Romancing the Alpha: An Action-Adventure Romance Boxed Set (98 page)

Now that’s something he hadn’t considered.
“Immaterial to the story, mainly because I don’t know. The thing is, this woman, on top of everything else, is beautiful, and I don’t think she can see it. Somewhere in her amazing life, she had an injury to her face.”

“That’s enough.”

She tried to rise, but he latched onto her hand, needing her to hear him out. It was an easy hold. She could break out of it in a second and snap his wrist in the two seconds after that. But she didn’t.

“This woman—”

“Kent, you’ve made your point.”

“She hides her face, as if a scar mars her magnificence in any way. I want her to see that—OW!”

Elena twisted and pivoted, stopping just short of doing him lasting damage, but did manage to roll him on his back, landing with her knees on his neck. “Forget we had this conversation. You’re not my counselor and—”

“I know a great one.”

“Oh? What? I’m crazy now?”

“I’ll respond when you get off my neck. Thank you,” he said, rising. “Not all battle scars are visible. I’ve seen things, honorable men and women changed by their duty. I didn’t leave my government job because the money was hard. I left because, every single day, I saw the worst of humanity. So I’m irreverent and maybe a little flirty...”

“A little?”

“People in this world have it far worse than me. Why should I go around angry or sad? And by “I,” I mean, “we.” There’s no glory in being miserable, Elena. You’re alive and strong and brilliant. A beautiful woman. You have no reason—”

A knock stopped him from saying more.

Elena’s body sagged in visible relief, and she damn near ran to the door. Kent hated himself that he’d contributed to it. Hell, he’d caused it. She was right. He had no training in human behavior. He’d only seen a woman hurting and tried to stop it. He’d back off...well...for a while.

Elena spoke softly to the man at the door, returning with a massive metal tray of food. “Good choices.”

“I’ve got a little culture in me.”

That same sad smile crossed her face. “Do you know what all these are?” She put the tray on the bed and waved her fingers over the smaller metal bowls inside.

He pointed to the rice mixture first. “Biryani. Actually, dear, mutton biryani to be precise. And that’s potato curry, boras and...uh...cooked leaves?”

“Pora,” Elena said with a weak smile. “Vegetables wrapped in leaves and cooked. Still, you did a pretty good job.”

“Thanks. Are we not going to talk about that other thing?”

“No, we’re not. We are going to eat, prepare for tomorrow, and get what might be our last good night of sleep until this is over.”

He didn’t push her. He didn’t have the heart, and for once, didn’t have the words. It was an unsettling feeling. A person he couldn’t charm. A woman whose good graces he’d have to earn. He wasn’t a magician, just a man, and here was Elena to painfully remind him of that. “Right. Here’s what I have so far.”

They ate as they worked, throwing ideas back and forth, wiping sticky fingers against towels and plotting as a team of equals. Although the hotel provided silverware, he followed her lead of using the food itself as a utensil to sop up bits of this and that.

Elena sipped her lassi and reached for her bag and tablet. “My visas are here. Once we get into Thimpu, I’ll add it in, and we can bypass the next registration place. The government has checkpoints all along the Lateral Road—the only way to get where we need to be without a yak—but if we stick to our story, we’re fine.”

“Don’t worry. This place is consistently ranked in the top ten happiest countries in the world.”

“So? I can’t trust a country that only allowed its people to have televisions a few years ago.”

“We’re talking about an absolute monarchy where the king voluntarily allowed his people to draw up a new government. The place has a constitution and—”

“Yeah, as of 2005. That’s not good.”

“It’s better than it was in 2004. Progress takes time.”

“Did your little info card tell you what they did to my mother’s people? Why she had to run? Was that progress too?”

No, but it could have been worse. He’d seen it in Sudan, the mission that had almost broken him. Word had come through of a cache of ancient Kushite jewelry. Along the way, he’d stumbled upon a camp of refugees escaping near certain slaughter. He’d never found the jewelry, but he’d called in backup and rushed in, evacuating people to safety. Later, he hunted down a small camp of rebels and slaughtered the bastards as they slept. It had taken months to wash the blood from his hands.

