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With Logan’s laugh ringing in his ears, Wade reluctantly gave up the possibility that, given enough time, he might have connected with the lady in white sometime during the party.
Logan led him back to the party and, to Wade’s bewilderment, straight to the side of the lady in white. At that point, the surprise Logan had promised him became the understatement of the year. Instead of acting as the escort of an innocent young girl as he’d been led to believe, his charge was the lady with the invitation in her exotic green eyes.
He took a deep breath and promised himself Undersecretary Logan hadn’t heard the last of this. A joke was a joke, but this was too much. And he wasn’t laughing.
Logan ignored Wade’s pointed look. “Your Grace, I’d like to introduce you to Commander Wade Stevens. As you requested, the commander will be your escort for the duration of your stay here in Washington. Commander, may I present Duchess Mary Louise of Baronovia.”
As requested?
Wade’s head swam as he acknowledged the introduction. Requested by whom? The lady in white herself?
He hadn’t set eyes on the duchess before tonight. And, outside of smiling at him over the rim of her flute of champagne, she hadn’t paid any real attention to him. There had to be a mistake, and one he would remedy the first chance he got.
“Delighted to meet you, Commander Stevens,” the duchess replied with a mischievous smile. She held out her hand. “I am looking forward to having you as my escort during my stay in your beautiful city.”
Wade glanced at the two Secret Service men hovering behind the duchess and eyeing him as if he were a suspect. Like it or not, he had to keep his questions for a later time when he and the duchess had more privacy. “Looks as if we’re going to be quite a cozy group,” he commented dryly.
After a glance over her shoulder, the duchess frowned. “As long as I have you as my escort, Commander, I’m sure I will not be needing anyone else.” She waved her hand in dismissal at the Secret Service men.
To give the men credit, they glanced at Wade and remained where they were.
Wade froze at her gesture. The sensuous duchess might have caught his attention, but her imperious royal manner was rapidly turning him off. It was time to make one thing clear: if he was going to be her escort, he intended to be in charge.
He gazed at her silently. Considering her age and her appearance, the Children’s Zoo was out. And along with it any other diversions intended for children.
“You won’t be needing the Secret Service?” he asked softly. When she shook her head, he turned to Undersecretary Logan. “This isn’t going to work, sir. Secret Service assistance is part of the package or the deal is off.”
Logan cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Your Grace, I’d like to have a moment with Commander Stevens.” At her cool nod, he drew Wade aside. “We have no choice in the matter, Commander. The request for your services came through Prince Alexis himself and has been sanctioned by everyone, with the possible exception of the president. I’ll see what I can do about making the Secret Service less conspicuous and more acceptable to the duchess, but I agree with you. They must remain.”
Logan turned back to the duchess and said apologetically, “The commander is right, Your Grace. There’s too much at stake here for you to go around D.C. without adequate protection. But I promise we will try to keep them in the background.”
The duchess handed her empty champagne flute to a passing waiter with an expression that confirmed Wade’s opinion of the lady. She was every bit as willful as she was beautiful.
“I want to see your beautiful city as an ordinary tourist,” she said with a smile clearly intended to charm the socks off of Logan, but wasn’t doing much for him. “I can hardly do it with an entourage. I’m sure the commander’s presence will be sufficient to protect me.” She patted Wade on his arm. “Right, Commander?”
Wade smothered a groan. It was bad enough that the duchess wasn’t the young girl he’d been led to believe. Children could be put in their place, but this was no child. The very adult duchess was a spoiled woman whose tempting lips and flashing eyes were set on charming him into going along with whatever she wanted.
Fortunately, he was experienced enough as a man and as a lawyer to know that when a woman uses her charms to get her way there’s bound to be trouble ahead. The trick was to stay one step ahead of the lady before she caused an international incident.
Bottom line, he sensed as he gazed down at her, was that her care and protection, with or without the Secret Service to back him up, promised to be a handful.
He glanced at the sculptured feminine hand that now clung to his arm. All his instincts to take advantage of the closeness she seemed to offer stirred, then died a quick death. He wasn’t a lawyer for nothing. Her smile was an act.
In his ten years with the Judge Advocate General Corps, he’d persuaded many a jury to see his side of a case before the court. This case was no different. Sooner or later he and the duchess were going to have to come to an agreement about the Secret Service, or his name wasn’t Wade Stevens. But not here in front of roomful of people. There was no point in creating a public spectacle of himself.
