The Marine & The Princess Read online

  Her stomach clenched again.

  Vanessa took a series of calming breaths, reminding herself that she was temporarily free of her father’s domination. But the ties that bound her to him weren’t just those of a princess loyal to her king and the throne, they were of a daughter who’d spent much of her life trying to please a father but rarely succeeding. Marrying Sebastian would please her father, but this time she had to draw the line.

  There was no point dwelling on all that now, however. She had more immediate issues. She waited until the cab had pulled away before demanding more information. “What do you mean by home?”

  “An old buddy of mine is loaning me his place for a few days. I decided it would be safer to stay here than at a hotel where someone might recognize you. Not to mention it being easier on the budget. Come on,” he said, holding the building’s wrought-iron door open for her. “His place is on the third floor.”

  Vanessa was out of breath by the time they reached the apartment. Mark, meanwhile, acted as if he could race up another twenty flights of stairs without breaking a sweat. He fished a key out of his jean pocket, which drew the black denim more tautly across the most intimate part of his body.

  She hurriedly looked away. A lady didn’t look there.

  One day out of royal captivity, and she’d turned into a rowdy woman. She wasn’t sure whether to be pleased…or alarmed.

  Mark opened the door and ushered her inside. Vanessa quickly focused her attention on her surroundings rather than Mark’s sexy anatomy. The apartment’s living room was small and simply furnished with a couch, coffee table and a huge TV-and-stereo combination. The kitchen opened off to one side and included the basics—stove, sink, fridge. Down the hallway was a bathroom that would have fit in the smallest broom closet in the palace back home. Only at the end of her tour did she realize that there was only one bedroom, only one king-size bed with a mirrored headboard and a leopard-print cover on it.

  She turned a suspicious gaze in Mark’s direction.

  “Hey, I plan on sleeping on the couch in the living room,” he assured her, his hands held palm out as if warding off any protest she might make. “Your reputation is safe with me, Princess.”

  “I have a name, and I prefer you use it.”

  “Vanessa.” He rolled it off his tongue.

  She shivered, even though she was hot, not cold. Very hot. Center-of-the-sun kind of hot.

  It was a warm May day, and the sun was shining on the roof directly above them. That must be why she felt so warm. That and the fact that she was still wearing Mark’s sweatshirt.

  She quickly peeled it off. Her baseball cap came off with it.

  Now she was wearing a baggy I Love New York T-shirt over the too-tight jeans she’d borrowed. Quickly running her fingers through her hair, she knew the royal hairdresser would be outraged at the tumbled state of her hair.

  Of course the hairdresser’s outrage was the least of her problems. Vanessa’s father was the one she had to watch out for. “I need to check in with Celeste,” she said.

  “Use my cell phone and don’t talk for long,” he told her.

  “Why? Do you think my father has had the phones bugged?”

  Mark already knew that the answer was yes. That’s why he was here. Because her father had learned of Vanessa’s phone call to Prudence.

  He’d never participated in an operation where his loyalty was anything but one hundred ten percent to the Marine Corps and his objectives. But for the first time in his life, he felt that loyalty wavering a bit.

  He was just following orders here, he reminded himself. The deception was necessary for him to carry out his orders.

  So why did he feel lower than a snake’s belly when she looked at him with those gorgeous green eyes of hers as if she trusted him with her life? In effect, she was trusting him with her life. She was doing that because he was Prudence’s brother-in-law, because he was a Marine.

  And as a Marine, honor and loyalty were critical things with him. The bottom line was that he felt dishonorable having to lie to her.

  But his orders were clear. She couldn’t know the truth.

  “This is America, we don’t bug phones here for no reason,” he said. “Your father may be powerful in Volzemburg, but here…” He shrugged, communicating one thing while he thought another. The king was powerful enough to have gotten Mark embroiled in this sticky situation. His C.O. had made it clear that should Mark successfully complete this operation, his career would be headed for the fast track to promotion.

  “If you don’t think my father is bugging my phone, why do you want me to use your cell phone?” Vanessa asked.

  “Because my friend had his phone service disconnected while he’s overseas. And I don’t want you talking long because it’s expensive.”

  “Oh. Okay, then. I won’t be long.”

  Her trusting acceptance of his answer made him feel even worse. He’d told her the truth, or part of it. His friend had had the phone service disconnected. But he’d lent Mark this apartment at the Marine Corps’ request.

  Mark didn’t know if Vanessa’s security officer, Anton, was in on the king’s hidden agenda. That’s the reason he didn’t want her talking long. Mark had a feeling the king’s plan was to have as few insiders know about this situation as possible. The king wanted his daughter to think she had a few days of freedom, to get it “out of her system” was the way it was presented to him, while keeping her within his watch.

  And Mark was the watcher. The spy, the one reporting back to the king directly via nightly e-mail reports.

  He hadn’t become an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps to participate in this kind of subterfuge. Not that he wasn’t good at it. During his time with Force Recon he’d done his fair share of undercover operations. But those had involved national security and protection of the interests of the United States. Not playing bodyguard to a spoiled princess.

