Книга - The Baron and The Bodyguard

The Baron and The Bodyguard
Valerie Parv


Playing royal bodyguard to Mathiaz de Marigny, the seductive Baron Montravel, was a temptation few women could resist. But the moment he was out of harm's way, Jacinta Newnham had fled his chateau–and abandoned memories of moonlit nights that left them both weak with unfulfilled passion.Now stricken with amnesia and in danger once again, Mathiaz summoned Jacinta back to his side. Jacinta vowed to protect his life, but the greater peril was to her heart–and the haunting secret she could never reveal. When the truth surrounding Mathiaz's accident–and Jacinta's connection to it–surfaced, would he force her to leave, or refuse to let her go again…?







“You tell me I don’t know what I’m doing. Yet every instinct tells me having you in my arms is the right thing…Have I kissed you before?”

Jacinta felt her cheeks flame. “Yes.”

“Have we made love?”

The answer stuck in her throat. “Mathiaz, please…”

“Answer the question or you’re fired.”

She hesitated, wondering whether to call his bluff. “Go ahead and fire me,” she said quietly. The thought of leaving swamped her in misery, but anything was better than dealing with this. Mathiaz couldn’t know that he was rubbing salt into a raw wound with every word.

“I wish I could. But as long as you hold the key to the hole in my memory, I’m not letting you go,” he said.

His eyes brightened, boring into her. “I need you, Jacinta. To help me remember.”


Dear Reader,

Grab a front-row seat on the roller-coaster ride of falling in love. This month, Silhouette Romance offers heart-spinning thrills, including the latest must-read from THE COLTONS saga, a new enchanting SOULMATES title and even a sexy Santa!

Become a fan—if you aren’t hooked already!—of THE COLTONS with the newest addition to the legendary family saga, Teresa Southwick’s Sky Full of Promise (#1624), about a stone-hearted doctor in search of a temporary fiancée. And single men don’t stay so for long in Jodi O’Donnell’s BRIDGEWATER BACHELORS series. The next rugged Texan loses his solo status in His Best Friend’s Bride (#1625).

Love is magical, and it’s especially true in our wonderful SOULMATES series, which brings couples together in extraordinary ways. In DeAnna Talcott’s Her Last Chance (#1628), virgin heiress Mallory Chevalle travels thousands of miles in search of a mythical horse—and finds her destiny in the arms of a stubborn, but irresistible rancher. And a case of amnesia reunites past lovers—but the heroine’s painful secret could destroy her second chance at happiness, in Valerie Parv’s The Baron & the Bodyguard, the latest exciting installment in THE CARRAMER LEGACY.

To get into the holiday spirit, enjoy Janet Tronstad’s Stranded with Santa (#1626), a fun-loving romp about a rodeo megastar who gets stormbound with a beautiful young widow. Then, discover how to melt a Scrooge’s heart in Moyra Tarling’s Christmas Due Date (#1629)

I hope you enjoy these stories, and please keep in touch!






Mary-Theresa Hussey

Senior Editor


The Baron & the Bodyguard

Valerie Parv






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


For my wonderful sister-in-law, Helga.




Books by Valerie Parv


Silhouette Romance

The Leopard Tree #507

The Billionaire’s Baby Chase #1270

Baby Wishes and Bachelor Kisses #1313

* (#litres_trial_promo)The Monarch’s Son #1459

* (#litres_trial_promo)The Prince’s Bride-To-Be #1465

* (#litres_trial_promo)The Princess’s Proposal #1471

Booties and the Beast #1501

Code Name: Prince #1516

† (#litres_trial_promo)Crowns and a Cradle #1621

† (#litres_trial_promo)The Baron & the Bodyguard #1627

Silhouette Intimate Moments

Interrupted Lullaby #1095

Royal Spy #1154




VALERIE PARV


lives and breathes romance and has even written a guide to being romantic, crediting her cartoonist husband of nearly thirty years as her inspiration. As a former buffalo and crocodile hunter in Australia’s Northern Territory, he’s ready-made hero material, she says.

When not writing her novels and nonfiction books, or speaking about romance on Australian radio and television, Valerie enjoys dollhouses, being a Star Trek fan and playing with food (in cooking, that is). Valerie agrees with actor Nichelle Nichols who said, “The difference between fantasy and fact is that fantasy simply hasn’t happened yet.”










Contents


Chapter One (#uc230eff2-bc31-5614-835b-ca561a2686c7)

Chapter Two (#u96588921-b0f9-5544-b152-c17f2ffb3dfe)

Chapter Three (#u78d57ca7-d47f-59aa-93bf-5b6a8e90a6a4)

Chapter Four (#ub7f29947-7d93-5313-b1cc-1fe9c4125209)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter One


Mathiaz was floating.

Pain shredded the edges of the mist surrounding him, but he found if he concentrated, he could push the pain away and enjoy the sensation of nothingness. Of floating free of care.

“Come on, Baron, don’t do this to me.”

The woman’s voice punched through the mist, bringing the awareness of pain closer. Pushing the pain away meant pushing her away, too, and for some reason, he didn’t want her to go, so he let both of them in. Immediately fire tore along the side of his leg, and every muscle in his body set up a clamoring ache as though from overuse. He heard a distant groan that he barely recognized as coming from himself.

He wanted to retreat into the mist, but the woman’s voice came again, refusing to let him go. “That’s it, come back to me. You can do it.”

Come back where? To whom? He couldn’t force the questions out, but she anticipated them. “It’s me, Jac. You’re in the hospital. You have to wake up for my sake, Mathiaz.”

Jac? Instinctively he rejected the name. Jacinta, that felt better. He remembered that her name was Jacinta Newnham, although she liked to be called Jac. He must have murmured her name, because her sigh whispered over him.

He felt her bend closer, and her lips brushed his mouth. A faint scent of frangipani teased his nostrils, the perfume as familiar as her touch and every bit as arousing. The sensation was so pleasant that he took it with him back into the mist.

Jacinta felt his grip slacken and fought back tears as she looked at Mathiaz in the bed. The nightmare was happening all over again. A man she cared about was hovering on the brink, and there was nothing she could do. For a moment, she’d thought she’d managed to reach him, only to watch him sink back into coma.

A white-coated man came to stand beside Mathiaz’s bed. “Isn’t it time you got some rest?”

She gave the doctor a savage look. “I’m not going anywhere until he comes out of this, Dr. Pascale.”

“I know I asked you to come in and talk to him, but running yourself into the ground isn’t going to help anyone.”

“Then tell me what will?”

The doctor’s craggy face softened. “With all the medical marvels at our disposal, sometimes there’s nothing you can do but wait.”

Nothing you can do. The words she hated most in the whole world. “There must be something.”

“You’re doing it. Keep talking to him, let him know you’re here and that there’s a world he should be rejoining by now.”