“Perhaps the duchess and I ought to have this discussion in private. Come to some sort of mutual understanding,” he quietly said to Logan. When Logan nodded, Wade motioned to the Secret Service men to hold off while he straightened out his charge. “Your Grace, please come with me.”
He offered his arm to the duchess and walked her to the library door. Before she could speak, he had led her into the library he’d left just moments before.
“Now see here, Your Grace,” he began as soon as the door closed behind him. “I don’t want to appear arbitrary, but there are some rules attached to the game we seem to be playing. Whether you like it or not.”
“Game?” The duchess wandered over to a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, drew out a leather-bound book and casually turned the pages. “I do not know what you’re talking about.”
“With due respect, Your Grace, I think you do,” Wade answered. “For starters, if you don’t mind the plain language, you’re going to have to knock off the royal act and come down off your high horse. If you’re serious about seeing D.C. as a tourist, fine. But you’re going to have to play strictly by the rules. My rules. The first of which is cooperating with the Secret Service. And,” he added grimly, “you might as well cut out the siren act to get your way. It isn’t going to work on me.”
The duchess thrust the book back on the shelf and turned to face Wade. Gold sparks of anger shot through her eyes. “Anything else, Commander?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’re going to have to stop acting like a duchess and more like a tourist from New Jersey.”
“But I am a duchess!”
“Maybe so, but with your regal bearing and custom-made clothing, no way in heaven are you going to pass for a typical tourist.” Nor like an ordinary woman, he added silently. Not with those green eyes and chestnut hair and a body sure to draw second glances.
He expected the duchess to protest. To use her royal status as an excuse to overrule this bodyguard-as-an-escort business. To his surprise she stared at him for a few moments before she bit her lip and spoke up.
“And how do you propose to change me into a typical tourist, Commander?”
He was a dead man.
Contrary to his hopeful expectations, instead of firing him, Duchess Mary Louise of Baronovia was actually going to go along with him! Grudgingly he had to give her credit. She’d not only gotten him for a bodyguard, she was smart. Smart enough to know when to fold.
All the more reason he had to be on his guard.
“First, Your Grace,” he said eyeing her cocktail dress frankly, “we’re going to go to Wal-Mart in the morning and outfit you in ordinary clothing.”
Ordinary clothing to turn her into an ordinary woman? he asked himself as he continued to lay down the rules. No way! Clearly he was out of his mind for even thinking so. No matter what she wore or how she looked, the duchess Mary Louise could never be ordinary. Still, if it was the only way he could get her attention it was worth a try.
After a moment’s pause, she shrugged. “You may be right. If you think clothing will make a difference, I’m willing. What else?”
“The Secret Service stays, both of them.”
A blush rose over her face, and for a moment she almost looked human. “They are two old married men with old-fashioned minds. Everything I told them I wanted to see was off-limits.”
Wade’s sixth sense sounded warning signals. As in any big city, there were enough off-limit places in D.C. to blow any bodyguard-cum-escort’s mind, and he was no different. Still, with him keeping an extra watchful eye on her and the two Secret Service men as backup, how much trouble could she get into?
“What exactly do you have in mind to see?”
“I’ll let you know in the morning,” she said airily and started to turn away.
“I don’t play games, Your Grace, and neither should you.” Wade said quietly. “To begin with, why don’t you make a list of the places you’d like to visit. I’ll look them over and let you know which ones I think are okay.”
She stopped in her tracks, and her eyes narrowed. Without saying a word, Wade knew that under that cool facade she was angry…and that he didn’t care. He was going to do his duty as he saw it, even if she didn’t like it. Furthermore, he sensed she hadn’t chosen him for an escort merely because he was younger than the Secret Service men assigned her. Age had nothing to do with it; she had to have another motive.
He raised his eyebrows and swallowed a begrudging smile. The angrier the duchess became, the more enchanting she looked, more the pity. For all her attraction, she could have come from another planet and was just as unreachable.
She didn’t fool him, either. She may have agreed to dressing down, but strong-minded women like her never gave up, any more than a leopard could change its spots. It would only be a matter of time before the lady was back trying to use her wiles to persuade him to see things her way.
Thank God he was going to be hers only for a few days.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, it sounds to me as if you’ve already tried your wiles on the Secret Service men and couldn’t get away with it,” he said dryly. “You can forget trying anything on me.”
