Focus on the mission, she kept repeating to herself.
The murmurs in the hall grew closer until a head peeked inside the room, then turned away. People always shied away from a couple kissing, which was a fucking handy way to get a few extra moments.
They broke apart but kept an arm around each other, and assessed the man and crowd behind. Being an agent meant having situational awareness at all times. She knew how many men were at the door with barely a glance—four—and she knew from the other voices and sounds she heard that there were at least three others nearby.
Spies also had to be good at math, and two against maybe seven wasn’t the best of odds. However, when you factored in that the two were her—supreme spy bitch and chameleon—and Ethan—kickass in his own right—the odds moved more into their favor.
The man in front of them looked like a member of the bomb squad, but given what Ethan had gone through with the fake agent, she didn’t trust him.
The man lifted his mask. “Are you hurt? I’m sorry, but you’ll both need to vacate the building.” Suddenly the man jerked when he realized who was standing in front of him. “Oh, shit. I mean, I’m sorry, Your Highness. Anda, er, Miss Salamanca. I had no idea it was both of you.”
Nobody had known about them, not in the nearly two tumultuous years of their relationship—if that’s what they could even call it—but she had a feeling that the rumor mill would run rampant now. It would no doubt be fueled by the fire that he’d gotten hurt trying to save her from beneath the stage.
Perception.
Damn it. She knew all about perception being in the entertainment industry, and it wouldn’t matter if they denounced the stories. Once a rumor was out there, it stuck until another one took its place. That the story involved a royal meant it would stick even longer and Ethan would suffer as well. They might even have to pretend to be in a relationship for a period of time, and she wasn’t sure she was up for faking a full romance with him—as opposed to a tryst in a dressing room—so soon after their all-too-real breakup.
Still, if it would help her get out of this situation, she would use it. She was an agent first, after all.
She slid into her actress persona again, and rested her head against Ethan’s shoulder with a soft smile. “You won’t tell anybody, will you? We do so want to keep this a secret.”
The bomb squad man’s eyes darted back and forth between her and Ethan. “Oh, of course. You still need to evacuate the building.”
Ethan played along and rubbed a hand down her arm; the other man’s eyes followed the movement. “Of course. We were just leaving.”
Making excuses on the fly was something she’d honed during her agent training. Her acting training also helped with this quite a bit, so much so that she’d recommended Marcello start similar training for other agents.
The best chance they had was to stay at or near the back of the crowd and find an excuse to slip through a side corridor, of which this theatre had plenty. However, finding an excuse was proving difficult. She could normally rattle off anything when she got stuck in sticky situations, but right now her brain just wasn’t working as fast as it usually did.
Damn it. She had to pull herself together, couldn’t let a bump on her head put her or Ethan in danger. If anything happened to Ethan, besides the devastation that it would cause her personally, she’d also lose her status as an agent. She’d worked too long and too hard to get where she was, and she still had work to do long after this night was over.
She wouldn’t let Ethan down, wouldn’t let Marcello down, wouldn’t let her country down, and wouldn’t let herself down, either.
She’d worked through injuries and pain before—emotional and physical—and this wouldn’t be any different. At least that’s what she tried to convince herself.
As they started to shuffle out the door, she and Ethan managed to arrange themselves near the back but there were still two men behind them. They walked slowly down the corridor, pausing as the squad cleared room after room and pondered ways to break free.
6
Then
ANDA
Fifteen months ago…
Parc View Resort Hotel
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Anda’s back bounced lightly off the wall she’d just been shoved against. She pushed the man away, then gripped his lapels and pulled him against her. “Ethan.”
“Christ, Anda.” He pounced on her lips, and she was every bit as demanding in return.
She tugged at his uniform—holy God, her Ethan in dress blues and purples was a goddamn fucking miracle to behold—and he grabbed the edge of her dress and started to push it up.
It had been months—three months, eight days, and five hours, but who was counting?—since they’d last seen each other. They’d tried to arrange a meeting sooner, but something had always kept them apart.
One look, one long, heated glance after he’d arrived at her hotel room door, was all they needed. Now, they were tearing each other apart in the most delicious way possible.
