Tonight, that would change. She was nervous about what she had to tell him, but he’d take it all. He’d finally make sense of her. The reasons she pushed and pulled. Understanding her past was the last barrier between them and his stomach balled in anticipation. Once he knew it all, he could tell her with conviction that there was nowhere else they belonged than by each other’s sides.
And finally, she would believe him.
Frankie stood staring at her reflection. The mirror didn’t lie—it had always confided the truth behind her charades. A hollow-hearted stare beneath her fine false lashes. The pinch of scruples around her rose-painted mouth. The curl of self-loathing at her top lip. A heaviness to her head, forcing her pearl-strung collarbones to catch the weight that bore down on her neck.
She’d never posed or played a part to fool herself. Never smiled or pouted or practiced lines. Her ability to fall into character had never been something she’d wanted to watch.
At sixteen, she’d sworn she’d never do it again—dress or behave like someone else.
Yet here she was, proof that old habits could rise swift and sharp to the surface like the pair of brass knuckles her fingertips never quite left alone in her pocket.
She shouldn’t be surprised.
It was in her blood, after all.
The restaurant was in an expensive part of the city that Kris hadn’t visited before. It was one of the many establishments surrounding a large square, cobbled and bustling, with a sparkling fountain at its heart and the last stalls of a daily market making way for nightlife.
He and Frankie sat outdoors at an elegant patio table, overlooking the piazza with a platter of canapes and two glasses of fizzing wine. A busker played violin nearby, accompanied by a pair of contemporary dancers who moved like ribbons caught in a current. Chatter was light with laughter in the warm summer evening—sounds to suit the strings of tiny lights and flickering candles in this busy hub of fine dining. If Kris hadn’t spent the past few months acclimating in a palace, he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in such a wealthy setting.
He’d assumed Frankie wouldn’t last two.
Yet she perched on the front half of her chair, ankles crossed and tucked beneath her. Leaning forward with a straight back, she picked up her glass in one hand and rested the forearm of the other arm with casual elegance on the tabletop, her fingers falling just over the edge. Her expression was soft with delight as she watched the dancers.
Shock had silenced him since they’d left the palace.
He’d assumed that tonight she would make sense to him. Reveal the nature of her spikes so he’d finally understand how to hold her without hurting either of them. But instead, she’d . . . instead—
She’d become someone else.
She wore a sundress with the ease of a woman long-used to such fashionable, fitted things. Green with a cream floral pattern and a square neckline, and despite the flowy hem that sat halfway up her thighs, he hadn’t noticed her tug at it once. Her hair was slicked back, gel turning it a dark brown, while a green-blue silk scarf wrapped snug around the base of her head and was tied in a bow at the front. Her makeup was different—finer and wider somehow, as if the shadows and sweeping black lines exposed the innocence in her eyes. She wore lipstick and a pearl necklace, and sipped her flute like she had a lifetime of experience in indulging her expensive tastes.
It was intensely unnerving.
He’d put on the chinos and button-up white shirt she’d sent to his room, and even jammed his hair beneath the Harvard University branded cap, but all that had done was change his clothes.
She’d changed everything.
“Stop staring,” she murmured, and sipped again.
Not knowing where else to look, he picked up a crescent of flaky pastry with a salty, tangy filling. Peripherally, she didn’t even scan as Frankie. Normally she held herself like a concealed yet firmly gripped cudgel: straight-bodied, tight, a small swing to her movements. Instead, her posture and body language were cultivated, polished with the gleam of high society. The discord sat uneasily inside him, and as he chewed, his gaze returned to her.
She sensed him watching. “I told you in the car, I don’t want to be recognized.”
“I don’t even recognize you.”
Her shoulder curled forward in a demure flirtation as she smiled at him. “At least look like you do.”
She was utterly convincing. The trick in transforming herself so completely seemed to lie in changing what he’d believed was her innate behavior. Her bearing, gestures, gait, expressions. If he’d passed her on the street, he wouldn’t know it unless he looked straight at her, and even then . . . Yet more disturbing was that she was behaving like the kind of person who’d be comfortable receiving the attention of a prince.
And he hated it.
He watched as she set her glass down and tightened the knot of her headscarf, looking around a little as if expecting—and privately hoping—someone was watching and admiring her.
Kris’s jaw dropped. “How are you doing that?”
“Don’t look,” she said, ignoring his question as she rested her chin in her hand, elbow featherlight on the table. “But shortly, a man is going to exit the hotel across the square. Pretend you’re watching the dancers. He’ll be with a woman in her middle years, and he’ll leave suddenly, cutting their evening short.”
What? “How could you possibly know that?”
Smiling, she gestured, flicking her fingers to the twilit sky as if commenting on the temperate evening. “Just wait.”
Baffled, he leaned back in the uncomfortable chair and watched the performance. Within a minute, he noted the hotel doors swing around as a couple emerged. The man had a hand on the woman’s back and he absently raised his other hand to check his watch. Jolting in alarm, he drew away, and after a brief exchange, moved in to kiss his companion. Kris risked a proper look, noting the kiss turn from gentle to hungry—like the man was being torn from his beloved—before he pulled back and rushed out of the square. The woman stared after him, disappointment in every line of her perfect posture.
Kris gaped after the retreating man. “I’m so confused.”
Frankie stood, tucking more than enough money to cover their meal beneath the platter. “We follow him.”
Alone and on foot, because Frankie had given his guards the night off and didn’t call the car around. In the twenty minutes it took to tail the man uphill to the center of Kiraly, Kris reached several conclusions.
One, Frankie must have done extensive research to believe the man was worthy of observing personally—which presumably connected him to the investigation. Adrenaline nicked Kris’s pulse as they climbed a winding set of mosaic steps through the arts precinct. She was closer than he’d realized.
Two, it explained why she didn’t want them to be recognized. As royal security, her presence could alert the man that he was a suspect.
And three, Kris couldn’t wait for the night to be over so he could get his Frankie back. Even her walk was different, kind of pulled in, a shorter stride and quicker steps. He didn’t like it. Any of it.
Less than a block away from the bar the man had entered, she paused to admire a shopfront window display of women’s clothing. She raised a hand, the fingernails of her thumb and pinkie flicking against each other delicately. “Give it a minute.”