She let out a breath, and it was a minute or two before she answered, in a voice that was husky and soft. "Yeah. I guess I am. A little."

"Why, luv?"

"I don't know. I think-" He felt her body strain as she hauled in another breath, as if she had vast spaces inside that air couldn't reach. "I came here to bring you back. It's my job to bring you back. You are the crown prince of Silvershire. It's your duty to go back. But…" her voice became a breaking whisper "…dammit, I can't help it. I don't want you to go."

He tightened his arms around her and rested his cheek on her head. "I don't want to go either."

"But you're going to…aren't you." She didn't make it a question.

He let out a breath, and it was a long time before he answered, "Yes, I guess I am. I think…I must."

She turned her face into the hollow of his neck. "Yeah. That's why you're going to make one helluva great king, you know that, don't you?"

He was shocked to feel a warm wetness on her face that could only have been tears.

Chapter 8

The Lazlo Group's sleek black helicopter churned across the waters of the channel on the morning sun's glistening path. Rhia, watching the wakes of ships and the Channel Islands- Alderney, Guernsey, Jersey-drift by below, thought it was like being the lone traveler on a broad superhighway paved in gold. She tore her gaze from the sparkling vista and glanced again at the man sitting silently beside her, narrowed eyes focused intently on the hazy outline just coming into view on the horizon. A cold little frisson of misery rippled through her. This morning there was no sign of the Nikolas Donovan she'd come to know, the cynical charmer from the Paris apartment, the carefree, flirtatious grape picker-somewhat more earthy than expected. The skillful and incredibly tender lover. This, she thought, must be the man Corbett Lazlo had warned her about, the hard man, the rebel who for years had organized and led a powerful and dedicated opposition to the monarchy in Silvershire. A man both respected and feared.

The man who'd made love to her, made her feel things she'd never felt before, the man who'd made her laugh…and cry, was a stranger to her now.

She was glad the clatter of the chopper's rotors and the headphones they both wore made conversation difficult, if not impossible. What would they have talked about? Impersonal things, probably, fit for the ears of the chopper pilot-an unnecessary recap of plans for the coming reunion with Nikolas's father, King Weston, perhaps. It was to be a private meeting, held in strictest secrecy, not at the royal palace in Silverton, or even at the official royal retreat in Carringtonshire, but at a little-known hunting lodge in the Lodan Mountains in the province of Chamberlain, the king's ancestral home. Those present at the historic meeting would include King Weston, Nikolas, Rhia and a few trusted members of the king's security staff. Those were the terms both the king and Nikolas had agreed upon. The details had been left to Rhia and other representatives of the Lazlo Group to work out.

And after the reunion…what then? Rhia's job would be done, another difficult assignment successfully completed. And Nikolas… what would become of him?

Bleakly, she watched a muscle work in the side of his jaw, his steely gray eyes fixed on the approaching coastline. Would he accept the charge that had been taken from him at birth and assume the crown he'd always despised? Become king…and thus forever beyond her reach? Would she ever again feel his hands on her body, taste his mouth, smell his skin?

Pain knifed through her and she drew a sharp, gasping breath, just as the chopper swept over the lacy edge where the lapping Channel waves met the rocky shores of Silvershire.

The helicopter's route brought them into Silvershire's airspace just north of the town of Dunford, in Danebyshire. As they crossed the gleaming ribbon of the Dane River. Nikolas nudged Rhia with his elbow and pointed; she nodded in reply. It was an acknowledgment, nothing more. He knew it wasn't necessary for him to tell her Dunford was where he'd lived and worked for the past five years, teaching history at Dunford College of Liberal and Fine Arts. She would have learned that fact, and just about everything else there was to know about his life, from the Lazlo Group's dossier. Though right now, looking down at the slate roofs and church spires of the town and the campus, he felt as disconnected from that life in spirit as in body.

That was his past. No matter what happened at the coming meeting, he had to accept that he could never go back to the way things had been.

Though he stared out his side of the chopper, watching its shadow flit across the forested landscape below, he was intensely aware of the woman sitting beside him. She was dressed once again in the black pants and leather jacket she'd worn for breaking and entering Phillipe's flat in Paris, though the chemise had been replaced by a black pullover embroidered just above her left breast with the green-and-gold plaited pentagram that was the Lazlo Group's logo.

