By Order of the Prince

Chapter Two

She had to be crazy.

Somehow between the time she’d left Amir’s suite and the time she’d left Antoine’s, she’d lost her ever-loving mind. The minute Beth reached her private office she sank down at her desk and shook her head, wondering what on earth she’d been thinking when she’d given Antoine that envelope, when she’d offered to help him.

She should have kept her mouth shut and taken the notes to Jake like she’d intended. The problem was she hadn’t been thinking. Instead, she’d been falling into the blue depths of Antoine’s eyes, touched by the loneliness and the feeling of isolation he hadn’t tried to hide.

She’d offered her help because she’d thought he needed it, which was a ridiculous thing for her to think. He was a prince, for God’s sake. He had people to take care of his every wish, his every need. The last thing he needed was a simple woman who didn’t know a thing about foreign politics and had only a high school education helping him investigate threats against members of royal families.

She checked her email and the voice mail on her phone to make sure there weren’t any fires to put out with the housekeeping staff, then moved to the multitask printer to copy the threatening notes in the envelope. With both the originals and the copies back in her pocket she left her office to do a walk-through of the hotel before heading back to Antoine’s suite.

The bulk of her work occurred in the mornings when she coordinated the staff to make sure all the rooms were cleaned and the guests’ needs were met. She was not only responsible for the cleaning staff, but also for inventory of housekeeping items needed for the cleaning and maintaining of the guests rooms.

It was her routine in the evenings to walk through the hotel and be accommodating to any guest who might have a problem or simply to be a friendly face to both returning regular guests and new people who had come to enjoy the luxury resort.

She knew how important it was to offer a personal touch to the people who vacationed or came here for work purposes. She liked to think that her work here was at least part of the reason people chose to come back again and again.

When it was finally time to return to Antoine’s suite a new tension began to well up in her stomach. The man definitely made her just a little breathless and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.

The last man who had left her breathless had not just broken her heart, but had shattered it into a million pieces. She’d never allow herself to be that vulnerable again. And she’d be a complete fool to entertain any feelings for a visiting prince who would soon return to his own life in his own country.

He’d obviously been waiting for her as he answered the door almost before her knock sounded. She stepped into the room and he closed the door behind her. “I made two copies of the notes,” she said. “One for you and one for me.” She handed him both the original and his copy.

“Why would you want a copy?” he asked curiously.

“In case something happens to yours,” she replied and tried to ignore how her heart stuttered at his nearness. At five feet nine inches, Beth was unaccustomed to men towering over her, but Antoine was a good four or five inches taller. He made her feel small and feminine.

“If you’ll get your driver, I’ll give him directions to the forensic lab where we can find Jane,” she said.

“You’re going to be my driver,” he replied smoothly. “I don’t want anyone to know what we’re doing, what we’ve found and that includes my entire security team. We must figure out a way to get me out of the hotel and to your car with nobody seeing me.”

Beth stared at him, not only nervous at the idea of being alone with him but also by the fact that she would be responsible for him while he was with her. “But what if something happens? What if you get hurt?”

His sensual lips curved up in a smile that warmed the ice-blue of his eyes. “Unless you’re planning on beating or maiming me, I should be just fine.”

“But surely you should take somebody from your security team with you,” she protested. She’d feel so much better if there was somebody big and burly and fully loaded with an arsenal of weapons.

The blue of his eyes paled to an icy silver and his lips thinned. “No. We go alone.” His voice was laced with command and for the first time he looked and sounded like a prince accustomed to getting his way.

She frowned thoughtfully. “Okay, if you go down this hall to the end, there’s another corridor, turn right and follow it and you’ll see an exit door. If you give me five minutes I can pull up outside the door.”

“Perfect, then I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

As Beth left the suite and headed back to the lobby nervous anxiety pressed tight against her chest. God forbid she had a wreck while driving the Prince of Barajas. Once again she found herself wondering when exactly she’d lost her mind and when she could hope for its return.

When she got into her car she quickly scanned the interior, noting the tear in the passenger seat, the faint layer of dust that covered the dashboard. Not exactly fit for royalty, but the ten-year-old car was paid off and still ran perfectly well. He’d just have to deal with the less-than-royal transportation.

She told herself that one of the reasons she wanted to help him was because this whole ordeal had hammered the hotel with negative publicity. But she suspected the truth of the matter was that she was desperate for something, anything that might fill the vast loneliness in her life, even if it was just for a single night.

She pulled up against the curb by the door she’d told Antoine to exit and watched as he strode toward her. Once again she was struck by his handsomeness and as he flashed a quick smile to her a crazy burst of heat momentarily usurped her nervous anxiety.

