“I know his safety is your utmost priority.” Hanna’s tone became careful. “But it’s mine, too. Sometimes it feels like—I mean, like maybe you don’t trust me to do my job.”
Stricken, Frankie’s amusement vanished. “I do trust you, and Peter.” Her gaze found the back of Kris’s black hat at the front of the line. I don’t trust him. “Behave however you deem appropriate. Just stay vigilant and don’t, for the love of God, laugh when he thinks he’s being funny.”
“Little chance of that.” Hanna grinned. “Race you to catch up?”
“Sure.”
After a burst of speed and burning lungs, Frankie joined the line two steps ahead of her.
“Damn it,” Hanna said, breathing fast. “I’m really fit.”
“Let it go, Johansson,” Frankie said, clapping her on the shoulder. “You’ll never win.”
“I will. One day. I can feel it.”
Frankie smiled again, shaking her head.
The sun was slipping from the sky when they arrived at Kris’s intended camping site. A grassy ledge that protruded from the mountainside, backed by pines with a perfect view of Kira City far below. Unease quickly took hold of Frankie as his shelter was erected first—an absurdly large lotus tent that must have been arranged by someone who genuinely didn’t know that Kris had lived most of his life as a free-ranging cowboy. She wasn’t sure how anyone within Kiralian borders could have missed that memo, but the proof was in the extravagant cotton-lined, lantern-strung, here-sleeps-the-prince pudding.
There was no room for a second tent, let alone the whole camp, so all other tents were set up on a clearing just below the outcrop. It breached protocol to separate the primary from his protection, even such a minimal distance, so after setting up her tent faster than Hanna—“You can’t be human,” Hanna declared, pointing a peg at her—Frankie chewed on the inside of her cheeks and approached Kris.
He’d just erected a tent for a blushing non-outdoorsy attendant, and was standing back with sleeves bunched at his elbows.
“I’m not comfortable with you sleeping up there, Your Highness.”
He tensed, turning to face her, his blue gaze like a finger flick to her heart.
“There’s no one to watch your back,” she added.
“There should be room for at least half of us up there,” he said, taking off his hat and running his fingers through his thick waves. “It’s not my fault I have to sleep in a giant, posh marshmallow.”
She pressed her lips together. “I’ll have it moved down.”
“No. Leave it.” Attention on the ludicrous tent, he angled his head to one side, stretching his neck. “You’re my bodyguard, right? Sleep in there with me.”
Her level gaze was waiting when he looked back to her. “That would be inappropriate.”
“Ask yourself why,” he said, angling his head to the other side, tempting her with the bold cut of his jawline. She resolutely held his stare. “I’d be surprised if it has anything to do with doing your job properly.”
She sucked in a breath—held it when she realized he was right.
“You made your bed on this one, Frankie.” His grin came slowly as he slid around her. “Meet you up there.”
Fuck.
She delayed as twilight turned to night, briefing her team on various eventualities and preparing them for their pre-dawn departure. By the time she collected dinner from the kitchen hand in charge of supplies, an uncomfortable truth had settled in her mind. She’d let Kris get away with that flawed logic. Assigning Peter or Hanna to stay with him overnight would still have been doing her job properly.
She wanted to do it.
Her plan to stay among her team had been practical, but too much like pulling a coat over a little black dress because the weather was cold outside. She’d wear the wool for a little while, avoiding a winter chill, but the moment she reached the party, she’d be all slinky fabric and skin. She wouldn’t have worn the dress otherwise.
And she wouldn’t have assigned herself as his bodyguard if she hadn’t secretly wanted something like this to happen—even though she knew it couldn’t.
She was so screwed.
With nerves multiplying in her belly, she walked the short incline to the bulbous tent that glowed warm and cream like the moon had eaten too much and had fallen into a food coma on the forest floor.
Cresting the slope, she resolutely ignored the shadow that was Kris sprawled on his back in the slim patch of uncovered grass. Instead, she nodded at Hanna and Peter. “Go have