“Now see here, Commander,” she retorted, all traces of the wistful and sexy woman gone in the blink of an eyelid. The imperious duchess was back. “In spite of what you think about me, I am not a spoiled child. Nor am I a fool. I am not looking for trouble, either. I merely wish to see your country’s capital and I wish to see it my way.”
“I don’t have a problem with that as long as the Secret Service tags along,” he agreed. And then he asked the question that continued to bother him. “Of all the men you could have asked for as an escort, why me?”
She looked at him cooly. “Simply put, Commander, I chose you for an escort because you looked to have an open mind and apparently knew how to enjoy yourself. So, if you think my dressing up or dressing down will make me inconspicuous, I will allow it.”
Wade reluctantly nodded his agreement. In his book the lady could never be inconspicuous. He might take her shopping for nondescript clothing, but as for her fading into the tourist landscape, he wasn’t going to bank on it. Any more than he could bank on her complete cooperation.
To make matters worse, there seemed to be no way out of the escort duty.
Escorting the duchess around Washington might actually turn out to be interesting, he mused as he eyed the folds of sheer material designed to hide her pert breasts. Instead, they only managed to heighten his interest. He’d always felt that when a woman left some hint of modesty in her clothing, it did more for him than a blatant invitation.
Whoever had designed the duchess’s cocktail dress had known exactly what he or she was doing. And, from his own reaction to the way she looked, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the lady knew it, too. To muddy the waters, he was sure, from the parting look she gave him she hadn’t given up on persuading him to see things her way.
He followed her back to the party with a sinking feeling in his middle. He was going to have to protect the lady for a few days. But who was going to protect him from her?
Chapter Two
She hadn’t told him the whole truth.
May, as the family called her, hastily adjusted the neckline of the white evening dress that had drawn Wade Stevens’s frankly interested gaze. The whole truth, a truth she wasn’t about to share with him, was that she’d requested him as her escort because she’d been as attracted to him as he seemed to have been drawn to her.
His age, his personality and the probability he was more likely to understand her than the two older Secret Service men hovering over her, had been a factor in his favor. But the truth was that it had been his virile appearance in his immaculate white dress uniform that had first captivated her and then held her attention.
She’d kept her eyes on him while he’d worked his way through the room, occasionally stopping to chat with someone he knew. It had been his easy smile, the way the corner of his eyes crinkled as he laughed that had finally convinced her.
She’d sensed then he was a man who had a sense of humor and knew how to enjoy life. A man who would know how to make her laugh.
She hadn’t known much laughter during her arranged marriage. Married at nineteen to a titled cousin, chosen for her by her father, she had tried to be the proper wife her late, older husband had expected. He had suddenly fallen dead at her feet of a heart attack a year ago.
Her period of mourning over, she had taken her father up on his invitation to travel with him on this short trip to the United States. She was desperate to enjoy her stay. Now was her chance to enjoy her youth and taste the freedom that had evaded her as a member of the royal family of Baronovia, and, until the recent birth of her half brother, its heir apparent.
The sight-seeing agenda laid out for her by the U.S. State Department had left her cold. The rules laid down by her Secret Service escorts had left her even colder. As for the commander, he may have been right about her wanting to see a side of Washington that was more than its stone monuments, but she didn’t care. She was more determined than ever to visit the places she’d longed to see.
If it meant using her royal status to charm or intimidate him into seeing things her way, so be it.
It was too bad she had to play a game with him, she thought regretfully as he held the door open for her. He appeared to be a genuinely decent man. Just as she knew herself to be a flesh-and-blood human woman under the role of imperious royalty she was playing. In different circumstances she might have enjoyed meeting him.
“EVERYTHING SETTLED?” Undersecretary of the navy Logan materialized at Wade’s elbow.
“You might say so, sir,” Wade agreed cautiously with a glance at the duchess.
“Good.” As Logan shook Wade’s hand, his relief was evident. “What’s on your sight-seeing agenda for tomorrow?”
“Sorry, sir,” Wade replied. “I’ve found it best never reveal my plans ahead of time.”
Logan started to speak, then appeared to change his mind. “Of course, Commander. You’re in charge.” He smiled at the duchess. “With your permission, Your Grace, I’ll leave you in the commander’s capable hands. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.” He bowed and hurried away.
Wade had been tempted to laugh when Logan acted if a diplomatic crisis had been averted. A stickler for propriety and rules, if Logan had known of Wade’s plans, he would have nixed the idea of shopping for appropriate clothing in Wal-Mart.