“Mission accomplished,” he said as he slid into the passenger seat. “Nobody saw my escape.”

“Won’t somebody worry if you aren’t in your room?” she asked as she pulled away from the curb.

“I have my cell phone with me and told my staff that I was retiring for the night and didn’t want to be disturbed for any reason. Nobody will even know that I’m missing from my suite,” he assured her.

Beth gripped the steering wheel tightly and headed toward the small town of Dumont. The scenery was spectacular with the last gasp of the sun sparking off the distant mountains and painting the landscape in lush shades of deep gold.

Antoine looked out the window and even though he was silent she felt a pulsing energy radiating from him. He turned to look at her, as if he’d felt her surreptitious gaze. “Do you think Jane will help us?”

“If anyone can pull a print from those papers, she can,” Beth replied. “But, she’s a by-the-book kind of woman. She might insist that the notes be handed over immediately to Sheriff Wolf.”

“Then I’ll just have to convince her that that’s not in our best interest,” he replied with an easy confidence.

“She’s pretty tough,” Beth warned.

“Yes, but I’m pretty charming,” he countered.

Beth gave a rueful laugh. “You charmed that envelope right out of my pocket.”

He sobered and she felt his gaze, intense and piercing on her. “I had a feeling you’d found something important and it was equally important that I convince you to tell me.”

“Do you always get what you want?” she asked lightly.

“It’s certainly rare that anyone tells me no.”

“I would imagine that being surrounded by yes-men could get a little boring at times.”

“Perhaps,” he replied and then cast his gaze out the side window once again.

The town of Dumont, Wyoming, was a small, charming place with historic buildings that dated back to the early 1800s. It had been a town filled with good, hard-working people before the royals had arrived. Now the streets were clogged with news vans and strangers.

Beth drove down the main drag and parked in front of the brick courthouse. “Jane’s lab and offices are on the second floor,” she said as she turned off the engine.

Antoine glanced at his wristwatch. “Won’t the offices be closed by now?”

“Security will let her know we’re here and it’s rare that Jane isn’t at work this late in the evening,” Beth explained.

Together they got out of the car and she noticed that Antoine did a quick sweep of the area with his narrowed gaze. Apparently he saw nothing to cause him alarm and they walked to the front door of the courthouse where Beth gestured to the security guard inside.

Within minutes they were in the elevator taking them to the second floor and Jane. She met them at the doorway of her office, her hazel eyes widening as she saw Antoine. “Prince Antoine, Beth…what’s going on?”

Antoine glanced up and down the hallway and then gestured to her office. “Ms. Cameron, perhaps we could speak to you in private.”

“Of course.” Jane ushered them into the small office and closed the door behind them.

“I was instructed today to pack up Sheik Amir Khalid’s items in his suite to be stored until we know what happened to him or somebody from his family came to claim them. While checking the nightstand drawers I found an envelope taped to the bottom of one,” Beth said.

Jane’s eyes filled with interest as Antoine held up the envelope but didn’t offer to hand it to her. “We’d like to see if you can pull some fingerprints from either the envelope or the notes inside, but before I give this to you I would like you to promise to keep this strictly confidential between the three of us.”

Jane frowned and raked a hand through her curly light brown hair. “I can’t make that promise without seeing what you have.” There was a hint of steel in her voice.

Antoine held her gaze for a long moment and then offered her the envelope. “What I’m hoping is that you can lift some prints and then give us a little time to do some investigating on our own before letting anyone else know about it.”

Jane didn’t take the envelope from him, but instead opened her office door and gestured them outside. “Bring it into the lab. I don’t want to touch it without gloves. As it is I’ll need to print both you and Beth so we can discount your prints on everything.”

They entered a small lab where Jane grabbed a kit from one of the metal shelves against the wall and then stepped up to a work table and pulled on latex gloves. Only then did she take the envelope from Antoine.

As she read the notes her eyes widened once again and when she finished she stared at first Antoine, then at Beth.

“These need to go to Jake,” she said.

“Eventually I’ll hand them over to him,” Antoine replied. “But let’s be serious here. The local law officials haven’t exactly proven themselves to be good, upstanding people. Even your own boss was proven to be untrustworthy.”

Jane’s face flushed and she looked down at the notes she’d spread out on the table. Amos Andrews, Jane’s boss, had not only tried to screw up her investigation into the bombing of the limo, he’d also tried to kill Jane. When he’d been arrested he’d made it clear that he was just a bit player in a larger conspiracy against the visiting royals, hired by somebody he refused to name.

