Four
Anna turned toward the commotion at the diner’s front door. A weaselly little man wearing plaid pants and wielding a portable microphone was on a collision course in her direction. He looked as out of place among the sea of Stetsons and western shirts as tennis shoes with a tuxedo.
An old familiar fear skittered down her spine as, slippery as a shark, he hurriedly skirted several tables to get to her. Behind him, a bearded photographer snapped pictures as if he was covering a coronation.
“Beautiful!” the weasel purred, his voice dripping with smarmy greed. “Man, this is just beautiful! Princess—Princess Anna von Oberland.” He flashed a business card under her nose and slung an arm around her shoulders as if she had just become his private property. “Herkner. Willis Herkner, of the American Investigator, at your service, Your Highness.
“You’d better be getting this Jackson,” he barked, cutting a sharp glance back at the photographer and dropping all pretense of charm. “A waitress. They’ve got her decked out like a damn waitress!” He whooped with absolute glee before turning an oily smile back to her. “Now, Princess. Tell me. What’s a nice little royal like you doing in a dump like this, huh?”
Anna was so startled by his piranha attack and his use of her title, she was at a momentary loss for words—as was everyone else occupying the Royal Diner. She darted a quick glance around the café. Everyone was staring. And she could see in their eyes that they were as shocked as they were curious. As confused as they were uneasy.
These people were her friends. At least, she had deluded herself into believing they were her friends. Suddenly she saw herself through their eyes. And through their eyes, she felt their sense of her betrayal.
“You...you’re mistaken. My name is Annie. Annie Grace,” she murmured miserably, the lie sounding as convincing as a snail claiming speed.
“Oh, come on. Princess. Baby. Don’t play games with me. Your little jig is up. Now talk to me. Let’s hammer out a deal before the rest of the pack closes in. I want an exclusive and I’m willing to pay for it.”
The abrupt tinkle of the bell over the diner’s front door attracted all eyes.
“Sonofabitch,” Herkner snarled when a full camera crew carrying equipment with the logo of a major cable TV network burst inside. Right behind them more reporters clamored to get through the door, butting against each other like a giant logjam bottlenecked at a narrow dam.
“Come on, Princess!” Herkner grabbed Anna by her arm, broke into a trot and dragged her with him toward the diner’s back door. “This story is mine. I’ll be damned if I’ll let those other bloodhounds beat me out of it. Talk to me. What are you doing hiding out here? And what do you know about the death of Prince Ivan Striksky? That’s right,” he said, malicious accusation widening his shark’s smile when she planted her feet and jerked out of his grasp. “We know about that. We know that he followed you here and now he’s dead. Here’s your chance to tell your story. Now give.”
Gripping her arm painfully, he started dragging her with him toward the back of the diner again. Even as he pummeled her with questions, the flood of reporters and photographers continued to glut the café, began to catch up with them, engulfing her in an endless, battering barrage of shouts and flashbulbs.
Manny poked his head out over the cook’s counter as an artificial Christmas tree toppled to its side in the ruckus. “What the hell’s going on?”
Anna grabbed hold of a table for an anchor as they passed by.
“Manny!” She sought his eyes and his help even as he vaulted over the counter and tried to cut his way through the crush toward her.
But it was hopeless. Herkner jerked her free and yanked her toward the rear exit. There were too many of them—and only one of Manny.
“Hold them off, Manny!”
Anna’s gaze shot up as the sound of Gregory’s voice rose above the chaos of yelling reporters and the bump and scrape of tables and chairs being shoved out of their way. Her heart cried with hope as she spotted his black Stetson above the crowd, then dove into despair when he got stalled in the middle of the jam of bodies.
He didn’t stay in the crush for long. With an agile stride, he stepped up on a chair, from the chair he leaped onto a table. And then he was rushing toward her, literally leaping from tabletop to tabletop. Candles wreathed with holly berries, napkin holders, salt and pepper shakers and anything else in the way flew as the good folk of Royal ducked under booths and dove out of the way.
If it hadn’t been so frightening, it would have been laughable. It was like a scene from one of those copsand-criminal movies she sometimes let William watch when she didn’t have the heart to turn off the TV. The whole diner was in a collective state of mayhem. A popular country artist launched into “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” as Herkner dragged her farther away from Gregory.
His grip on her arm was brutal. The army of reporters and camera crews lurching forward in hot pursuit was relentless. And Gregory, gaining on the whole ugly swarm, maneuvered around hanging tinsel and wobbly tables to get to her side.
