Page 47 of Captured

He eyed her as he took the watch, then glanced back to the open beach. He quickly slid the watch on his wrist. It hung there with a reassuring weight. “I thought you were a master negotiator. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“I wasn’t negotiating formyself, I was negotiating for you, and for a man who was your best friend. It changes things.” She gestured toward the watch. “Is it the right one?”

“It is.”

“How can you tell? You’re not even really looking at it.”

“I can tell because the watch has two diving chronometers that most flight watches don’t, and a world time meter that most diving watches don’t. It’s also engineered for high-altitude antifogging. And,” he offered her a lopsided smile, “the band is cracked.”

He held the watch toward her, and she saw the thin crack in the metal next to the case. “Ari had a new one on order. It arrived three days after he was lost at sea.”

Lauren stared at him. “Do you think those men—those men saw Ari? Knew him? Maybe they helped him out of the water or saw where he, I mean—” She broke off, clearly unsure of how ready he was to deal with the concept of Ari being finally gone.

He wasn’t sure himself, and the need resurfaced to go and interrogate the men. Lauren apparently felt the same way. “We should go back! You should ask them directly now, before they leave.”

“No.” With welcome clarity, his training reasserted itself. No. He’d waited too long to do this wrong now. He would make his report and let the royal family follow up. Their need to find out what happened to Ari was every bit as great as his own. And their need to do it with ultimate secrecy was paramount. They didn’t want to look weak or foolish to either their allies or their enemies.

He shook his head. “We’ll go in town to make the full report and ensure I have a strong enough signal to send pictures. But we’ll stop first at home to radio it in with the sat phone. I don’t want to wait.”

“Well, I should say not.”

They raced across the sand, Lauren practically bouncing in her seat. She was almost out of the rover before it stopped in front of the villa, running around to tug him out as well. “I can’t believe you can’t video call. Can you even take a picture with this thing?”

“No, which is why we’re going into town. King Jasen will also want the watch secured, so our timetable has probably moved up as well.”

That stopped her, and she turned back to him. She’d made it as far as the porch, and as he mounted the stairs, her manner seemed suddenly far too tense. “Moved up as in?—”

“As in I expect I’ll be recalled back to the mainland immediately, with you as well.” He frowned at her as her expression flickered between disappointment, loss, and finally resolve. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

Thirty-One

Lauren looked up, blinking as Dimitri loomed over her. They were on the porch, the porch where the day before she’d sat, clutching her beer, wondering if she was reading Dimitri’s signals wrong, and practically desperate to have sex with the man, if only once. Her time on the island had been a remarkable, a time-out-of-time experience, and she was already losing the memory of it, her mind already moving forward, everything happening too fast.

Now she felt as if she had to memorize everything around her, because it was all ending. Everything would be going back to normal, and she wasn’t ready for normal yet, though she knew that was selfish, knew that that wasn’t her place. She didn’t care.

“Lauren.” Dimitri’s large hands came up to her upper arms, and he gently steadied her as if she were a filly about to bolt, or a skittish child about to have a meltdown. Was that what he thought of her, she wondered? And what did it matter if he did?

But it did matter. It mattered a lot. And if she wasn’t careful, she’d betray how much it mattered, and then the big hulking possibly demigod-bodyguard would have a better story to tell his military buddies for the rest of his life, however long it lasted, about how he swooped an American heiress off her feet withoutso much as lifting a hand, and then she turned into a blubbering mess at the prospect of him leaving her. They’d all have a good laugh about that, probably, or at least they should.

“Lauren,” Dimitri said again, more sharply this time. “I’m serious. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” she snapped, smiling to soften the harshness of her tone. She glanced away to compose herself. How many times had she done that over the years? A simple pause to center on what was important, what counted. A resetting of her expression to ensure that she conveyed exactly what she wanted to convey—and only what she wanted to convey.

But when she looked back to Dimitri, it all fell apart again. She prayed she sounded artful when she spoke, that he couldn’t tell how much he affected her, but her heart was in her words too much to her own ears, and there was nothing she could do about it. “It’s just that—once you make that call, we’re done here, right? We’ll pack up and leave this house, this beach, and head back to the mainland on the earliest possible boat.”

“Well...yes. But that’s better for you anyway. You didn’t plan on staying hidden for any longer than a few days, remember?” He smiled, and suddenly he seemed larger, more powerful than she wanted him to. Definitely more in control. Where had all that predictable confusion gone? “Unless you simply can’t imagine life without me?”

His tease let her recenter herself, far more than any of her training could have. See? He didn’t consider this any big deal. Why should she?

“Ha, no. Of course not.” She straightened with a bright smile as Dimitri lounged back against the railing, watching her. She drew in a deep, steadying breath. “What will your role be anyway, after you give up the watch? Are they going to let you take part in the search?”

He shrugged, apparently unconcerned. “I’ll go where they order me to go,” he said. But he wasn’t looking at the watch; he was looking at her. “That’s what you do when you commit to serve.”

“Whatever.” She looked out to the ocean. “Sounds kind of mindless to me.”

He chuckled, clearly way too happy about the idea of getting rid of her. “Not really. The military doesn’t want you to stop thinking, princess. They want you to think very hard about the right things.” He didn’t move, but she still sensed him shifting toward her, somehow, like a net that was closing in too quickly. “You aren’t paid to counteract your orders, you’re paid to be creative in the pursuit of your orders.”

“Creativity, right,” she muttered, stung to the quick though he hadn’t said anything offensive. Once again, he simply seemed so...blasé. So matter-of-fact. As if none of this mattered. As if she didn’t matter. “I don’t remember creativity being a key attribute of a good soldier.”

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