“Talk to him about what?”

The doctor thought for a moment. “You worked with him for four months. Talk about the time you spent together.”

“That ended ten months ago. We didn’t part on very good terms.”

“He fired you?”

She shook her head. “He wanted me to stay. I was the one who quit.”

“Didn’t take to royal life, huh?”

“The baron hired me for a specific assignment. When the danger to him was past, I had no reason to stay.” She didn’t tell the doctor that Mathiaz had given her the one reason guaranteed to make her run like a rabbit. He had begun to care about her.

The doctor’s expression showed he had his own suspicions. “I got the impression that the two of you…”

She didn’t let him finish. “We set out to create that impression as a cover. Mathiaz thought that being seen with increased security would alarm the public. Running my own defense academy, I have the skills but I’m not actually a bodyguard, so he suggested I pose as his girlfriend while keeping him from harm.”

The doctor looked at her as if he didn’t quite believe her, but decided to let it go. “Then talk to him about yourself.”

“He already knows my background. He had palace security check me out before I came aboard.”

“I don’t mean the facts, I mean you, your interests, your passions. You do have passions, don’t you?”

She kept her face averted. What would the doctor say if she admitted that one of her passions had been Mathiaz himself? “Climbing and adventure training,” she said instead.

The doctor made a skeptical noise. “I’ve heard you took two American teenagers to ride the Nuee Trail, but I’ve never heard having a death wish described as a passion before.”

“Depends how much you care about what you’re doing. Those boys were tough street kids. A judge gave them the choice of undertaking one of my adventure training courses to straighten themselves out, or going to jail.”

“I’d take jail.”

She knew the doctor didn’t mean it. As court physician, Alain Pascale was known for his gruff manner, but also for his willingness to do anything he could to help his patients. “Anyway, I didn’t take them out solo. The court supplied a supervisor who complained all the way up and down the mountain. The boys acted tough but they were only sixteen and seventeen,” she told him.

“The age when Carramer males traditionally ride the Nuee Trail,” the doctor mused. “They considered it a rite of passage for hundreds of years.”

“As well as being one of the toughest endurance rides in the world,” she pointed out. “When those boys finished the course, they were different people.” She had also been different, too, in love with an island kingdom called Carramer. She had returned to America long enough to resign from her job as a personal trainer, said a tearful goodbye to her parents and older sister and moved to Carramer. When suitable premises in Valmont came up for rent, she had leased it and spent the next three years establishing her own fitness business. Guarding Mathiaz had seemed like an interesting change of pace at the time.

The doctor patted her shoulder. “Now you know what to talk to the baron about.”

“This feels weird,” she said to the still form in the bed after the doctor had gone. “While I worked for you, we talked so much, but I managed to tell you very little about myself.”

He had asked, she remembered, but she hadn’t wanted to let him get too close. She still wasn’t prepared to tell him the most significant details of her life. He might be unconscious but she preferred to keep some secrets.

“There isn’t much to tell,” she began awkwardly. “Compared to your royal family, mine isn’t the least bit glamorous. Mom and Dad have a berry farm in Orange County, California, and my sister, Debbie, runs a store selling their produce and local handicrafts when she isn’t taking care of her husband and their three children. She’s much better suited to that life than me, although I never thought I’d end up on an island in the middle of the South Pacific.”

She lapsed into silence. Once she had thought of training as a kindergarten teacher. She enjoyed working with children, the reason she’d volunteered to help the street kids in her spare time. Switching her degree from education to science, with a major in sport and exercise had been an impulsive choice. The right one, as things turned out. At twenty-seven, she was still a teacher of sorts, and exercise was a universal skill, as useful in Carramer as in Orange County.

“I’m supposed to talk to you about passion. How’s that for irony?” she asked Mathiaz’s unmoving form. She felt a pang as she said the word. Mathiaz had been a passionate man—was a passionate man, she amended the thought firmly. They had agreed to act in public as if there was a romance between them. Holding hands, exchanging looks, all in the name of keeping him safe.

When had they stopped acting?

The first time he kissed her, she remembered. Two months after she started working for him, she had accompanied him to a trade dinner. Hardly a forum for passion. In the back of the limousine, returning to Château Valmont, they had laughed about how boring the chief delegate’s speech had been. Letting Mathiaz kiss her had seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

He’d kissed her again as they shared a nightcap at his villa in the royal compound. Talked long into the night. Talked some more the next day. Kissed again. She had told herself she was acting a part, while recognizing the lie for what it was.

She should have left after the man threatening Mathiaz was caught, but she’d agreed to stay for another month, telling herself she needed the pay check. The truth was, she needed Mathiaz. And she didn’t want to need any man.

Unconscious, he was no threat to her peace of mind, she told herself. When she had agreed to Dr. Pascale’s request to help Mathiaz, she hadn’t counted on the strength of her own feelings at being so close to him. She dragged a hand through her hair. When she’d walked into the room, found him tangled in tubes and medical monitors, her heart had almost stopped.

She’d taken his hand without thinking, unprepared for the electric jolt that arced through her. His fingers had closed around hers so strongly that she had to remind herself he was unconscious. He’d felt as if he was holding on to her. According to Dr. Pascale, he possibly was.

She cleared her throat. “Dr. Pascale asked me what’s my passion? Being strong, having answers. Only this time I don’t have any. He thinks I can help you by talking to you. But you have to do your part. You have to wake up.”

The man on the bed stirred, his fingers flexing. With a sigh she slid her hand into his, and he seemed to settle. She wished she could say the same for herself, but the pulse at her throat fluttered like a trapped bird, and she could feel her heart hammering. She told herself she was scared for Mathiaz, but knew some of her discomfort was for herself. For the pleasure she felt at his touch and didn’t want to feel. Could you turn off feelings by wanting to? In the ten months since she’d left him, she’d tried with everything in her. Thought she had succeeded. Knew she was kidding herself the moment she walked into his hospital room.

She still cared about him, and it scared the life out of her.

She untangled her fingers from his and straightened. “I’m sorry, Mathiaz, but I can’t do this anymore. I have to go.” His eyelids began to quiver.

Mathiaz had no idea how long he drifted, dreaming of the woman called Jacinta. Gradually he became aware that she was calling to him more and more urgently. He grasped her hand because the gesture seemed natural. How warm and soft she felt, but she wasn’t, he knew. How did he know that?

This time he was able to force his eyes open, and saw a vision bending over him. Jacinta. A head sculpted by Michelangelo was capped with shining blond hair, neat except for a few stray wisps curling across her forehead and around her ears. The effect suggested an abandoned nature kept under firm control, but not quite. His blurred gaze gave him an imperfect view of her unusual gray blue eyes, enough to see that they glistened, as if she was trying not to cry.

