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“I can’t, Tricia, but I love you for offering.”
Her own irresponsibility and carelessness were what had gotten her into this mess, and she was the only one who could get herself out.
Colin had never put much stock in rumors. In a royal family, even on the outermost fringes, gossip spread like a disease. Which was why, when he heard the speculation about the senator’s daughter, out of fairness and respect, he reserved judgment. And maybe he was missing something, but she’d seemed all right to him. Of course, she could have had two heads and hooves for feet and he would have been perfectly gracious.
This assignment was Colin’s first go as a diplomat, and certainly not somewhere he had intended to be at this point in his life—or ever, for that matter—but he was making the best of an unfortunate situation. He had been warned that when dealing with American politicians, especially one as powerful and influential as Senator Tate, he would be wise to watch his back. The senator was a man who got things done. When he put the weight of his office behind legislation, his colleagues naturally fell in line. The royal family was counting on Colin to ensure that the tech treaty, a crucial piece of legislation for both the U.K. and the U.S., became law.
Too many high-profile instances of phone and internet hacking had been occurring in both the U.K. and the U.S. A tech treaty would give international law enforcement the tools to see that the guilty parties were brought to justice.
Due to illegal hacking, President Morrow had been outed as having an illegitimate daughter by the press at his own inaugural ball in front of family, friends and celebrities. Even worse, his supposed illegitimate daughter, Ariella Winthrop, had been standing a few feet away from him when the news broke and was taken by complete surprise herself.
The U.S. was finally willing to negotiate. It was up to Colin to see it through.
He’d made it nearly halfway up the bricked trail to the mansion when Senator Tate caught up to him, saying, “Again, my apologies.”
“As I said, it’s not a problem.”
“It’s no secret that Rowena had problems in the past,” the senator said. “She has worked hard to overcome them.”
Still, the senator seemed to keep her on a very short leash. It was silly to get so upset over something as simple as spilled paint.
“I think we’ve all done things we’re not proud of.”
The senator was quiet for several seconds, then, looking troubled, said, “Can I be direct with you, Colin?”
“Of course.”
“I understand that you have something of a reputation as a womanizer.”
“I do?”
“I don’t mean to imply that I would hold that against you,” the senator said. “How you lead your life is your business.”
Colin wouldn’t deny that he had dated his share of women, but he was no cad. He never dated a woman without first making it absolutely clear that he was in no hurry to settle down, and he never promised exclusivity.
“Sir, this so-called reputation of mine sounds a bit hyperbolic.”
“You’re young, in your prime, and I don’t fault you for playing the field.”
Colin sensed an unspoken “however” at the end of that sentence.
“Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t even bring it up, but I’ve welcomed you into my home for an extended stay, and I should make it clear that there are certain ground rules I expect you to follow.”
Ground rules?
“My daughter can be very… impulsive and in the past has been a target for unscrupulous men who think they can use her to get to me. Or simply just use her.”
“Sir, let me assure you—”
He held up a hand to stop him. “It’s not an accusation.”
It certainly felt like one.
“That said, I must insist that as long as you’re staying in my home, you are to consider my daughter off-limits.”
Well, it didn’t get much more direct than that.
“Can I count on you to do the right thing, son?”
“Of course,” Colin said, unsure if he should feel slighted or amused or if he should pity the senator. “I’m here to work on the treaty.”
“Well, then,” the senator said, “Let’s get to work.”
Two
After a long day of collaboration with the senator that was encouragingly productive, and dinner out with him and several of his friends, Colin found a quiet, dark corner by the pool to relax. It was blessedly out of view of the mansion, and the only place that he felt truly alone on the estate. And he needed his alone time. He stretched out in a lounge chair and gazed up at a clear, star-filled sky while he sipped a glass of the senator’s finest scotch.
When his phone rang he was surprised to see his sister’s number flash across the screen. It was only 5:30 a.m. in London.
“You’re up early,” he said in lieu of a hello.
“Mother’s having a rough night,” she told him, “so I was up watching television. I just wanted to check in and see how you’re enjoying your stay there.”
“It’s been… interesting.”
He told her about the senator’s warning, and at first she was convinced he was joking.
“It’s the God’s honest truth,” he assured her.
“Her father actually told you that she’s off-limits?”
“In those exact words.”
“How unbelievably rude and tactless!”
“Apparently I have a reputation with the ladies.”
