After, after soldiering up and doing his job, greeting her at the bottom of the stairs in the roar of welcome and introducing her to his family and escorting her to the public luncheon in the courtyard of El Castillo then stepping back as Mateo and Sofia took her on a tour of the Monte, after watching his family and their people adjust quickly to the fact that they had her and not her father to thank for their financial salvation while he was still seeing contrails from the bomb she dropped, after she asked if she could have a private word with him and he escorted her to his castle office in the waning twilight of a surreal day, Roman sat on the edge of his ancient carved desk and tried to wrangle his thoughts and feelings into an orderly line as Cenobia “Cen” Trujillo wandered his office.
“Cen,” she’d asked everyone to call her.
Cen.
Sin.
Goddammit.
She paced his office, slow and a little dreamy, looking out at the vineyards and mountains from his leaded glass window, walking on fine leather ankle boots that got her up to 5’5” or so. He’d forgotten she was short; she’d been a titan on the podium. Sunset turned her cream cashmere sweater and russet full-grain leather skirt various shades of buttery gold over her curvy body.
Her clothes had been torn and dirty last time he’d seen her. Somehow she’d still managed to fill the cab of his truck with the smell of honeysuckle.
When she turned to face him, Roman realized he was staring.
“Who could’ve imagined this is where we’d end up thirteen years later,” she said with a soft grin and real wonder, motioning to his office. The Spanish accent was light in her voice; she’d gotten all of her education in the U.S. “Both of us CEOs and you a príncipe and king’s advisor.”
He gave a nod, acknowledging the surreal.
Last time she’d seen him, he’d been a twenty-six-year-old kid, the ink still wet on his Sheppard Security business cards, just six months out of third batt and most comfortable in his ACU pants and sand-colored T-shirts.
Then, when he was twenty-nine, his biological father had called wanting to give him a kingdom.
It had been bullshit—the greedy, self-consumed man Roman had never known had really just wanted to take the kingdom away from Mateo, assuming a dumb American soldier would be easier to keep under his thumb. Roman had given the old man the finger and offered his sword to his half brother and half sister, who wanted to make their little kingdom a nice place to live. It’d been simple: good people had needed Roman’s help. He could help them.
Then, six months ago, Mateo had gone and complicated it.
Now, Cenobia Trujillo was seeing a thirty-nine-year-old clotheshorse who claimed an office with ancient tapestries and a six-hundred-year-old mosaic ceiling in a medieval castle. Roman’s dark high-and-tight haircut now had expensive product in it, his Tom Ford suit was bespoke, the burnished calfskin of his dark brown Berluti oxfords was as smooth as silk, his dinged up memorial bracelet now cozied up to a stainless-steel Jaeger-LeCoultre, and his Gucci pocket square was a birthday present from his rock star brother-in-law.
Cenobia’s brown eyes, coffee bean dark and velvety, traveled over him as she walked closer. “You certainly look the part of CEO,” she said, voice soft.
Roman straightened.
“Yeah, I’m CEO of a firm that employs two hundred and fifty-five of the smartest private-security minds in the world,” he said. “I’m also advisor to the guy who runs this place. Right now, they should yank me off both jobs.”
She paused, confused, just a few feet away between the two high-backed chairs in front of his desk.
“A stranger had her pretty fingers playing around in this kingdom and I had no clue.”
The surprised hurt was instant on her wide, expressive face. “You’re upset,” she said, raising her chin.
“Damn right,” he growled out. “Why didn’t you tell me you were the one okaying our money, Cenobia?”
“Please,” she said. “Call me Cen.”
Like hell he would. He looked at her steadily.
Everyone talked about how bright and green his eyes were, brighter and greener surrounded by dark lashes. Interrogation hadn’t been his primary skill as a Ranger. But his eyes, his silence, and the sense of threat that ran closer to the surface than anyone understood had always been his best tools at getting people to talk.
His best tools weren’t often greeted with a direct, cat-eyed gaze.
