Chapter 24

Stefan watched Nicki mingle across the room as he made his own rounds. With everyone she met, she was bright, vivacious, engaged—and authentic, despite her almost relentless cheer. Was that due to the people who connected with her, all of them athletes or former athletes? Or would she be that way to everyone who approached her, from toddler to grandmother?

He frowned, shaking his head at the unexpected thought. Nicki Clark had so far performed exactly as he needed her to. She'd shown up and done the work, logging the video blogs, going where he told her to go, doing whatever he'd asked. She hadn't lost her nerve on the island—and she should have. She hadn't balked at working long days doing articles purely for cover, not for pay—and she should have, given that she was a professional journalist. She'd endured his sarcasm and his judgment and taken it as her due.

That last continued to bother him, and he lifted his hand idly to rub his chest as he studied her. There was something about Nicki that was almost fatalistic, as if she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. She was only twenty-three...too young to have come by that belief the usual way. She didn't appear to be crushed by life's experiences, but instead was someone who took them on full force, learning and adapting to each new challenge.

So why was she so hesitant? Timid wasn't the right word—no one would ever accuse her of timidity. But there was almost an expectation that she would somehow do the wrong thing, say the wrong words, react the wrong way. It didn't make sense.

At that moment, Nicki caught him staring at her across the room. Another woman would have acted coy, or pretended she didn't notice. Nicki merely grinned and raised her champagne flute, appearing for all the world like she was exactly who she was pretending to be: an adventure blogger thrilled to be rubbing elbows with the glitterati and her home crowd alike.

Only this was who Nicki could be, if she truly wanted to be. He wasn't unaware of the attention she was receiving. He overheard or intuited the job offers. That Nicki responded to each with gracious, non-committal answers once again left him wondering why. She was here as cover, yes, but these offers were for the life she would lead after the need for cover was through. This little jaunt to Turkey was three inconsequential days out of her life. Would she follow up on those opportunities later, if one truly caught her interest?

He shouldn't care. He knew he shouldn't care. Nicki Clark wasn't his mission here, Aristotle Andris was. And Nicki was doing everything she could to ease their way so they could find Ari sooner—whether it was the prince himself, or simply his remains. She was working hard, sacrificing. The least he could do was the same.

If only every time she glanced over at him, his resolve to treat her with polite indifference didn't shatter into a million pieces.

That…was an issue.

By the time they left the party, Nicki glowed like an incandescent bulb, attracting a stream of admiring glances—none more so than from Omir. She knew it too.

"Is he still watching?" she asked with a sunny smile, her words unusually biting despite her carefree expression.

"I think he might well stare a hole in the elevator door."

"Then let's take the stairs," she said. "Anything to move us more quickly out of here is all right by me."

The stairs didn't take them down to the front of the lobby, however, but to the sitting room in the back—a sitting room that opened onto another wide veranda that led down to the water. They exited the hotel that way.

"Our hotel is on the waterfront. We might as well walk," he said, and Nicki nodded.

"It couldn't be a more beautiful night."

Within minutes they were walking down the paved sidewalk to the waterside, Stefan with his jacket slung over his shoulder, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows. They looked like what they supposedly were—two visitors to the resort city with nothing on their mind but surf and sun and whatever the next day's adventure would bring.

Except the next day's adventure would probably bring challenges that would, at a minimum, darken the mood between them. The prince could be behind those walls at the asylum. He could be dead, injured, or damaged beyond recognition. It was unlikely that even if he was alive, he would be the same man who had taken off in that plane nearly a year ago. He might have survived the accident, but he would be irrevocably changed.

"So Omir is warming to the idea of a tour, aided in no small part by Josef's glowing accounts of his student's recon trip up there, despite the fact the kid was peeking over the walls." Nicki said the words casually, gently easing Stefan out of his dark thoughts, as she always did. "He's thinking about ten a.m. That to me is interesting. If the workers up there are truly scrubs from the asylum next door, I'd think that would be high work time for them."

Stefan considered that. "It's possible he doesn't know the details of the work camp, not intimately," he said. "He may know that work is getting completed, but not how, specifically."

She blew out a breath. "Yeah, agreed. The more I think about it, the less realistic I think it would be that he'd be talking about the site at all if there was something hinky going on. Speed is fine. But using prisoners and drunks to build walls and pathways for a tourist destination seems like something that someone would oppose, no matter what country you're in."

Without thinking, Stefan reached for her hand, smoothing over the action by helping her up onto a flight of stairs that led to their hotel. But he didn't let go when he could have—when he should have, for anyone watching. He didn't want to let go.

Nicki, being Nicki, rolled with it. "Josef has wrangled me into the expo tomorrow, you should know," she said, keeping her words light. "It won't be a big deal, a few runs demonstrating more advanced moves. The wind is always perfect here, and the water shallow, so if I wipe out, I won't ding myself up too much."

Her phrasing struck him as odd, and then he remembered—she didn't want to be a liability. He smiled, shaking his head.

"That's no problem. If it strengthens your cover—and our purpose here—for you to show off your windsurfing skills, then that's only to the good. You can't derail the mission."

Her hand stiffened a little in his grasp, and she pulled herself free, moving ahead to the railing of the hotel's wide landing. She rapped on the sturdy wooden crossbar. "Don't jinx us, not when this is all going so well," she said, offering him a lopsided grin.

He stared down at her for a moment, half-caught between light and shadows. He didn't plan to kiss her, not in the open. It wasn't part of his cover, or hers. It didn't move the mission forward.

And, strangely, he didn't give a damn about any of that.

She seemed to know it too, opening her mouth to warn him away and then her face was transfixed, her eyes blinking rapidly as he leaned down. He slid one arm around her, his hand finding her warm skin beneath the silky folds of her dress, and his body responded immediately to the intimate touch. When his lips met hers, the kiss galvanized him, sending all his nerves alight with need—the need to draw her closer, the need to touch every inch of her body, the need to make her his.

Something else overtook him as well. A sudden knowing, a searing awareness that went far deeper than any ordinary connection between a man and a woman. In his arms, Nicki suddenly felt like a spark lit too brightly, flaring bold and fierce in the darkness—and then winking out.

He gasped in real pain, but the devastating vision was gone almost as quickly as it appeared. Nicki swayed in his grasp and pressed closer, her back arching so she could deepen the kiss, her arms up and around his shoulders cradling his head. He bent toward her hungrily and she gave as good as she got, straining toward him on her toes as if she could add another few inches to her already ridiculous shoes.

Stefan's hands dropped, skimming her waist before curving to her backside. Without thinking, he dragged her against his groin until he could feel his shaft stiffen unbearably. Nicki gave a small, feminine moan and wriggled closer still.

"I suppose it wouldn't be a good idea for us to have sex on a public staircase in Turkey?" she whispered.

Stefan barked a laugh, the sudden impossibility of her words combined with her teasing tone striking him exactly the right way. He pulled away quickly, smoothing Nicki's hair, shaking his head in surprise at his own actions.

"I shouldn't have done that. I…I shouldn't."

"It's okay," she grinned, giving him a broad wink. "I have demigods falling all over me all the time. It happens."

Their laughter threaded around them, a comforting balm, all the way to the doors of their hotel.