With Rowena’s flame-red hair and striking, emerald-green bedroom eyes, he couldn’t deny that under different circumstances he would have been interested. Very interested. But he was more than capable of resisting a beautiful woman.
“Maybe you should come home,” Matty said.
She meant to London, of course, and though he’d spent most of his recovery there, it hadn’t felt like home any more than it had when he was a child. Home to him was boarding school, then later whichever country he’d been stationed in.
“You’ve been through so much, and you’re still healing,” Matilda insisted. Twenty years his senior, she had always been more of a parent than a sibling. But more so after the helicopter crash. Yes, he was lucky to be alive, but dwelling on the past was counterproductive. The worst of his wounds had healed and he needed to get on with his life. Not that he could ever expect to forget completely, nor would he want to. He was proud of his service and honored to defend his country. Deep down he would always be a warrior.
“I know you’re doing this for the family’s sake,” Matilda said, “but, Colin, politics? It’s so… beneath you.”
Having spent most of her life distanced from the royal family and isolated from the real world, Matilda couldn’t truly grasp the need for the treaty. “I need to do this. The family’s privacy has been violated countless times, our reputation damaged. This has to stop. We need the treaty.”
“I’m just worried about you,” she said. “Are you staying warm?”
He laughed. “I’m in Southern California, Matty. It doesn’t get cold here.” Unlike Washington, where he’d made a brief stop before flying to the West Coast. There the bitter wind and subzero temperatures seeped into his bones, reminding him, with aches and twinges, that he had a while to go before he was fully recovered.
They chatted for a few more minutes, and Matilda started to yawn.
“You should try to get some more sleep,” he told her.
“Promise you’ll take care of yourself.”
“I promise. Love you, Matty, and give my best to Mother.”
“Love you, too.”
He disconnected, slid his phone back into his pants pocket and closed his eyes, going over in his head all that they had covered this afternoon, and how much more work they had ahead of them. Thorough as the senator was, he insisted they pick the treaty apart, section by section, line by line. It would be a slow and agonizing process. And it would be given the same scrutiny in the U.K. before anything was set in stone.
At some point he must have drifted off, because he was startled awake by a loud splash. He jerked up in the chair, blinking furiously, briefly disoriented by his surroundings. He’d lived so many places that at times they all blurred together, and when he woke from a deep sleep it took him a moment to get his bearings.
Senator’s mansion. Pool deck. Got it.
Had he actually heard a splash, or had it just been a dream? He noticed movement in the water at the far end of the pool. Backlit by the glow emanating from under the surface, the blurry outline of a figure cut though the water. Then, as the swimmer came up for air, he saw the unmistakable flash of flaming red hair.
Rowena dove back under, then resurfaced when she reached the opposite side, not ten feet from where he sat. She flipped over, arms slicing through the water as she pushed off the side. He sat there, transfixed, hypnotized by the graceful glide of her body, the practiced, even strokes that took her to the opposite end of the pool, then back again. It went on like that for a while, until she finally stopped at the end farthest from him and hung on to the edge, seemingly exhausted and out of breath. But she couldn’t have rested more than a minute before she started the process all over again.
After a few more laps he began to think about the senator, his ridiculous ground rules, and how Colin’s sitting there watching his daughter might be misconstrued. And the more he thought about it, the more it seemed inappropriate. He could sneak away, but if someone were to see him that would definitely make it seem as if he had something to hide. By not leaving the second she dove into the pool, without even realizing it, he had created something of a dilemma for himself. At this point, it seemed that the wise thing to do would be to politely announce his presence, then get the hell out.
Still fuming over the berating she’d received from her father in front of her staff today when he learned that she’d gone thirty dollars over budget on art supplies for the month, Rowena pushed herself harder than usual, working out her frustration, swimming until her arms and legs felt rubbery and her shoulders ached.
Three years, two months and six days sober, and the senator was still waiting for her to fail.
And while she wasn’t denying she’d made a lot of mistakes, they were mistakes that she had since owned up to, and paid her penance for a million times over.
She had done everything her father had asked of her, but it still wasn’t enough. Maybe it would never be enough for him. She would always be the bad seed, always chasing after his love, trying to please him, but never quite making the cut.
It was tough to impress a man who didn’t want to be impressed.
By the time she was finished swimming she was so exhausted she barely had the strength to hoist herself up over the side and out of the water.