“So, what exactly is it you want from me?” she asked with a weary sigh.

“Just a little time,” Antoine replied.

“How much time?” she asked.

“Seventy-two hours,” he replied after a moment of hesitation.

Jane said nothing. She opened the kit and withdrew several brushes and powder compounds in small bottles. As she began her work, Beth couldn’t help but gaze at Antoine again and again.

He stood rigid and once again she felt the energy wafting from him. And why wouldn’t he be tense? The stakes couldn’t be higher. Somebody wanted him and the other participants in the COIN coalition dead.

They didn’t know at this time if the people who were behind the conspiracy had already achieved the goal of killing one of them—Amir.

Antoine slid a glance at her and offered her a small smile that shot a hint of warmth in his cool blue eyes. Beth had always believed the term bedroom eyes meant dark and smoky and slightly mysterious, but she now recognized that bedroom eyes could be the cool blue of a mountain lake.

“I hope you find a useable fingerprint,” he said, his focus back on Jane. “When I know the identity of the person who wrote those notes, I will make certain he’s never a threat to anyone again.”

His tone was light and easy, but with a chilling undertone. Yes, he might make a delicious lover, but she had a feeling he’d make an even more formidable enemy.

IT WAS ALMOST NINE when they finally left the lab after being printed by Jane. She’d managed to pull another print that didn’t belong to either him or Beth and hoped that whoever had left it behind was in the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. If they were lucky she would have a name for them sometime the next day.

“I’m too wound up to go back to the suite and sleep.” He turned to look at the woman driving the car. He’d been acutely aware of Beth even as he’d tried to focus on what Jane had been doing.

He knew that to be successful in her position she had to be a strong taskmaster. The resort was known for impeccable guest services and housekeeping. And yet he sensed a softness in Beth that drew the darkness that resided inside him.

And there was darkness.

She cast him a quick glance and then returned her gaze to the road. “I’m a little wired myself,” she admitted.

“Perhaps we could go back to your place, have a cup of coffee and talk about things.”

He could tell he’d shocked her. “Prince Antoine, my home is small and simple. It’s not exactly fit for a prince,” she replied.

“A comfortable chair, some hot coffee and a little company is all I’d like. And please, call me Antoine.”

“Then you can call me Beth. Coffee sounds good and then I’ll be glad to take you back to the resort. My place is only ten minutes from there.”

“Then it’s settled, coffee at your house.” He leaned back against the seat and stared out the side window into the darkness. You’re a cliché, he thought ruefully. He was a prince who was afraid to trust anyone, with an aching depth of loneliness inside him and the mantle of power weighing heavily, definitely a cliché.

For the past three weeks Antoine had done nothing but worry and wonder about the attack, about what danger might come from what unexpected source.

He’d had long dialogues with the other men in the COIN coalition. Prince Stefan Lutece, Sheik Efraim Aziz, Sheik Amir Khalid and Antoine and his brother had all come here in the hopes of trade agreements with the United States that would benefit their small countries and instead had found nothing but treachery, danger and betrayal.

At the moment Antoine was sick of it all. The resort had become a place of intense stress, of people yammering at him and palpable tension that filled the air the moment he stepped out of his rooms. He was looking forward to a little more time away from the luxurious surroundings.

Beth turned off the road they had been traveling and onto a narrower road with deep embankments and thick trees on either side. “You drive this every night after dark?” he asked.

“It’s the only way for me to get home. It’s not too bad as long as you make sure you stay on the road.”

A small laugh escaped him. “That would be an understatement. I’m sure it gets quite dangerous in the winter.”

“I call this car my little engine that could.” She tapped the steering wheel with a long slender finger. “Although I have to admit more than once in the winters somebody from the hotel has had to come to get me because I don’t have four-wheel drive.”

He could tell she was beginning to relax with each minute they spent together. He wanted that. For just a little while he wanted to be treated like an ordinary man and not like a prince.

“This feels very isolated,” he said as the trees on either side of the road seemed to crawl closer.

“It is. It’s a pretty big spread but most of it hasn’t been cleared or anything. My grandfather bought the land years ago, long before there was a resort. My father and mother chose to make it their home after my grandparents died and I’ve always lived here. I like the isolation, the beautiful nature that surrounds me when I step outside my front or back door. Is your country beautiful?”

“White beaches, blue seas, lush flowers…yes, Barajas is very beautiful, but I find Wyoming to be as beautiful, just different.”

She turned off the road and onto a driveway that led to a small cottage. A light shone from the front porch, a welcome beacon in the darkness that had fallen. Colorful flowers spilled from boxes under the windows. It looked like something from a fairy tale, an enchanted cottage in the middle of the wilderness.

