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“Because it’s Wednesday. Because I can.”
She took him to the latest James Bond thriller. Who could say? Maybe he’d be able to relate. At the snack counter, she bought a jumbo tub of popcorn drizzled with butter flavoring and a large Sprite.
“We can share the popcorn,” she told him. “Want a Coke or something?”
“No, thank you.”
She accepted her Sprite from the guy behind the counter, who kept shooting sideways glances at Hauk. Elli supposed she wasn’t surprised. Hauk was hardly your average Joe. He stood at least a head taller than anyone else in the sparse weekday-afternoon crowd around them. And then there were all those muscles, that proud military bearing—not to mention the shoulder-length golden hair. Even with his shirt on, so you couldn’t see the blue-and-gold lightning bolt that blazed across his chest, Hauk could have walked right off a martial arts movie poster.
Elli realized she might actually be starting to enjoy herself a little. She grinned. Oh, yes. Enter the Viking. Or maybe Warriors of the North.
“You’re smiling. Why?” Hauk’s voice was low. Somehow, it sounded right next door to intimate.
Elli felt a shiver run beneath her skin. How odd. “Oh, nothing. Here.” She shoved the tub of popcorn at him. He took it and she got herself a straw and a handful of napkins and led the way up the ramp to the little stand where the ticket taker waited.
There were thirteen theaters in the building. Each of them had Dolby sound and big, comfortable seats, like easy chairs, well padded with high backs and plenty of room between the rows. Still, in deference to Hauk’s massive frame, Elli chose the row in back, which had an extra-wide aisle between it and the next row down.
Once they were seated in the dark, he offered her the popcorn tub. “Oh, you go ahead and hold it,” she said.
“I don’t care for any.”
She started to take it from him. And then a naughty whim took her. “Hold it anyway—because I am your princess, right? Because, after my father, you serve me.”
He looked at her for a long time, his eyes shining at her through the darkness. “That’s right. I serve you.”
A small tremor went through her, a quivery feeling. Her heart beat too fast and her cheeks felt warm.
Was something happening here?
Oh, of course not.
The dark screen lit up and the preshow snack-bar advertisements of dancing paper cups and singing candy boxes began.
The movie was your usual James Bond flick. Fast-paced, fun to watch, with lots of drop-dead-gorgeous women and Pierce Brosnan, the perfect James Bond, dark and sleek, killer handsome, delightfully urbane.
Elli sipped her Sprite and intermittently munched her popcorn and wished her silly heart would stop pounding so fast every time she reached over and grabbed a handful out of Hauk’s lap.
Okay, she’d blundered. She should have taken the tub when he tried to give it back to her. She should have thought about how awkward it was going to be, how…intimate, to keep groping for fistfuls of popcorn while he was holding the container.
Intimate.
It was the second time that particular word had come to mind since they’d entered the theater complex.
But what was so strange about that?
Not a thing. Not considering the way it was between them, the way she had to be with him virtually round-the-clock. Even though they weren’t really intimate, it was hard not to think of the word. Intimate, at least in part, meant to be physically close. And that they were.
Oh, yes, they were.
She could feel the heat coming off his big body. And the outer side of her upper arm touched his, just barely, all the time. And then there was the scent of him, that scent of cedar and spice and…maleness. That scent that she did find so dangerously attractive.
He whispered, out of the side of his mouth, “You’re not eating your popcorn.” She could have sworn she heard humor in his voice.
Humor.
And intimacy.
She looked at him sharply. He was staring at the screen.
And wasn’t that the main reason she’d dragged him here? To give him something else to stare at but her.
She hadn’t thought it through, though. Hadn’t considered that they’d be sitting so close their bodies brushed, that she’d have the bad judgment to make a big deal of ordering him to hold the popcorn for her.
She whispered, “Um, are you sure you don’t want any popcorn?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“Then I guess I’ll just hold it myself.”
He leaned a fraction nearer, heat and size and maleness pressing in. “Are you certain? I am willing to serve.” His voice was low and soft and…silky.
Elli’s mouth went bone-dry. She gulped. “I…yeah. I’m certain.”
He handed her the tub, the pads of his big fingers brushing hers. A bullet of heat went shooting through her, so thrilling it was painful—from where his fingers grazed hers, straight up her arm—and right to her chest, which contracted sharply, so that she almost gasped.
They were staring at each other. The Dolby sound swelled around them and images flashed on the big screen, reflecting at them, so that Hauk’s chiseled profile gleamed alabaster in the darkness. His hair shone, not gold, not platinum, but some rare color in between.
He was the one who looked away, back at the screen. And this time she felt no triumph that he did. This time, she felt it as a tearing sensation, that he ripped something, left tattered raw edges, when he looked away.
She stared at him for several bewildered seconds, thinking what she shouldn’t be thinking: that he was so very wonderfully male. That it would be a lovely, thrilling thing to have his big hands on her, to press her mouth to his…
When they came out of the movie, it was a little after three. Hauk pushed the glass door open for her and she walked out, across the covered ticket booth area and into the bright sunlight of a beautiful afternoon. Overhead, the sky was clear and powder-blue.
And she wasn’t ready—not yet—to go back to her place and be cooped up in there with Hauk. She headed for Land Park.
Hauk saw they weren’t going where he’d assumed they’d be going. “Where are we going now?”
“To Land Park.”
“You wish to see your mother again?”
