Second Chance With the Rebel: Her Royal Wedding Wish (18 page)

She decided she loved everything, absolutely everything, about being an ordinary girl. And she hadn’t given up on herself in the domestic department yet, either!

CHAPTER FOUR

A
FTER
A
FEW
minutes
Shoshauna couldn’t help but notice that her pleasure in the simplicity of the breakfast feast seemed to be entirely one-sided.

Ronan, while obviously enjoying the sunshine and eating with male appetite, seemed pensive, turned in on himself, as anxious not to connect with her as she was to connect with him.

“Are you enjoying breakfast?” she asked, craving conversation, curious about this man who had become her protector.

He nodded curtly.

She realized she was going to have to be more direct! “Tell me about yourself,” she invited.

He shot her a look, looked away. “There’s nothing to tell. I’m a soldier. That means my life is ninety-nine percent pure unadulterated boredom.”

She supposed you didn’t learn to make a bed like that if you led a life of continuous excitement, but she knew he was fudging the truth. She could tell, from the way he carried himself, from the calm with which he had handled things yesterday that he dealt with danger as comfortably as most men dealt with the reading of the morning paper.

“And one percent what?” she asked when it became apparent he was going to add nothing voluntarily.

“All hell breaking loose.”

“Oh!” she said genuinely intrigued. “All hell breaking loose! That sounds exciting.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say that word,” he said, ignoring her implied invitation to share some of his most exciting experiences with her.

“Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell,” she said, and found it very liberating both to say the word and to defy him. Her society prized meekness in women, but she had made the discovery she was not eager to be anyone’s prize!

He shot her a stern look. She smiled back. He wasn’t her father! He didn’t look more than a few years older than she was. He couldn’t tell her how to behave!

He sighed, resigned, she hoped, to the fact he was not going to control her. She’d been controlled quite enough. This was her week to do whatever she wanted, including say hell to her heart’s content.

“What’s the most exciting thing that ever happened to you?” she pressed, when he actually shut his eyes, lifted his chin a bit higher to the sun, took a bite of biscuit, apparently intent on pretending he was dining alone and ignoring her questions.

He thought about it for a minute, but his reluctance to engage in this conversation was palpable. Finally he said, without even opening his eyes, “I ran into a grizzly bear while in Canada on a mountain survival exercise.”

“Really?” she breathed. “What happened?” It was better than she could have hoped. Better than a movie! She waited for him to tell her what she could picture so vividly—Ronan wrestling the primitive animal to the ground with his bare hands...

“It ran one way and I ran the other.”

She frowned, sharply disappointed at his lack of heroics. “That doesn’t sound very exciting!”

“I guess you had to be there.”

“I think I would like to go to the mountains in Canada.” Yes, even with bears, or maybe because of bears, it sounded like an adventure she’d enjoy very much. “Are the mountains beautiful? Is there snow?”

“Yes, to both.”

“What’s snow like?” she asked wistfully.

“Cold.”

“No, what does it feel like.” Again, he was trying to disengage, but he was the only person she’d ever met who had experienced snow, and she had to know.

“It’s different all the time,” he said, giving in a little, as if he sensed her needing to know. “If it’s very cold the snow is light and powdery, like frozen dust. If it’s warmer it’s heavy and wet and sticks together. You can build things with it when it’s like that.”

“Like a snowman?”

“Yeah, I suppose. I built a snow cave out of it.”

“Which kind is better for sledding?”

“The cold, dry kind. What do you know about that?”

“Nothing. I’ve seen it on television. I’ve always had a secret desire to try it, a secret desire to see different things than here, more beautiful.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything more beautiful than this,” he said. “It’s a different kind of beauty. More rugged. The landscape there is powerful rather than gentle. It reminds a person of how small they are and how big nature is.” He suddenly seemed to think he was talking too much. “I’m sure your husband will take you there if you want to go,” he said abruptly.

It was her turn to glare at him. She didn’t want to be reminded, at this moment, that her life was soon going to involve a husband.

