A Royal Mess and Her Knight To Remember

“You okay?” He patted his hand between her shoulder blades, but she kept coughing, mostly because he didn’t seem to know his own strength. “Damn, Pink, keep your lungs in your chest.” Without a care for the loaned shirt on his back, he ripped it off, tearing the thing in half with his bare hands. He put one half over her face, before he covered his mouth with the other half.

Their eyes met, and she saw the frantic concern in his, so she nodded, then continued shimmying up the narrow hatch.

At the top, he held her back, making sure he was the first one out into what she feared would be an open hallway, making them easy targets.

But the third floor was some sort of warehouse, filled to the brim with huge storage containers the size of wardrobes, each probably filled with more torturous dresses. And while containers provided cover for them, they also provided that same cover to Jimmy.

Her cop-sooner or later she’d have to stop thinking of him as hers-reached down, grabbed her hand and pulled her up. For a moment, their bodies collided and he held her still, looking her over.

“I’m okay,” she said.

“You’re amazing, is what you are.” He moved to a window and carefully peered out, leaving her with the most incredible view of his now bare, sleek back. “At least five black-and-whites down there. That’s the good news.”

“And the bad?”

He moved away from the window. “Until Jimmy is caught or gives himself up, we’re on the third floor of a possibly burning building, the hostages of a wild idiot with a gun. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Out of ideas, are you?” He guided her to the west wall, where there was a door.

“Stairs?”

“Shh.” He put his ear to it, then his hand.

She wrestled with the urge to put her ear and hand and everything else against his bare back.

Taken, she reminded herself. He’s taken. “Let’s go out the window,” she suggested. “The cops can cover us.”

“Unless you’re Spider Woman, bad idea. There’s no fire escape.”

“No, but we can shimmy down the storm drain.”

He stared at her. “Who the hell are you?”

“Cops aren’t the only ones with nerves of steel,” she said. “Try being a princess.”

“What?”

“You want a formal introduction?” She curtsied, not an easy move in her cut-off dress. “Your Serene Highness Andrea Katrine Fran Brunner of Grunberg, at your service. But the at-your-service part is just a formality, you understand. I’m not really at your ser-”

“You hit your head in the elevator, right?”

“I came here for the wedding.” She tried not to sound bitter about that, because really, just because he was big, strong and gorgeous didn’t mean she wanted him for herself. Nope. He was too stubborn, too confident, too… everything. “You can just call me Annie, if that’s easier.”

“Annie.” He was looking at her as if she was from Mars.

“I’m telling you the truth. Grunberg is a perfectly nice little country, right next to Switzerland.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, forget it.” She turned away, but he grabbed her arm.

“Don’t you want to know who I am?” he asked, sounding a little surprised that she wasn’t panting with the need to know his name.

“I already know who you are.” She didn’t want to hear him say he was going to get married. Not when he was the first man to stir her in a very long time.

No, wait, she wasn’t stirred. She wasn’t anything but sick and tired of this dress. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, suddenly very weary. “Before I start screaming and never stop.”

He looked at her for a long moment, as if not quite certain she wouldn’t do exactly that.

“I’m not going to fall apart,” she said.

“You’d be entitled.”

“A princess doesn’t fall apart.” At least not until she was safe, and he was far, far away.

4

THE WAREHOUSE was a bit of a mystery. For someone of Annie’s stature-that is short-it wasn’t possible to see the entire room at once. Which, given the circumstances, was disturbing to say the least. “We need a better plan,” she said, gaze searching, hoping Jimmy wasn’t up here with them.

He was a cool one, her cop-no, he wasn’t hers. She needed to remember that. But she had begun to think of him as such the moment he’d actually let her lead the way onto the elevator, because in her life how many men had let her lead?

Exactly none.

Not that she’d been neglected. The opposite, really. She’d been pampered and sheltered and protected, even when it wasn’t in her nature to hide behind someone. No, her nature was to come out fists swinging. “I think we should-”

“Stay here, stay down,” he said, nudging her to the floor. He placed his hand over hers and lifted it to her mouth. “Keep the shirt over your face.”

So much for her leading. Fine. She could share the power, if she had to for now.

She just didn’t want him to get used to it.

It wasn’t until he vanished that she realized the smoke had followed them, and that suddenly she couldn’t see more than a few feet. “Hello?” she whispered, squinting, but no one answered.

He’d left her.

She was alone.

Keep trouble at bay.

“Amelia?” Annie whipped her head to the right, then the left. Through the filtering smoke she would have sworn she’d just seen Amelia standing there, her silver hair neatly coiled on top of her head, her wire-rimmed glasses slipping down her nose, her satchel firmly at her side.

But that couldn’t be, it just couldn’t. Amelia was with Lili at a museum opening. And yet it had seemed so real, right down to Amelia’s intense, all-seeing gaze.

Annie peered harder into the growing smoke. If Amelia was doing something magical, it wouldn’t be the first time. Lili, Natalia and Annie had long ago come to terms with one thing. Amelia was…different. Very different. “Hello?”

Of course, there was no answer.

But thinking about Amelia made her just a tad homesick, not that she’d admit it to anyone. She longed for Nat, who would be absolutely no help.

She must be inhaling too much smoke. Must be near passing out. How infuriating. She never passed out. Fainting was for sissies, and no one had ever accused her of being a sissy.

If she passed out and ended up in a hospital in this dress, someone was going to have to die.

“Hey.”

At the low, husky voice she blinked. “I don’t want to die here.”

“That makes two of us.” His face was blurry through the smoke, but even so, he had such a way of looking at her. Like no one else ever had before. “Jimmy set a fire to smoke us out, I’m sure of it. He’s a known pyromaniac.”

“He’s trying to kill us,” she whispered, suddenly sad.

“He’s trying to kill me.” He hunkered before her, touched her face. “I won’t let him