“No. Not to my mother’s house. Just into the park. I want to walk by the duck pond.” She added, turning to give him a sarcastic smile, “Is that all right with you?”
Their gazes collided. A shimmer of heat went through her. “Return to your apartment,” he said softly. “Pack your belongings. I’ll take you to the plane.”
Elli yanked her gaze back to the street in front of her. She had to be careful. She could get them in an accident. “No. Not yet.”
“This is foolish.”
And it was. She knew it. Something more than a James Bond flick had happened in the darkened movie theater. They’d emerged into the sunshine with everything changed between them—or if not changed, at least mutually acknowledged.
Looking back, it seemed that maybe there had been attraction between them almost from the very first. She’d denied it. That hadn’t been difficult. What self-respecting woman would ever willingly admit that her kidnapper made her heart go pitter-pat? Not Elli.
But time had done it, made her see it. Time and the forced closeness that they shared. She was coming to know him a little, coming to understand that though she despised the job he was doing, she didn’t—she couldn’t—despise the man himself. She knew there was goodness in him. That honor and loyalty meant more to him than life. How could she help but admire that? How could she help but let down her guard with him, at least a little?
Now it seemed terribly dangerous to imagine the night to come, should she continue to insist on remaining in Sacramento until the last possible moment her agreement with her father allowed.
She should do what Hauk kept trying to get her to do. Pack. Get on that plane.
And yet, she held back. Beyond this impossible attraction to the man her father had sent to kidnap her, she had other issues here.
The more she thought about this whole situation, the more suspicious she became of her father’s motives. What if her mother was right? Could she be walking blind into some ugly palace plot?
Her doubts ate at her. True, she was going. Hauk would make certain of that. But she saw no reason to rush headlong into the jaws of a possible trap.
Who knew what might happen in the next eighteen hours or so? It didn’t seem particularly likely, but some new and valuable piece of information just might come to light. Maybe everything would become clear, after all.
Right, whispered a knowing voice in the back of her mind. Everything might become clear. Oh, certainly. Anything might happen….
Now, that did ring true. Anything might happen, all right—between her and Hauk.
Elli tossed her head. “I don’t care. I don’t want to go yet. I’m not sure I want to go at all.”
She waited for the man beside her to tell her that she had no choice. She’d vowed to go and she would go.
He said nothing.
Land Park boasted its own outdoor amphitheater across from a children’s amusement area called Fairy-tale Town and not far from the zoo. Below the amphitheater, sparkling in the afternoon sun, lay the duck pond.
Elli parked the car above the amphitheater, to the side a little. A steep, tree-shadowed, grass-covered hill swept down to the pond. They got out and Elli took off at a run down the grassy slope. Maybe she’d leave him behind.
Yeah, right.
Elli kept running anyway, not looking back, almost tumbling head-over-heels once or twice, but somehow managing to keep her feet.
Hauk followed close behind. She could feel him there. Never once did he stumble. And she knew he wasn’t running full-out, that he effortlessly paced himself to keep a few yards back.
She reached the base of the slope, where the ground leveled out, drawing to a halt on the asphalt path that encircled the perimeter of the pond. Ducks and geese glided on the sun-sparkled surface and oaks and sweet gums grew at intervals along the bank, inviting wooden benches waiting beneath them.
Slightly breathless, she turned to Hauk. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
His sky-blue gaze darkened. “Beautiful.”
She knew what he meant and it wasn’t the duck pond. Her mouth was dry again. She swallowed.
He looked away from her. “What now?”
Good question. “Let’s, uh, walk.”
He started walking. Fast.
“Hey, wait up.”
He stopped where he was. She hurried and caught up.
They stood on the path, facing each other. He was looking at her again—gazing at her as if he would eat her up. And she liked it, to have him look at her that way.
He said, as if it hurt him to tell her, “You will have to go. I will have to make you go.”
“I know. But not till tomorrow. You won’t make me go…until tomorrow.”
“You enjoy this? Pushing the boundaries? Tempting the fates?”
Anger sizzled through her. “I’ll tell you what I don’t enjoy. Being kept in the dark. Knowing that if I break my word, you’ll make me keep it anyway.”
“You are jarl. High jarl. A princess.”
“Did you think I’d forgotten?”
“You are a princess and a princess keeps her word.”
The ducks drifted, elegant and easy, on the pond. The tree branches swayed in the slight breeze. A hundred yards away, on a swath of green across the street, a woman and a small blond child sat on a pink blanket beneath an oak, eating ice cream. The cars rolled past on the street, each one observing the speed limit. Everything seemed peaceful and perfect. Idyllic.
Except between Elli and Hauk. Between them, the air crackled. With hostility. And with heat.
She demanded with a low voice, “Do you know more of what drives my father than you’re telling me?”
“No.”
“If you did know more, would you tell me?”
“I can’t say. It would depend.”
“On?”
“What I knew. What I was ordered to keep to myself, what I thought wise to keep to myself.”
“So, I can’t really trust you, then. You could be lying to me now. You would lie to me now—if my father had ordered you to lie, if you thought you should lie.”
“You knew that from the first. And you can trust me. To take you where you need to go, to keep you safe.”
“Where I need to go?”
“Yes. By your own vow, I will take you where you need to go.”
She was recalling the things her mother had said. “Do you think it’s possible that my father hopes I might somehow claim the throne of Gullandria once he’s gone?”
“No.”
