“Running for another twenty minutes won’t ultimately make any difference.”
Well, tough. She wasn’t in charge of her security. Elias called those shots. “Not today, but it could someday. You know the secret to perfecting a skill? Practice it for ten thousand hours.”
She stopped completely, braced herself with her hands on her thighs, and shot him the smile that always melted his heart like a ray of sunshine. “That’s hilarious.”
“It’s proven fact.” Elias had read the book about outliers years ago and applied its theories to his shooting and fighting techniques. Putting in the time made all the difference. It was why he felt confident protecting the princess by himself right now.
On royal grounds.
Still connected to his team by earbud.
And wearing a revolver as well as three knives.
“No, it’s hilarious you think you can goad me into running for ten thousand hours. That’s more than four hundred days. More than a year straight. Not. Gonna. Happen.”
Elias adored her stubborn streak. The way she stood up for what she wanted and believed, no matter what. Personally, at least. Professionally, her attitude made his job much more difficult. “I’m not suggesting you do it without breaks. Merely that if you must start sometime, you might as well start today.”
She extended her hand to him, fingers outstretched. He didn’t rise to the bait. After tossing him a questioning glance, she awkwardly laced her fingers through his. “I’d rather rely on you to keep me safe. Becoming a better sprinter doesn’t seem like the best long-term solution.”
“Correct.” Holding her felt so right, and it also felt so wrong. He let go, quickly backing up a few steps to separate them. “That’s why you’ll need to keep at your hand-to-hand. Start learning karate. Something that will help you use your own weight as leverage against a far bigger attacker. We’ll get you down to the gun range, as well. Perhaps a short dagger.”
“A knife?” Sunlight shafted through the trees to highlight her look of incredulity. “You want me to walk around with a knife sheathed to my thigh like I’m an assassin?”
“Yes.”
“No.” Her voice was flat. Like she damn well expected him to do what she said, no questions asked.
Like a princess.
Elias hated them being on opposite sides. Hated not letting her live in a bubble of happy naivete. “Your Highness, this isn’t a discussion. You can’t pull rank. Not when it comes to your safety. For now, I’m in charge of it. You must follow my direction.”
She crossed her arms. “One step at a time. One measured step at a time.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“God. Why are you being like this?” She backed away from him. As if to make it clear they were on opposite sides. The yawning chasm between them was palpable. “Look, personal weapons have a high statistical rate of being turned around and used against you by an attacker. I don’t want to be stabbed by my own knife. On top of being dead, I’d be mortally embarrassed.”
“You want to quote statistics? Fine.” Because he had them. Reams of information never released to the general public about thwarted attacks against royalty, all over the globe. If Elias had to scare her into submission, he would. “Meet me back here tomorrow and I’ll have pages of statistics supporting my very rational request that you take your personal safety into your own hands.”
She lifted her chin. “I have people for that. Not because I’m lazy or not listening to you, but because you and Marko and everyone in the Royal Protection Service are far more highly qualified to protect me from an attacker. I have faith in all of you.”
Damn it, why did she have to look at him with those wide, trusting violet eyes? Like she believed he could hold off entire armies with his bare hands? It almost made him believe, too.
Which was dangerous.
Elias thwacked his palm against the trunk of the elm tree next to him. “You can’t, Kelsey. You shouldn’t. Your parents did, and look how that ended up. They left you alone, trusting your safety to the head of the RPS. My father, whom I’d entrust my own life to. And he failed them. He failed you. I could do the same.”
“Elias, where is all this coming from?” There was a catch in her throat, confusion that he hated knowing he’d rooted there. “You can’t have received a specific threat against me because the world doesn’t know I’m alive. So why are you harping on this?”
“Because I’m not enough. No one man would be.” The thoughts that had been churning through his brain since his talk with Christian finally coalesced into a gut-wrenching decision. “I will do everything in my power to keep you safe, but there’s no guarantee I’ll succeed. We’ve been lax, Your Highness. Letting other things distract from the basic tenet that you need to be kept safe.”
She threw up her arms, surprising a squirrel into skittering away with loud cheeps. “How about happy? Who’s in charge of keeping me happy?”
Elias swallowed hard. Gritted out the words he wished were a lie. “Not me.”
Her arms dropped, limply, to her sides. “What?”
He’d always known he’d have to be the one strong enough to let go. To push away. To stop the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Elias hadn’t known it would be this hard. That they’d spend every day and many nights together, and already meld into a tight, cohesive unit, a couple. That their hearts would already be so intertwined.
Elias hadn’t known it would hurt so damn much.
He spread his feet wide and locked his hands together behind his back. Hopefully that would be enough to keep him from reaching out to comfort her as he broke her heart.
“My sole job is to keep you safe, Your Highness. I’m afraid I’ve let you down. Once the announcement about you is made public, we’ll adjust your team. I’ll go back to guarding Prince Christian.”
Kelsey pinched her eyes shut, rubbing at her temple. “Explain something to me.” Her eyes flew open, those violet depths sucking him in deep, like a velvet-lined black hole of feelings. Her voice was thick, clogged with emotions he didn’t have the courage to name. “How did you let me down? And, on the ridiculous assumption you did, how is your punishment to guard someone higher in rank than me? What on earth is going on?”
“I’ve let myself become distracted. It is entirely my fault. I’ve let my feelings for you cloud my judgment. Weaken my focus.”
It was happening even as they spoke. With it being summer, there weren’t twigs or leaves on the ground to crunch and give away if someone approached. Having this conversation out in the open was just another in the countless risks he’d taken since assuming protection of the princess. And Elias was grateful that Christian had pointed it out before things got any more out of hand.