The Duke's Runaway Princess Page 0,54

were spending every night together so as soon as she agreed to marry him, he was moving her belongings into his bedroom. He wanted this back and forth business between her place and his to stop. He wanted her in his house, in his bedroom and at his table all the time.

At the door to the apartment she shared with her friend, Derrick banged loudly on the wood, uncaring that he was waking up Suzanne. He needed answers, and he had a funny feeling that had been bothering him the whole drive into town. Something just didn’t feel right, he thought to himself.

Suzanne opened the door a moment later, pulling on a blue, fluffy robe and pushing her blond hair out of her eyes. When she spied who was at her door, she woke up much more quickly. “Your Grace!” she gasped and pulled the robe tighter. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you. I thought Zarah was at the castle.”

Derrick tried to smile, but suspected it came out as more of a grimace than a friendly gesture. “I’m looking for Zarah. Is she here?”

Suzanne’s eyes widened but she pulled herself together quickly. “Um, I don’t think so,” she said and looked around. “It’s Saturday and she usually borrows my keys for a personal trip.”

Derrick was already aware of this trip and was the reason he was feeling uneasy. “Do you know where she went this week to make the phone call?”

Suzanne actually stumbled as she stepped back into the apartment. “How do you know she makes a phone call?” she asked carefully.

Derrick stepped inside, looking around in the hopes that the roommate was wrong and Zarah would just appear out of her bedroom with a bag filled with clothes so she didn’t have to come back and forth. But as he took in the bright, cheerful room, Zarah didn’t come out. In fact, it was eerily quiet except for Suzanne’s breathing at the moment.

Derrick looked around and quickly spotted the note left on the counter. “Do you mind?” he asked, but the words were only to be polite because he didn’t care if Suzanne minded if he read her note or not. That bad feeling was intensifying and his gut was telling him to find Zarah fast. He read through the note but all it said was she was making the trip to call her brother.

“Why would she need to drive into London to communicate with her brother? Does he live there or something?”

He could tell that Suzanne was trying to come up with a lie and he stepped forward, trying to convey the urgency he was feeling over finding Zarah. “Please tell me the truth,” he said with a tone that was as gentle as he could muster at the moment. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I have a feeling that she might be in trouble.”

Suzanne immediately shook her head. “She’s fine. She just goes into London so that her brother can’t track her phone calls.”

“Why would he even try?”

Suzanne bit her lower lip, unsure how to handle this tall, intimidating man that her best friend had fallen in love with. She made a snap decision, knowing how the rest of the people in the village protected and cared for this man. He wouldn’t hurt her friend, she told herself. And if he thought she was in trouble, he might know something she didn’t.

“Zarah isn’t normal like the rest of us. Her brother is Rashid Samara Busain, Sheik of Tasain and she’s Princess Zarah Andromeda Bussain. She’s the youngest sister and she ran away from her brother seven months ago so she could find a job and live a normal life.”

Derrick crushed the note in his hands. “Was I….”

“No!” Suzanne quickly replied, instantly knowing where he was going with those two words. “Absolutely not! You weren’t an experiment. In fact, just the opposite. She tried to stay away from you, knowing that she would have to marry someone her brother chose for her at the end of her year here in Great Britain.” She should feel like she was betraying her friend, but there was something in his eyes that made her think he might be right, that Zarah could be in trouble. As she glanced at the clock on the wall, she realized that it was later than she’d thought. “Zarah should be back by now,” she said softly, warily.

“Where does she go?” he demanded.

Suzanne shrugged her shoulders. “She tries to vary the place each time