Royal Protocol Read online

  For a second her fingers tightened around his. Then the hem of her gown got caught on the fixture and as she yanked it, her feet slipped on the shards and she stumbled. He dipped with her and caught her against him, raised her back up, but not before she’d braced a hand to the floor, cutting herself.

  He took in her slim palm with dismay, hating to see her hurt. “There should be a first aid kit in the security office. I need that,” he ordered his bodyguard.

  The man hesitated.

  “Either you go, or I will and you stay here with Miss Williams.”

  “Your Highness, under the circumstances—”

  “I can protect myself. Give me one of your guns. I’ll be right here when you get back.”

  Looking decidedly unhappy, the man handed him a standard-issue Beretta then took off. Benedek tucked the weapon into his cummerbund, knowing the guy had a backup weapon so he wouldn’t be walking the corridors unarmed either.

  “It’s not that bad,” Rayne was saying.

  Like hell it wasn’t.

  Benedek cursed himself as he examined her palm, the small pieces of glass embedded in her tender skin and the faint rivulets of blood. He wished she had kept her satin gloves on.

  Her small hand gave a slight tremble in his, the only sign of the pain she must have felt. They were standing a short distance from the bathrooms. “Let’s wash it off first.” He drew her that way, pushed the door open and went right in with her.

  She extracted her hand from his and ran cold water on it.

  He checked the bathroom for any sign of a bomb while she did that, returning to her in short order. The stream dislodged most of the glass, leaving only the largest of the shards still embedded in her skin. She tried to remove it, biting her lower lip.

  The sight of those white teeth sunk into moist, red flesh held him immobilized for a second.

  “Wait.” He cleared his throat. “Let me try.” And he moved to take back her hand.

  She hesitated. She barely knew him, had no reason to trust him. He felt a small sense of triumph when she put her hand in his anyway.

  He wished he could distract her with something. Like a kiss. Her lips were ruby velvet, closer to his than they’d ever been. His breathing slowed as his gaze glided over those lips then lifted higher.

  Her silver eyes widened as if she could read his mind.

  The air thickened between them.

  “It’s not going to happen,” she said, quite clearly.

  She didn’t need to spell out what she meant. The electric charge in the air between them threw about sparks, their connection a near palpable thing.

  “Isn’t it?” He dipped his head the short distance it took to brush his lips across hers.

  He tugged the shard free in that very second.

  She turned and pulled away, rinsing her palm again, then dabbing it dry with some paper towels. But as soon as she dabbed the blood, more beaded in her palm. She worked at that with efficient movements. “I have a rule against dating opera patrons.” She wouldn’t look at him.

  He shouldn’t want her this badly. Anything permanent between them was impossible. Short of that, a long, public affair would be scandalous. But he didn’t seem to care. Realization dawned on him that he wanted Rayne any way he could get her.

  A dangerous thought. He had to be careful there.

  “My bodyguard should be here soon. Let me help.” He took a few paper towels, put them together and folded them in quarters, pressed them against her palm then sandwiched her hand between his, applying pressure.

  A long moment passed.

  “Thank you.” She looked at their hands, not at him.

  “The bleeding should stop in a minute. We’ll dis-infect and bandage when the guard gets back.”

  She did look at him then. “Shouldn’t he be here already?”

  Yes, but he’d been trying to ignore that and the foreboding that spread over him. Like he was ignoring his body’s demand to pull her into his arms. “Let’s give him another minute.” He kept the pressure on her hand.

  The minute passed.

  “Should we go back and look for him?” she asked as she pulled away and checked under the paper towels. The bleeding had stopped. She pressed the makeshift bandage back.

  “We can’t afford to go back. We have to cover our share of the building. He knows where we’re headed. He can catch up with us.”

  They left the women’s room, turned into the men’s so he could check that for the bomb, then moved down the hallway. He opened the first dressing room.

  “Any idea what the bomb would look like?” Rayne asked from behind him. She was pretending hard that they hadn’t kissed.

  “Large. Something powerful enough to bring down this building would have to be pretty damn large.” He wanted to be with her anywhere but here.

  They progressed through the rooms rapidly, searching through costume closets inside and any large prop boxes outside in the hallways. He double-checked Rayne’s dressing room when they reached it.

  “You can take a minute to change if you’d like,” he told her when he was sure there was nothing dangerous in there.

  She’d been dragging the full-skirted heavy brocade gown around without complaint, but he’d noticed how it slowed her down. It had to tire her out, too. Not that he wouldn’t miss the low-cut bodice once she changed into something else. The picture of her full breasts in that thing was permanently imprinted on his brain.

  It was a sight he was sure he’d see in his dreams again. He hoped.

  He shifted through the props and found a silver silk scarf, the color an exact match to her eyes. “Here.” He carefully wrapped it around her hand to keep the paper towels in place. “That should help.”

  He was about to step away from her when he realized that the bodice of her dress buttoned in the back, in the old style. Since she had no costume changes for this night, they could afford to go with historical accuracy instead of the Velcro and zippers that singing in a full opera would have required.