Elena waited expectantly, but there was no point in measuring evil or having a contest to see who won at pain, so he dropped the issue and pivoted back to the mission before them. Kent walked on the mahogany carpet to the heater and punched it up another few notches. “We rent a truck—”

“Steal a truck.”

“Because it’s less dangerous?”

“Because it’s Bhutan. Everything here is done in the name of preserving culture. Tourists can’t drive anywhere they please. Nationals, Bangladeshis, and Indians can rent—”

“There you go!”

“Cars. We can rent cars. But if I say that I’m here to take you to my family, why would I need a truck?”

“Fine, but we can’t steal it too soon. We do, and it might tip off the authorities.”

She turned on her tablet and pulled the comb from her hair, letting loose those dark tresses. He coughed at an unexpected vision of her hair, dangling above him as she rocked...

“Hello?” Elena snapped her fingers in his face. “Still there?”

“Sorry.”

“Internet activity is monitored across the border, so we’ll have to use this.” She tapped the elaborate ruby hair comb. “Our Wi-Fi.”

“Neat trick. I’ll stick with my phone though.”

“Suit yourself.” Elena pulled up several maps of Bhutan then overlaid the images one over the other. Towns—of which there were few—and roads—of which there were less—were marked with purple exclamation points that clustered close together in the northwestern part of the country. “Our target is a guy called Xiàng. He’s a cigarette smuggler out of China. The Bhutanese government outlawed tobacco in 2004, and the market is desperate. Recently, he’s gotten into moving artwork.”

“More specifically, our Amber Room.”

“Exactly. Once we get here,” she said, pointing to a mountainous road, “there’s nothing. No villages, just a road that leads to Xiàng.”

“Good. We can work without worrying about authorities or civilians.”

Elena nodded and lowered her tablet. “Bad. In that if things go wrong, we’ll never be seen again.” She palmed her eye for the third time since they’d started eating. “Mind if I turn down that heater? It’s not that cold, is it?”

It couldn’t be more than fifty degrees. On the other hand, that was probably T-shirt weather to a Swede. “I can bundle up tonight. On the freezing floor. Alone. Shivering.”

“Enough with the theatrics. I never expected that. We’ll share a bed. I’m perfectly willing to shoot off any part of you that touches any part of me without permission.”

“I’ll take the floor,” he said with a laugh. “Seriously, I don’t mind. I’m forward, but not a jerk.”

“We’ll share the bed, and I don’t mind. Not at all.” She crossed the room and headed for the heater. She didn’t return directly to the bed, stopping to fiddle with something in her bag in between the now constant rubbing of her eye.

He grabbed a handful of
naan
and shoved it in his mouth. “I’m going to hit the shower.”

“Yeah,” she said, still digging, still rubbing that eye as he walked away.

He didn’t expect The Ritz, but the shower started lukewarm and cooled from there. He was out in less than five minutes and returned to find Elena already in bed with the comforter pulled tight over her shoulder.

Despite her earlier words, he pulled on his sweater and settled into the floral print armchair.

“What are you doing?”

“Sleeping.”

Her sigh was more annoyed than anything else. “Get in the bed, Kent. I need you at your best to complete my mission. That means rested and un-cramped.”

It felt weird to thank her, almost as weird as getting into bed with a woman and not saying anything at all. “Um, good night.”

“Yeah.” Elena faced the wall, and it wasn’t until he slid under the sheets next to her that he noticed the thin, black piece of fabric around her head.
An eye patch?

The small strip of black damn near ripped out his heart. There was no point in wearing that at night. Hell, no point in wearing it at all. Was she so worried that he’d see her face? His sadness snowballed into anger before withering into misery. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and tell her that none of it mattered. Tell her that...

“Kent, you can turn the heat back up if you want.”

He thought back to the minutes leading up to his shower. The heat of the room. The dozens of times she’d rubbed her eye. He eased up on his elbow. On the table next to her, was a small, white bottle that could only be eye lubricant. The heat or dryness in the air created by the heater
had
caused her pain.

Worse, to make him comfortable, she’d taken out her eye so he could kick up the heat.

