The Baron and The Bodyguard

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.”