Her Bodyguard Read online

  don't know what happened, but I need to talk to Mr. Jenkins and make sure this isn't some kind of scam."

  "Have you ever heard of any scams where people buy other people's houses for them?" she asks. "Because if you know of any, there's a whole lot of people in this town who'd like to get taken by one of those scams."

  The princess' bedroom door opens. "Just let me look into it," I tell my mother, as the princess exits her room and looks at me like she just smelled sour milk.

  "Am I interrupting your phone time, James?" the princess asks, her hand going to her hip. Bodyguards are definitely not supposed to be on private phone calls in the middle of their shifts.

  "Mom, I have to go," I whisper.

  Alexandra's eyebrows go up. "Mom?"

  "I hear a girl. Is that the princess?" my mom squawks. "Tell her I saw her interview in one of the magazines at the grocery store and she looked –"

  I hang up the phone and direct my attention to Alexandra. "Good morning, princess."

  "Good morning, James," she replies, her voice clipped. "Was that your mother on the phone?"

  "Are we back to James again? It was so cozy before, when you were calling me Max."

  "You're avoiding the question."

  I roll my eyes. "Yes, it was my mother on the phone, Your Highness. Now, are you ready for the big day?"

  Her face goes pale. Big day was probably the wrong way of putting it. Alexandra isn't exactly thrilled about her father's engagement party tonight. I'm also positive that she's not going to be happy when she hears about the team of stylists that the future queen has scheduled to get her ready for the event. "What big day would you be referring to, exactly, James?" she asks, her voice icy.

  For a second, I have a pang of sympathy for her, because she and the future queen so clearly don't get along – and because if you're getting a new stepmother, Sofia is a pretty cold one to be getting. The woman rarely cracks a smile, and she seems to communicate her displeasure with Alexandra with every frown she directs at her.

  "Your father is requiring that you attend the engagement party tonight, you know," I tell her, handing her the day's agenda because she never reads the copy that's slid under her door in the morning.

  She scowls as she takes the paper. "Or … I could skip out on the festivities," she says, looking me over. "How good are you at poker?"

  "Not good enough to beat Russian mobsters, princess."

  "You're not very useful, are you, bodyguard?"

  "I'm better at other things." I don't realize how much the words drip with innuendo until they leave my mouth. I clear my throat and stand straighter.

  Damn it, I need to get control over myself when it comes to this girl, especially because she's not just any girl. She's a princess – a spoiled one, at that. I don't know why she seems to have this effect on me.

  Alexandra looks up at me, her eyes wide. "Other things," she says softly. She's standing so close to me that I can smell her perfume, something light, leftover from the night before. "Like what?"

  I try to ignore the fact that I'm so close to her – once again – that I could kiss her. I try to ignore the fact that I'm even thinking about kissing her. I try to ignore the fact that I want to kiss her. "Like picking your entitled ass up and putting you over my shoulder."

  Her eyes narrow. "That's not a skill to brag about."

  "No? It seems to have come in pretty handy, in my experience."

  "Oh? So you're in the habit of tossing princesses over your shoulder?"

  "You're the only one." Neither of us move, despite the fact that we're standing too close to possibly be appropriate. If someone walked down this hallway, there would definitely be questions.

  Still, I wonder what would happen if I put my mouth on hers.

  "Lucky me," she whispers.

  I think she might want me to put my mouth on hers.

  A sound from around the corner makes both of us jump, and I step back a foot from the princess and clear my throat loudly. "Your hair appointment is at one o'clock," I tell her, a paragon of professionalism. "The future queen set it up, I believe."

  "That is so not happening," Alexandra hisses, turning back toward her room. She pauses at the door. "Are you absolutely sure about the poker thing? You seem like you'd have a great poker face."

  "I can't let you escape from the palace tonight," I tell her.

  She smiles. "As if you allowed me to escape any other time, James."

  * * *

  "My parents' banker says the payment came from a company in Protrovia," I tell Felix Muller, the head of security. "I don't know what this is. I assume this is some kind of backwards attempt to blackmail me by paying me first? Obviously, the first thing I did was come here to report it."

  "Huh." Felix's brow furrows. He looks puzzled but not surprised. "Well, making the payment upfront is a strange way of blackmailing someone."

  "I agree. The only other possibility is that it's a clerical error."

  "Yes. Clerical error," Felix parrots. "That's a legitimate possibility. Have you pursued that?"

  "The bank assured me that isn’t the case."

  "Well, perhaps a good citizen has decided to help your parents."

  I laugh, the sound clipped. "A good citizen? Good citizens like that don't exist."

  "No, of course not. That would be ridiculous." Felix looks at me for a long time, and I stare back at him, waiting for him to ask me something else about it – anything else, like the company the payment was made through – but he doesn't.

  Because he either assumes I'm on the take and he's about to fire me, or because he already knows what happened.

  "You've made an impression on the princess, I think," he finally says.

  "What does the princess have to do with any –" I start, then stop short when I realize that he's not bringing the princess up as a random topic of conversation.

  But that's impossible. The princess wouldn't have done something like this, not after overhearing a single conversation. Right? She didn't even hear that much of it, and definitely not the part about my parents' mortgage. Did she?

  "Nothing. She has nothing to do with this, of course." Felix coughs. "She has kept you around longer than anyone else who's ever been her private security."

  "I don't think she had much choice in the matter," I note. Even after the helicopter incident, the firing I expected to happen never materialized. Either Alexandra didn't tell her father about me throwing her over my shoulder, or he didn't care.

  Of course, I can't imagine that her father wouldn't have cared, which means she must not have told him.

  Which means she wants to keep me around.

  A warped sense of pride runs through me at the fact that she might not entirely be hell-bent on kicking me out of the palace.

  "The king trusts Prince Albert," Felix says. "And the prince trusts you. And now the princess apparently trusts you as well."

  "Well, trust might be going a little too far," I say. I can't quite imagine Princess Alexandra trusting anyone completely. She's the most guarded person I've ever met. She definitely doesn't trust me.

  She shouldn't trust you, either. Especially considering all of the filthy thoughts you've had about her.

  Felix gives me a hard look. "I'm certain that you wouldn't do anything to betray that trust," he says, as if he can read my thoughts.

  I shift uncomfortably in my seat. "Obviously not," I deflect. "Which is why I came by here to ask about the payment to my parents. If someone's trying to blackmail me, that's clearly important to the royal family."

  "Yes." He clears his throat. "Blackmail."

  "Unless it was a gift from someone in the royal family," I say, verbalizing my suspicion. Part of me doesn't really believe it could be the princess' doing. Maybe the king decided that a bonus was in order for my stellar work protecting his daughter.

  My work hasn’t been stellar.

  "If it's a gift, perhaps it's best it remain anonymous," Felix says.

  "Does