Chapter 11
The first thing Talia was aware of was pain. Excruciating, bone-deep pain that caused her to groan out loud.
“Shh, it’s okay,” a voice soothed. “You’re okay.”
Talia didn’t feel okay. In fact, she felt as if she had been run over by a truck and then that truck had reversed back over her for good measure.
Her breath caught in her throat as she attempted to turn in the direction of that voice, causing the pain to centralize in her left shoulder and back.
Which was when it all came back to her. Seeing her father Knowing him for exactly what he was. Ethan attacking the two bodyguards. The bullets raining down from the hillside. More bodyguards. One of them pointing a gun at Ethan’s chest. Her running in front of him as the gun was fired. The bloom of pain in her shoulder before it spread to every part of her and became so all-consuming, she blacked out.
“Try not to move again,” that voice murmured. “I’ll get the doctor so he can give you something to help with the pain—”
“No!” Even the act of making her voice loud enough to be heard made Talia’s chest ache. She opened her eyelids instead of moving again, taking a few seconds to acclimatize to the bright sunlight before she focused on the face of a worried Stazzi as the other woman peered down at her anxiously. Not the beautiful and composed regal princess today, but a woman with tousled blonde hair, with dark shadows under her eyes and her clothing crumpled and creased.
Stazzi.
Not Ethan.
“Ethan is okay,” the other woman assured her, telling Talia she must have whispered his name out loud.
“Where…?”
“Where is he?” Stazzi anticipated what she was trying to say. “He stepped out for a few minutes. He’s been sitting with you night and day since they brought you back here.”
Talia moved her head slowly to take in her surroundings and realized she was back in the same bedroom she and Ethan had slept in at the palace two night ago. But was it two nights ago? Stazzi said Ethan had been sitting with her night and day. “How long?”
“Two days, three days since you were shot.” Again, Stazzi seemed to realize what she was asking. “Our doctor here gave you something that would help you with the pain and let you sleep through the worst of it.”
If this wasn’t the worst of the pain, then Talia was grateful for the doctor’s decision to keep her knocked out. “Could I—” Her mouth was so dry, she couldn’t moisten her lips. “Water, please,” she finally managed to croak.
“Oh God, yes. What am I thinking of, the doctor said you would be thirsty when you woke.” Stazzi turned to the side table, and there was the sound of water being poured seconds before she turned and helped Talia to sit up against the pillows a little bit before lifting the glass of water to her lips. “Slowly, and only small sips,” Stazzi cautioned.
It hurt to swallow, but Talia doubted that even the best champagne would taste half as good as the few sips of water she managed to swallow before sinking gratefully back against the pillows.
She could think a little more clearly now. Remembered arriving back at the motel in Tampa, and Ethan carrying her inside. He had refused to release her but sat on the bed cradling her in his arms while Caleb examined the wound on her shoulder. Caleb had then injected her with something to help with the pain while he stitched and then dressed the entry and exit wounds.
Whatever Caleb had given her for the pain must have knocked her out, because she didn’t remember flying back to Androcco, being brought to this bedroom in the palace, or being examined by a doctor.
“The doctor said Caleb did a professional job stitching your shoulder. There will hardly be any scars at all,” Stazzi reassured her. “I’m so sorry about your father, Talia.”
Talia felt a different sort of pain at her father’s betrayal. She had looked up to him for the first twenty years of her life, believed him to be only a successful businessman. Everything had happened so fast once the bomb went off under his SUV on his way home from a business meeting, and the truth was revealed as to his true identity. They had been on the run ever since, taking on so many different identities, Talia had no longer known who she was anymore.
She had reacted purely on instinct when her father disappeared from Nassau, sure that someone had kidnapped him and she was the only one who could save him. The truth was far less noble. Her father, also tired of running, had left her there without a word of explanation as to where and why he was going to Florida to see his partner in crime, Antipov.
“Not here, is he?”
“The doctor is just downstairs—”
“Ethan’s not here,” she said weakly.
Stazzi took Talia’s hand in hers as she sank down onto the chair beside the bed, where she had obviously been siting before Talia woke. “He was here for the first twenty-four hours.” She frowned. “But the doctor said you were in no danger, and Gabriel and the others needed to get back to England and their families, and so he—they—”
“Alizoti.”
“Yes,” the other woman confirmed softly.
“All of them? Alexandre too?”
“Yes.”
Talia squeezed Stazzi’s hand. “Be okay.” She had watched Ethan in amazement at the Antipov estate as he disarmed and disabled two of the Russian’s bodyguards using only his hands and feet for weapons. “Be okay,” she repeated in a slurred voice, more for her own benefit than Stazzi’s.
Because Ethan might be an expert in martial arts, but he wasn’t bulletproof. And he, his brothers, and Alexandre were going up against a man who wouldn’t give up until he’d taken vengeance for the son who’d been killed.
