Courting Carolina (31 page)

Dear Idiot,

Stay the hell away from Nova Mare!

Sincerely,
Carolina Oceanus

P.S. Thank you for returning MOST of my
belongings, but there appears to be one item missing
from my jewelry pouch. I would like it returned
as soon as possible, please, as I have a pressing
need to USE it.

P.P.S. Oh, and thank you for the wonderful
education, as I believe it will come in quite
handy very SOON.

Okay then. Forget pissing off her father;
Jane
was ready to feed him to the orcas.

But then, he
had
promised to be her champion.

And last time he checked,
he
was strong and fearless and mortal.

Alec refolded the letter and slid it in the envelope with a heavy sigh, guessing it was time he shoved the goddamn bus off his chest and started courting Carolina.

Chapter Eighteen

Four long, tiring days of
doubling
her efforts to appear interested in her three remaining suitors, putting up with Aaron and Sir Garth’s posturing at the fading handprint on her cheek as they swore to avenge her if they ever got their hands on the infidel, and all but turning cartwheels trying to get Niall MacKeage to just friggin’
kiss
her, was starting to take its toll. Sweet Prometheus, it was time to start panicking.

Jane stormed into her cottage while shedding her jacket and then rounded on Nicholas the moment he closed the door. “Thanks for the help,” she snapped, so angry she actually stamped her foot. “How in Hades am I supposed to know which one to pick if you keep scaring them off just when things start getting interesting?”

Apparently not the least bit impressed by her show of temper, Nicholas also shed his jacket—exposing the modern gun he probably wore to
bed
—and pulled an equally modern lighter out of his pocket as he strolled to the fireplace. “I didn’t want to be holding your hair back over the bushes while you threw up after Devonshire kissed you,” he said
with maddening calm as he crouched down and placed a few pinecones on the grate and set them on fire. He started adding kindling. “I’ll make a deal with you,” he continued, twisting on the balls of his feet to give her a grin. “In exchange for your doing me a favor, I’ll keep my distance when Niall takes you fishing up at the high-mountain pond tomorrow afternoon.”

Jane folded her arms under her breasts. “I promised Olivia I’d watch the cherub tomorrow afternoon while she runs some errands.”

“Perfect,” he said with a chuckle, turning back and adding a couple of logs to the snapping kindling. He stood up and faced her, his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Ella will probably make a better chaperone than me, anyway, and you’ll get to see how Niall is with kids. So, do we have a deal?”

“That depends on what the favor is,” she said more sweetly than she was feeling.

He sat down on the hearth and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I want you to design a cottage like this one for me,” he said, waving a dangling hand. “Completely self-sufficient like Nova Mare, using sun and wind energy and whatever that heat exchange system is that comes from the ground.”

Jane dropped her arms in surprise. “You’re going to move out of the palace? But that’s your—” She clutched her throat on a gasp. “You think Daddy’s going to kick you out when I get married, like you’re…like yesterday’s trash?”

He stood up and walked over and took hold of her shoulders. “No, Lina, he’s not kicking me out. I’m kicking myself out.” He pulled her into his arms. “I’ve pretty much decided I want to live in this century,” he said against her hair. “And I’m going to buy a boat and a fishing pole and a cooler to keep my beer in, and get drunk and fish and nap in the sun all summer and hibernate like a bear all winter in my cottage. And maybe,” he said gruffly, “I’ll find myself a lady bear to hibernate with me.”

Jane leaned away. “Ohmigod,” she whispered, feeling her skin prickle as her vision suddenly blurred with threatening
tears. “Oh, Nicholas, all these years you’ve put me before…You put your entire life on…” She smacked his shoulder, then struggled against him when he wouldn’t let her go. “Dammit, Nikki! Why didn’t you
say
you wanted a life of your own?”

“You were my life,” he said, pulling her into a fierce hug. “It was
my
choice, not yours or Titus’s or anyone else’s. But you and I have known all along it wasn’t going to last forever.” His chest rumbled with his chuckle. “Hell, Lina, I couldn’t have dreamed up a more exciting thirty years.” He tilted her head back and shot her one of his maddening grins. “Or a more entertaining ending.” He gave her forehead a kiss before turning away to walk back to the hearth, where he stared down at the fire. “I don’t regret one minute of my life, so don’t even think about making me out to be some long-suffering…buffoon,” he said over his shoulder with another grin. “You just worry about making the choice that’s best for
you
five days from now.” He turned to her. “And design me a cozy cottage just like this one, only larger. Go on,” he said, waving at the desk, “get out some paper.” He headed toward the back rooms and stopped at the bathroom door. “You’ll need to write this down, as I have several requirements that might challenge even your sharp mind.”

Jane stood gaping at the empty hall when he stepped into the bathroom. Nikki was staying in this century? And fishing and getting drunk and napping?

And hibernating with a
lady
?

Sweet Athena, he’d been waiting for her to fall in love so
he
could fall in love.

But Nicholas had always been…well, Nicholas. He was also a
guy
. She knew he’d had lovers; heck, she’d even introduced him to some of them. But now that she thought about it, he’d never let any of them ever get emotionally close and had always broken it off if they’d started getting…clingy.

“Princess,” he said in a tone that made her go utterly still, “could you come in here, please?”

She ran to the hall and stopped in the open bathroom doorway to see him standing in front of the vanity staring at
the mirror, which appeared to have something written on it in lipstick and something taped to—

Jane gasped and ran in and snatched the packet off the mirror and tried to stuff it in her pocket. But Nicholas caught her hand and held it up between them, even as he looked at the mirror again.
“This had better still be unopened, lass, the night of the ball,”
he quietly read. He looked at her. “Mind telling me what’s going on,
lass
?” he asked, his eyes as lethal as his tone.

