miserable had been during gorgeous evenings wandering by herself along the Seine, when she was unable to avoid watching couples so helplessly in love with each other they couldn’t walk two paces without stopping to steal another kiss.
She had never felt that. Not once.
She frowned, wondering if she ever would.
After Colyn she had been determined only to date nice men with solid family values. Men who were in touch with their feelings. But they hadn’t inspired much more than friendship in her. Thankfully her business kept her too busy to dwell on what she lacked, and if she was getting older…
Pah!
Stamping on even more mood-altering thoughts, she adjusted the volume dial on the radio and wasn’t at all prepared when she put her foot on the brake to slow down for a bend in the road and nothing happened. Imagining that she had put her foot on the accelerator instead, she’d moved to correct the oversight when the car hit a patch of gravel and started to slide.
Panicking, she yanked on the steering wheel to keep the car straight, but the car had gathered momentum and in the blink of an eye it fishtailed and rammed into some sort of small tree.
Groaning, Ava clasped her head where it had bounced off the steering wheel.
For a moment she just sat there. Then she realised the engine was roaring, took her foot from the accelerator and switched the car off. Her ears rang loudly in the sudden silence and then she caught the sound of one of her tyres spinning in midair. Glancing out through the windscreen, she realised her car was wedged on top of a clump of rocks and heather plants in full bloom.
Talk about a lapse in concentration!
She blew out a breath and gingerly moved her limbs one at a time. Thankfully the car had been going too slowly for her to have been seriously hurt. A good thing—except she could picture her father shaking his head at her. He was always telling her to use a driver on official engagements, but of course she didn’t listen. Arguing with him had become something of a blood sport. A blood sport he was so much better at than her. It was one of the main reasons she’d snuck off to study Fine Arts at the Sorbonne. If she had stayed in Anders it would have been impossible to keep the promise she had made to her dying mother to try and get along with her father.
His earlier edict replayed again in her head. She couldn’t return to Anders. What would she do there? Sit around and play parlour games all day while she waited for him to line up another convenient husband? The thought made her shiver.
Determined to stop thinking about her father, Ava carefully opened the car door and stepped out into the long grass. The spiky heels of her ankle boots immediately sank into the soft earth.
Great. As a gallery owner it was imperative that she always look impeccable and there was no way she could afford to ruin her prized Prada boots. Since she’d decided a long time ago not to take any of her father’s money she didn’t have any spare cash lying around to replace them. Another decision that had displeased him.
She stood precariously on the balls of her feet and leaned in to retrieve her handbag. Her phone had fallen out and when she picked it up she saw the screen was smashed. Unable to remember Gilles’s mobile number, she tossed it back in the car in frustration. She could always call emergency services, but then her little accident would be all over the news in a heartbeat—and the thought of any more attention this week for ‘the poor jilted Princess’ made her teeth gnash together. Which didn’t help her sore head.
No. She’d simply have to walk.
But standing on the grassy verge with her hands on her hips, she realised just how far it was to the main gates. Her beloved boots would be destroyed. Not to mention how hot and sweaty she would be by the time she got there. This was not the graceful and dignified entrance she had planned to make. And if one of those media vans she had seen loitering a few miles back saw her…
Wondering just what to do next, she had a sudden brainwave. A sudden and slightly crazy brainwave. Fortuitously—if she could describe running her little car into a ditch in such terms—she’d crashed right near a section of the outer wall that she had played on with her brother Frédéric and her cousin Baden and Gilles during family visits to the château in her childhood. Scaling the wall as revolutionary spies had been their secret game, and they’d even scraped out footholds to aid their escape from imaginary enemies.
Ava felt a grin creep across her face for the first time that day. She had to concede it was a tad desperate, but with Gilles’s wedding only hours away that was exactly what she was. And, anyway, she had always loved to climb as a kid; surely it would be even easier as an adult?
‘There’s a woman stuck on the south wall, boss. What do you want us to do with her?’
Wolfe pulled up in the middle of an arched hallway in Château Verne and pressed his phone a little tighter to his ear. ‘On the wall?’
‘The very top,’ repeated Eric, one of the more junior members of Wolfe’s security team.
Wolfe tensed. Perfect. Most likely another interfering journalist, trying to get the scoop on his friend’s extravagant wedding to the daughter of a controversial American politician. They hadn’t let up all day, circling the château like starving buzzards. But none had been brazen enough to go over the wall yet. Of course he’d been prepared for the possibility—the reason they now had this little intruder in hand.
‘Name?’
‘Says she’s Ava de Veers, Princess of Anders.’
A princess climbing over a forty-foot brick wall? Wolfe didn’t think so. ‘ID?’
‘No ID in her handbag. Says she had a car accident and it must have fallen out.’
Clever.
‘Camera?’
‘Check.’
Wolfe considered his options. Even from inside the thick walls of the château he could hear the irritating whine of distant media choppers as they hovered just outside the established no-fly zone. With the wedding still three hours away he’d better extend the security perimeters before there were any more breaches.
‘Want me to take her back to base, boss?’
‘No.’ Wolfe shot his hand through his hair. He’d rather turf her back over the wall than give her even more access to the property by taking her to the outer cottage his men were temporarily using. And he would—after he had established her identity and satisfied himself that she wasn’t a real threat. ‘Leave her where she’s perched.’ He was about to ring off when he had another thought. ‘And, Eric, keep your gun on her until I get there.’ That would teach her for entering a private function without an invitation.
‘Ah…you mean keep her on the wall?’
When Eric hesitated Wolfe knew right then that the woman was attractive.
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.’ For all he knew she could be a political nutcase instead of an overzealous journo. ‘And don’t engage in any conversation with her until I get there.’
Wolfe trusted his men implicitly, but the last thing he needed was some smoking Mata Hari doing a number on their head.
‘Yes,