“I’m fairly certain Prince Mahail,” she said, “is about as interested in tobogganing in snow as he is in training a water buffalo to tap dance.”

“He doesn’t like traveling? Trying new things?” He did open his eyes then, lower his chin. He was regarding her now with way too much interest.

She felt a sensation in her stomach like panic. “I don’t know what he likes,” she said, her voice strangled. She felt suddenly like crying, looked down at her plate and blinked back the tears.

Her life had come within seconds of being linked forever to a man who was a stranger to her. And despite the fact the heavens had taken pity on her and granted her a reprieve, there was no guarantee that linking would not still happen.

“Hey,” Ronan said, “hey, don’t cry.”

After all the events of yesterday, including being shot at, this was the first time she’d heard even the smallest hint of panic in that calm voice!

“I’m not crying,” she said. But she was. She scrubbed furiously at the tear that worked its way down her cheek. She didn’t want Ronan to be looking at her like that because he felt sorry for her!

She reminded herself she was supposed to be finding out about Ronan, not the other way around!

“What made you want to be a soldier?” she asked, trying desperately for an even tone of voice, to change the subject, to not waste one precious second contemplating all the adventures she was not going to have once she was married to Mahail.

Something flickered in his eyes. Sympathy? Compassion? Whatever it was, he opened up to her just the tiniest little bit.

“I had a lousy home life as a kid. I wanted routine. Stability. Rules. I found what I was looking for.” He regarded her intently, hesitated and then said softly, “And you will, too. Trust me.”

He would be such an easy man to trust, to believe that he had answers.

“Isn’t it a hard life you’ve chosen?” she asked him, even though what she really wanted to say was how? How will I ever find what I’m looking for? I don’t even know where to look!

He shrugged, tilted his chin back toward the sun. “Our unit’s unofficial motto is Go Hard or Go Home. Some would see it as hard. I see it as challenging.”

Was there any subtle way to ask what she most wanted to ask, besides How will I ever find what I’m looking for? It was inappropriate to ask him, and too soon. But still, she was not going to find herself alone on a deserted island with an extremely handsome man ever again.

She had to know. She had to know if he was available. Even though she herself, of course, was not. Not even close.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” She hoped she wasn’t blushing.

He opened his eyes, shot her a look, closed them again. “No.”

“Why not?”

His openness came to an abrupt end. That firm line appeared again around his mouth. “What is this? Twenty questions at the high school cafeteria?”

“What’s a high school caff-a-ter-ee-a?”

“Never mind. I don’t have a girlfriend because my lifestyle doesn’t lend itself to having a girlfriend.”

“Why?”

He sighed, but she was not going to be discouraged. Her option was to spend the week talking to him or talking to herself. At the moment she felt her survival depended on focusing on his life, rather than her own.

Maybe her desperation was apparent because he caved slightly. “I travel a lot. I can be called away from home for months at a time. I dismantle the odd bomb. I jump from airplanes.”

“Meeting the grizzly bear wasn’t the most exciting thing that ever happened to you!” she accused.

“Well, it was the most exciting thing that I’m allowed to talk about. Most of what I do is highly classified.”

“And dangerous.”

He shrugged. “Dangerous enough that it doesn’t seem fair to have a girlfriend or a family.”

“I’m not sure,” she said, thoughtfully, “what is unfair about being yourself?”

He looked at her curiously and she explained what she meant. “The best thing is to be passionate about life. That’s what makes people really seem alive, whole, isn’t it? If they aren’t afraid to live the way they want to live and to live fully? That’s what a girlfriend should want for you. For a life that makes you whole. And happy. Even if it is dangerous.”

She was a little embarrassed that she, who had never had a boyfriend, felt so certain about what qualifications his girlfriend should have. And she was sadly aware that passion, the ability to be alive and whole, were the very qualities she herself had lost somewhere a long the way.

As if to underscore how much she had lost or never discovered, he asked her, suddenly deciding to have a conversation after all, “So, what’s the most exciting thing you’ve ever done?”

Been shot at. Cut my hair. Ridden a motorcycle.

