LITMIR.BIZ

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      She glared at him. “I command it.”

      He actually laughed out loud, the same laugh that had given her her first glimpse yesterday of just how real he could be, making her yearn to know him, know someone real.

      “Command away, Princess. I’m not calling you by your first name.”

      “Why?”

      “It’s too familiar. I’m your bodyguard, not your buddy.”

      She felt the sting of that. Her disappointment was acute. He wanted the exact opposite of what she wanted! She wanted to feel close to another human being, he wanted to feel distant. She wanted to use this time together to explore his mysteries, he was just as determined to keep them secret.

      It was frustrating! Her mother would approve of his attitude, a man who knew his place and was so determined to keep their different positions as a barrier between them.

      But so would her grandmother love him. Her grandmother said soldiers made the best husbands, because they already knew how to obey. Not that he was showing any sign of obeying Shoshauna!

      And not that she wanted to be thinking of this handsome man and the word husband in the same sentence. She had just narrowly missed making marriage her fate.

      Still, she wanted him to participate in the great adventure she was on. How could she forget she was a princess, forget her obligations and duties for a short while, if he was going to insist on reminding her at every turn by using a formal title?

      “How about my code name, then?” she asked.

      He hesitated, glanced at her, shrugged. She couldn’t tell if it was agreement or appeasement, though whichever it was, she sensed it was a big concession from him, he suddenly refused to look at her, took an avid interest in the fruit in front of him.

      “I’ll do that,” she said, moving up beside him. Did he move a careful step away from her? She moved closer. He moved away again and without looking at her, passed her a little tiny knife and a mango.

      “Don’t cut your fingers off,” he said dryly.

      She watched for a moment as his own fingers handled the knife, removed a fine coil of peel from the fruit. He caught her watching him, again, put down the knife and turned away from her to put wood in the oven.

      “What are we going to make in there?” she asked eagerly.

      “I’m going to make biscuits.”

      “I want to learn!”

      “What for?”

      “It seems like it would be a useful skill,” she said stubbornly.

      “It is a useful skill. For someone like me, who frequently finds himself trying to make the best of rough circumstances. But for a princess?” He shook his head.

      “I want to know useful things!”

      “What is useful in your world and what is useful in mine are two very different things,” he said almost gently.

      Rebelliously she attacked the mango with her knife. Ten minutes later as she looked at the sliver of fruit in front of her, what was left of her mango, she realized he was probably right. Domestication at this late date was probably hopeless. She felt sticky to the elbow, and had managed to get juice in her eye. The mango was mangled beyond recognition.

      She cast him a look. Ronan was taking golden-brown biscuits off a griddle above the stove. The scent of them made her mouth water.

      “Here,” she said, handing him the remnants of her mango. He took it wordlessly, his face a careful blank, and added it to the plate of fruit he had prepared.

      She thought they’d take the food inside to the dining table, but he motioned her over to a little stone bench, set the plate down between them, lifted his face to the morning sun as he picked up a piece of fruit.

      She followed his example and picked up a slice of fruit and a biscuit with her fingers.

      Shoshauna had dined on the finest foods in the world. She had eaten at the fanciest tables of B’Ranasha, using the most exquisite china and cutlery. But she felt as if she had never tasted food this fine or enjoyed flavor so much.

      She decided she loved everything, absolutely everything, about being an ordinary girl. And she hadn’t given up on herself in the domestic department yet, either!

       CHAPTER FOUR

      AFTER a few minutes Shoshauna couldn’t help but notice that her pleasure in the simplicity of the breakfast feast seemed to be entirely one-sided.

      Ronan, while obviously enjoying the sunshine and eating with male appetite, seemed pensive, turned in on himself, as anxious not to connect with her as she was to connect with him.

      “Are you enjoying breakfast?” she asked, craving conversation, curious about this man who had become her protector.

      He nodded curtly.

      She realized she was going to have to be more direct! “Tell me about yourself,” she invited.

      He shot her a look, looked away. “There’s nothing to tell. I’m a soldier. That means my life is ninety-nine percent pure unadulterated boredom.”

      She supposed you didn’t learn to make a bed like that if you led a life of continuous excitement, but she knew he was fudging the truth. She could tell, from the way he carried himself, from the calm with which he had handled things yesterday that he dealt with danger as comfortably as most men dealt with the reading of the morning paper.

      “And one percent what?” she asked when it became apparent he was going to add nothing voluntarily.

      “All hell breaking loose.”

      “Oh!” she said genuinely intrigued. “All hell breaking loose! That sounds exciting.”

      “I wish you wouldn’t say that word,” he said, ignoring her implied invitation to share some of his most exciting experiences with her.

      “Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell,” she said, and found it very liberating both to say the word and to defy him. Her society prized meekness in women, but she had made the discovery she was not eager to be anyone’s prize!

      He shot her a stern look. She smiled back. He wasn’t her father! He didn’t look more than a few years older than she was. He couldn’t tell her how to behave!

      He sighed, resigned, she hoped, to the fact he was not going to control her. She’d been controlled quite enough. This was her week to do whatever she wanted, including say hell to her heart’s content.

      “What’s the most exciting thing that ever happened to you?” she pressed, when he actually shut his eyes, lifted his chin a bit higher to the sun, took a bite of biscuit, apparently intent on pretending he was dining alone and ignoring her questions.

      He thought about it for a minute, but his reluctance to engage in this conversation was palpable. Finally he said, without even opening his eyes, “I ran into a grizzly bear while in Canada on a mountain survival exercise.”

      “Really?” she breathed. “What happened?” It was better than she could have hoped. Better than a movie! She waited for him to tell her what she could picture so vividly—Ronan wrestling the primitive animal to the ground with his bare hands…

      “It ran one way and I ran the other.”

      She frowned, sharply disappointed at his lack of heroics. “That doesn’t sound very exciting!”

      “I guess you had to be there.”

      “I think I would like to go to the mountains in Canada.” Yes, even with bears, or maybe because of bears, it sounded like an adventure she’d enjoy very much.

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