He moved restively, wanting to stroke her lovely face, to reassure her that tears were unnecessary. He was fine. But his arms were held to his sides by a web of tubes. He couldn’t summon the energy to wonder what flowed through the tubes, or why they snaked into his veins. He was too busy trying to focus on what Jacinta was saying to him.

His hold on consciousness was too precarious to sort out her words, so he concentrated on her generous mouth, finding that he remembered exactly how her lips felt against his own, and how much heat her touch could ignite inside him. He groaned again, this time with the remembered pleasure of holding her, caressing her. In the vestiges of his floating cocoon, the image was so vivid that he raised himself to take her into his arms, desperate to turn the dream of closeness into reality.

She pressed against his shoulders, settling him back. “Don’t try to move, you’ve been hurt.”

As if he hadn’t worked that out for himself. He didn’t normally wake up in this much of a mess. “What…” he tried hoarsely. His mouth was too arid for speech.

She lifted his head and slid ice chips into his mouth. The coolness eased the burning in his throat, but not in his body. The brush of her fingers against his lips made him ache to embrace her and kiss her again.

Again? Had he really kissed her, or only in his dream? Surely if he was dreaming, he should be able to control the outcome? Which didn’t include being pinned to a bed, restricted to looking at his ministering angel, when his imagination stretched to far more enjoyable ways they could spend the time.

“I see our patient is finally coming around. Nice work, Ms. Newnham.”

The gravel voice dissipated some of the mist surrounding Mathiaz, and he felt the pain settle around him like a cloak, unable to be pushed away. His vision cleared, revealing a steel-haired man in a white coat looming above him, coming between Mathiaz and the angelic vision. Mathiaz made an involuntary sound of protest as the doctor checked him over with professional skill.

When he finished, he peered intently at Mathiaz. “Do you know who you are?”

Mathiaz croaked out an unsuccessful reply, coughed, and tried again with better results. “Mathiaz Albert Alphonse de Marigny, Baron Montravel.”

The doctor’s concerned expression eased, although it was hard to tell because his face was as craggy as clothing that had been slept in for several days. “Beats me how you remember all that even when you’re not injured. Now who am I?”

This was much easier to answer. “A pain in the neck.”

The doctor shot a relieved look at Jacinta. “He’s himself all right. Like the rest of the de Marigny family, he has no respect for my medical skills. You’d think I’d be entitled to some respect after bringing most of them into the world, Lord Montravel here included.”

Alain Pascale, personal physician to Mathiaz’s cousin, Prince Lorne, ruler of Carramer, Mathiaz’s mind slowly supplied the details. The doctor had served the family for decades, as he said delivering many of the royal babies in that time. He was the only man in Carramer who could speak so familiarly to members of the royal family, his unique place in their affections giving him immunity from the demands of protocol. He wasn’t above taking advantage of it when he thought one of the family needed his guidance, Mathiaz knew. But the doctor was semiretired now. Whatever Mathiaz had gotten himself into must have been drastic to drag the doctor away from his beloved orchid growing.

“What happened?” he struggled to ask.

The doctor shook his head. “Plenty of time for that. Right now, you need rest.”

Pascale did something to the equipment beside Mathiaz’s bed and he felt himself slipping back into sleep. He didn’t resist. Jacinta waited for him there.




Chapter Two


When next Mathiaz awoke, some of the pain has dissipated and he felt stronger. Sunlight streamed across the room. He recalled it had been dark when last he awoke. He must have slept around the clock.

He turned his head, smiling at the sight of his ministering angel seated beside his bed. She was asleep and looked even more beautiful than she had in his dreams.

Within minutes of the medical equipment registering his return to consciousness, Dr. Pascale hurried to his side. Instantly Jacinta stirred and came to her feet almost in the same moment. “Is something wrong?” she asked the doctor.

“You can ask our patient,” Pascale said with a smile.

“Mathiaz, you’re awake.”

Wishing he knew what he’d done to deserve the look of delight on her face, Mathiaz managed to nod. “Looks like it.”

“Do you know what happened?” Dr. Pascale asked.

Mathiaz struggled to think around the fog in his mind. The answer refused to come.

The doctor rested his fingers against Mathiaz’s wrist and frowned at the fast-beating pulse Mathiaz could feel from the inside. “Don’t agitate yourself. It will come back,” the doctor assured him.

“You were on your way to the royal treasury. You were caught in an explosion,” Jacinta supplied.

“Accident?” Mathiaz asked. Surely he should be able to remember such an event? When he tried, he met only blankness.

“The police and palace security are still investigating,” she said, but her expression told him she had her own theory. “If I’d been working for you…”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why weren’t you? You’re my bodyguard.”

She and the doctor exchanged concerned looks before the doctor asked, “What’s the last thing you remember before waking up here?”

Mathiaz had to think. “Taking Prince Henry some books for his nurse to read to him.”

“Prince Henry?” she said, sounding troubled.

Mathiaz’s uncle, Prince Henry, ruled Valmont Province under an ancient charter granted to the de Valmont family by the Carramer crown. “You should remember. You came with me.”

She took his hand, her grip warm and firm in his. “Mathiaz, the day you remember happened over a year ago. Henry died six months ago. In his will, he left you the Antoinette wedding ring. You were on your way to the treasury to have the ring valued when you were caught in the explosion.”

Mathiaz clung to her hand, wondering why holding her felt so right. Henry hadn’t been anyone’s favorite member of the family, but he and Mathiaz had respected each other. The old prince didn’t deserve to have his death erased from Mathiaz’s memory.

“What are you talking about? As far as I know, we saw my uncle yesterday. If he’s gone, then who…”

Her touch soothed some of his agitation. “Your cousin, Prince Josquin de Marigny, rules the province as Crown Regent until his stepson, Christophe, comes of age,” she anticipated his question.

That meant Josquin had married Sarah de Valmont, the American-born princess who had grown up in an adoptive family and borne Prince Henry an heir without knowing that she was Henry’s granddaughter, Mathiaz worked out. Their wedding and Josquin’s elevation to the Regency had vanished from his memory as if they had never taken place. He had missed baby Christophe’s accession to the throne, his cousin’s wedding, everything.

“How long have I been here?” he asked.

The doctor looked up from the chart he was studying. “You were brought in the day before yesterday. We worked on your injuries for a couple of hours, then you were semicomatose for another twelve and sleeping the rest. All up, you’ve been here two and a half days.”

“So how can I have lost a year?”

The doctor came closer, chart in hand. “My diagnosis is post-traumatic amnesia. Happens a lot in cases of closed-head injuries and shock. The mind can’t deal with what happened so it skips backward, to a more tolerable memory, giving the brain time to develop coping mechanisms.”

“You mean that whole year of my life is just…gone?” Mathiaz let his tone reflect his disbelief.

“Sounds that way. There’s no sign of any physical injury to the brain, but you were knocked unconscious by the blast, striking your head against the carved doors of the treasury as you fell. I’ll consult a specialist, since this is out of my field, but she’ll probably confirm my diagnosis.”

