imagined teenage girls swooning all across America at the sight of the crown prince, whose camera appeal was second only to his patriotic fervor.
There was scattered applause from those assembled at the Golf Resort, and the cameras panned to track the prince as he made his way to the portable podium. The image swept over several navy-suited figures in the background. Secret Service most likely, Jacob thought, and ignored the quiver in his gut and the sudden desire to stare at the screen.
He focused instead on the dartboard, where he was one bull away from his usual perfect score. He lifted the missile and felt the click as he visually connected with his target. Measured. Pulled back.
A flicker of navy suit on the screen caught his peripheral view and yanked his attention to the TV in an instant. Images jammed his brain. An hourglass shape. A chin-length swing of auburn hair too vivid to be strawberry-blond, too rich to be brassy red. Flashing green eyes and mobile lips made for kissing.
Jacob’s stomach knotted.
He threw.
He missed.
The room stilled with a collective hiss of indrawn breath as the six other bounty hunters stared at the dart quivering in the outer ring of the board. A half an inch farther out and he would have missed the board entirely. In the game of Bull, that entitled the other player to a future claim.
In five years, Jacob had never given up a future claim. Shoot, he’d only missed the bull one other time—and then he’d had a bullet wound in his arm and a temperature well over a hundred and two.
But hell and damn, he’d missed this time. Missed big.
On the television screen, Prince Nikolai spoke of patriotism and human rights, and of how his pain at working against his father was offset by the knowledge that the people of Lunkinburg needed his help. But Jacob heard the words as background noise—his whole attention was locked on the woman standing behind Secretary Cooper with a clever communications device in her ear and an I’m-all-about-the-job look on her face.
His body flashed hot then blazed to nuclear temperatures as he took a second look and realized that, yeah, it was her, all right, a heart-stopping face and mind-blowing body straight out of his past.
Isabella Gray.
HER DAY HAD STARTED well before dawn and didn’t look as though it was going to be over anytime soon.
Special Agent Isabella Gray unobtrusively shifted on her aching feet, one level of her consciousness wishing for a shower and a couple of aspirin while another, deeper level scanned the crowd and monitored the low-level chatter on the airwaves. As the single Secret Service agent overseeing the Secretary of Defense’s vacation, she’d liaised with the Montana locals for backup and security when Cooper had announced he was holding an impromptu press conference at the resort.
So far, everything seemed under control.
It had better be, she thought with a frown. She’d been up at 3:00 a.m. overseeing the last of the details. It was her event, her security, and her reputation on the line.
They didn’t call her a cojone-busting nitpicker for nothing. She didn’t tolerate screwups, either above or below her position.
And certainly not from herself.
“And so,” Prince Nikolai said into the microphone from his position between two of his personal bodyguard/advisers, “It is with both sadness and joy that I proclaim my support of the UN resolution to send troops into Lunkinburg and remove my father, King Aleksandr, from his dissolute throne.” Nikolai glanced at Secretary Cooper. “It is my fondest hope that these actions will bring to my country the great peace and prosperity enjoyed by the people of the U.S., such as Secretary Cooper and his lovely family.”
At that, the two men shared a handshake while reporters shouted easily ignored questions.
Secretary Cooper shook his head. “I’m sorry, folks. No questions today. The prince has a prior commitment and I promised to have an early dinner with Hope and the girls.”
At the mention of his family, Cooper’s normally fierce expression softened so slightly that Isabella might have missed it if she hadn’t known to look. But in the past couple of weeks, ever since Cooper had received graphic death threats from King Aleksandr’s supporters and been assigned Secret Service protection, she had gotten to know her protectee and his family. For all that he was a political barracuda, Louis Cooper was soft as mush when it came to his young wife, Hope, and his twin, eighteen-month-old daughters, Becky and Tiffany.
Isabella motioned for the locals to flank her, guarding the secretary and Prince Nikolai while they walked from the front of the Golf Resort to the rear, where Cooper’s secure chalet was set back against the edge of the dense forest. While she scanned the crowd and the manicured lawns beyond, a small, not-so-easily ignored part of her felt a wistful tug at Cooper’s devotion to Hope and the girls.
Isabella had once dreamed of having a loving, stable family of her own, but it hadn’t happened. Now, at thirty-five, she protected other people’s families and considered it a patriotic trade-off. Even the low-grade maternal urges had mostly faded over the years. She told herself she was only feeling them now because she’d been spending so much time around Becky and Tiff. She told herself it had nothing to do with being in Montana, with knowing that the Big Sky Bounty Hunters were quartered nearby.
But she was lying to herself, and knew it. Damn Jacob Powell. Thirteen years later she still couldn’t stop herself from keeping track of him. She’d even located the Big Sky headquarters on a map and checked how long it would take her to reach the cabin.
Not that she’d drop in for a visit. No way, no how. Their relationship had burned comet-bright, and when it had crashed, she’d been left cratered. Nearly destroyed.
She had grown up and grown out of the breakup damn quick, but that didn’t mean she’d feel comfortable seeing him again. Besides, what was the point? They were different people now, with different agendas.
He probably barely even remembered her.
And heck, it wasn’t as though she thought of him on a weekly basis now, or even yearly. It was being in Montana that had brought him to mind. Montana and the little girls and the foolish dreams she’d once had.
Secretary Cooper and Prince Nikolai stopped on the wide pathway outside the Coopers’ chalet, bumping Isabella out of her unproductive, unprofessional thoughts.
“I will leave you here, my friend,” Prince Nikolai announced.
The men shook hands and parted, the prince returning up the walkway and passing near Isabella. She caught a faint whiff of his cologne, felt a whisper of his sheer animal magnetism and held herself professionally distant when he stopped a breath away and looked down at her with dark, almost ebony eyes.
“Keep him safe, Agent Gray,” the prince said in his trademark low, sexy voice. “I need him. My people need him.” He glanced back. “And he is a good man.”
“He’s my protectee,” Isabella said simply, refusing to credit the fine buzz running along her skin, which served only to remind her how long she’d focused on being a Secret Service agent rather than a woman.
The prince held her eyes for a moment more before nodding. “I leave him in your care, then.”
She