Rather ironic, he thought, that she should be the one bright spot for him in all of this, when she was the one who'd yanked him out of his former life and pitched him kicking and screaming into this new one he'd never dreamed of nor wanted. In any case it would have been idiotic to blame her for it, and he didn't. She'd only been doing her job. And as for what had happened between them, he acknowledged that was more his doing than hers, and furthermore, in his selfishness he'd caused her some degree of pain.

Still, he couldn't bring himself to regret what had happened… making love with her. Or to contemplate the possibility that it might never happen again.

To block that thought, he turned his mind instead to the coming meeting. Another irony, that was. He'd tried so many times, as head of the Union for Democracy, to arrange a meeting with His Majesty, to discuss his plan for phasing out the centuries-old and outdated monarchy and ushering in a form of democratic government based-in his opinion quite reasonably-on that of their neighbor, Great Britain's responsible monarchy. In the past, he'd never gotten past Weston's advisors-not hard to understand their diligence, perhaps, since most of their jobs no doubt depended on keeping the status quo. And now…here he was, on his way to a private, one-on-one meeting with the king at his secret mountain hideaway. But not to discuss politics.

What, he wondered, as his heart lurched and a pulse began tap-tap-tapping in his belly, does a man say to a long-lost father who is not only his sworn adversary, but his king?

The chopper churned on across the Dunford Wood, the province of Perthegon. and crossed the Kairn River into Chamberlain. My father's lands. I suppose that makes them my lands, too?

His mouth curved in a sardonic little smile as the chopper banked sharply south over the Lodan Mountains.

The helicopter settled onto the grassy clearing, a little meadow surrounded by pine trees not far from the lodge. As the rotors slowed to a lazy swishing. Nikolas opened the door and stepped down onto the yellowing grass. He paused to wait for Rhia to do the same, and then they both hurried at a half crouch through the turbulence to meet their welcoming committee.

Three people had emerged from the woods on the edge of the clearing. Two were men, obviously security guards, resplendent in the king's livery and looking gloriously out of place in that rustic setting. The third person, Rhia was startled to see, was a woman, casually dressed in slacks and a windbreaker. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and it was a moment before Rhia recognized the king's personal physician, Dr. Zara Smith-or was it Shaw, now? she wondered. Lady Zara had recently become the wife of Dr. Walker Shaw, the Lazlo Group's chief psychologist and an old friend of Rhia's.

While the two guards stood stiffly at attention, Lady Zara, whom Rhia had met only briefly at her wedding reception, greeted her with a smile and a brisk handshake. "Hello, Rhia. it's good to see you again."

"Likewise, Lady Zara." Rhia said, returning the smile. "Good to see you looking so great. Married life must be good for you."

"Walker is good for me." Lady Zara replied, with the soft eyes and satisfied smile of a woman deeply in love, and Rhia couldn't help feeling a small, treacherous stab of envy.

"I'm surprised to see you here," she said. "I thought you were still on your honeymoon."

Lady Zara's forehead creased momentarily with a tiny frown. "Lord Southgate suggested I be here for the meeting." she said in an undertone. "He is…concerned. But it was His Majesty who insisted on it."

She turned curious, champagne-colored eyes on Nikolas and offered him her hand. "Mr. Donovan, I must tell you that I have strongly advised against this meeting."

"I imagine you have." Nikolas said drily as he shook her hand. "You, and I'm sure many others as well, considering I'm suspected of murder for hire-among other things."

"That's for others to determine." Lady Zara said without smiling. "My concerns are for His Majesty's health. The king is still recovering from his recent illness, as you know. He is still not entirely himself, which is to be expected given the series of shocks he's had to deal with. His son-ah, Reginald's death, then surgery for a brain tumor, and the hospital bombing and his subsequent coma on top of it. The news that Reginald wasn't the king and queen's biological son, and the fact that he was murdered…and now…" she shook her head "…learning his biological son and the true heir to his crown is none other than the man who's been trying to take it from him-" She broke off, realizing, perhaps, that she'd been a bit too frank.