No wonder Mathiaz felt as if a team of miners were drilling through his brain. The treasury doors were eight feet tall and almost as wide, and made of foot-thick iron-wood. “No physical injury? That means my memory is intact. All I have to do is recover it, right?”

Dr. Pascale nodded. “That’s the good news.”

Mathiaz’s gut clenched involuntarily. “And the bad?”

“I can’t say when you might get your memory back.”

Mathiaz refused to accept that his memory of everything that had taken place in the last year was gone forever. Giving up wasn’t in his vocabulary. But some things were beyond even willpower. “You mean I might never recover those memories?”

“You have to consider the possibility.”

Mathiaz’s anger warred with his confusion. Having a headache the size of Carramer didn’t help. “What about hypnosis, therapy of some kind?” he demanded.

The doctor sighed. “This kind of retrograde amnesia is the mind’s way of dealing with the stress of major trauma. Trying to force a recovery could do more harm than good. Better to let yourself remember in your own sweet time.”

“Or not.” Mathiaz’s voice was edged with bitterness.

“Or not.” The doctor’s professionally calm expression didn’t change. Only his pale blue eyes registered the depths of his concern. “Give yourself time to recover before you start worrying too much.”

“Easy for you to say, Dr. Pascale. You don’t have a hole where the last year of your life is supposed to be.”

“It could be worse. The hole could have been in your head, if not for…”

“The angle of the explosion,” Jacinta said, cutting the doctor off in midsentence. “Another few feet closer to the source and you wouldn’t be here to complain about a few lost memories.”

Mathiaz intercepted a look between the two that he couldn’t interpret. Annoyed at being so obviously excluded, he glanced at the tubes feeding into his arm. “Are these really necessary?”

The doctor snapped the chart shut and replaced it at the foot of the bed. “One thing you didn’t acquire in the last year is a medical degree, Lord Montravel.” He made the title sound vaguely insulting. “I’ll be the judge of what you need and when you need it. Now just lie there and be glad you’re still in one piece.”

Jacinta asked, “Is he always this abrasive?”

Mathiaz grinned tiredly. “The time to worry is when he starts being nice.”

The doctor growled a negation. “You were easier to deal with when you were asleep.” But he managed to sound pleased at the same time.

“What else has happened that I don’t remember?”

“I’ll let Ms. Newnham fill you in on whatever you want to know. She’s the specialist when it comes to Lord Montravel. I have work to do.”

The doctor left and Mathiaz turned his head toward Jacinta. “What did he mean, you’re the specialist on me?”

She looked uncomfortable. “When they had trouble getting you to wake up after the surgery, Dr. Pascale called me in, hoping that I could get through to you.”

She had succeeded better than she knew, but her impersonal manner made him wonder if his erotic fantasies about her were just that, fantasies. “Why did he have to call you in? Don’t you work for me anymore?”

She glanced at the surgical monitors over Mathiaz’s bed. The readings evidently gave her cause for concern, because she said, “We don’t have to cover everything now. You should get some rest.”

His hand clamped around her wrist. “From the sound of things, I’ve had too much rest. I want to know what went on between us.”

Something flared in her unusual eyes, but was gone before he could identify it. “Nothing went on between us, as you put it. Fourteen months ago, you hired me following a security scare at the Château Valmont. Your valet, Andre Zenio, was fired for showing people around the palace without clearing them with the Royal Protection Detail. Zenio blamed you for getting him fired, although you weren’t the one who reported him. He started stalking you and making threats. Eventually the police caught him, and I went back to my work at the academy. End of story.”

Mathiaz remembered most of this. He knew that she ran a personal defense school in Valmont’s capital city of Perla. Mathiaz’s younger brother, Eduard, had taught a course at the academy and came back singing Jacinta’s praises. When Mathiaz started getting threats and being followed, the police advised hiring extra security. Jacinta had been the logical choice. She had the appropriate skills, but could be presented as Mathiaz’s girlfriend rather than as a bodyguard, saving the need to go public about the security scare.

“There was nothing more between us?” he asked, wondering why the question sounded so ridiculous, as if part of him already knew that there was.

She hesitated. “We were attracted to one another.”

Why did he get the feeling that was the understatement of the year? He sure as blazes was attracted to her, but in the incendiary kind of way that usually ended up in bed. He could hardly believe that she didn’t share his feelings. “How far did we take this—attraction?” he asked.

“We didn’t.”

Was he imagining things, or was her answer a little too glib? “I don’t believe you.”

She sketched a bow from the neck. “You have the right to believe what you choose, Lord Montravel.”

Pain fueled his irritation. “You can drop the Lord Montravel bit. We both know you never call me anything but Mathiaz or Baron when we’re alone.” They were alone now.

“As you wish, Baron.”

Her ready agreement didn’t fool him, either. “I may have forgotten the last year of my life, but I remember you were never awed by my rank and titles.”

“I’m an American, I was brought up in a democracy,” she reminded him, as if her California accent hadn’t already done so. “We don’t believe in bowing and scraping.”

He doubted if she would bow or scrape to anyone, regardless of her nationality. “You sure you’re not related to Alain Pascale?” he asked.

“Only by attitude.” She hefted a capacious shoulder bag off a chair. “I’d better leave you to get some rest.”

He felt the need to keep her with him. “What brought you to Carramer?”

She hesitated. “We have talked about this before.”

“Humor me.”

“Carramer is a beautiful, peaceful kingdom, and Valmont province is one of the most attractive regions.”

“With about as much use for a self-defense expert as a fish has for a bicycle,” he pointed out. Apart from an occasional problem like the security scare, Carramer had one of the lowest crime rates in the world. What wasn’t she telling him?

She shrugged. “Maybe that’s why I wanted to live here. The skills I teach are as useful for honing self-discipline and fitness as they are for fighting crime.”

If all her pupils developed figures like hers, he could hardly argue. She had moved a little away and she stood about five-eight, although trapped on the bed, he couldn’t see if that was with or without heels. With, his memory supplied. Without, he recalled, she only came up to his shoulder.

She had a waist he could nearly span with two hands, although he’d need a longer reach to span any higher. She was dressed in a clinging sunshine-yellow halter top that left her satiny shoulders bare and emphasized the fullness of her feminine curves. The top was tucked into the slimmest pair of black denim jeans he’d seen in a long time. Getting into them must be an exercise in itself, he thought, then slammed a lid on the thought. Trussed up as he was, letting himself dwell on such things was a recipe for terminal frustration.

“Why did you agree to come back?” he asked, hoping she’d give him a clue as to why she’d left his employ in the first place.

She looked startled as if the question was unexpected. “You needed me,” she said. Then she glanced away as if she had given away more than she wanted to.