“He’s stepped out for a few minutes,” she chided the other woman softly.
Stazzi looked slightly shamefaced at having told the lie. “I didn’t want you to worry.”
“Or you.” Talia gave the other woman’s hand another squeeze. “Be fine.” She wanted to say more. To know more. How long the men had been gone. If Stazzi had heard from them since they left. When were they coming back?
But she found she wasn’t able to keep her eyes open a moment longer as the tide of darkness washed over her again and she fell back into unconsciousness.
It was dark when she woke a second time, only the small bedside lamp illuminating the room.
She did a quick mental check of her body. Her shoulder felt less painful, but she was loath to move in case that movement made it start to throb again.
Stazzi was no longer sitting in the chair beside the bed.
And yet Talia still somehow sensed that she wasn’t alone.
She lay very still, allowing her senses to reach out, to listen, to— There, she could hear someone else breathing. Slow and shallow, but definitely there.
Without moving her head too much, which seemed to hurt, Talia allowed her gaze to slowly flit to the four shadowed corners of the bedroom.
Her own breath caught and held as she saw someone was sitting in the shadows to the left of the French doors opening out onto her balcony.
“It’s done,” Ethan stated flatly.
He didn’t need to say any more. “Did you do it?”
“Gabriel was a sniper in the army.”
A sob of relief hitched in the back of Talia’s throat. Ethan already had the specter of Vaso Alizoti’s death hanging over his head for the rest of his life. He didn’t need to have the father’s there too.
The fact Ethan remained in the shadows filled her with dread. “Will there be more reprisals?”
“No.” He breathed deeply. “His successor has dismissed all blood debts.”
“Thank God.” She shuddered with relief before frowning. “Was anyone hurt?” Were you hurt, was what she really wanted to ask, but was almost afraid of the answer.
“You.”
“I meant—”
“I know what you meant, Talia.”
“All back safely?”
“Yes.” He surged to his feet, thrusting his hands into his jeans pockets as he stepped forward into the soft glow given off by the lamp.
Talia’s gaze moved over him hungrily. His face was grim: eyes sunken into the dark sockets, the skin stretched tautly over high cheekbones, cheeks hollow, mouth unsmiling, his jaw tensely set.
She lowered her gaze to look for any sign he had been injured, knowing Ethan well enough to realize he wouldn’t tell her if he had. A black T-shirt clung to his muscular chest and the bulging muscles at the tops of his arms. Black jeans hugged lean hips and long muscular legs, heavy black boots on his feet.
There was no blood on any of them.
“I’m not hurt, Talia.” There was an edge to his voice. “It’s over.”
Then why was he keeping his distance? They were both free now to—
To do what?
Ethan’s agreement to help her find her father had been grudging at best. He had his own personal demons to fight, without taking on hers. And yes, he had helped her. The two of them had even made love. But Ethan had been gone the following morning, albeit to go in search of her father. None of that meant Ethan wanted to stay in her life now the danger to both of them was over.
Because it, whatever it had been between them, was also over?
It was up to her to behave like an adult if it was. “Any news on what’s happened to Ivan and Antipov?” She hadn’t like to bother Stazzi with that particular question earlier.
“Arrested. They, and the missing money, are being returned to Russia.”
Talia knew she should feel something, sadness, regret, loss, but her father’s actions had almost gotten Ethan killed. She had almost gotten him killed. All she felt now was the relief of not having to run anymore. Maybe those regrets about her father would come later, but she didn’t think so.
“Will you be going back to England with your brothers?”
Ethan shook his head. “They already left.”
“Oh.” She was disappointed she wouldn’t be able to thank them or say good-bye to them, but relieved Ethan was still here. “Back to Majorca, then?”
“Maybe,” he said grudgingly.
Talia moistened her lips, never having been in the position of parting from a lover before. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do or say next. Emotions had been running high the past few days, and sexual release had been the perfect outlet to that tension. She needed to thank Ethan and let him go—wherever it was he wanted to go. Which clearly wasn’t anywhere she was.
“Why did you do it?” Ethan demanded as he stepped closer to the bed, his body so tightly coiled, he was almost afraid to get too close to Talia in case he made a fucking idiot of himself and turned caveman on her again. She wasn’t strong enough to cope with that sort of shit from him. Because she had been shot, damn it. Shot!
Her frown was puzzled. “Do what?”
“Take a bullet for me.” Every time he closed his eyes, he could see that scene again. Talia stepping in front of him. The jerk of her body as the bullet ripped through her. The sheer panic when he thought she was dead.
None of that panic had subsided as he watched Caleb sewing her up at the motel, or when he held her in his arms on the flight back to Androcco. Nor as he sat beside her as she lay so still and white in this bed for the next twenty-four hours, until the doctor assured him she was completely out of danger from infection. Nor had she been out of his thoughts for a single moment during all that had gone down in Atlanta.