  One of the dressing assistants must have helped her put the dress on. She couldn’t get it off alone, not with her hand all bandaged.

  “Let me assist with your dress.”

  IF SHE HAD A PENNY FOR every time she’d been offered that by a man with a hungry gleam in his eyes after a performance…Rayne blinked the thought away. She’d made plenty of money with her singing. She didn’t need those pennies. Neither did she need another man in her life.

  Still, she only hesitated a split second before turning her back to Benedek.

  Changing would take only a minute. They would waste more time than that if her dress slowed them down, if it got caught on everything and tripped her wherever she went.

  His hands were sure and skillful, moving rapidly down her back. She ignored the feel of his fingertips dragging against her skin as the material parted. When the bodice opened like a shell in the back, she held it to her front to keep it from dropping. She didn’t wear a bra underneath, couldn’t with this cut of the neckline, not without spoiling the whole authentic effect.

  “Thank you.”

  She felt his hands move to her waist and untie the wide sash that held the top layer of the skirt, then the safety pins that held the series of petticoats under it. She sank to a large pine chest, the closest piece of furniture to her, to prevent the material from dropping around her ankles and leaving her in her underwear. Her skin tingled with awareness. He was inches from her and she was practically naked.

  Her nipples were pointy, hard knobs. From the chill in the air, she told herself, although the temperature in her dressing room was nothing if not comfortable.

  “I’d rather not leave you alone, not even to stand right outside the door.” His voice sounded a little off. So little that no one but a singer trained to notice the tiniest nuance in any sound would have caught that.

  “Of course,” she said, annoyed that he would play that cheap trick. But she didn’t have time for modesty. If they didn’t g
et on with their search, find the bomb and disarm it in the next twenty-five minutes, they would all be dead.

  She let the bodice drop first, keeping her back to him, and reached for the closest thing on the back of another chair, a T-shirt with the Valtrian Royal Palace on it that she’d received that morning as a gift from one of the staff. The material caught on her signature black pearl choker she never took off except for sleep. But all it needed was a tug before the material slipped free. The shirt was a size too small, fitting her like a second skin, the large image of the palace barely disguising the fact that she was too chicken to cross the room half-naked to retrieve her bra from the built-in closet.

  The room felt hotter than a polar bear costume. The awareness between them was growing to an unbearable level. She half expected to feel his hands on her shoulders any second.

  She stood with a nervous jump and let the skirts drop, grabbed a pair of fitted black pants someone had brought from the dry cleaners and hadn’t put away yet. One of her suitcases had had an unfortunate accident with a makeup jar on the flight here. She slipped into the pants, then turned.

  Prince Benedek stood with his back to her clear across the room, his wide shoulders silhouetted against the busy paisley pattern of the wallpaper.

  He hadn’t watched her dress.

  She felt about as impressed as disappointed.

  She slipped into a pair of silk loafers, the nearest footwear. “Ready.” She headed for the door.

  “Wait.” His voice sounded husky as he cut in front of her and checked outside before they left. But then he let her go first, a gentleman.

  “Where do you think your bodyguard is?” She’d half hoped to spot him somewhere in the hallway. She couldn’t not think of Peter and Tamas, the men they’d already lost.

  He shook his head, a somber look coming over his face. “We don’t have time to look for him.”

  They searched through the dressing rooms together. And after a few minutes, she could actually breathe normally again.

  “Where should we go next?” she asked when they reached the end.

  “Downstairs.”

  “But that’s where the second bomb was. Wouldn’t the third be someplace else?” And Craig and that royal guard had already gone there.

  “It’s a large basement, there’s room enough for two bombs. And if they’d been placed far enough from each other, with enough walls between them, one wouldn’t necessarily set off the other.”

  Good point. She followed him down the stairs, feeling a lot more comfortable out of her dress, glad that soon they’d be with Craig and that other man. Being alone with Benedek was getting to be too much for her frayed nerves. It was one thing resisting him from afar, it was quite another fighting to keep from falling under his spell when he was within reach of her.

  When they reached the steel door that led to the basement, he stopped for a second to turn back to her. “We’ll find the bomb. We’ll make it out of here.” He tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ears, his fingers gentle.

  She wasn’t used to her body responding so vehemently to a man.

  A smile stretched his sexy, masculine lips as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, what she was feeling. “I’ve never seen anyone with as many walls built around her as you have,” he observed. “Makes a man that much more curious.”

  She needed every one of her walls when she was around Benedek, but she shrugged as if she didn’t know what he was talking about, then she went around him, ready to walk through that door. They needed to end this conversation before she did or said something that betrayed just how much of an effect he had on her.

  He drew her back and pulled her behind him as if protecting her was some sort of an instinct with him. He turned the knob and called back to her over his shoulder, his voice low. “Word of warning.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m good with walls, Rayne.”

  Of course, he was. He was an architect. She had to remember to build a moat when she had a minute. And reinforce her walls. Definitely.

  Her musings were interrupted when he pushed the steel door open and swore, putting a hand up to hold her back.

  She pushed in behind him anyway.

