His Lover to Protect - Katee Robert Page 0,19

to get educated. “Why wasn’t this on the list of possible places she’d go?”

“Because it’s a goddamn mountain, and her sister is afraid of heights.”

More self-discovery shit? Of course. “Where do I need to fly in?”

“Stavanger.”

Good enough. He’d read up on his way. “I’ll be on the next flight out.”

“Thanks, man.” Again, a hesitation. “Thank you for doing this. We’re all really worried about her.”

Which only drove home that there was something Flannery wasn’t telling him. She might be a princess, but he still had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that she knew she had people worried sick about her, and she’d just dropped everything and taken off. Normal people planned a trip like this, gave their family an itinerary with the expected day they’d be back, and then flew to Europe.

He hesitated, torn between wanting to know what the hell was going on and not wanting to waste any more time on this phone call. “You didn’t tell me a whole lot about her when you called for help.” And he’d owed Flannery enough that he hadn’t bothered to ask. Now Luke was wondering if that had been a mistake.

“She’s important to us, and we’re worried about her. I wasn’t aware you needed a goddamn profile.”

He didn’t, not if his only goal was to keep her safe. He shoved down his irritation. Mostly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep her out of trouble.” He hung up.

Yeah, he’d keep her out of trouble, but she was going to get an earful when he found her. Who the hell did she think she was, bouncing out on him like he was some kind of dirty one-night stand?

The fact that she’d been up-front about calling them exactly that didn’t change a damn thing.

Luke stopped next to the dresser, his gaze falling to the piece of paper there. There was no explanation, no way to get a hold of her, just a hastily written, You gave me back a piece of what I was looking for. Thank you. Yet another indication that he was swimming in deep waters, and no one had thought to warn him that there were sharks about. What the hell is she running from? He frowned at the note. Or running toward? He wanted to rip it up and flush it down the toilet, but he stuffed it in his pocket instead.

He had a plane to Norway to catch.

Chapter Seven

Two motherfucking miles. Luke cursed again as his knee cried out. Two miles up. Because apparently Alexis the Princess simply had to climb to the top of a goddamn cliff and stare off it. Maybe she was calling in the birds from the area to do her cleaning à la her Disney counterparts, or she just wanted to feel closer to nature, but Christ, she could do either of those things on flat ground that didn’t require him to bust his ass up a path…

He stumbled to a stop, looked up…and kept looking. “You have got to be fucking with me.” The path turned into a goddamn mountain, so steep he’d have to use both his feet and his hands to climb, and it was riddled with boulders. He’d be lucky if he made it to the top without spraining an ankle.

This all could have been bypassed if he’d caught an earlier flight. But the early one—the same one he suspected Alexis was on out of Cork—had already left by the time he made it to the airport. So he was stuck with the evening flight. By the time he made it to Stavanger, it was well past dinnertime, and he had no idea where she would have picked to spend the night. The helpful stewardess had told him that the hike to Pulpit Rock—or Preikestolen as most people called it—was an all-day event. So at least he’d been spared from chasing after her in the dark.

Which was why he was here, at the ass-crack of dawn, ready to risk permanent injury to get to the top of this shit. If Alexis had kept on the phone long enough to tell her sister where she was staying, this would have been unnecessary, but noooooo.

He leaned down to rub his knee, knowing damn well that his anger was misplaced. It didn’t make it miraculously disappear to know the source was a combination of the physical aggravation from his knee and his bruised pride from the fact that she’d slipped out of bed without him so much as