He jumped out, headed straight for the main house and rang the bell, but no one answered the door. He rang again, but still no answer. Wondering, but not really worried, not yet, he pulled out his key ring to unlock the door. But just as he was reaching for the doorknob he heard footsteps crunching in the snow behind him, and he swung around.
Alec stood there bareheaded, his jacket hanging open as if he’d just shrugged it on and hurried outside when he heard Trace’s truck. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” Trace asked blankly, staring at the other man. “What do you mean? Why didn’t you call me? She wasn’t supposed to leave until Christmas Eve.”
“They left Saturday. Not just the princess, her entire household. And I don’t think she’s coming back. She had her horses shipped by rail to the coast and then by sea to Zakhar—her groom accompanied them.”
An icy, empty feeling settled over Trace, but Alec wasn’t finished. “She left you something,” he said, his voice as cold as Trace felt. “Liam and I drew straws to see which of us got to be the one to tell you—and I won.”
“Tell me what?”
“That whatever you did to her, we hope you’re satisfied.” Contempt mingled with repressed anger in Alec’s face and voice, and was reflected in the rigid tenseness of his muscles. “Because Liam and I—we just wanted to cry.”
Trace’s right hand slowly clenched into a fist. “Just spit it out, damn it,” he grated.
Alec shook his head. In a soft but deadly voice he said, “See for yourself. She left it in your room.”
Trace held Alec’s gaze for a minute, then stalked toward the guest house, his footsteps in the crisp snow the only sound in the stillness. Foreboding clutched at him, and a fear such as he’d never known filled his chest. When he reached his room he pushed the door open. And froze.
Alec’s words reverberated in his mind. Liam and I—we just wanted to cry. Now he understood what Alec had meant. Because he wanted to cry, too. Strewn across his bed was the gift she’d left him. Her hair. Her glorious honey-brown hair. If Eve had looked like you, he’d told her when he’d seen her naked except for those cascading waves, Adam would have gladly left Eden.
He took two steps toward the bed, and then stopped short as her message hit him like a physical blow. She’d left it all behind. For him. Because he’d made her feel ashamed. Ashamed of every intimate moment they’d spent together. She’d hacked it off and discarded it, as if she couldn’t bear the reminder of the times he’d caressed her body through the silk of her hair, as if she couldn’t bear the reminder of how he’d wrapped her hair around his throat and breathed in the scent of her. As if she couldn’t bear any reminder of him.
A slight sound alerted him to Alec’s presence behind him before the other man spoke from the doorway. “What the hell did you do to her, McKinnon?” he asked, the rage in his voice even more a challenge than his words. And a threat.
Trace didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He didn’t even turn around. He just pushed the door shut in Alec’s face and locked it. Locked himself in with his anguish. “I’m sorry, Princess,” he whispered in a ravaged voice, his eyes squeezing shut as the enormity of what he’d done washed over him. “Oh God, I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” There was no answer except the harsh sound of his tormented breathing.
* * *
Trace spent Christmas Day holed up in his cabin in Keystone. He hadn’t wanted to go back there—memories of the princess at the cabin would haunt him until the day he died—but he had nowhere else to go. His condo was sublet until June; he couldn’t possibly stay at the estate now that he was no longer guarding the princess; and although he’d long since been invited to spend Christmas with the Walkers, he couldn’t envision himself making convivial small talk with the Walkers’ other guests. Especially since two of them—Keira’s brothers, Alec and Liam—would be staring at him with the contempt decent men reserved for rapists and child molesters.
He’d brought a bottle of Johnny Walker Black along with the intention of getting wasted, but he couldn’t even bring himself to break the seal. The bottle sat unopened on the counter in the cabin’s tiny kitchen. Nor could he bring himself to start a fire in the fireplace, so he stoically sat on the sofa in the main room, staring at the cold, empty grate, huddled in his ski jacket and woolen scarf until the heater warmed up the room.
He was exhausted. His body craved the respite of dreamless sleep, but for the past five nights he’d only slept in snatches. Every time he dozed off he dreamed of the princess as he’d last seen her, her eyes huge in a face from which all color had fled. All except for that thin line of blood on her lip, crimson as she whispered her worst nightmare come true. Photographs?