Free Princess in the Iron Mask by Victoria Parker Page B

Satin, he mused, eyeing the way the expensive fabric rippled around her neck. Today she had an untouchable, regal aura—one he was extremely grateful for.
    ‘Why are you staring at me? Do I look dour this morning?’
    Lucas jerked his eyes back to her face. Had he just imagined her wounded tone? With his limited experience of the female sex outside the sheets he felt unsure how to proceed. Unsure? Dios, he felt something close to panic claw down his chest. Never had he been asked to comment on a woman’s appearance.
    Lucas snapped the paper shut and laid it on the table beside his empty coffee cup. ‘Not at all. I was just thinking how smart you look.’
    ‘Smart?’ she repeated, deadpan, tapping her pencil off her front teeth, popping the end into her mouth and nibbling it.
    He shifted in his seat. ‘ Sí. Appropriate for your arrival in Arunthia.’
    ‘I’m not there yet,’ she said, no more happy with his comment than he was.
    Damn. He should have told her she was beautiful. How he itched to untie her hair, to caress her long, sultry curls.
    As it was, the memory of a hard floor against his back and a walking centrefold in the cushy bed thirty feet away would haunt him for days. By four a.m. he’d done six hundred sit-ups, cleaned his gun, had three showers and interviewed the man in the white pick-up. Armande had hauled the bastard into the adjoining suite at midnight. A shifty Arunthian reporter whom Lucas had despised on sight. One who wouldn’t be returning to his home country for some time. Not as long as Claudia was there.
    The reminder brought him back to her comment. She wasn’t in Arunthia. Yet.
    ‘Our flight is at three p.m. You have plenty of time to make your visit. Accompanied,’ he tagged on, unwilling to be moved on the point.
    Tearing at a slice of wholemeal toast, she chewed with vigour and speared him with arrows of contempt.
    Good. She hated him. As long as he kept that look on her face they’d make it home without another hitch. Problem was Lucas had an uneasy notion that Claudia was about to produce a hitch the size of Mount Vesuvius.
    * * *
    ‘There is something wrong with you?’ asked Lucas, with a harshness that made Claudia’s skin bristle.
    Sliding her eyes over the vast entrance of St Andrew’s Hospital, she knotted her fingers atop her lap.
    What? Was he concerned that he’d have to take damaged goods through Security in Arunthia? Claudia would laugh if the chord didn’t strike through to the very heart of her. How many times had she dreamed of being perfect, being cured, just so her parents would come back for her? Days, months, years spent waiting, her naïve heart still hoping.
    Throat thick, pain smashing into her forehead, she rubbed her brow with an unsteady hand. Why couldn’t she forget? Why couldn’t she just get over it and move on?
    ‘Claudia? Answer me!’
    She turned to look at a scowling Lucas in the seat beside her, hating the instant fire in her belly just one look ignited. ‘No, Lucas, there is nothing wrong with me. Apart from the insane urge to strangle you.’ The man was driving her to Valium.
    Scowl diminishing, a smile played about his lips. ‘The feeling is entirely mutual, princesa. So, tell me, why are we here?’
    ‘I sometimes work here and—’
    He snorted, relief easing the two little lines he got when he frowned. ‘I should have known.’
    ‘Actually, on this occasion it isn’t about work. I was about to say I met someone here. Bailey, remember? So if you’ll excuse me—’
    ‘Wait,’ he said, grasping her wrist.
    Whether it was the hundred volts ripping up her arm or the fact he’d touched her wrist, she wasn’t sure, but she twisted her arm, writhing from his hold. ‘Please don’t touch me there.’
    Lucas instantly let go and held up his hand. ‘I would not hurt you, Claudia,’ he said, voice gruff, his brows low over intense eyes brimming with... pain? Oh, no. No!
    ‘Of course you wouldn’t.’ No thought, no