Double worse—or was it triple now? —the damned woman was willing to sleep with something wrapped around her head just to avoid him accidently seeing something that wasn’t a big damned deal to begin with.

For the first time in his life, Kent had a problem and no clue of how to fix it.

Kent twisted, snarling at his reflection. It was the first she’d seen of him not falling in love with the mirror.

“Problem?” she asked.

“Several. Why am I wearing this?”

“Because the
gho
is the traditional uniform—”

“So?”

“And a man visiting to impress his wife’s family would want—”

“I’m an American. I get a pass.”

“It’s the required dress for work and school here. If the goal is—”

“I can’t kill anyone in this.”

“That’s not the goal, Kent. Getting the Amber Room is. Why wouldn’t you wear something that makes our travels easier?”

He frowned and plucked at the fabric of his multi-colored sleeve. “When was the last time you were here? What makes you so certain about this? I don’t quite buy your premise.”

“What exactly is your problem? Are you saying that you don’t appreciate the traditions of my people?”

“I did not say that.”

“That our clothing is hideous?” She leaned in with her arms crossed, thoroughly enjoying watching him squirm.

But Kent wasn’t a pushover. He leaned in too. “All of a sudden it’s
my
people and
our
clothing. You weren’t loving this place last night.”

He looked like a cat waiting for the mousetrap to snap, but he hadn’t set a decent ambush. “I stand by what I said then and what I say today. I love my mother’s people and my father’s too. Governments? They disappoint, but people are the heart of a country. The clothes stay on. Besides, I look rather nice in my mother’s
kira
.”

These outfits belonged to her parents. Her father with his blond hair looked more at ease in it than this blond-haired man before her. That wasn’t to say Kent looked bad in it. There probably wasn’t much he didn’t look good in.

Dangerous line of thinking.

She rechecked the folds of her green and pink
kira
and pinned the second length of it near her shoulder. The silver brooch here matched the one on the opposite side, simple, but polished and neat.

She caught Kent staring in the reflection and shrugged. “I like it.”

“My wife’s hot.”

“Why, thank you.”

“Yours look’s cooler than this.” He pinched the wide sleeve of his
gho
. “Mine looks like a lame kimono.”

“You’re being insulting again.”

He turned to the side, checking his profile over his shoulder. “Fine. I’ll do it. If anybody can pull this outfit off, it’s me.”

“Along with an entire nation. You look like a husband that my imaginary family could be proud of.” Her real one too. She let herself imagine it, only because it was so ridiculous. A man like Kent was too flirtatious to ever settle down. She couldn’t either. She had too much to prove to the world.

Something
thunked.
Kent crossed the room in long, quick, strides and pressed his ear to the wall. “I think our friends are heading out. Grab your things, and move.”

They rushed to follow the German tourists out the hotel, down the street, and to the gated entrance of Bhutan.

Step one: Get exit stamps from India. Done in two seconds, but then, that had never been the worry.

Step two: The border itself.

It wasn’t so much a road or pedestrian walkway as a glob of shoving bodies. Day laborers, men in suits, tourists with maps, all with wide eyes that looked northward. Some stopped for pictures between the two nations. A few braver ones snapped selfies with clenched-jawed guards in sharp-creased suits.

“Are you ready?”

Kent, predictably, winked. “Things women never have to ask me.”

They inserted themselves in the thick of the crowd. Those who appeared overtly western were pulled straight away. Meanwhile, agents waved in other groups with barely a second glance.

Elena was among them. She held open her passport, and after a quick glance, was ignored. One second. That was the sum total of time she took to let go of Kent’s hand and ease the passport into a hidden interior pocket of her
kira.
It was also the time it took for things to go to shit.

Kent barked out her name.

By the time she turned around, three guards pinned him in a tight circle of suspicion. Elena pushed her way back. If the soldiers flipped through every page of his passport, they were screwed. Sure, they had backup stories, but it’d alert the Bhutanese central government and God knew who else.

She sidestepped two large men, popping up on her toes to catch Kent again in the crowd. He pointed to her and waved. As she closed the distance between them, Kent’s laugh sliced through the air, and the elephant sitting on her chest eased up a little.