Forrest Cunningham and Sterling Churchill, she realized, had joined the mix, too. So had Blake. She caught glimpses of them close behind Gregory, striding briskly over tables and booths in their cowboy boots, expertly dodging the grabbing hands of the reporters, throwing in a shoulder block here, a body slam there, guarding Gregory’s back as, stone-faced, he made his way to her side.
Langley had also come to his friend’s aid. He’d stationed himself like a cement wall by the front door. The black look on his face and the fever of the fight glinting from the eyes shielded by the brim of his hat invited the late arrivals to just try to get past him and get inside.
“Let her go, you sleazebag!” Gregory snarled as he hooked an arm around Herkner’s neck. When the reporter jerked viciously on Anna’s arm, Greg brought a knee up hard in his left kidney.
Herkner groaned like a dog with a bellyache and let go. “That...that’s...assault. I’ll...s-sue,” he croaked miserably then folded like a tin roof in a hurricane wind.
“So I’ll see you in court,” Greg shouted as Herkner doubled over into a ball on the floor. Stepping over him, Gregory tucked Anna against his side. “While we’re at it, we’ll have a little chat with the judge about invasion of privacy. And how about throwing a little attempted kidnapping into the mix just for fun?”
With Gregory’s arm around her, strong, yet gentle, he made a shield of his body and sheltered her from the rapidly gaining pack.
Caught up in the frenzy of the mob mentality, a freckle-faced reporter who saw headlines instead of danger broke through the throng and got within three feet of Anna.
“You just entered the danger zone, partner!” Manny warned, blocking his way.
“Chill out, man.” He hefted his camera and shot, fast and furious. “Don’t you know it’s always open season on princesses?”
“I know it’s open season on skunk,” Manny said, then politely lopped him over the head with an iron skillet and watched with a smile as he crumbled to the floor without a whimper.
“Go! Go, man,” Manny shouted to Greg, and grinning like a fallen angel, tucked into a karate stance, daring the next reporter to challenge him.
“You want a piece of Manny?” he crooned over the noise. “You just come on, you miserable little cockroaches. Let’s see what you got.”
“Manny! Buzzard bait at ten o’clock!”
He spun around as Sheila yelled a warning then launched herself off a chair and onto Manny’s pursuer’s back.
“Ride him, little Sheba!” Manny let out a whoop of laughter and dove across the sea of bodies to help her.
Anna saw it all as if it was a bad dream, as Gregory steered her closer to the back door and safety. Tob late she heard a table topple beside her. She tried to dodge it, stumbled over a fallen chair and felt herself falling.
She was falling and running and the hands just kept grabbing—just like in her nightmare. But no sooner was she hit by the sensation of being sucked into a quicksand of seeking hands was she being lifted off her feet. With a cry of relief, she wrapped her arms around Gregory’s neck, buried her face against the solid strength of his chest and clung to the haven she had thought she’d never find.
 
The next sound Anna heard was the solid thump of the diner’s back door slamming shut behind them. The next sensation she felt was the brilliance of the Texas sun on her cheek and the heat of Gregory’s body against her breast. And the next time she opened her eyes, she was still wrapped in Gregory’s arms, his heart beating fast and heavy against hers.
They flew down the alley, Gregory running like an Olympic sprinter. He ducked around a corner, checked the street for reporters. When he spotted several milling around the diner’s door, he swore under his breath. Gauging the distance, he sucked in a deep breath and made a break for his truck.
When he reached it, he jerked opened the driver’s side door and tumbled Anna inside. He’d just hitched a hip onto the seat and reached for the ignition when a CNN photographer with a video camera blocked the door.
“Back off!” Greg snarled.
“In your dreams, cowboy.” The photographer stuck the lens in the open door to get a better shot.
Mistake. Big mistake.
With a roar of pure, primal rage, Greg jerked the camera out of his hands.
“Hey—that’s private property. You can’t—”
He stopped midsentence when the camera flew over his head and into the street in front of the truck.
Without missing a beat, Greg cranked the key and rammed the truck in gear. Peeling away from the curb, he deliberately ran over the expensive camera.
“My camera! You killed my camera!” the reporter wailed as Greg gunned the motor, shifted directly from first to fourth gear and burned rubber for three blocks.
Stunned into silence, Anna hung on to the seat with one hand and brushed the hair that had tumbled from her ponytail out of her face with the other. With a shaky breath, she glanced behind them. The throng of reporters clambered out of the café and into their vehicles.