  The thing was, she wasn’t as spoiled as he’d expected. His job would be a lot easier if she was simply a bored rich girl. Then this guilt starting to nag him would disappear.

  But no, she had to be more complicated than that. She had to moan in delight over the taste of French fries. She had to lead him into the temptation of a department store’s lingerie department and flirt with him over a sexy lilac bra. She had to smile at the little girl in the shoe department who’d run up to her and put her sticky fingers all over Vanessa’s knee while she had been trying on sandals.

  Mark was trained to observe the little things, and there were things about Vanessa that told him there was more to her than met the eye. Not that what met the eye wasn’t unexpectedly sexy.

  He refocused his attention on her conversation with Celeste. As promised, Vanessa kept it short. When she hung up, he said, “Well?”

  Vanessa smiled. “Everything is going according to plan.”

  Which was a good thing and should make him feel a lot better than he did.

  Vanessa felt much better after she tried on all the new clothes she’d bought and found they all fit. She then went through the clothes she’d packed in Mark’s duffel. He’d just dumped them on top of the bed, which quivered and moved when she sat on it. That startled her for a second until it registered that it was a water bed.

  Her attention returned to the pile of clothing. Going through them, she found a pair of black knit pants she didn’t know she’d included.

  A minute later, she’d kicked off her shoes and discarded her too-tight jeans for the comfort of knit. “Ahhhh.” She sighed with pleasure. Next the baggy T-shirt was replaced with a silk knit top in powder blue. Yes, that felt soooo much better.

  All she needed was more French fries, and she would be in heaven. But wait, was that pizza she smelled? Pizza would be good, she instantly decided. Not as good as French fries, but a close second.

  She opened the bedroom door and looked down the hallway to the living room where Mark was setting a flat cardboard box on the coffee table.

  “You
hungry?” he asked as she walked into the room.

  “Mmm, starving.” She headed straight for the pizza.

  “I had no idea princesses were such a hungry bunch,” Mark teased her as she sat beside him and took a bite.

  “Mmm.” She closed her eyes as the pleasure of tomato sauce, cheese and sweet sausage bloomed in her mouth.

  “They don’t have pizza where you come from?”

  “Not like this.” She dabbed at her chin with a napkin he handed her. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. I just never expected a princess to show such passion for pizza.”

  “I suspect there’s a great deal you never expected a princess to do. Like temporarily running away the way I have.”

  He shrugged, drawing her attention to the breadth of his shoulders.

  “You have a lot to learn about princesses,” she told him.

  “Why don’t you teach me.”

  “You make that sound like an order rather than a request.”

  “I’m a Marine,” Mark said. “I’m used to giving orders.”

  “And used to having them obeyed, no doubt.”

  “Yes,” he readily admitted. “Something wrong with that?”

  “Only when you’re not dealing with Marines. Is that why you aren’t married?”

  Mark almost choked on his pizza. “Whaa…at?”

  “You’re older than Joe, yet you’re not married.”

  “So what? You’re Prudence’s age, and you’re not married either. Why not?”

  “Because I haven’t found the right man. Marrying into royalty isn’t exactly a simple matter.”

  “Neither is marrying a Marine. Duty comes first.”

  “Trust me, I know all about duty coming first. But duty won’t keep you warm at night,” she said wistfully.

  “I can find someone to keep me warm at night without marrying them.”

  “I can’t,” she said with simple candor. “Definitely not allowed.”

  “Princesses are supposed to remain pure, huh?”

  She threw a crumpled-up napkin at him. “Don’t sound so sarcastic.”

  “Pardon me, Princess.”

  “I told you to call me Vanessa.”

  They both reached for the same piece of pizza. She stubbornly refused to give up her claim to it. Her eyes met his as the battle silently continued. Then she grinned at him, distracting him enough for her to gain possession of the slice in question.

  “Competitive little thing, aren’t you?” Mark noted ruefully.

  She laughed. “I’m hardly little. I used to wish I was petite like my mother and sister. But I’m not. The press calls me Vertical Vanessa because I’m so tall.”

  “You seem just right to me.”

  She paused, the pizza slice midway to her mouth to stare at him. “I do?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded as if disconcerted by his own words.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “You’re welcome.”

  They ate in silence for a while. But her mind was moving a mile a minute, processing what he’d said. Just right. No one had ever said that to her before. She’d always been too something—too exuberant, too willful, too tall, too heavy, too much. Never just right. His words made her heart glow like a sunset in St. Kristoff.

  She wanted to know more about the man who made her feel this way. But she didn’t want to blurt out any more personal questions, like asking him why he hadn’t married. So she said, “Have you ever been to New York before?”

  He nodded. “A couple of times.”

  “What are your favorite places?”

  Mark considered her question carefully. He’d already said more than he meant to by telling her he thought she was just right. He needed to keep the conversation on a more impersonal level. Favorite places was a move in the right direction.

  Now he needed an appropriate answer. There was a little strip club down in the Lower East Side he and a bunch of his fellow Marines once frequented, but he doubted she’d want to hear about that. Even if she did, he wasn’t about to tell her.