He felt a surge of satisfaction. “If you were from Carramer, I could put your answer down to loyalty to the crown, but you’re not. You tell me there’s nothing between us, yet you come running the moment I’m injured. Does that sound like nothing to you?”

“You always did twist my words,” she snapped. “I’ve a good mind to…”

“Careful,” he cautioned her. “You’re dealing with an injured man.”

“He’ll be a lot worse injured if he keeps provoking me.”

“Does the word ‘treason’ mean anything to you?” he asked, pleased to have provoked some sort of response from her.

She wrapped her arms around herself as if she was cold. “As I recall, you threatened to have me charged with treason when I resigned. It didn’t work then, so I don’t see why it should change my behavior now.”

“I didn’t want you to leave?”

The question hung in the air between them. Finally she shook her head. “No, but you didn’t need a bodyguard after Zenio was caught.”

He must have had another reason for wanting her to stay, he concluded. He wished his head didn’t ache so abominably, making thinking such an ordeal. Belatedly he noticed something else. She wore a flesh-colored bandage on her left forearm. She saw him looking at it and dropped the arm to her side, where she’d held it since he woke up, wanting to keep him from seeing the injury, he assumed.

“How did you come by that?”

She glanced at the bandage then looked away. “It’s nothing. I was jogging past the treasury at the time of the bombing.”

He hated the thought of her being injured, however slightly. “You weren’t working for me, so what were you doing there?”

She had been running through the park and had seen him approach the treasury in his limousine. Even as she chided herself for acting like a sycophantic teenager, she had moved closer, hoping for another glimpse of him when he got out.

Automatically her gaze had swept the area. Her realization that something was wrong had been almost subliminal, an awareness that one of the terra-cotta pots of flowers edging the steps didn’t match the others. It was also out of alignment, as if it had been added in haste.

She had moved without conscious thought, grabbing the object and flinging it into the lake. Before the water could absorb the detonation the bomb hidden in the pot had exploded in the air, the blast catching Mathiaz as he walked up the treasury steps.

A flying fragment of hot debris had singed her arm, but she hadn’t paid the injury any attention until later. At the time, she had been consumed with worry for Mathiaz. Seeing him stir and moan, she had known he was still alive, and it had been all she could do not to rush to his side.

No one had seen her action, or if they had, they hadn’t reported her to the police because she hadn’t been detained or interviewed. She had waited long enough to see a doctor emerge from the crowd and check Mathiaz over then an ambulance had arrived and she had slipped away. Later she had telephoned the police and tipped them off about the flowerpot, without identifying herself.

Explaining about her role to the police or to Mathiaz would have meant revealing her feelings for him. She was far from ready for that, so she said, “When I saw your car pull up, I was curious to see what you were doing, that’s all.”

Her answer left him unsatisfied, as if he suspected there was more she wasn’t telling him. “You weren’t keeping an informal eye on me, by any chance?”

Her heightened color told him he was getting close, but she shook her head. “I told you, I was only called in after you became injured. Dr. Pascale hoped a familiar face would help bring you back to consciousness.”

“The family is full of familiar faces. Any one of them could have answered Pascale’s call as well as you could. There’s another reason, isn’t there?”

This time she met his gaze. “The police are treating the explosion as suspicious, so palace security asked me to come back for the time being.”

An upsurge of pleasure at the news that she was staying around, was offset by the worry her statement generated. Apart from an occasional malcontent like Zenio, Carramer had few antiroyalists. Fewer still who would actively harm the monarchy which ensured the country’s peace and prosperity. Mathiaz asked grimly, “What do you think?”

Her expression tightened. “Explosions don’t happen by themselves. We’ll know more when the experts have finished combing through the debris. The treasury portico and front courtyard were a mess.”

He fisted handfuls of the bedclothes, his tension rising. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“A couple of passersby had near misses. Mostly shock. As luck would have it, you arrived a few minutes early. The staff were on their way to greet you when the explosion occurred.”

“Then I should thank my stars we all got off so lightly.” Another thought occurred to him. “I did get off lightly, didn’t I? There’s nothing Pascale hasn’t told me?”

“Your leg is still attached, if that’s what’s worrying you,” she assured him. She gave a knowing smile. “And according to Dr. Pascale, everything else is in working order.”

Mathiaz masked his relief. As far as he could remember, he wasn’t involved with anyone, but he hoped one day to have a wife and children, especially a son to inherit his land and titles. Jacinta’s oblique reassurance meant they were still a possibility.

Good grief, he could be married already, and not remember. The thought made him realize how much could have happened in the months he had lost. He felt awkward asking Jacinta whether or not he was involved with anyone, so he kept silent. Surely if he had, she would have been at his bedside, rather than Jacinta?

“What happened to my leg?” he asked instead.

“They removed a chunk of shrapnel from your calf muscle, so you won’t be playing hopscotch for a week or so. You’ll be on crutches for another week, but after that, with care, you should heal as good as new.”

Some of his anxiety receded. “What about your arm?”

“It’s nothing.”

“One thing I do remember is that with you, nothing can cover anything from a bruise to the need for a bionic replacement.”

A smile blossomed, lighting up her features, and Mathiaz felt his insides tighten. In the months she’d worked with him—a year ago now, he struggled to remember—she hadn’t smiled nearly often enough. When she did, it was like the sun coming out. He felt an aching need to see her smile again.

“Were we lovers?”

Instead of making her smile, his question had her looking away. He felt cheated. In his dream when he’d held her in his arms, his mouth hungry on hers, she’d laughed with happiness. She’d responded out of her own hunger, and the ferocity of what they’d shared made him ache with the desire to translate dream into reality.

“If you weren’t injured, I’d be insulted,” she said. “It wouldn’t say much for my lovemaking capability if you couldn’t remember.”

She hadn’t answered his question, he noticed, wondering if her brittle response covered something deeper. More wishful thinking? Or a memory beyond conscious reach? He decided to match her brittleness, for now. “Considering I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, it’s hardly an insult.”

“French toast and double-strength black coffee.”

He stared at her. As far as he knew, that was the breakfast he’d eaten, except that it wasn’t yesterday, it was months ago. “How did you…”

“You have the same thing every morning except Sundays when you have eggs Benedict.”

Inwardly he felt gratified at how well she knew him. Warning himself not to read too much into the discovery, he said, “Am I that predictable?”

“Bad security, but yes. When I worked for you, we argued a lot about the need to vary your routines to reduce the risk of the stalker being able to predict your movements.”

The relationship he remembered was friendly but formal, at least on Jacinta’s side. On his own, he remembered a strong wish to turn their association into something more personal. Had they done so, or had it remained another dream? “I don’t recall arguing with you.”

“Trust me, we didn’t see eye to eye on anything much.”