“They’re following us!”
“They can try,” Greg muttered, cutting a quick glance to the rearview mirror. His expression, odd as it seemed under the circumstances, could have passed for a smile. “Buckle up. This is not going to turn into a parade.”
He downshifted, hit the brake and the gas at the same time and jetted them in a screeching, careening, twowheel, ninety-degree turn around the corner. Shifting straight into fourth gear again, he punched the accelerator and sent them flying.
If her jaws hadn’t been locked so tight she’d have screamed. Loud and long. Buildings bled by in blurry images as they raced across town. Every intersection was an exercise in nerve as he ran stoplights, dodged cars, then did another one of those flying ninety’s. This time they ended up sandwiched in a narrow alley, where he tucked the pickup neatly between an idling garbage truck and a brick wall.
Greg kept the motor revved and his eyes glued on the rearview mirror. A tense five minutes passed before he let out a long breath and turned his gaze to Anna.
The adrenaline from the exhilaration of the cat-and-mouse chase bottomed out at the look of her. Damn. She looked bruised, battered and about two breaths away from shattering like glass.
The freckle-faced reporter’s words came back like a tabloid headline: “It’s always open season on princesses.”
For the first time since this all began, Greg let himself feel a full dose of pity for the fishbowl life Anna had to endure. At the same time, his mind geared down long enough to remember the feel of her in his arms when he’d carried her out of the diner.
It had been four years since he’d held her. Four years since he’d felt the sweet yielding warmth of her body nestled against his. It had been four damn years too long.
He tightened his grip on the wheel. “I think we lost them,” he said when what he wanted to do was pull her into his arms and hold her again.
She nodded, looking straight ahead.
A sudden concern outdistanced his desire. “Anna, are you okay?”
Another nod, but slow enough in coming that he felt a sharp, hard pain somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. “Did that bastard hurt you?”
She pinched her eyes shut Touched a hand unconsciously to her arm and shook her head.
Instantly alert, he flicked open the buckle on his seat belt, twisted in the seat and pushed up her sleeve. He swore under his breath. Four angry red welts in the exact shape of a man’s fingers mottled her milk-white skin. Tomorrow they’d be black and blue.
Tomorrow Herkner would be eating through a straw.
Through the rage, he saw her tear. And it was then that he lost his mind completely.
“Ah, hell.” He slid over beside her. “Come here,” he said gruffly, flicked open her seat belt and pulled her into his arms.
She came like a kitten. All delicate curves and snugly warmth. And he was lost. Again. Lost, still, he realized, as she curled up on his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck and held on like he was the harbor she’d been seeking in an endless sea of uncertainty.
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “It’s all right.”
He felt her tense, sensed her struggle to contain the tears, but the dam broke against her will and she started to cry openly then.
“Oh, damn. Don’t. Anna, don’t Don’t cry,” he whispered, pressing his lips against her hair, touching them to the delicate shell of her ear, skimming them across her brow. “Please don’t cry.”
It was the most natural thing in the world for him to tip her face to his. He wiped her tears with his thumbs, cradled her face in his hands. And still she cried. Silent, heartbreaking tears that cost her the pride she so valued and that he knew only one way to silence.
He brushed his lips across hers, whispered her name, tasted the salt of her tears, the essence of what made her Anna, and threw caution and common sense to the wind. He silenced her soulful sobs with a kiss. Long, strong and innately tender. He cruised his mouth over hers, soothing, gentling, promising with his touch that he’d slay dragons, scale castle walls, anything to stop this endless flow of tears and events that kept happening to her.
She cried harder at first, as if she wanted what he offered but didn’t trust herself to take it. Then under his gentle onslaught, she began to settle. She began to trust—in the comfort that he offered, in the message his tenderness relayed. And she began to take what he so wanted to give.
She opened her eyes, and in their misty-green depths he saw the awakening of hunger. He saw the emergence of need. And he set about satisfying both.
He slanted his mouth over hers, protectively, possessively, taking charge, taking care. For a moment it was enough. For a moment he made it be enough—and then everything changed.
The brush of her hand on his cheek, once tentative and hesitant, became caressing and hot. The fit of her mouth beneath his, once trembling and needy, became wanton and lush. She didn’t just open for him. She invited him home.
Where he’d wanted to be for four long years.
Where, at this moment, he had no doubt in the world, he belonged.