  Not far from the door, the outside wall of the basement had collapsed. Bricks lay in heaps. A gaping hole yawned where the wall had once stood. From what she could make out, it looked like there was a tunnel back there. But a still shape next to the piles of rubble soon dragged her attention from everything else.

  “Craig!” She flew forward, ducking as Benedek tried to hold her back. She ran toward her agent, praying for him to open his eyes and look at her, even as she knew that he wouldn’t.

  Craig, the only friend she’d had in a long time, was dead. She couldn’t not think that he was only here because of her in the first place. This was all her fault, just like the death of her mother and her brother had been. Not for the first time, she wished she were the one who’d died instead.

  She cradled Craig’s head and held him tight. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she whispered over and over again, knowing that nothing she could say or do would bring Craig back.

  The killer was out there, and there was no way of telling who would be his next victim.

  When a noise came from the tunnel, she spun that way, but couldn’t see anything through her veil of tears.

  Chapter Four

  Benedek stood between her and the tunnel, ready to defend her. But the man who slowly took shape in the clouds of dust, stumbling forward among the rubble, was Vilmos, the royal guard who’d been Craig’s search partner.

  “Your Highness. Anything?” He coughed.

  Nobody was coming up behind him. Benedek relaxed, but kept an eye on the tunnel, made sure it was in his line of vision at all times. It could still hold some unpleasant surprises.

  With the next step forward, Vilmos spotted Craig. “What’s wrong with him?” He rushed to him, tripped over a sizable chunk of cement and ended up on his knees next to Rayne.

  “Craig?” He grabbed the man’s shoulder. “I told him to come in with me. Not to separate.” He shot Benedek a tight look, probably worried he’d be blamed. “I had to investigate the tunnel, Your Highness. It could be our way out or a way for the rebels to get in. I had to—”

  “You did fine.” Benedek set him at ease. “You did the right thing.”

  Rayne was holding her agent’s head on her lap, tears rolling down her cheek. Her face was so tight he thought it might break. She didn’t cry out, didn’t sob. She held her emotions with an iron will, except for those few escaping tears.

  He moved toward her to comfort her. She caught the move and shook her head slightly. Her walls were standing as strong as ever.

  He hated to see her in pain.

  Benedek tamped down his anger at whoever had killed her agent in cold blood, his gaze focusing on the large bloodstain on Craig’s chest. “How long have you been in the tunnel?”

  Vilmos looked dazed. “Less than five minutes. He was fine when I went in.”

  “Anything in there?”

  “Old walls and rubble. It led someplace at some point, but the walls have mostly collapsed. I don’t think there’s an exit that way.” His gaze returned to Craig. “I can’t believe this happened. He didn’t even call out. I would have heard him.” He pushed to standing, running his fingers through his hair over and over again.

  He was a trained guard, but a royal guard. Benedek doubted the man had had to face anything worse than a nosy tourist now and then since he’d received his palace appointment. Until recently, the kingdom had lived in peace. The only armed conflict, over a year ago, had happened in the mountains, at Maltmore Castle.

  “It’s not your fault,” Benedek told him and stepped toward Rayne, extending a hand. “We better get back.”

  He tried to reach his bodyguard again over his headset, but the man didn’t respond, so he shared his dark news with the others through their radio connection.

  Th
ey were halfway up the stairs when a voice came over his headset. “Found the bomb. It’s big enough to take off the two top floors, at least.”

  And the weight of those would collapse the rest of the building. “Where are you?”

  “In the attic. Above the security office.”

  So the safe was out as a hiding place. Benedek glanced at his watch. Ten minutes left before the rebels’ deadline. Not enough time for him to get to the attic, let alone to make contact with the bomb squad and disarm the bomb following phone directions.

  He stopped and looked back toward the tunnel, then at Rayne’s mascara-smudged eyes. Craig had been her agent. Of course, she cared for the man. It shouldn’t bother him, Benedek thought. He shouldn’t have such need to know whether they’d been only business associates, or something more.

  She was not his. She could never be his, not for good. He needed to keep remembering that. But just because she wasn’t his, it didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to save her. Or die trying.

  “Everyone to the basement. Immediately,” he told the men over his headset.

  THERE WERE ONLY ELEVEN of them left. They had lost four men, one by one to an unseen killer. The thought had that eerie, horror-movie feel to it. The tunnel provided the perfect setting to take the grim story further. Catacombs, Benedek had called the place. The very word was full of foreboding.

  Rayne trudged forward in the semidarkness, the dank space lit only by the flashlights some of the royal guards carried.

  The good news was Vilmos had been wrong and the tunnel hadn’t collapsed completely. They had been able to dig through some rubble and enter the underground labyrinth behind it. At least the rebels hadn’t blown up the opera house. Yet.

  The bad news was that the small group moving deeper into the catacombs had no idea where they were or whether the narrow corridors they traveled would ever take them out of there. Also, the rebels could blow the building at any time, sealing them in forever. But possibly the worst part was that cell phones didn’t work down here, so they were now completely cut off from the outside.