“Roman, imagine how that would have looked,” she said, the fingers he hadn’t meant to call pretty running absently along the back of one of the wooden chairs she stood next to. “A great and noble kingdom receives aid from a twenty-one-year-old girl?” She gripped a finial. “It would have looked like I was adopting the Monte as my puppy.”
He shook his head. Focused. “Screw everyone else. Why didn’t you tell me?”
He’d spent the day trying to rewrite ten years of understanding. All those emails and notes hadn’t been with her father. They’d been with her.
A thread had woven between them when he’d extracted her from the bunker, held her up while she was physically ill from seeing the death he’d delivered, then raced her across the desert to safety.
But those short, quick notes had created a bond.
Those notes had transformed her into the only former Sheppard Security client Roman expected the truth from.
“If the loan came from my father, you would assume it was a business decision,” she said. “From me... I was afraid you would think it was pity.” For the first time that day, she dropped her gaze. “Or teenage...fancifulness.”
Fancifulness?
A CEO in cashmere and leather stood before him saying she hadn’t revealed herself in a decade of jointly overseeing a fortune because he’d think she had a crush?
He wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole. “You didn’t tell me in the beginning? Fine. But ten years, Cenobia.”
“Cen.”
He crossed his arms and glowered back.
She clasped her dark hands together and ran four fingers over the back of one. “I did repeatedly invite you to Mexico with the intention of telling you in person.”
Well...shit.
He’d repeatedly found an excuse not to accept.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” she said quietly. Her dark eyes were velvet soft as she looked at him. “I admire you so much for what you’ve accomplished here.”
Okay.
What was he doing?
This woman had given him a fortune and helped him figure out to use it. How long was he going to browbeat her for it?
“I didn’t do anything,” he said, gruffly. “It was you, you convincing your dad to loan us the money. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”
“I know you do,” she said gently. “You still have a right to be angry.”
He shook off his glower, which wasn’t the easiest thing to lose on the best of days. “Look, if Mateo and Sofia aren’t pissed, then I shouldn’t be. They’re the ones who did all the work.”
Her head with that heavy crown of shiny black hair tipped as she looked at him. “That’s not true.”
He wasn’t gonna go round-and-round with her the way he did with his siblings. The Monte had been able to pay off the loan in half the time because of his brother’s plans, his billionaire sister-in-law’s financial oversight, and his sister’s idea to begin a winemaking industry that matched the Monte’s winegrowing reputation. Roman had just watched the money.
She nodded at Roman’s bicep. “The reluctant warrior prince has become the king’s right hand,” she teased gently.
He looked down and saw the mammoth gold ring his crossed arms showed off there. Saw the finger next to it with its missing top third. His other hand was rippled and tight with a burn scar covering the back.
His brother had shoved the king’s advisor ring with its family crest and ode of loyalty on Roman’s middle finger six months ago, after their father’s stroke had made Mateo the official king he’d already been acting as for the last ten years. The thing was tight and surprisingly heavy.
“It’s a role worthy of you,” she mused. “Your careful management of our money helped make me interim CEO.”
“Interim?” That word kept him from hiding his hands in his pants’ pockets. His tailor made sure his hands wouldn’t fit anyway. “What do you mean interim?”
Cenobia crossed her own arms and absently stroked her earlobe. “My father wants an opportunity to observe me in the role before he names me his successor in truth. The heart condition that was reported as the reason he stepped back is a ruse. Only me, my father, and his doctor know.”
On that long-ago four-hour drive, she’d filled the air with words, and many of them had been about her family’s company, Trujillo Industries, Mexico’s largest producer of foreign cars and parts, and her future hopes and dreams for it. In his occasional googling, he’d read how hard she’d worked to earn the CEO seat.
“Sorry,” he said. He watched a peach pearl earring wink between her fingers as she continued to stroke her ear.
“Actually, it’s why I’ve come.” She dropped her hands and raised troubled eyes to look at him. “I need your help.”