And then he was just taking. He took what she offered. He feasted on what she gave.
It was sweet. It was fine. As sweet as fresh water to a man parched on salt and sand. As fine as the raw silk of her hair that he’d tangled in the hungry fist of his hand.
He settled her more firmly on his lap, pressed the delicate fullness of her hip to his groin, let her feel the thickening length of his arousal, cruised a hand toward her breast...
The jolting bleat of a horn ripped his mouth from hers. Swearing darkly, Greg looked frantically over his shoulder for the source while he tucked Anna’s face protectively against his chest.
“Take it somewhere else, buddy,” a balding man with a dirty T-shirt and a fat, stubby cigar bellowed from behind the wheel of the garbage truck. “I got a schedule to keep.”
When Greg could form a thought that didn’t involve kissing or killing, he realized he was blocking the truck in. With unsteady hands, he set Anna off his lap and told her to buckle up again. Once he’d done the same, he shifted into low and crept toward the opening of the alley.
After checking left and right and seeing no cars that looked threatening, he eased out of the alley and onto the street.
Then he silently damned himself for his loss of control.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
When she smoothed the hair from her face, he noticed her hand was no steadier than his. Just like he noticed the bruised look about her swollen lips and the fact that she chose to deal with his apology by ignoring it. “Where will we go?”
He slogged out a deep breath, his attention bouncing back and forth between the road ahead, the street at their backs and what had happened in that alley. “I’m not sure yet.”
Another block passed by before he punched in a speed-dial number on a cell phone built into his console.
“Hunt residence,” a very proper, very professional gentleman answered
“Lawrence,” Greg replied crisply, still working on pulling himself back together. “I’m en route. What’s the climate out there?”
“Climate, sir?”
“Check the security cameras at the drive. Do you see any cars?”
“Just a moment, sir.”
Greg filtered through the unspoken questions he saw in Anna’s eyes. He ignored all but the one he thought he could deal with. “Lawrence takes care of my Pine Valley residence for me.”
“Sir,” Lawrence’s voice came back on the line.
“What’s the story?”
“An unusual number of vehicles seem to be parked outside the estate gates. More are pulling up as we speak. They appear to be television crews.”
Greg swore under his breath. Herkner and his minions must have found out about Greg and the Cattleman’s Club members’ involvement with Anna’s abduction from Obersbourg—and that he’d been providing protection for her from Ivan and lately from the press.
“Sir? Is there something I should do? Do you wish that I call the police?”
“No. Let ’em sit there and stew.”
“Yes, sir. Will you be home for dinner, sir?”
He let out a weary chuckle. “Not anytime soon, Lawrence. Not anytime soon.”
“Sir?”.
“I’ll fill you in later. In the meantime, guard the fort, Lawrence. Don’t let them in.”
“As you say, sir.”
He broke the connection, checked his rearview again.
“Now what?” she asked, her thick lashes still heavy with the tears she had shed.
Drawing a deep breath, he slowly let it out and came to a reluctant decision. Though it was the last thing he wanted to do, he headed south, out of town. “Now we hope they don’t find out about my ranch until after I’ve got you safely settled in.”
“Ranch? You have a ranch?”
Though he wasn’t pleased with his solution, he tried for a smile. “This is Texas, Anna. Of course I have a ranch.”
“How...how far is it?”
“Far enough that once we give those jackals the slip, they’ll play hell getting past my security.”
“William,” she said suddenly, her voice filled with an alarm that had been silently building. “I can’t leave William.”
Without a word, he punched in another speed-dial number.
Harriet answered on the third ring.
“Hey, Tank. How’s it going?”
Harriet Sherman’s chuckle rang out over the console speaker. “That was my line. I’ve had my police scanner on. Sounds like you’re cutting your own grand prix route through Royal. What’s going on?”
“I’ll fill you in later. Right now, I need you to get yourself and Anna’s little guy out of the apartment and out to the ranch. No fuss. No delays, okay?”
“Consider it done. We’ll see you there in an hour then.”
He’d known he could count on Harriet. She understood the need for discretion and speed—and was blessed with the good sense not to ask any questions.
“We’ll be waiting.”
He disconnected, cut a look Anna’s way. “Okay?”
She nodded. Let out a pent-up breath. “Okay.”
Only nothing was okay. And as he sped for the city limits and the wide-open spaces that led to his ranch, Casa Royale, Greg wondered if anything in his life or hers would ever be okay again.