Alec's Royal Assignment (Man On A Mission Book 3) by Amelia Autin Read Free Book Online Page B

year’s leave of absence from the university after the twins were born. The plan wouldn’t work if she had to rush home to get back to teaching, because it involves her, too.”
    “So you want Mara to stay on here in order to give me an ostensible reason for staying on, do I have that right?”
    “Pretty much. And the job is right up the agency’s alley. I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”
    McKinnon nodded thoughtfully. “It tracks. And Mara did take a year’s sabbatical.” A smile crept across his face. “I’ll have to check with her, but I know what she’ll say.”
    “So, you’re in?”
    “Are you kidding? Making Mara happy by giving her a reason to stay here indefinitely? It’s a no-brainer.”
    * * *
    Angelina sat quietly in one corner of the queen’s sitting room as Queen Juliana and Princess Mara drank tea and shared confidences about their husbands and their children in the way of longtime friends—which they were.
    Angelina hadn’t said anything when the queen had introduced her favorite bodyguard to her best friend a week ago, but she’d been thrilled to have finally met the princess who’d played such a pivotal role in her life. The princess was only a few months older than Angelina, but she’d been held up to Angelina as a role model by her mother since she was a little girl.
    Angelina’s mother hadn’t realized Angelina wasn’t patterning herself after the princess as a lady—she was inspired instead by the princess’s scholastic achievements and steadfast determination to achieve her goals, despite the common Zakharian attitude toward women.
    Angelina had been fired up to follow in the princess’s footsteps. Not in mathematics—she’d known that wasn’t her forte—but she’d pushed herself to excel scholastically just as the princess had done. She’d graduated from college a year early and followed that up immediately with law school and then a budding career as a prosecutor—as budding a career in the law as any woman could find in Zakhar—before joining the military.
    Her original dream of being a prosecutor might have been supplanted by her current dream job as one of the queen’s bodyguards, but that didn’t mean her original dream was gone. Someday she’d go back to it. Just not anytime soon.
    “Trace tells me you and Captain Zale met Alec at the airport,” Princess Mara said, and suddenly Angelina realized the princess was addressing her. “What did you think of him?”
    Angelina wasn’t about to admit she’d met Alec more than once—or that she’d kissed him twice—so she searched for something innocuous to say about a man the princess held in affection. “He seemed...nice, Your Highness.”
    “Mara, please,” the princess said. “I am an American now, and I prefer the freedom of being just me.” Her green eyes twinkled. “And Alec is many things, but
nice
is not a word I would have picked to describe him.” She tilted her head to one side. “Liam, now,
he
is nice. Sweet, too. And idealistic. But Alec?” She shook her head. “No, Alec is not sweet. And he is not idealistic. But he is a man to contend with. I would not want to be on the wrong side of him, but I would trust him with my life.”
    * * *
    Humming a tune under his breath, Alec left the McKinnons’ suite and headed for the grand staircase. He was just about to go down when he saw a woman come out of another suite on the other side of the landing. A woman he recognized in a heartbeat. Recognized, and wanted to talk to. Urgently.
    He’d thought of Angelina whenever he’d had a free moment. And even when he didn’t really have a free moment, just a few seconds. Every night since he’d last seen her in the cathedral—since he’d kissed her until they were both trembling—he’d found himself thinking how lonely his bed was without her. As if they were already lovers. As if he knew what it would be like with her, so that her absence hurt. Physically. An ache that started—predictably—in his