Roman felt the cool warning tingle at the base of his spine.
“A month ago, my security began seeing emails that concerned them. They didn’t read different to me than any other ugly, misogynistic emails, but apparently there’s been the right combo of words and an escalation of aggression...”
Roman pushed off his desk, moved a step closer to her. “Okay, send them to me.” He would fix this. “I’ll have my team analyze them and—”
“Then last week, someone left a note on my car.”
Everything stopped. “In a secure lot? With your driver in it?”
Her strong, wide jaw went up. “No, I’d driven myself. It was...personal business. But I know my security protocols; I drive to avoid a tail. Still, someone followed me. Or knew where to expect me. They knew I’d be there.”
Roman let her choice of words sink in: escalation of aggression, security protocols, tail.
She was a brilliant, beautiful, wealthy woman who shouldn’t waste her superior brain power on her security. She was supposed to be building cars and changing the world and leaving her safety to ground pounders like him.
He began putting a team together. Glori would serve as point. “My second-in-command will fly home with you and the team will meet y’all there.” His best risk mitigation analyst was in Venezuela but he’d swap him out. “They’ll interview your security team, review the last six months of chatter, and then we’ll figure out—”
“I need you,” she said. Her eyes were pleading and silky.
He licked his always-dry lips. “My people are good.”
“You’re the only one I trust.”
She let go of the chair and stepped closer in a shush of leather and cashmere, her heels clicking against the tile. She still smelled like honeysuckle. “I know it’s too much to ask, for you to drop everything and come to Mexico. But I’m concerned there’s a breach in my security. How else would someone know where I’d be?” He could see the weight of her frustration and concern on her fine, wide forehead. “It’s such a critical time. I don’t have the energy or mental capacity to deal with a threat. Not when I have the launch of La Primera in thirty days and so much I have to prove to my father.”
La Primera, her affordable hybrid car, was going to be the first automobile entirely conceived, designed, and manufactured in Mexico. A fascinated auto industry—split between those who believed the car was a revolution long-in-coming and those who thought she was a spoiled girl killing her dad’s company—would get their first look at the Frankfurt Auto Show in a month.
Roman already had his ticket and a civvies bag packed with the disguises that helped him blend into crowds.
He’d thought the launch of La Primera was a victory lap for Cenobia; instead, it was a test run. She’d helped him save a kingdom and had never once asked for anything in return. And she said he was the only one she trusted.
Damn.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He mentally ran through his duties in the Monte. “I can be there in a couple of days.”
Relief relaxed her like he’d cut her string. He hadn’t realized, through the warmth and joy she showered everyone with today, how tense she was. He’d never imagined that Cenobia’s gorgeous smile beaming from the society pages covered the fact that she’d learned to avoid a tail. He’d assumed—hoped—she’d left those ghosts behind in the bunker.
But when her relief made her sway closer, stirring up her smell of summer and sunshine, and reach for him, Roman stiffened. She tentatively slipped her hand inside his coat and pressed it against his shirt and chest and heart.
“Thank you,” she said, her eyes brimming with gratefulness. “Thank you.”
He dropped his crossed arms, and used one hand to pat hers, channeling her dad. His burned hand gripped the edge of his desk.
“We’ll figure this out, Cenobia,” he said. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
She smiled ruefully. “You’re the only man I believe when he says that. And please, if we’re going to spend the next couple of weeks together, call me Cen.”
He’d find the bastards threatening her and free up her big brain to focus on her launch. He’d make sure she was safe.
But he wouldn’t call her by her nickname. Not with the way it added kindling to an ember lit when she stepped off the plane. And he’d minimize the amount of time he spent in the company of one honeysuckle-sweet CEO.
He patted her hand again with all the protective condescension he could muster, stepped away from his desk and her touch, and pulled out his phone to start sending messages.
The only man she trusted? He’d fix this.
That’s what he was good at.