She had revealed more than she knew, Mathiaz thought. He rarely argued with anyone. When they were boys, his brother, Eduard, used to complain that Mathiaz preferred to use logic rather than fists to resolve their differences. No wonder Eduard had ended up a navy pilot, while Mathiaz had gone into government.

Mathiaz wondered if Jacinta knew how much she had just revealed. For sparks to have flown between them, she had to have reached him on a level few people did. Their relationship may have started out purely professional, but somewhere along the line things had changed, he would swear to it. He was still agonizing over it when a nurse came in, smiled at him, and did something to the drip feeding into his arm, before making a note on his chart. Moments later, he was deeply asleep.

Jacinta wondered if he sensed her keeping watch at his side.




Chapter Three


“This…is…not…my…idea…of…fun,” Jacinta said around a plastic mouthguard, punctuating each word with vicious right and left jabs at a leather covered punching bag suspended from the ceiling of Mathiaz’s private gymnasium.

Being surrounded by an army of servants gave her a lot of sympathy for people who needed bodyguards all the time. Until she came to work for the baron the first time, she had never understood how annoying it was to have someone shadowing her every move. She had only been back at Château Valmont for two weeks, and already she longed for the freedom to come and go without having people underfoot constantly.

The gymnasium was one of the few places she could have privacy. Attendants were on call at the press of a button, along with a personal trainer, a masseur, and for all she knew, someone to do the workout for her. But at least they weren’t in the same room watching every move she made.

Security cameras scrutinized the perimeter of the complex, but Mathiaz had vetoed their presence inside the workout rooms themselves. On security grounds, Jacinta should object, but right now she was glad no one could see her work off her frustration.

She didn’t like living in the royal compound, and she didn’t like being on call for Mathiaz twenty-four hours a day, knowing she was the only one who remembered everything they’d shared. She launched a roundhouse punch at the bag. The recoil almost knocked her off her feet, but the release of tension felt good.

The baron had been discharged from the hospital after a week, using crutches for the first week. Now his leg had all but healed and he could get around using only a stick until he regained full strength.

He had thrown himself into his recovery with his usual determination. Challenged by Dr. Pascale to get back on his feet in two weeks, he managed it in less. Confronted with a physiotherapy program that would make a lesser man blanch, he had followed it to the letter, although Jacinta hadn’t missed the clenched teeth and sweat-soaked clothing that accompanied his progress.

She only wished as much progress had been made identifying the reason for the explosion. The combined efforts of the police and the royal protection detail hadn’t turned up anything useful. No demands had been received at the château. A group of hotheads claiming responsibility would have given them some leads, but there was nothing.

The police had interviewed the employee who had threatened Mathiaz before. Zenio was on parole, but the police found no connection, although Jacinta thought there had to be one. In a country as peaceful as Carramer, two lots of threats against the same member of the royal family was stretching coincidence. But she had no evidence, only suspicions.

She took another swing at the punching bag. How did you fight an invisible enemy?

“You must have killed that bag by now.”

She shoved the mouthguard into a pocket and pushed locks of sweat-streaked hair off her forehead, then tried for an impersonal tone. “Good morning, Baron. Has Dr. Pascale finished with you already?”

Mathiaz rubbed his chin ruefully. “He accused me of wasting his time, his way of telling me I’m doing fine.”

He gestured toward the punching bag. “You’re attacking that as if it’s a mortal enemy.”

She reached for a towel and hung it around her neck. “You never know, someday it might be.”

“Have you ever tried talking your way out of a jam?” She swabbed her face with the towel. “Sometimes talking doesn’t work.” And sometimes it got people killed, she thought but didn’t say.

Mathiaz rested his stick against a wall, let his silk robe pool on the floor, and dropped onto a bench, positioning himself to perform the exercises the physiotherapist had prescribed. She saw him wince as he stretched and flexed his injured leg, but he kept up the movements until sweat beaded his face.

He might not believe in fighting his way out of a crisis, but he fought when he had to. She had never seen anyone attack a rehabilitation program so single-mindedly. At thirty-one, he had a superb physique thanks to his passions for climbing and bushwalking, and his fitness stood him in good stead now.

Watching him work out, she almost wished he looked less imposing. It was all too easy to remember how his strong arms had held her, and to want him to hold her again.

She stopped the punching bag’s pendulum action, stripped off her gloves, and crossed the room to a state-of-the-art walking machine.

“How’s the arm?” he asked, grunting as he hefted a set of weights resting against his ankles.

She fiddled with the settings on the treadmill. “Fine.” The bandage had been replaced by a smaller sticking plaster, the burn itself already fading.

He lowered the weights and sat up, straddling the bench. “I still have trouble believing that you were in the vicinity of the explosion by pure coincidence.”

“Coincidence or not, it’s true.” Her guarded tone sounded betraying even to her.

He heard it, too. “I could pull royal rank and make you tell me more.”

“You can’t, I’m not a Carramer citizen. All you can do is have me thrown out of the country.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he growled. “You live here, you have a business here, yet you haven’t taken out citizenship. Don’t you plan on staying?”

A few months ago her answer would have been an unequivocal yes. Now, she wasn’t sure. Before the explosion, she had been thinking of selling the academy. The woman who helped manage it had expressed an interest. Jacinta could return to her native California and…do what? Martial arts experts were a dime a dozen in the States. So were self-defense classes and personal trainers. She wasn’t guaranteed a good living, and definitely not the exotic surroundings she enjoyed in Perla, the largest city in Valmont Province, where her home and business were located.

Who was she kidding? She didn’t stay in Carramer because of her work or the tropical scenery, but because Mathiaz was here. She had done the one thing she knew bodyguards weren’t supposed to do, get involved with their clients. Judgment got clouded, mistakes were made. People got hurt.

Like Mathiaz.

Never mind that she wasn’t a professional. She was acting as one. If she hadn’t allowed her own fears to drive her away, she would still have been working for him when the explosion happened, and been able to prevent him from being injured. As if it could expiate her guilt, Jacinta wrenched the dial on the treadmill all the way around, giving herself an uphill hike that left her panting within minutes.

The pressure slackened abruptly as Mathiaz twisted the dial lower. She grabbed the side rails and slowed her pace to match the treadmill’s dwindling speed. “Why did you do that?”

“You can’t talk when you’re climbing Everest.”

“Who says I want to talk?”

“You may not, but I do. Since I got out of the hospital I’ve been treated with kid gloves by everyone but you.”

She gave him what her Scottish grandmother would have called an old-fashioned look. “Are you complaining?”

“The opposite. You have my full permission to go on giving me a hard time.”

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t recall ever needing your permission. But this is the first time you’ve considered it beneficial. May I ask the reason?”

“I want to get back to normal as fast as possible. Mollycoddling isn’t going to achieve it.”

