Prince Incognito. Rachelle McCalla

“Before who found me?”

       “I suppose it depends on whose side you’re on.” She gave him that wary, uncertain look again.

       He wanted to assure her that he was a person of integrity and honor, not someone to be feared, but he couldn’t claim something he didn’t know to be true. The unknowns of his past sat between them like a live grenade that might go off at any moment.

       Lillian rose to her feet. “Do you need anything? There’s drinking water there, and a few snacks.” She pointed to a small fridge that served as a nightstand. “Help yourself.”

       Her hospitality surprised him. She didn’t know whether he could be trusted, and yet, she’d given up her room for him, and had gone out of her way to make him comfortable.

       Lillian stopped halfway to the door. “I’ll be across the hall if you need anything. You might want to lock yourself in the room. Don’t trust my father.”

       “Thank you.” He took a step forward, intending to shake her hand.

       She shrank back against the door frame.

       “I have no intention of hurting you.” He assured her quickly, wishing he had evidence to back up his claim. “I don’t think I’m dangerous.”

       Her eyes flickered across the breadth of his shoulders, to the thick biceps that stretched the sleeves of the T-shirt he wore, up to his full height, towering over her in the close confines of the stateroom. “I think—” a tremor cut through her words “—you could be plenty dangerous, if you wanted to be.”

       He lowered his head. She had an excellent point. His powerful physique indicated that he lived a lifestyle that required him to be strong. Did that mean he was dangerous? Her uncle and her father thought so.

       “Thank you for everything—” he began, startled by the sound of someone knocking on the other side of the heavily lacquered mahogany door.

       Lillian looked concerned and stepped away from the door to make room to open it.

       As she did so, the door swung open, virtually eliminating any open floor space in the tiny room. He shrank back, intending to get out of her way, but she must have had the same thought, because she stumbled into him and he reached out to steady her just as the door swung open.

       Lily’s father stood on the other side, his face red up to his receding hairline, his eyes bulging with anger.

       Lily shuffled away, but the move only made her look that much more guilty as she disentangled herself from his arms.

       “Lillian,” her father seethed. “What are you doing?”

       She opened her mouth to answer.

       He raised one hand, silencing her as he addressed the soldier. “Who are you?”

       “I don’t know,” he admitted.

       “He’s lost his memory from the blasts,” Lily explained. “But he could regain it at any time.”

       Lily’s father shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. This man is coming with me.”

       “Why? Where?” Lillian looked as though she might try to step between them.

       “Your uncle David would like to see him.” Her father grabbed the soldier by his arm. “On deck. Now.”

       He could have fought the older man, but having just assured Lillian that he wasn’t dangerous, he didn’t figure he ought to strike her father. That left him with no choice but to walk in the direction he was shoved.

       “Stay in your room, Lily.”

       “No.” The stubborn woman trailed them both up onto the deck.

       For one disorientated moment, he thought perhaps a storm had blown up. Then he recognized the familiar sound of a military helicopter’s pulsing rotors.

       He tensed, all his instincts telling him there was danger in the darkness.

       A man stepped into the dim circle of light provided by a fixture next to the pilothouse door. Other than the military uniform he wore, and his hair more salt than pepper, he looked like Lillian’s father.

       The uniformed man—apparently Lily’s uncle David—spoke. “You tried to run away. That was foolish.” He raised a hand, gesturing to somewhere beyond them.

       Four uniformed men stepped from the shadows—soldiers, with guns slung across their backs. They stepped toward him as though to apprehend him.

       His heart pounded. Should he fight them or go nicely? He didn’t even know who he was—how was he supposed to know how to respond to these men?

       “No!” Lillian screamed from behind him, pushing her way between him and the men who approached.

       The soldiers reacted, two of them lunging toward him, two others rushing her, intention to harm spelled across their features and their postures.

       He made up his mind instantly. He couldn’t let them hurt Lillian.

       Whipping his boot around in a high-round kick, he sent the nearest two soldiers sprawling.

      THREE

      Lillian staggered back, as the soldier who’d rescued her from the sea dispatched a flurry of kicks at the soldiers who swarmed the deck of her father’s sloop. The first two fell and didn’t rise. He disarmed the next, pulling the intimidatingly large gun off the man’s back and knocking him in the head with the end of it, sending him keeling back into the fourth soldier, who drew his gun, only to have it kicked from his hand, clattering across the deck.

       It was her uncle David who ended it, pulling out his own gun and grabbing her by the arm, shoving the cold metal up under her jaw so hard her head snapped sideways.

       “Stop!”

       The soldier spun around, his blue eyes immediately sizing up the situation. “Let her go.”

       Lillian glanced at her parents, who were cowering in the doorway of the pilothouse. She waited for them to reprimand her uncle, to demand he put away the gun that he held to her head.

       They shrank back, fear on their faces, and said nothing.

       “You’ll come with me.” David glowered at the soldier. “And if you make one false move, Lillian won’t be here to save you the next time.”

       The soldier closed his eyes in submission.

       The other uniformed men rose from where they’d fallen, warily grasping the soldier as the helicopter that had been hovering just beyond the boat moved closer. Lillian saw that her parents had lowered the sails to keep the whirling rotors from harming them. They must have welcomed her uncle aboard as she’d been below, bandaging up the soldier’s face again, the sounds of the helicopter drowned out by the ambient noise of the ship and the sea.

       A ladder dangled from the helicopter, and David nodded toward it. “Climb,” he told the soldier.

       The man stepped forward, grabbed the rungs, and ascended. One by one, the rest of the soldiers followed him up, disappearing into the shadowy bird that hovered over them in the night sky.

       David pulled her toward the ladder.

       Finally, her father stepped forward. “You can’t take Lillian.”

       “I don’t have any choice.” David lowered the gun, but kept it pointed at her. “You saw how he responded when I threatened her. He didn’t hesitate. She may be the only effective weapon I have against him.”

       “You won’t hurt her?”

       “She’ll be fine.”

       Sandra Bardici peeked her head around her husband’s shoulder. “Can she change into dry clothes first? She doesn’t even have shoes on.”