Somehow the idea didn’t sound amusing anymore.
Wade gazed down at the duchess. She’d tried to use her charm on him to get her way, but it wasn’t going to work. He’d actually expected her to tell Logan she’d changed her mind about wanting him for an escort. Instead, she’d slipped her hand through his arm, smiled and gazed up at Wade as if she was a star-struck fan of his.
Wade knew better. The wily duchess had an agenda. Although she seemed to have given in to his conditions for their outings, her teasing smile was a dead giveaway. Instinct told him the dimples that danced across her cheeks hid the truth.
He gazed down at her manicured hand. Another gesture that gave her away. He knew that royalty didn’t normally touch strangers. The duchess was acting, trying to use charm to get her way. Only time and his watchful eyes would tell what was behind that smile of hers.
He didn’t trust her as far as the front door to the Blair House.
“You are going to at least consult with me on our agenda, are you not?” the duchess said in a silky voice that dripped with honey.
He wasn’t buying.
Wade hesitated long enough to see her squirm, a question in her eyes. Good. He intended to keep her on edge while he laid down the rules. “That depends on what you have in mind.”
She took her hand away. “To begin with, I saw all of your national monuments that I care to see on our way in from the airport. Now I want to see the other side of the city.”
“Hold it right there,” Wade ordered before the last words were out of her mouth. “I don’t know what you mean by the other side of the city, but I have a strong suspicion it’s the wrong side.”
“Perhaps,” she added with a frown. “At least, the Secret Service agents seemed to think so. Nevertheless I have my mind made up. I will see no more monuments.”
“Really.” Wade’s eyebrows rose and came together. “Just what did you have in mind?”
“I shall give you a list tomorrow, after you call off the Secret Service. Right now I would like to speak to my father.” She started to move away.
“As a matter of fact, so would I.” Before she could take a second step, Wade touched her elbow and urged her to a corner of the room. “First let’s get something straight, Your Grace. You tell me what you’d like to see, then I’ll tell you if I agree. And as for the Secret Service men, forget calling them off. Like I said, they’re in.”
Her face paled and her eyes turned as cold as the glittering emeralds around her neck. “I think you’re forgetting who I am and who you are, Commander.”
Wade felt as if he’d been slapped in the face.
“Not at all, Your Grace,” he said with as much restraint as he could muster. “I’m Commander Wade Stevens, of the United States Navy. A lawyer attached to the Judge Advocate General Corps. While I’m not normally in the escort business, I am also the man you apparently asked for as an escort. And as your chosen escort I get to make the rules. You might say,” he added dryly, “you’re in my hands for the duration of your stay.”
At the annoyed expression that came across her face, Wade began to wonder if the duchess actually knew the reason his government was interested in protecting her. Or if she realized that if she hadn’t been in some kind of danger, the Secret Service and his own services would never have been called into play. Just how urgent remained to be seen.
He settled for the middle ground. “Where I come from, Your Grace, anything worth doing is worth doing well. Especially after an order from my superiors. So, how about starting over? As long as we appear to be stuck with each other for the next few days, how about a truce?”
He knew, even as he asked the question, that any truce the lady might agree to wasn’t going to be worth the powder to blow it to hell.
MAY GAZED in stony silence at the man who was turning out to be her bodyguard as well as her escort. Instead of being intimidated by her royal status, he appeared not to be impressed. Part of her was annoyed, even angry at his take-charge attitude. Another part, the sensible part of her, admired his courage. If there ever was a man she wanted as an escort around Washington, D.C., it was this Wade Stevens. From the moment she’d watched him make his way across the room in his eye-catching uniform, she’d sensed that a woman could be a woman and enjoy herself with him. Now, if she could only make him see things her way.
He stood more than six foot tall, with wavy brown hair and hazel eyes that changed with his thoughts. In his pristine white uniform, his athletic figure stirred emotions in her no other man before him had managed to do. Certainly not her late husband.
When their gazes locked, she realized that she wanted more than Wade Stevens’s company. She wanted him as a woman wants a man, and, heaven forgive her, in ways she was almost embarrassed to contemplate.
On the other hand, attracted to him or not, she had promised herself she would never let a man control her again the way her late husband had been wont to do. And certainly not a person from another country. Asking her to cooperate with him was one thing. Ordering her to do it was another.