“Whereas being taunted and nagged provides a better incentive,” she guessed. She remembered that he worked best under pressure, setting his own goals and deadlines, and taking satisfaction in exceeding those set by others. She stepped off the treadmill and gestured to a padded floor area in one corner. “It’s a shame you can’t join me in a few falls—in the interests of not mollycoddling you.”

While guarding him the last time, she had jogged with him, worked out in the gym with him, but never invited him to join her in practicing any of the defense disciplines in which she was trained. The warrior arts created a physical closeness between the combatants that was more than she dared to encourage between herself and Mathiaz, not that resisting had done her much good.

She wasn’t sure why she wished he could join her now. Telling herself she was complying with his order to push him to his limits might explain his motives, but it didn’t explain hers.

Mathiaz looked at the mat speculatively. “Might be interesting at that.”

She had only made the comment because she thought it was impossible. “I’m sure Dr. Pascale’s prescription doesn’t include martial arts,” she said, hoping he would agree and give her a graceful way out of this.

Mathiaz’s jaw hardened as he compared her small size against his own well-muscled bulk. His stay in the hospital hadn’t done much to even the odds between them. “Pascale gave me the all-clear to do anything I feel up to doing. You should be more worried that I might hurt you.”

He had already done so in ways he couldn’t imagine. Throwing her over his shoulder a few times couldn’t do much more damage. “In your dreams, Baron,” she said. “Haven’t you heard the saying that size isn’t everything?”

She regretted starting down that path when she saw his eyes glitter. “All depends on the arena,” he said softly and closed the distance between them.

She drew a ragged breath, feeling cornered. “Shouldn’t we get changed?”

“There’s something I want to do first.”

The air seemed charged, and she had difficulty catching her breath. She knew it had nothing to do with her workout on the treadmill, and everything to do with the man standing so close to her she could see the tiny flecks of gold in his blue eyes.

He had lost a little weight since the explosion, and the aristocratic angles of his face were more sharply defined than ever, adding to his devastating appeal. Though his ordeal had etched lines of strain around his mouth, renewed energy radiated from him. He stood easily, his injured leg taking his weight almost evenly with his good leg. She let her eyes close, knowing that he meant to kiss her, and knowing equally well that she was going to let him.

Ten months of self-imposed exile from him had taken a toll. She told herself she wanted to feel his touch for old times’ sake, to give her something to remember him by when this was over, and they went their separate ways again.

The moment his arms came around her and he pulled her against his chest, she knew she lied.

Her cheek molded against his shoulder as if by design, and her palms slid up his back. She felt corded muscle and scented dampness from his exertion. The steady sound of his breathing almost completed the sensory package. All that was missing was taste.

He supplied it by tilting her head up and bringing his mouth down to cover hers, breathing in the sigh she had begun to release. The mingling of her breath with his felt so erotic that her heart picked up speed.

The effect increased when he flicked the corner of her mouth with his tongue. She opened her mouth in surprise, probably just as he had intended, and he used the advantage to deepen the kiss.

Her senses spun. Clinging to him to steady herself only intensified the feeling. She had forgotten how well he could play her, like an instrument in which he was a virtuoso.

Even as logic insisted she should end this, part of her returned his kiss with all the pent-up passion inside her. She had no business allowing herself such an indulgence, but she could no more push him away than she could fly.

As he lifted his mouth away, she murmured a protest, then sighed again as he rained tiny kisses along her jaw and down the sensitive column of her throat. He cupped her face, looking at her from under heavy lids as if seeing her for the first time.

“I dreamed of this,” he said huskily.

He wasn’t dreaming, he was remembering, but she wasn’t going to tell him so. He had held her and kissed her more times than she liked to think. With no memory beyond their working relationship, he thought this was the first time his mouth had almost drowned hers in a kiss so sweetly demanding, that she wouldn’t have cared if she never surfaced again. He had no idea that they had resisted the pull between them for almost two months, pretending that theirs was a purely professional relationship.

After he’d kissed her on the night of the trade dinner, she could no longer pretend. Mathiaz had worked his way into a corner of her heart she had walled off since her late teens. He not only ignited her senses in every way possible, he seduced her mind, too. She was skilled in defending herself against physical encroachment, but had no practice at keeping someone like Mathiaz out of her mind.

Her thoughts spun back to candlelit dinners in his villa, as he fascinated, aroused and intrigued her with his conversation, as well as his beguiling touch. One night he had arranged to screen a movie especially for her. Afterward, in the darkness of the private theater, they’d come so close to making love that heat poured through her thinking about it now.

Although she told herself she was relieved that he couldn’t remember, she felt stupidly hurt to think that the night he had told her he loved her wasn’t burned on his memory the way it was on hers.

The baron had received another threatening letter, this time with a live bullet enclosed in the envelope, hand delivered to his villa. The stalker had known how to bypass the palace security protocols, giving himself away as an insider, The mistake had enabled him to be caught within hours.

She should have left then, but had allowed Mathiaz to convince her to stay, supposedly to help tighten up palace security protocols. They both knew the real reason. He wanted her to stay, so she stayed.

A month after the stalker was caught, Mathiaz had arranged a moonlit picnic in a secluded area of the garden at Château Valmont, instructing palace security to allow them their privacy. The champagne and excellent food, moonlight and the perfume of roses had bewitched her into forgetting that she shouldn’t let him kiss her, far less caress her so intimately that her eyes blurred just thinking of that night.

Afterward they had gone for a midnight stroll along the private beach and he had told her that he was in love with her.

He hadn’t understood when she pulled away from him in panic. How could he, when she barely understood herself? Like Cinderella fleeing the ball on the stroke of midnight, she’d gone back to her suite in the guest wing, and started packing. Her resignation had been on his desk next morning.

He had asked her to explain, plainly hurt by her apparent change of heart. Her job at the château was done, she informed him, the finality of it echoing in her soul. Time she moved on. She knew she sounded uncaring, when it was the last thing she felt. Better he thought she didn’t care, than discover how much she did, when her every instinct rejected the feeling.

She hadn’t wanted him to know about the panic attack his declaration of love had brought on, ashamed to admit how the thought of loving anyone paralyzed her. If he knew, he would want more from her than she was capable of giving. So she told herself she was doing the right thing leaving now before she hurt him more than she had already. For herself, it was already too late.

No one else had ever held her so tenderly, or made her feel such intense emotions. She put them into her response now, blindly, hungrily, the long months of deprivation overriding the inner voice that warned her she was playing with fire.

How had she found the strength to walk away from him, and live without him for ten of the longest months of her life? How was she going to find the strength to walk away a second time?

“Jacinta,” he murmured, his lips moving against her mouth. “While I was unconscious, I dreamed of you, and this was exactly how I imagined kissing you would feel.”

She turned her head away, trying to sound unaffected, when it was the last thing she felt. “In my experience, reality rarely measures up to our dreams.”

He dropped his hands to his sides and moved back a few paces. “I wanted to know, all the same.”

