Page 20 of The Prince's Secret Daughter
Raj looked down at Helen. Her beautiful blue eyes were filled with concern. That was a start, wasn’t it? She was startled by the possibility of him falling on his face, which meant that she cared for him. That was a start. It was more than just lust, he told himself.
He could work with that. Somehow, he was going to tamp down on this need to make love to Helen long enough to get to the real issue; falling in love. Raj realized that he wanted to become a committed, loving couple that raised a family and grew old together.
Chapter 15
The warehouse was a mess!
“This can’t be the same place,” Helen asserted, opening the binder to compare its pictures to the warehouse in which they were standing. “It can’t be.”
Raj peeked over her shoulder, staring at the image with his hands on her hips. She wanted to toss the binder away and lean back into Raj’s embrace. She missed the shocking pleasures that she remembered from their previous time together.
But what if they fell into the same pattern as before? Sex hadn’t been enough to keep Raj from leaving her the last time. Maybe, she should take a different approach.
And yet, maybe sex was all they had together. If that was it, then Helen was fine with enjoying Raj’s bed for however long their mutual desire lasted.
Damn it! There were too many questions clouding in her mind right now. It was hard to keep track of them all. Should she focus on figuring out what Paul and Nathan were up to? Or should she concentrate on seducing Raj and determining if they had a future together? Maybe if they just fell into bed together, they could get this sexual tension out of the way so they could actually talk about how to move forward together with Angela.
Or should she focus on building a friendship with Raj so that they could co-parent Angela amicably?
There were security issues, legal questions, and emotional dilemmas. Helen wasn’t sure what needed to be herhighest priority. This was much more than she’d anticipated when she’d woken up in a strange bed this morning!
“Helen?” Raj said softly, interrupting a litany of problems racing through her head.
She blinked, tilting her head back to look into his eyes. “Yes?”
“Breathe,” he whispered, tracing his thumb lightly over her jaw. “We’re going to figure this out. Together.”
She sighed, desperately wanting to lean her head against his chest, as if she could absorb some of his strength and confidence. At the moment, she didn’t have either the strength, or the confidence to figure this out. But he was right. One issue at a time.
“Let’s look around,” she suggested.
He nodded and grinned, making her stomach twist as the desire burned low in her belly.
“I have a feeling that the pictures he presented yesterday were doctored.” Raj’s voice broke through the stillness as his eyes scanned the area, flicking over the disarray with a mix of skepticism and growing frustration. “This mess definitely wouldn’t have enticed me.” He paused, his gaze lingering on the scattered debris and peeling paint. “The only way to make this building usable would be to tear everything down and start over.”
His sigh echoed in the empty space, a sound that seemed to reverberate off the walls, the weight of it settling heavily in the air. Raj turned to face her, his brow furrowed, the usualcalmness in his demeanor replaced by something sharper. He reached out and took her hand, the gesture unexpected but not unwelcome. Helen’s breath caught for a brief moment, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, she met his eyes, unsure of what to make of the sudden closeness.
“Let’s walk around,” he said, his grip firm yet reassuring. “I’ll ask my assistant to take some pictures. Once we have a better sense of the scope of this project, I’ll give Paul a call and see if he can clarify the discrepancies.”
Helen nodded, her mind still racing through the puzzle pieces of their investigation. “That sounds like a good plan.”
They moved into the building, stepping carefully around the ruble. A steel beam, corroded with brown and red rust, stretched across their path. Helen stepped over it, her eyes scanning the area for anything else that seemed out of place. “I’m going to do more digging into the history of this plot of land,” she said, her voice steady, but there was an undercurrent of suspicion. She wrinkled her mouth, stepping around a pile of crumbled bricks and rusty nails. “Nothing besides the address matches the images we were shown yesterday. I think Paul and Nathan are up to more than just a little exaggeration.”
“I agree.” Raj’s voice was low, his attention on the surroundings, but his gaze never strayed far from her. “Let’s see what else we can find.”
They continued moving through the area, the cluttered floorboards creaking under their feet, the sound adding to the eerie stillness of the abandoned building. Then, as if the building itself had conspired to present an answer, something odd caught their eyes.
A wall, built hastily with two-by-fours, stood in the middle of the room, holding up... drywall? That didn’t make sense. The construction was too new, too crude for something that was supposed to be part of a building that had been left to decay.
Helen and Raj exchanged a baffled glance, their unspoken thoughts matching in that moment of confusion. They stared at the strange wall, its rough edges almost daring them to uncover its secret.
“This is new,” Raj muttered, stepping closer to inspect the anomaly.
Helen felt a surge of curiosity, her instincts telling her this was the key to everything. She slipped her hand from his, but her fingers lingered, brushing lightly, as if she didn’t want to relinquish his touch, before she moved towards the left. Raj, his focus sharp as ever, veered right, his guards trailing behind him like silent sentinels. Helen didn’t pay much attention to the one guard following her; her mind was elsewhere now, fixated on what this strange wall could mean. This was bigger than she’d thought—this was no simple scam.
Suddenly, a thrill of discovery sparked through her, an impulse she couldn’t resist.
“I found a door!” she called out, her voice echoing slightly in the vast, empty space as she reached for the handle.