“That was quite a workout,” an unfamiliar and sinister-sounding voice said from somewhere behind her in the dark.
Startled, she whipped around, seeing only the shadow of a very large and intimidating figure. Her heart stopped, then picked up triple time, alarm flooding her veins with adrenaline, her automatic first thought being rapist or serial killer. In that split second she imagined José the pool boy finding her bloated, discolored corpse floating in the water the following morning, or some unfortunate jogger finding her in the woods along the jogging path in one of the city parks.
Her brain said run, and she took an instinctive step back—right off the edge of the pool. She felt herself falling backward, thought, Okay, now what? and then a hand shot out of the darkness and locked firmly around her wrist, tugging her upright, to her imminent doom.
She jerked her arm back, expecting him to let go. Instead she managed to knock both herself and her would-be attacker off balance and sent them both careening into the pool.
They landed with a splash, the voice she’d heard suddenly replaying like a tape recorder in her head, only this time it sounded vaguely familiar. This time she heard the crisp accent, the smooth-as-caramel tone that really wasn’t sinister after all. And as he surfaced beside her, sputtering and cursing, all she could think was that her father was going to kill her.
If Colin didn’t get to her first.
“Why in the bloody hell did you do that?” he said, treading water.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
He grabbed the edge of the pool and hoisted himself up. But the fact that she wasn’t about to be murdered left her so weak with relief that when she tried to pull herself up onto the deck, her arms crumpled and she slid back into the water instead.
“Allow me,” he said, reaching down to help her. When she hesitated, he said in an exasperated voice, “Just take my hand, for God’s sake.”
It was either accept his help or swim to the steps at the opposite end, and she honestly wasn’t sure she had the strength.
She grabbed his outstretched hand and with hardly any effort at all he hauled her out of the water. He was strong, which had her questioning how she’d managed to get him into the water in the first place. Maybe the adrenaline had given her superhuman strength. Now she felt weak and trembly and cold.
Colin grabbed her towel from the chair where she’d left it, but instead of using it on himself, he wrapped it around her shoulders. Her modest one-piece could hardly be considered revealing, yet she couldn’t help feeling exposed.
His soggy slacks and sweater were a pretty good indication that he hadn’t been out there to swim. Unless he’d been planning to skinny-dip.
She wouldn’t have minded seeing that.
He pulled an expensive-looking cell phone from the pocket of his soggy slacks. She cringed as he gave it a shake, jabbed the home button a few times and got nothing.
If he told her father about this, she was dead meat.
“I am so sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was out here. I usually have the pool all to myself.”
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, ringing water from the sleeves of his sweater. “I was sitting by the pool and I must have dozed off. I woke up when you dove in.”
“Your phone—can it be salvaged?”
“I doubt it,” he said, and shoved it back into his pocket.
His sweater wasn’t looking too promising, either. Her father was going to have a field day with this one. “I am so sorry, Colin. First your pants, now this.”
He gave up on the sweater, which had gone all saggy and misshapen, and said, “Could you spare me a towel?”
“Of course!” Where were her manners? It was the least she could do, since, in the process of trying not to get herself murdered, she had murdered his phone instead and, from the looks of it, his sweater… and were those leather shoes?
“They’re in the pool house.”
He followed her, his soles squeaking against the ceramic tile. She prayed he wasn’t wearing an expensive and non-waterproof wristwatch.
The door was locked, and she didn’t have her keys, so she dug behind the loose strip of siding beside the door frame and pulled out the spare. Once inside, she switched on the lights, blinking against the sudden brightness.
While it was technically a pool house, it was the size, and had all the amenities, of a studio apartment.
Colin kicked off his shoes and followed her inside. She stepped into the bathroom, which had its own door leading to the pool area, and grabbed a beach towel from the shelf. She walked back out just as Colin was peeling the wet sweater over his head, uncovering a chest and midriff that were a testament to years of dedication to fitness, and an abdomen hard with rippling muscles. Slim hips and lean, strong arms gave proportion to what, under the clingy fabric of his slacks, were clearly long and muscular legs. Then he turned to toss the ruined garment out the door, and she sucked in a quiet breath.
Patchy, pink burn scars that were fully healed, yet somehow still looked painfully fresh, started just below his shoulders and ran down the entire width of his back, disappearing beneath the waist of his pants.
She wiped the surprise from her face as he turned back around. Aside from the scars, his body couldn’t have been more perfect.