She kept the disappointment out of her voice. “And now?”

“Now we practice those falls.”

She should be glad he had the strength to stop when he did, but regret pulsed through her as she went to the dressing room and changed. Close combat was probably the last exercise she should contemplate with Mathiaz, but since she couldn’t risk any other kind of intimacy, she decided to take what comfort she could in this kind.

When she emerged from the dressing room, he was waiting for her at the padded floor area. His loose-fitting white pants and tunic matched hers. The sash around his waist was also black.

“You sure you want to go through with this?” she asked more cheerfully than she felt.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Regretting accepting my challenge already? I’ll try not to do too much damage.”

“I was more concerned about hurting your leg.”

“Let me worry about the leg. You worry about surviving.”

She was already worried about survival, but knew he didn’t mean the same kind she did. Emotional survival worried her more than dealing with his greater physical strength. She was trained to handle opponents twice her size, but her training hadn’t included what to do when your opponent kissed you and left your mind so fogged you could hardly think straight.

She forced her mind to clear and bowed ceremonially to him. He returned the bow, then began to circle around her, warming up.

The first couple of times he threw her easily, and let her throw him once out of courtesy. Then she managed to throw him once without his cooperation. She saw the look of surprise on his face as he landed, slapping the mat to absorb the impact of his fall.

Rolling to his feet, he began to react with more strength, demanding more from her to keep up. “You’re good at this,” he said as she rolled to her feet, after another fall.

“For a woman of my size,” she added, tongue firmly in cheek.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to. I’m used to being underestimated.”

“I have the feeling I’m doing it now.” He sounded as if he meant something more than the friendly bout.

“Are you remembering something?”

He frowned. “Not sure. I have the feeling we’ve done this before, or something very like it. Have we?”

“This is the first time we’ve practiced martial arts together,” she said with scrupulous honesty.

He circled again, looking for an opening. “But not the first time I’ve kissed you.”

Apprehension prickled along her spine. “You said you dreamed about it. Sometimes the mind can’t tell the difference between a real experience and one that’s strongly imagined.”

“Now you sound like Pascale.” Mathiaz said in annoyance, as if her evasiveness bothered him more than her fast footwork.

She was bothered, too, for different reasons. She didn’t like lying to him even by omission, but how else could she describe her refusal to tell him what had gone on between them in the year he had lost?

Why didn’t she simply tell him that she was the one who couldn’t deal with the closeness blossoming between them?

Mathiaz lunged at her with a speed that surprised her, given his injury. When he grasped her and pulled her down to the floor with him, her mind whirled back to when she was eighteen, returning from a date with her first love, the man she had fully expected to marry when they were old enough.

They had blown a tire on a back road on the way home from a dance. She had been helping Colin change the tire when a group of teenagers pulled up beside them, making lewd, drunken comments.

They had ignored the catcalling, but the four drunken youths piled out of the car and encircled her. She had tried talking to them, hoping to defuse the situation, but they began pawing her. When Colin tried to stop them, one of the youths struck him from behind with the tire lever. Colin slumped to the ground. Never had Jacinta felt more helpless.

She tried to reach Colin but two of the men pulled her to the ground. A third dragged her dress up around her waist. Her attempts to kick and bite her assailants proved useless. She knew what would have happened next if a police car hadn’t cruised to a halt beside them, lights blazing. After a scuffle, the youths were arrested. She had been vindicated to see them convicted of Colin’s murder.

She had made up her mind never to be helpless again, learning every self-defense move she could, and finding that she had an unerring eye with a gun. Perhaps because she now projected an air of being able to take care of herself, she had never needed to use any of her skills other than in practice.

It had taken her a few years to learn that her ability to let anyone get close to her had also been a casualty of that night. After panicking as soon as she began to care too much about anyone, she had made sure her dates weren’t allowed to progress beyond friendship.

Until Mathiaz.

She had resisted his appeal as long as she could, telling herself that anything else was unprofessional. He had no such qualms, making his feelings for her plain, as well as ensuring that she knew he didn’t give his heart lightly. She had really thought she could respond in kind, until the night when he told her he loved her. Until her sense of panic had become too strong to fight. No amount of logic could shake her terror that if she allowed him to love her, something terrible would happen to him, too.

Caught up in the memory of the attack, she fought Mathiaz as if possessed, almost succeeding in breaking his hold on her until she realized who he was, and where they were. In her confusion, he was able to pin her beneath him. She had no choice but to concede the match.

He looked down at her, enjoying the moment. She tensed, thinking he meant to kiss her again, but instead he smiled in triumph. “What was that about hurting me?”

She let him give her a hand up, resisting the urge to use the leverage to flip him over her shoulder. One day she would have to warn him about making such a basic mistake. “I always fantasize when I’m fighting, don’t you?”

He grinned. “Sure. I fantasize that what we’re doing isn’t fighting.”

She felt her cheeks glow, and looked away. While they were apart, Mathiaz had figured in her fantasies more often than he had any right to do. She felt the familiar swell of panic start, and made an effort to control her breathing. “I need a shower.”

Mathiaz watched her go, feeling puzzled. Whoever she had been fighting just now, he’d wager anything that it wasn’t him. When he had lunged at her, she had acted exactly as he’d hoped, moving into his attack and trying to throw him off balance. The move had enabled him to pull her to the floor, pinning her beneath him.

That was the moment when she’d left him to fight some demon of her own imagination. He wished he knew what it was.

There was so much about her he didn’t know, including why he felt as if he’d kissed her many times before today. He felt a tug of need. She was so fragile and so strong, and the glow of her exertion made her look beautiful.

Holding her in his arms felt right. He couldn’t accept that today was the first time. Some part of him had known exactly how she liked to be touched. He crashed one fist into the other in frustration. If only he could force his way through the fog shrouding his memory, he was sure he would find some answers.

He strode to the changing room and stood under a cool shower for a long time, hoping either to stir some memory of the past year, or wash away his need to know. He did neither, and came out chilled to the bone, his leg aching, and his temper heading for boiling point. Dr. Pascale had said Mathiaz’s memory of the last months might be gone for good, but fragments of recollection kept tantalizing him, especially when he spent time with Jacinta. So his next step was obvious. He would spend as much time with her as he could.




Chapter Four


Some people never learned, Jacinta thought furiously as she showered and dressed. Bad enough to let him kiss her. Agreeing to practice unarmed combat with him was the height of folly and could only end in one way, with every nerve in her body screaming for more of his touch, and her mind urging her to get as far away from him as she could before something terrible happened to him as it had to Colin.

She should have turned down this assignment, she knew. But when Dr. Pascale had called to tell her that he needed her help to rouse Mathiaz from his coma, she hadn’t hesitated, hastening to the baron’s bedside like a lovesick adolescent. Her conceit at thinking she was the one person who could bring him back was going to cost her dearly.





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