songs, and personal questions about Mark, but had waded even more shallowly into the activities than her earlier conversation with Zara. Feet wet, she’d kicked up just enough sparkling spray to pass as present, but the rest of her was wrung dry.
Adam might be out there raising his stone and taking aim at the Jaroka brothers.
He might want her boys dead.
Panic sparked in her bloodstream. Despite rational thought assuring her that Kris was fine, some stretched-thin part of her reached for him. It had been three hours, yet she ached for him like he’d taken away the front half of her rib cage with a wink and a promise she’d get it back on his return. Her chest throbbed; her heartbeat felt uncontained.
Sending another breath over her inked arm, she met eyes with the royal guard positioned by the front entrance. He raised two fingers. Two minutes away. When she continued staring, he gave a subtle headshake. No news on Adam.
Her stomach churned. This was agony.
“Can you spot them, Frankie?”
She jerked around and found Zara watching her with a pointed smile. She frowned. “What?”
Zara gestured at Ava’s outstretched arms. “The artist hid them well.”
Frankie forced herself to focus. Ava’s henna design was exquisite. Tiny flowers and leaves spread outward from her palms and wound up her forearms, the patterns curling into lace-like detail, glints of gold paint embellishing the earthy brown ink. Mark’s initials had been secreted into the design and Ava was beaming with both arms extended as Zara, Yasmin and Gul tried their best to find them.
“Uh, let’s see.” Frankie scooted her chair closer. After scanning the ink, she said, “There,” and pointed at a cursive M.J. at the pulse point on Ava’s wrist.
Ava smiled at her like she’d completed some kind of quest.
“Wow, you can see the forest and the trees,” Zara said, impressed.
Frankie’s ears pricked at a sound from the rear entrance. “Sometimes.”
“A bride in Kelehar always wears her groom’s initials over her pulse.” Ava lowered her arms, looking every part a princess in her ivory evening dress and diamond tiara. “To symbolize his place in every beat of her heart.”
“Aw,” Zara said in an appropriately gooey tone.
“Yasmin, Gul,” Ava said, and nudged her old guard. “You both knew that.”
“I wasn’t going to spoil your fun, Princess.” Gul grinned. “But it’s on both wrists.”
With a sound of astonished delight, Ava examined her other arm.
Frankie stood, shaking her arm so the damn thing would finish drying as the back doors opened and Mark’s party entered.
Their arrival was like a steel-tipped arrow passing through a magnolia bloom. The feminine ambiance of the room scattered like torn petals. These men were cowboys and elite guards, masculine and hard-edged, and the bridal party fell quiet at the sudden punch of their testosterone.
Gul sat back in his chair with a murmured, “I feel faint.”
Frankie couldn’t tell whether he was joking.
As the royal triplets advanced across the twinkling lounge, she suspected he wasn’t.
Mark strode in the lead. Pure-hearted and grounded, he was the gravity that pulled his brothers in close. As if to prove it, Kris swaggered on Mark’s right, untamed and impulsive, a man who drove the people he loved up the wall but knew no greater force than loyalty. Frankie’s ribs seem to fasten back in place at the sight of him. Tommy stuck to Mark’s left, all ragged edges and deep waters—and that vein of authority running through his core like gold trapped in granite.
The warm shadows played over them. Broad-shouldered, sculpted, reverberatingly attractive. It wasn’t a new thought for Frankie that nature itself must have sensed the genetic perfection of that face and split cells for two more on the spot. Privately, she applauded such quick thinking.
Royal. Breathtaking. Cowboys.
These brothers didn’t know their own power.
Then Ava called, “Markus!” and dashed toward him.
Mark stopped abruptly. “My God,” he said, looking dazed. “Look at you.”
Ava’s smile turned shy and she spun in a graceful circle to show off her bridal ink. “It’s to bless us with a marriage of contentment and joy.”
“But I’m already blessed,” Mark said, and his brothers rolled their eyes with grins beside him.
As the couple embraced, Frankie glanced at Kris and found him checking her out. She was no princess. She’d paired her short yellow dress with her trusty black boots, spiked her hair as usual, and with her henna sleeve tattoo, she was infinitely more punk than pretty. When he looked up, the hunger in his eyes betrayed he was totally into that.