“It’s not much,” she said with a touch of defensiveness. “But it’s all mine and I love it here.” This time her words held an obvious sense of pride.

The sense of welcome that the porch light had emitted continued on into the house. As Antoine stepped inside the living room the earthy burnt orange and browns of the décor instantly put him at rest.

“Please, have a seat.” She gestured him toward the overstuffed sofa. “I’m just going to get out of my uniform. I’ll be right back to start the coffee.”

She disappeared down the hallway and Antoine sank into the comfortable couch cushion and gazed around the room. Like subtle facial features that could give away internal emotions and weaknesses, he knew a room could speak volumes about the person who lived in it.

A bookcase stood against one wall, one of the shelves filled with framed photos of Beth with an older woman who appeared to be her mother. The television was small, as if watching it wasn’t a top priority. A paperback lay on the end of the coffee table, the couple’s clinch on the cover letting him know it was a romance novel. A wind chime tinkled a lovely melody from someplace outside the windows.

A lonely romantic who loved nature, he thought. There was no sign of a man’s presence anywhere in the room. An old record player sat next to a stack of ancient LPs and it was easy for him to imagine her curled on the sofa with a book in hand while old, romantic music filled the house.

He looked up as she returned to the room, clad in a pair of jeans that looked slightly worn and hugged her long slender legs to perfection. Her mint-green T-shirt fit a little big but not so much that he didn’t notice the press of her full breasts against the material.

He suddenly wished he was in a pair of jeans, on the back of a horse with her, her arms wrapped tightly around him as they rode carefree across a pasture. It was a vision that brought the first burst of pleasure he’d felt since arriving in Wyoming.

“Let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll make the coffee,” she said.

He followed after her, unable to avoid noticing the way her jeans cupped her shapely buttocks. Why was there no man in her life? A woman like her should have a man to thrill her with his lovemaking and then hold her tight through the darkness of the night.

The kitchen was a surprise. Large and airy, with a breakfast nook that was surrounded on three sides by floor-to-ceiling windows, it was obviously the heart of the house. Gourmet copper-bottomed pans hung from a rack above the stove and a variety of cooking-aid machines lined the counters.

“You like to cook.” He stated the obvious.

She flashed him a bright smile that warmed him in places he hadn’t realized were cold. “I love to cook. It’s my secret passion.” She pointed him to the round oak table in the nook. “Have a seat. The coffee will be ready in just a minute and I have some leftover red velvet cake to go with it.”

He sat and enjoyed the view of her bustling to get the coffee brewing. It had been far too long since he’d enjoyed the pleasure of a woman. For weeks before the trip to the resort there had been meeting after meeting to decide what to offer and what they needed from the trade agreements they intended to make. There had been almost no time for any kind of a social life.

“Hopefully Jane will have something for you tomorrow,” she said as she placed a creamer and sugar bowl on the table. Then went back to the counter and returned with a platter holding a cake that looked as if it had just come out of a bakery.

“Hopefully,” he replied. “But I don’t want to talk about any of that tonight. Tonight I want to talk about ordinary things, things that don’t set off a burn of anger in my belly. I noticed that you have a lot of pictures of you and your mother in the living room.”

“Yes. My dad died when I was six and when I was thirteen my mom developed a severe heart condition. Unfortunately she passed away three years ago.”

“My parents died when I was young.” A long-remembered grief touched Antoine’s heart. He thought about the horrific night of his parents’ deaths often, recognized and never forgot the lesson he’d learned that night.

“I’m so sorry.” She poured the coffee and carried the cups to the table, then sank down in the chair opposite his. “Was it some kind of an accident?”

“Actually, they were murdered.” She gasped and he continued, “My father was initially my mother’s bodyguard. He was an American, an ex-mercenary and they fell in love and married. Unfortunately my father had made many enemies in his past and that night those enemies found him and my mother.”

“So, who raised you and your brother?”

“My mother’s father, King Omar Zubira.” A whisper of a smile curved his lips as he thought of the stern but loving man who had raised them. “He didn’t approve of my mother’s marriage and never really accepted my father, but he was a loving man to me and Sebastian, although I must admit we sometimes gave him a hard time.”

“The twin thing?”

He grinned. “But, of course. Being an identical twin can be quite amusing and Sebastian and I definitely used it to our advantage whenever possible. After grandfather died I was grateful to have Sebastian by my side to share the responsibility of ruling Barajas.”

“It must be a huge responsibility, to run a nation,” she said as she sliced the cake and shoved a generous piece toward him.