  Or there was a jazz club in Harlem. No, not her style probably. “I like the Met,” he finally said.

  “The art museum?”

  “Yeah,” Mark said defensively. “Something wrong with that?”

  “No, it’s just that…”

  “You thought I was a dumb Marine who didn’t know a van Gogh from a hole in the wall.”

  “I’m just surprised by your answer, that’s all.”

  “There’s also a great strip club I’ve visited once or twice,” he drawled, wanting to shock her now. “Does that surprise you?”

  “Yes, it does. I wouldn’t think a good-looking man like you would have to pay to see a woman undress.”

  Mark blinked at her. That wasn’t what he’d expected her to say. And judging by the startled look on her face, he was willing to bet she hadn’t expected to say that either.

  “So you think I’m good-looking, huh? That’s nice to know.”

  “I’m so glad to have made your day, Captain.” Her voice mocked him.

  “You’ve certainly made it a memorable day. So what’s it really like, being a princess? What’s a normal day in your life like?”

  “A normal day? I’m not sure my life is normal at all. In fact, I’m sure it isn’t. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to get away. Have you ever felt like there was something more to life, something you were missing out on?”

  He shrugged.

  “Well, I’ve felt that way for years now,” she murmured, her expression pensive. “As if I’m shutting off the best parts of myself—the creative, expressive parts—in order to fit in.”

  “You didn’t seem to have any trouble expressing yourself with me.”

  “That’s because I was already breaking free of the chains of duty and loyalty that were killing me. Killing my soul, anyway.”

  Mark told himself she was just being melodramatic. How could the pampered life she led kill her soul? “Millions of women would give anything to be in your shoes.”

  “Then they’re welcome to my shoes, all two hundred pairs of them.”

  “A budding Mrs. Marcos, huh?”

  “Actually it’s part of the uniform.” She remembered how great he’d looked in his dress blues uniform at Prudence’s wedding. “I have a dresser who is in charge of my wardrobe. She selected and packed everything for this trip. She keeps detailed records, on a computer no less, of each outfit. It wouldn’t do for me to show up at the same charity event in the same gown two years in a row. So she keeps track of where I wore it, what shoes and gloves and hat go with it.”

  “Your baseball cap won’t do, huh?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve got fifty hats, forty cocktail dresses, one hundred and forty day suits. Then there are the twenty formal ball gowns. I only know the numbers because my dresser did an inventory right before I left.” The trappings had only added to the weight of the burden she was already under. Because none of the clothes represented the real Vanessa, the one struggling to find herself. They were the wardrobe of a princess and despite a lifetime spent working at it, she still felt it was a role too big for her.

  She’d been the cause of too many disappointments—from the fact that she’d been born a girl instead of the boy her father wanted to the fact that she refused to marry the man of her father’s choice. In between those cornerstones were hundreds of small incidents, when she’d been too candid or too “natural” or too something her father didn’t think was proper. She’d had to stomp out her true nature, and the effort of doing so was grinding her down until she felt utterly hollow and lonely inside.

  Until today. Today was…special.

  “So that’s what your life is like, counting your ball gowns?” he teased her.

  “My dresser does the counting.” Vanessa reached for another slice of pizza. “As for a typical day, let’s see.” She paused to take a bite, daintily munching on it and swallowing before speaking again. “I’m
usually out of the palace by seven. My work as a princess has three components—official engagements, charity projects and high ceremonies like Displaying the Colors. Of the three, I enjoy the charity work the most, but even there I have to be careful and follow protocol. I can’t encroach on another royal family’s territory, and I can’t get involved in a charity that the palace considers to be controversial, like doing away with land mines, for example.”

  “Weapons of warfare are ugly but often necessary.”

  “We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that,” she said with a shake of her head.

  “It wouldn’t be the first thing we disagree on,” Mark noted wryly.

  “We agree on some things. For example, we both like pizza.”

  “And French fries.”

  “And French fries,” she agreed. “Now, where was I…oh yes, my schedule as a princess. Well, for one thing, it’s set a good six months in advance. As I said, I start my days usually around seven and make some appearances at a local hospital or factory or school. Then lunch usually includes a board meeting of some kind, I’m on fifteen different boards. A change of clothes, which often takes over an hour, and I’m off again maybe to give a speech or two. Celeste goes over the important elements with me, the important people I’ll be meeting, their names, their spouses and children’s names and ages, that sort of thing. After a full day’s round of events, there is usually an evening function of some kind, which means a third change of clothing. The other night it was a charity auction and ball put on by the Chocolate Manufacturers Convention. My country is known for its chocolate, and some of the traveling I do is to promote that.”

  “Sounds like a tough job,” he said in a mocking voice.

  His words irked her. “Many of the charities I’m involved with also require traveling to see things that would break your heart. I’m particularly interested in orphans and improving conditions of orphanages in Eastern Europe as well as the rest of the world. I’ve seen children in deplorable conditions.” Her voice was so tight she couldn’t go on.