LITMIR.BIZ

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of opening, Princess Bliss had been named by Aussie Business as one of the top-ten new businesses in the country. His mother had been approached about franchising. She was arranging weddings around the globe.

      “Kay Harden just called,” his mother told him breathlessly. “She and Henry Hopkins are getting married again.”

      “Uh-huh,” Ronan said.

      “Do you even know who they are, Jacob?”

      “No, ma’am.”

      “Don’t call me that! Jacob, you’re hopeless. Movie stars. They’re both movie stars.”

      He didn’t care about that, he’d protected enough important people to know the truth. One important person in particular had let him know the truth.

      All people, inside, were the very same.

      Even soldiers.

      “We’re going to have a million-dollar year!” his mother said.

      Life was full of cruel ironies: Jake Ronan the man who hated weddings more than any other was going to get rich from them. He’d told his mother he would be happy just to have his initial investment back, but she was having none of it. He was a full, if silent, partner in Princess Bliss, if he liked it or not. And when he saw how happy his mother was, for the first time in his memory since his father had died, he liked it just fine.

      “Mom,” he said. “I’m proud of you. I really am. Please, don’t cry.”

      But she cried, and talked about her business, and he just listened, glancing around his small apartment while she talked. This was another change he’d made since coming home from B’Ranasha.

      After a month back at work he had decided to give up barrack life and get his own place. The brotherhood of his comrades was no longer as comfortable as it once had been. After he’d gotten back from B’Ranasha he had felt an overwhelming desire to be alone, to create his own space, a life separate from his career.

      If the apartment was any indication, he hadn’t really succeeded. Try as he might to make it homey, it just never was.

      Try as he might to never think about her or that week on the island, he never quite could. He was changed. He was lonely. He hurt.

      The apartment was just an indication of something else, wanting more, wanting to have more to life than his work.

      And all that money piling up in his bank account, thanks to his partnership in Bliss, was an indication that something more wasn’t about money, either.

      He’d contacted Gray Peterson once, a couple of days after leaving B’Ranasha. He’d been in a country so small it didn’t appear on the map, in the middle of a civil war. Trying to sound casual, which was ridiculous given the lengths he’d gone to, to get his hands on a phone, and hard to do with gunfire exploding in the background, he’d asked if she was all right.

      And found out the only thing he needed to know: the marriage of Prince Mahail and Princess Shoshauna had been called off. Ronan had wanted to press for details, called off for what reason, by whom, but he’d already known that the phone call was inappropriate, that a soldier asking after a princess was not acceptable in any world that he moved in.

      Ronan heard a knock on his door, got up and answered it. “Mom, gotta go. Someone’s at the door.”

      Was it Halloween? A child dressed as a motorcycle rider stood on his outside step, all black leather, a helmet, sunglasses.

      And then the sunglasses came off, and he recognized eyes as turquoise as the sunlit bay of his boyhood. His mouth fell open.

      And then she undid the motorcycle helmet strap, and struggled to get the snug-fitting helmet from her head.

      He had to stuff his hands in his pockets to keep from helping her. Finally she had it off.

      He studied her hair. Possibly, her hair looked even worse than it had on the island, grown out considerably but flattened by the helmet.

      “What are you doing here?” he asked gruffly, as if his heart was not nearly pounding out of his chest, as if he did not want to lift her into his arms and swing her around until she was shrieking with laughter. As if he had not known, the moment he had recognized her, that she was the something more that he yearned for, that filled him with restless energy and a sense of hollow emptiness that nothing seemed to fill.

      This was his greatest fear: that with every moment he’d dedicated to helping her find her own power, he had lost some of his own.

      “What am I doing here?” she said, with a dangerous flick of her hair. “Try this—‘Shoshauna, what a delightful surprise. I’m so glad to see you.’”

      He saw instantly she had come into her own in ways he could not even imagine. She exuded the confidence of a woman sure of herself, sure of her intelligence, her attractiveness, her power.

      “I’m going to university here now.”

      That explained it. Those smart-alec university guys were probably all over her. He tried not to let the flicker of pure jealousy he felt show. In fact, he deliberately kept his voice remote. “Oh? Good for you.”

      She glared at him, looked as if she wanted to stamp her foot or slap him. But then her eyes, smoky with heat, rested on his lips, and he knew she didn’t want to stamp her foot or slap him.

      “I didn’t get married,” she announced in a soft, husky purr.

      “Yeah, I heard.” No sense telling her he had celebrated as best he could, with a warm soda in one hand and his rifle in the other, watching the sand blow over a hostile land, wishing he had someone, something more to go home to. Feeling guilty for being distracted, wondering if he was just like his mother. Did all relationships equal a surrender of power? Wasn’t that his fear of love?

      “But I have dated all kinds of boys.”

      “Really.” It was a statement, not a question. He tried not to feel irritated, his sense of having given her way too much power over him confirmed! Seeing her after all this time, all he wanted to do was taste her lips, and he had to hear she was dating guys? Boys. Not men. Why did he feel faintly relieved by that distinction?

      “I thought I should. You know, go out with a few of them.”

      “And you stopped by to tell me that?” He folded his arms more firmly over his chest, but something twinkled in her eyes, and he had a feeling his defensive posture was not fooling her one little bit. She knew she had stormed his bastions, taken down his defenses long ago.

      “Mmm-hmm. And to tell you that they were all very boring.”

      “Sorry.”

      “And childish.”

      “Males are slow-maturing creatures,” he said. Had she kissed any of them, those boys she had dated? Of course she had. That was the way things worked these days. He remembered all too well the sweetness of her kiss, felt something both possessive and protective when he thought of another man—especially a childish one—tasting her.

      “I didn’t kiss anyone, though,” she said, and the twinkle in her eyes deepened. Why was it she seemed to find him so transparent? She had always insisted on seeing who he really was, not what he wanted her to see.

      He wanted to tell her he didn’t care, but he had the feeling she’d see right through that, too, so he kept his mouth shut.

      “I learned to surf last summer. And I can ride a motorcycle now. By myself.”

      “So I can see.”

      “Ronan,” she said softly, “are you happy to see me?”

      He closed his eyes, marshaled himself, opened them again. “Why are you here, Shoshauna?”

      Not princess, a lapse in protocol that she noticed, too. She beamed at him.

      “I want to play you a game of chess.”

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