All the time, that question as to why she had taken that bullet for him had been reverberating around inside his head.
“I’m not a hero either, Ethan.” She teased him about one of his earlier comments. “It was pure instinct on my part. I saw the bodyguard aiming his gun at you, and I tried to stop him.”
“You stepped in front of me,” Ethan corrected. “Not the same thing at all.”
“You wouldn’t have been there if not for me.” She shrugged. “Besides, you would have done the same for me.”
Yes, he would. And there was a reason why he would. The question was, had Talia done it for the same reason?
He was standing directly next to the bed now. “Where are you going once you’re well enough to leave?”
She gave a rueful smile. “I honestly have no idea.”
“Majorca is nice this time of year.”
She blinked, her smile becoming uncertain as she gazed up at him. “Yes, it is.”
“A daily swim in the salt water of the Med would help your wound heal quicker.”
“Yes, it would.”
Ethan felt some of his tension ease when she didn’t say an outright no to his suggestions. “For the first time in five years, you could even travel with the passport under the name of Talia Morris now.”
“Yes, I could.”
“Or maybe you could travel as”—he drew in a deep breath before finishing the sentence—“Talia Knight in future.”
Silence.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck.
He had moved to soon. Or, more likely, simply misread the situation completely. So what if Talia had given him her virginity? She hadn’t exactly had any opportunity to give it to anyone else the last three years. She hadn’t said she felt anything for him other than desire.
Any more than he had said he felt anything more for her…
Yes, she had taken a bullet for him, but she could have just felt responsible.
He was a fucking moron. Had no idea how to tell this woman how he felt about her other than to simply say—
“Yes, I could.” Talia sounded breathless as she finally answered him.
Again, she hadn’t said an outright no. “Of course you would have to marry me first.”
“Yes.”
His heart skipped several beats. “Is that a yes, I realize that, or a yes, I’ll marry you?”
“That depends.”
Ethan eyed her warily. “On what?”
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue before speaking. “On whether or not you’re offering to marry me because you’re grateful to me for saving your life. Because you feel sorry for me. Or because—because you love me.” Her cheeks were flushed.
“Well, I’m grateful to Gabriel too for dealing with the problem of Alizoti, but I’m not offering to marry him.”
“That’s because he’s your brother.”
“No, it’s because I don’t— Why the fuck would I feel sorry for you?” he demanded incredulously. “You’re young and beautiful, and have, what I hope, will be a long life ahead of you.”
“And I may currently be staying in a palace, but I’m also currently homeless, an unemployed hacker, and I have very little money to call my own.”
“I never thought of that,” he murmured ruefully. “That sucks, huh?”
“Yes.”
“I think I may have the answer to your problem.”
“You do?”
“I already have a home, two in fact, one in England, one in Majorca. If you want a job, then I believe Knight Security would happily employ you for your…computer skills.” He gave her a telling glance. “As for having little money… I have enough to last us both for the rest of our lives.”
“And what would you want in return?”
He instantly fell to his knees beside the bed. “Talia, I love you. I want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you, if you’ll have me.”
If she’d have him?
If Talia could have jumped out of bed and thrown herself into his arms at that moment, shouting yes, yes, yes, then she would have done. As it was, all she could do was roll over onto her side and fall out of the bed straight into Ethan’s hastily raised arms. Even so, her weight overbalanced him and they both ended up lying on the floor, Talia on top of Ethan.
“Can I take that as a yes?” he murmured once he’d caught his breath.
“Oh, it’s definitely a yes,” Talia assured him happily. “I love you, Ethan. I have loved you for so long. All my adult life, it seems.”
He touched her cheek gently. “I’m pretty sure I’ve loved you since the moment I first saw you too.”
She lowered her head, and the two of them kissed with all the pent-up love they had felt for each other for so many years.
“If I talk to Alexandre nicely,” Ethan murmured a long time later, “as the ruler of Androcco, he might be able to arrange for you to become a citizen of the island. Then the two of us could be married here before we leave for Majorca. I’m sure my family, your family too now, will be only too happy to fly back for the wedding.”
It warmed Talia inside to think of the Knight family as her own. She’d never had a real family, and now Ethan was giving her one of those too. “Yes, please.”
That warranted another lengthy time kissing and murmuring their love for each other.
“Are you going to be this compliant when we’re married?” Ethan teased.
“Doubtful.”
He chuckled. “That’s what I thought.”
Talia’s expression was completely serious as she gazed down at him. “But I do promise to always love you.”
Ethan gazed back at her just as seriously. “And I promise to always love you.”
It was the same vow they made to each other in the cathedral on Androcco only two short weeks later. Surrounded by all the Knight family, and their friends, they became Mr. & Mrs. Ethan and Talia Knight.
It was the only name Talia wanted for the rest of her life.
Turn the page to read your BONUS novella, Resisting Alexandre (Knight Security 0.5)