the type of man who cried. A young female translator filled in the blanks. “The premier thanks you with all his heart. Everything he has is yours. He would offer his daughter but you are already taken.”
The pair beamed at their joke. The man gripped the sleeve of Jared’s royal outfit. “You saved world,” he said in a thick accent. “You saved us.” He gave one last emotional squeeze before letting Jared pass by.
Jared watched them walk away. “Who was that?”
“The premier of China,” his father answered.
“The head dude? The leader?” He’d already been greeted by President Ramos and the British prime minister. “But this is Kentucky.”
“It’s now ground zero in the fight to save Earth.”
A group of plain-clothed feds with dark glasses and no expressions met them at the entrance to the room where the screen from the REEF’s fighter was set up to receive an incoming message from the Coalition’s Royal Palace. They gave Jared a box.
“The betrothal gift,” Cavin explained.
“An engagement ring?”
“The stone is too large for a ring. But it can be cut down if she so desires.”
Jared lifted the lid and peered inside the box. “Holy…You weren’t kidding when you said too large.”
“It’s a pink diamond,” Jana explained. “Almost two hundred and seventy-four carats. At first, everyone thought the Hope Diamond would do because it’s in the Smithsonian and easy to get hold of, but then some experts reminded us the stone was bad luck. Someone talked to someone else and we ended up with this one. It’s called the Pink Sunrise—rare, flawless pink and—”
“Huge.” Jared shut the lid. “The little diva better say thank you.”
As they hustled him into the room, the enormity of what he was about to do struck him. “I don’t feel ready for this,” he said under his breath. How the hell had saving the world fallen on his shoulders? Your big mouth, that’s how. A throwaway remark got you into this.
“Follow the script,” Cavin reminded him. “It’s all right here. Coalition protocol.”
“Why their protocol? Why not our way?”
“We don’t have a way,” Jana pointed out.
“We don’t have a prince of Earth, either.”
Cavin urged him forward. “Prime Minister Rissallen will most likely begin the proceedings. When the queen appears, he will be the one to introduce her. Don’t say anything until they’re done. And when it is time, you will tell them this….” Cavin’s finger traced along the lines Jana had scrawled for him—he hadn’t yet mastered the written form of the language. “You’ll say you’re humbled and honored by her generous offer of marriage—”
“Humbled?” Not.
“—and pleased to accept their offer of peace.”
Jared held up his hands. “Hold on, cowboy. I didn’t agree to anything yet.”
Jana reassured him. “Think of the phantom fleet—the battle force of false signals. This is the same thing. A phantom engagement. You’re not agreeing to anything at this point, not really.”
“Right. We’re lying.”
“We’re setting the bait.”
Jared took the script and sat in an expensive leather recliner in the middle of a marble-floored room that had been cleared of all other furniture. People fussed all around him, testing the light, the sound, the position of his medals—rather, the king of Denmark’s medals. A woman dusted his face with a huge, powdery brush. “No.” He pushed away her hand as tactfully as he could. “No makeup.”
She seemed to sense his coiled tension and backed away quickly.
At the appointed time, the screen went from opaque to clear and the room fell silent. There was nothing to see yet on-screen, just an empty throne.
“Maybe she got cold feet,” Jana whispered.
“Maybe she’s getting her daggers out.” He glanced over at Cavin. “It feels a little strange meeting your former almost fiancée and pretending I’m going to marry her. You okay with that?”
Cavin snorted. He lifted fingers to the back of Jana’s neck, massaging her with unconscious possessiveness. “Our betrothal was never official, nor did I ever meet her. Although not many years after I visited Earth for the first time, when Jana and I first met, I remember seeing images of her coronation. Queen Keira was very young. A child of six or so of your Earth years.”
That put Keira in her mid twenties now. “Where were her parents?”
“She was orphaned at a young age. The royal family was lost in a tragic accident.”
Gone, in one fell swoop. Life could be like that. One minute everything was okay, and in the next the rug got pulled from under you. What a rotten break, losing your entire family like that and