She nodded.
‘The helicopter will be ready to leave at four.’
He turned and, just before he could open the door, ‘What happened to Kristine?’ Henna asked gently.
He clenched his jaw and, forcing a small smile to numb lips, he turned to Henna. ‘She’s married to a tax accountant with whom she has three children.’
Aleksander left the room before he could see the flare of sympathy in Henna’s compassionate gaze. As he’d thought before, it was wasted on him.
CHAPTER SIX
THEHELICOPTERLIFTEDinto the sky, leaving Henna’s stomach back on the Palace grounds. Swallowing a swell of nausea, she looked down at the paper in her lap. It was a hand-written schedule that she would destroy at the end of this event. This journey had all the makings of a spy film, which should seem ridiculous if it wasn’t for the fact that every single aspect of Aleksander’s life was fodder for journalists and newspaper oligarchs, waiting to make money from his mistakes more than his successes.
The stark realisation that they would have torn the young Prince of Svardia and his girlfriend to pieces over a teenage pregnancy was devastating. Her heart ached for the decision Kristine had been forced to make and it broke for Aleksander, who’d had no choice at all. She could imagine just how much he’d tried to keep bottled in—his grief, his anger, his loss, not being able to speak to anyone about it. And then to discover that his father had known. Had known and not provided him with comfort, or compassion, or support... To a woman whose father had been the sun and moon in her life, constant, nourishing and loving, it felt unnatural to her. And her heart swelled with the need to give Aleksander some of those things, even if it was twelve years too late.
Not that he would accept anything from her. Aleksander was a man whose sense of trust had been crucified and he saw emotional bonds as a threat to his control—a control that was sorely tested by the responsibility he’d felt for Kristine, for the pain they’d shared and for the loss of what they could have had. Henna feared that his plan for a loveless marriage was a form of self-punishment for the mistakes of a young man’s passion.
The helicopter banked suddenly, forcing her to thrust out an arm to the side of the cabin to steady herself. The close protection officers were still grim-faced and silent in their disapproval of their King’s command. They had reluctantly agreed to remain close by, but outside the area of the tiny peninsula of Öström.
The cover story she and Aleksander had concocted was a three-day tour of a military base, where it would be expected for details to be scarce. The helicopter would land, before they took a two-hour drive, in secret, to Öström—an area that had a population of six, comprised entirely of the live-in staff members of a hotel that was so exclusive it didn’t have a website. There had been no photographs for Henna to look at and she was unfamiliar with the area. She knew nothing about how many people would be in attendance, or who they were, only that during the hours Aleksander spent in meetings she would be fielding any incoming correspondence and—if necessary—pretend to be him on email.
They hadn’t had much time to talk about what specifically would happen when they got to Öström and, with so many people around, Henna knew that now wasn’t the appropriate time to ask. Outside of managing the details of the trip, Aleksander had been neither the commanding King she had come to recognise nor the charming teenager she’d once thought she’d known. There was a seriousness to him that she’d sensed as a middle level between the two. As if, perhaps, now she knew, Aleksander didn’t have to pretend any more.
Gunnar, who had until recently been the head of Freya’s security detail, motioned to the headset and Henna flicked the button that would allow her to hear the conversation.
‘Ms Olin, we will be landing at the base in fifteen minutes. From there Aleksander will drive you onward.’
Henna frowned.
‘Don’t worry, you’re in safe hands,’ Aleksander said absently as he looked out of the window, completely unaware of how thethought of being in his hands undid her.
Her pulse jerked, as if he’d flipped a switch in her body. A throb, hard, fast and just a little damp, pulsed between her legs and she forced her gaze away from the cabin and out of the window, hoping that she had hidden the sudden blush on her cheeks.
‘Gunnar—’ she heard Aleksander sigh as if tired of having to explain himself to the head of security ‘—the security threat level is practically zero, you have been allowed to vet the area before anyone’s arrival, so you know the layout and you will be within a five-minute reach of us at all times. There is nothing to worry about,’ the King of Svardia insisted.
Only Henna was beginning to realise that being secluded with Aleksander for three days meant that there was alotto worry about.