All the most exciting events of her life had happened yesterday! It seemed way too pathetic to admit that, though it increased her sense of urgency, this was her week to live.

“I’m afraid that’s classified,” she said, and was rewarded when he smiled, ever so slightly, but spoiled the effect entirely by chucking her under her chin as if she was a precocious child, gathered their plates and stood up.

Shoshauna realized, that panicky sensation suddenly back, that she had to squeeze as much into the next week as she possibly could. “I’m putting on my bathing suit now and going swimming. Are you coming?”

He looked pained. “No. I’ll look after the dishes.”

“We can do the dishes later. Together. You can show me how.”

He said another nice word under his breath.

She repeated it, and when he gave her that look, the stern, forbidding, don’t-mess-with-me look, she said it again!

When he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, a man marshaling his every resource, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was dreading this week every bit as much as she was looking forward to it.

“How about if we do the dishes now?” he said. “In this climate I don’t think you want to leave things out to attract bugs. And then,” he added, resigned, “if you really want, I’ll show you how to make biscuits.”

She eyed him suspiciously. He didn’t look like a man who would be the least bothered by a few bugs. He’d probably eaten them on occasion! And he certainly did not look like a man who wanted to give out cooking lessons.

So that left her with one conclusion. He didn’t like the water. No, that wasn’t it. And then, for some reason, she remembered the look on his face when he’d put that pink bikini back on the rack in the store yesterday.

And she understood perfectly!

Ronan did not want to see her in a bikini. Which meant, as much as he didn’t want to, he found her attractive.

A shiver went up and down her spine, and she felt something she had not felt for a very long time, if she had ever felt it at all.

Without knowing it, Ronan had given her a very special gift. Princess Shoshauna felt the exquisite discovery of her own power.

“I’d love to learn to make biscuits instead of going swimming,” she said meekly, the perfect B’Ranasha princess. Then she smiled to herself at the relief he was unable to mask in his features. She had a secret weapon. And she would decide when and where to use it.

* * *

“Hey,” Ronan snapped, “cut it out.”

The princess ignored him, took another handful of soap bubbles and blew them at him. Princess Shoshauna had developed a gift for knowing when it was okay to ignore his instructions and when it wasn’t, and it troubled him that she read him so easily after four days of being together.

He had not managed to keep her out of the bathing suit, hard as he had tried. He’d taken her at her word that she wanted to learn things and had her collecting fruit and firewood. He’d taught her how to start a decent fire, showed her edible plants, a few rudimentary survival skills.

Ronan had really thought she would lose interest in all these things, but she had not. Her fingers were covered in tiny pinpricks from her attempts to handle a needle and thread, she was sporting a bruise on one of her legs from trying to climb up a coconut tree, she gathered firewood every morning with enthusiasm and without being asked. Even her bed making was improving!

He was reluctantly aware that the princess had that quality that soldiers admired more than any other. They called it “try.” It was a never-say-die, never-quit determination that was worth more in many situations than other attributes like strength and smarts, though in fact the princess had both of those, too, her strength surprising, given her physical size.

Still, busy as he’d tried to keep her, he’d failed to keep her from swimming, though he’d developed his own survival technique for when she donned the lime-green handkerchief she called a bathing suit.

The bathing suit was absolutely astonishing on her. He knew as soon as he saw it that he had been wrong thinking the pink one he’d made her put back would look better, because nothing could look better.

She was pure, one-hundred-percent-female menace in that bathing suit, slenderness and curves in a head-spinning mix. Mercifully, for him, she was shy about wearing it, and got herself to the water’s edge each day before dropping the towel she wrapped herself in.

His survival technique: he went way down the beach and spearfished for dinner while she swam. He kept an eye on her, listened for sounds of distress, kept his distance.

He was quite pleased with his plan, because she was so gorgeous in a bathing suit it could steal a man’s strength as surely as Delilah had stolen Sampson’s by cutting off his hair.

Shoshauna blew some more bubbles at him.

“Cut it out,” he warned her again.

She chuckled, unfortunately, not the least intimidated by him anymore.