Prologue
Europe, the Country of Baronovia, February
Flailing helplessly, U.S. Secret Service agent Mike Wheeler tumbled to the ground. Moments before, he’d been idly checking out security measures around the palace where the wedding of Duchess Mary Louise to Commander Wade Stevens of the U.S. Navy was to take place in a few hours. Now, he was lying on his back in a bed of carefully tended petunias and staring up into a pair of startled blue eyes.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry! I’m afraid I wasn’t looking where I was going. Are you okay? Here, let me help you up!” A pair of manicured feminine hands pulled at his tuxedo jacket.
Mike bit back the paralyzing pain in his injured leg and grimly eyed his attacker, Charlie Norris, a fellow American and a member of the wedding party. She was the last person he wanted to meet.
He took a deep breath and struggled to his feet. Getting shot in the line of duty three months ago had been the pits. Getting knocked over by the woman who inadvertently had played a large part in the events that had led to the shooting didn’t make the pain any easier to bear.
“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” She took a corner of her silk stole, wet it between her lips and tried to scrub something off his chin.
To his chagrin, whether he approved of her or not, his body warmed at her touch. And tightened at the sight of full, tempting lips so close to his own. He grabbed her hand before things could become more personal.
“Thank you, no,” he said tightly. “Give me a minute. I’ll be fine.”
She waited hopefully, her concern evident. Considering how he felt about the way trouble seemed to follow Charlie and wind up affecting him, he would have been just as happy to see her leave.
“I understand that there are over two hundred rooms in the palace and that it is surrounded by hundreds of acres of grounds,” he said when he could breath freely again. “How did you manage to pick precisely the same two square feet of ground I was standing on to stumble about on?”
She colored. “I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s the problem,” he agreed as he tried to balance himself squarely on two feet. He hadn’t approved of the lady’s methods as the concierge of Blair House even before she ignored security rules to aid and abet the forbidden courtship and subsequent fairy-tale marriage of today’s unlikely bride and groom. He didn’t approve of her any more now.
Charlie bristled. She had been about to tell Mike she’d barreled into him simply because she had slipped down the sloping lawn. “The only mistake I made was to head for the only friendly face I thought I recognized out here,” she said. “Strike the word friendly. And furthermore,” she went on as she tried to balance on one foot, “it looks as if I’ve sprained my ankle. All you have to show for this accident are a few grass stains!” Turning to leave, she teetered and flailed at empty air.
Instinctively, Mike reached to catch Charlie before she fell. Too late—she stumbled, squealed and, to his discomfort, landed squarely in his arms.
He closed his eyes and mentally counted to ten. However misguided Charlie Norris might be, and no matter how wary he was of what she might do next, she was every bit as soft and warm as he’d been afraid she would turn out to be.
Chapter One
Washington, D.C., April
It was said by some that Washington’s Blair House was jinxed.
Now that it looked as if a second State Department guest within six months had become the target of a disgruntled foreign nationalist, Secret Service agent Mike Wheeler was prepared to believe the rumor. At least this shooting, thank God, hadn’t happened on his watch.
For some reason, whenever Mike thought of Blair House, his thoughts turned to the Blair House concierge, Charlene Norris, dubbed Charlie by all who knew her. She was trouble, blond, blue-eyed trouble. If that wasn’t bad enough, she usually got him involved in whatever trouble she managed to get herself into.
His fears had been realized when he reported for duty that day. The foyer of the residence was teeming with activity. The air smelled of cordite. Cell phones were ringing. Sirens screamed outside, Secret Service agents, anyone with the credentials to get in the front door milled around the reception room where, to his dismay, it looked as if another attempted assassination had taken place.
His practiced eye took in a wounded man who lay sprawled, groaning on the marble entry floor clutching his bleeding shoulder. An agitated man dressed in a foreign military uniform stood handcuffed in the custody of two D.C. policemen. The cuffed man was protesting at the top of his lungs, but the police seemed to be ignoring their suspect. One D.C. lawman gingerly held a smoking gun by two fingers while a third was preparing to fit the gun into a plastic evidence bag.
Off to the side, six uniformed staff members stood gaping at the scene being played out in front of them. Mike didn’t blame them. He could hardly believe it himself.
He cut through the mob scene until he caught sight of Charlie Norris. She looked as if she was in a state of shock. There was blood on one of her wrists and on the skirt of her tailored beige suit. He was concerned at the sight, but not surprised. He’d had the sinking feeling that somehow she would be in the thick of any action, hadn’t he?
And not for the first time.
As if on cue, his leg started to ache. The pain reminded him of the night a disenchanted Baronovian nationalist had attempted to assassinate Prince Alexis of Baronovia and his daughter, the duchess Mary Louise, the night he’d been wounded in the line of duty.
In his book, trouble, Charlie and his aching leg were synonymous.
He wasn’t actually afraid of what she might do next. Almost half his size, he could have handled two of her. Besides, problem-solving was his job. What he was afraid of was a loose cannon, a description that custom-fit Charlie Norris to a T.
There was another concern, he thought uneasily as he made his way through the crowded room to where the shooting had taken place. He was too fascinated with Charlie for his own good. A fatal attraction if there ever was one, he thought unhappily.
Gazing at Charlie today, he realized that Charlie Norris, the coltish figure from the Baronovia caper, obviously was a magnet for trouble. Her hair was summer sunbeams, her eyes the color of clear blue summer skies. Used as a weapon, à la the famed Helen of Troy, her blue eyes could have sunk a thousand battleships. But instead of her usual professional, tailored appearance, tonight she looked distraught and disheveled.
Normally, Charlie had the most sinful and inviting smile he’d ever encountered on a woman. And, to his professional way of thinking, the darndest way of talking herself out of any problem she managed to get herself into. She wasn’t smiling now. After a glance around at the chaotic activity, he couldn’t blame her.
He bit back his frustration as he came up along her side. To his chagrin, his body reminded him he hadn’t been with a woman for a while; not since before the Baronovian shooting. Why in the hell he remembered this now, in a room full of people that resembled a scene out of a TV mystery comedy, beat the hell out of him. Maybe it was the excitement of the moment—he always seemed to feel high when danger threatened. If that weren’t so, he never would have joined the Secret Service nor would he have met Charlie.
Mike ground to a halt and turned his gaze on her. From the distressed expression on her face, he knew she had to have been present when all hell had broken loose.
“What?” she said before he could open his mouth. She glared at him from under narrowed eyebrows and crossed her arms in front of her as if to put some distance between them. She certainly didn’t look pleased to see him. Maybe it was difficult for her to read his opinion of the situation.
He might have been more surprised at her question, if he’d been paying