Aleksander was worried, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was due to meet a startling array of the world’s most powerful players in the morning. No, it had everything to do with the woman sitting beside him in the sleek matt black two-seater that he usually loved driving. Large sweeping slow corners of grey tarmac cut through the craggy coastline and a gunmetal-grey sea as he changed up a gear and hit the accelerator.
Whether it was because they were alone, or that her perfume was once again wreaking havoc on his senses, but from the moment they’d left Svardia his body had been on high alert—as if sensing he was under threat. And he supposed he was. Aleksander had imagined that revealing what had happened in his past would change things between them and he’d been right. He’d thought that it would have made him vulnerable to her somehow, but instead it had made the connection between them stronger—at the exact time he needed it to be weaker.
Henna shifted behind him, crossing her legs and accidentally revealing an expanse of thigh that he was intimately and deliciously familiar with. His gaze flickered down the length of her legs and his fingers wrapped around the steering wheel instead of her skin just as Henna pulled two sections of the blue skirt together. Never before had he paid such attention to the design of women’s clothing, but the wrap-over skirt Henna wore seemed nothing short of devious. The silky lining he’d seen far too much of slid over her skin and constantly revealed too much leg. Or not enough.
Fighting a ferocious wave of arousal, Aleksander forced his body back under his control, just in time to take the last turning onto a peninsula that looked as if it had been carved from volcanic rock. He watched in the rear-view mirror as the security detail peeled off in the opposite direction, heading to the smaller camp they’d reluctantly agreed to stay in. Returning his gaze to the road, he was struck by the desolate and primeval landscape, ancient in a way that felt about as base as his urges towards Henna. So no, even the setting wasn’t helping.
The dark, jagged, blackened jutting rocks, however, hid a hotel so exclusive that it couldn’t be found online in any form. There was a central building, around which eight cabins were situated in such a feat of architectural design it had become one of Aleksander’s favourite places to be. He had come to Öström to meet with the others twice a year over the last eight, but this would be the first time he had come as King. It had been easier before, when the press could be distracted by either an easy-to-sell minor scandal or a dramatic world event, but as King it was different.
Not that the change in his status would mean much to the people he was meeting. More than half of them had more wealth than thirty percent of the world’s smaller countries, and each and every one of them would be willing to disagree with him or they wouldn’t be there. The organisation had been the secret of the world’s most powerful players for the last one hundred years and would probably be so for another hundred. And tomorrow Aleksander had to convince the five highest members that he was demanding Kozlov be removed from the organisation.
He pulled into the small circular drive in front of the main building and asked Henna to wait in the car. She nodded, her gaze locked on to the incredible horizon visible from her window. It took him less than five minutes to confirm his arrival with the hotel, the arrival of the other guests and to request that dinner be sent to the cabin in an hour’s time.
He returned to the car and drove it around to the cabin at the furthest edge of the rocky outcrop. He was out of the car and halfway to her door when she thrust it open to stand and stare at the end of the peninsula, where grey and white waves crashed against black rock. Her mouth was open, shock, surprise and delight all clear in her gaze.
The wind had blown her fringe back, away from her forehead and wisps of hair whipped around her. She reminded him of a Vettriano painting, as if she stood strong and alone in the eye of a storm, preyed upon by his voyeurism. Then she looked at him and everything he’d been trying to deny rushed to the surface—want, desire, hit him hard and he knew that he’d made a monumental mistake in bringing her here.
Standing by the floor-to-ceiling window at the edge of the seemingly simple cabin that she was set to share with Aleksander for the next three nights, Henna shivered, and it had nothing to do with the gentle heat inside and everything to do with the way that the last third of the cabin hung away from the rocky outcrop of the peninsula and directly above the swelling sea beneath. The waves were relentless, hurling themselves dramatically against the rocky harbour curving around to her left.
She’d noticed that there were other cabins, but the distance between them all was surprisingly vast. The sense of isolation here was like nothing she’d ever experienced and that she was sharing it with a man who had driven her almost to an orgasm when his thumb barely touched her thigh sent blood and sparks rushing around her body in equal measure.