the palace fire-attack during the war, and your father’s and brother’s deaths so soon after the war ended. It’s no wonder you agreed to this engagement. Security’s not to be sneezed at after all you’ve been through.’
Moved yet unnerved by kindness from a stranger, she turned her face. ‘I barely knew