Jane brushed down the front of her shirt with her free hand—since he wouldn’t give up the one holding the condom. “I really don’t think my love life is any of your business,” she said as she fought down her blush, “any more than your love life is mine.”

“Until the ball, everything about you is my business.” He reached up and pulled the condom from her hand—after a small tug of war—and stuffed it in his pocket. “How in hell does the bastard keep getting in here?” he growled, finally letting her go, then pushing her ahead of him out of the bathroom.

Jane ran into her bedroom, trying not to let him see her frantically looking around for other signs that Alec had been there. “Maybe he met the employee bus in the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain this morning and asked one of the housekeepers to leave that message,” she said when Nicholas followed her. She shot him a smug smile and decided to deflect his anger from Alec to herself. “I hid a note in the privy they flew out to Alec the other day, telling him to stay away from Nova Mare.” She winced, only just now realizing her mistake. “Except I contradicted myself by also asking him to return the condom he…um, took out of my jewelry pouch,” she ended in a whisper as she lamely gestured at Nicholas’s pocket.

“And what were you doing carrying a condom in your jewelry pouch?” he asked really softly as she stared at a spot on the far corner ceiling.

“I was going to…I thought I might…” She snorted and glared at him. “Okay, look; I thought that if I wasn’t a virgin,
then Daddy couldn’t marry me off to some power-hungry buffoon. I carried that stupid thing around for
two years
,” she growled—only to suddenly hug herself on a shuddering breath. “Except I couldn’t do it,” she whispered, “because I was too fussy.”

“Lina,” he said thickly. “You know that instead of solving your problem, using that condom only would have compounded it.”

She looked up, smiling sadly. “I know. I think that’s what Alec thought, too.”

Nicholas’s jaw slackened in surprise. “You tried to seduce MacKeage? And he actually managed to keep his hands off you?”

Jane snorted and threw herself back onto the bed to stare up at the ceiling. “He didn’t exactly— What in Hades am I lying on?” she muttered, jumping up and pulling back the quilt, only to gape at the fist-size rocks scattered all over the sheet.

“Son of a bitch!” Nicholas roared, grabbing one of the rocks. His jaw slackened again and he grabbed another one. “The damn things are still
hot
.” He snapped his gaze to the closed window, then bent down and looked under the bed, then walked to the closet and opened the door. He slowly turned, staring in silence at the rocks in his hand for what seemed like forever, then held them toward her. “The bastard was here less than half an hour ago.”

Having seen Nicholas’s legendary temper surface only twice in her life, and really not wanting to hang around if this was about to become explosion number three, Jane bolted out of the room. Only he caught her just as she reached the front door, then simply grabbed their jackets and dragged her outside.

Partly because she liked to think she was pretty smart and partly because she was curious as to where he was taking her, Jane remained equally silent as he dragged her down the path toward the resort’s common green. He suddenly shoved both their jackets at her without breaking stride or letting go of her arm and pulled a small walkie-talkie off his belt.

“Everyone,” he snapped after keying the mike, “report in, beginning with Rowan, from north to east.”

“I see Dante from where I’m standing, sir, and not so much as a mouse has walked between us,” a voice Jane recognized as Rowan said over the small speaker.

“Dante here,” another voice said, “and I see Cyril.”

The radio squelched, and then, “I can see Ephraim not three stadions away,” another voice she assumed was Cyril said, indicating the men were positioned about eighteen hundred feet apart.

And on the roll call went, until the radio suddenly went silent.

Nicholas stopped walking. “Who’s next?”

Whoever he was, Jane felt sorry for him. Not because she was worried Alec had hurt him, but for what Nicholas was going to do to the missing man when he found him.

“Averill,” Nicholas said quietly to the last man to report, “who are you next to?”

“Micah, sir, and I’m looking right at him. He’s sitting against a tree not three stadions away.”

“Then don’t you think you should go see why he didn’t immediately stand up when I came on the radio?” Nicholas said really softly. “Who’s after Micah?”

Again, silence.

“Rowan and Dante, meet me at Micah’s post. You others spread out to fill the void they’re leaving,” he said as he started dragging Jane again, turning onto another path she assumed led to Micah.

A little worried Nicholas didn’t even realize she was still with him, Jane remained silent for fear he’d make her go back to the cottage. Because honestly, she wanted to see what was going on, as she couldn’t imagine anyone being able to sneak past one of Nicholas’s guards—especially not Alec. Alec might be good in a fight, and he’d served in the military according to Sam Waters, but the underachieving ski bum couldn’t possibly outsmart the most elite fighting force on the planet from
any
century.

They’d just reached the man still sitting leaning against a
large tree when Rowan and Dante came running up to them. Jane tried not to flinch when Nicholas—still holding on to her arm—used his foot to give Micah’s shoulder a shove, but she couldn’t stifle a gasp when the man simply fell onto his side, apparently out cold. Rowan and Dante immediately grabbed his arms and lifted him to his feet, Rowan giving the guy’s face a couple of brisk slaps.

Micah threw his head back with a snarled curse, then groaned, then finally noticed Nicholas standing in front of him. The soldier’s eyes widened and he stiffened to a weaving attention. “Sir!”

Still holding on to Jane, Nicholas got right in his face. “Mind telling me how someone was able to sneak up and ambush you?” he asked really, really softly.