Page 46 of Trapped with the Undercover Prince

As soon as they were out of earshot of the crowd, she wilted against him. “Thank you for covering for me in there. I really didn’t know what to say.”

“You’re hungry and half asleep. I’m surprised you managed to keep up with the conversation at all.”

“Hey,” she said, smacking him with her free hand. Her other one had somehow found its way around his waist, and now they walked like lovers, in perfect synch.

He laughed, and his smile woke something up deep inside her, something she’d thought she’d never feel again after the cancer that took a big part of her life away. He made her want things she could never have.

A bright flash from in front of them stole her attention from the gorgeous smile on his face.

Someone with a fancy camera at the end of the hallway took photo after photo of them in rapid succession.

Zar sighed. “We’ve been discovered.” His voice was so dry she almost burst out laughing. Wouldn’t that look great on all the news sites and social media outlets?

Prince Zar’s new girlfriend seen drunk in hospital. Or Prince Zarius’s awkward walk of shame with mystery drunk woman.

Her grandmother would roll over in her grave.

“Should we run?” she whispered. “I think I can find my sea legs long enough to get out of the building.”

“Sea legs? This isn’t a boat.”

She smacked his chest. Again. “You know what I mean.”

He squeezed her hip again. “You’re over-tired.”

“My questions still applies, because that guy looks like he’s going to take pictures until we lose him or his camera runs out of battery.”

“Don’t worry,” he whispered in her ear. “I’ll save you from the nasty photographer.”

“You’re not going to put him in a dungeon, are you?” She thought about that some more. “Do you even have a dungeon?”

“We call it the recreational room.”

That put a whole lot of inappropriate images in her head. “Really?”

They got close enough to the photographer for him to ask loudly, “Prince Zar, there are reports that you were injured in the train accident? What’s your condition now? Was there a bomb? What does the queen have to say about this latest bombing?”

Zar looked at the photographer, and his body language changed subtly. His shoulders went back slightly, and his face lost all humor. “At the moment, I’m ensuring that the heroine of the train accident, Dr. Anna Brown, a trauma surgeon from Boston, gets something to eat and a place to stay. She’s just come from eight hours of surgery, helping to save a young Lerasian boy’s life.” He smiled, but it had more in common with a shark’s show of teeth than a demonstration of happiness. “And the queen is keen to meet her and thank her for all her help in saving her citizens.”

“Were you injured, Your Highness?” the photographer asked again.

“I suffered relatively few injuries. Cuts and bruises. I was very lucky.” Zar pulled Anna with him as they kept walking toward the exit she could now see down at the end of the hall.

“Dr. Anna,” the photographer shouted at her. He sounded desperate for something interesting. “Is it true Prince Zar has already asked you to marry him?”

She tried to keep it in, she really did, but the absurdity of the question was too much.

She burst out laughing. This was no shushed chuckle, but a full-on, out-and-out guffaw. She couldn’t even stand up straight she was laughing so hard.

She wasn’t sure why, but the photographer stopped taking pictures to just stare at her. “Is she all right?” He sounded shocked.

“She’s very tired,” Zar said with a hint of embarrassment in his tone.

“I guess the answer is no then,” the photographer said, snapping one more photo of them.

Zar sighed and dragged her outside and into a waiting luxury car.

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