and he found himself admiring the full lips carefully colored with ruby-red lipstick, the high cheekbones pinkened with a blush of color and green eyes that suddenly caused shock to rivet through him.
He knew those green eyes. They weren’t the eyes of a hooker…they were the eyes of a princess. It was Isabel.
Before he had time to assess the situation, before his shock had completely worn off, she launched herself into him, pressing her warm lithe body intimately against his.
“I was just telling Willie here about my handsome hunk of a husband, then I look across the room and there you are,” she said, her head tilted back to look at him. “Now, kiss me, sweetheart, and show Willie just how glad you really are to see me.”
Her eyes beseeched him to play the game and with his head still reeling from shock, with her body warm and soft against his and her perfume dizzying his senses, Adam could do nothing but comply.
Someplace in the back of his mind, as his mouth descended to hers, he knew this was a major mistake. She hadn’t said anything about kissing her when she’d told him they were going undercover.
But, even knowing it was a mistake, Adam couldn’t stop the maelstrom of excitement that coursed through him as he realized he was about to do what he’d dreamed of doing for years. He was going to kiss Princess Isabel Stanbury.
He’d intended the kiss to be a mere brushing of lips, a perfunctory touch of mouths. But, the moment his lips met hers, desire roared through him.
With the press of her breasts against his chest, and his fingers touching the silky warm bare skin of her lower back, Adam lost himself in the kiss.
Her mouth was hot and opened eagerly to him as her arms wound tight around his neck. She tasted sweeter, hotter than in any of his fantasies, and his senses reeled with the reality of her in his arms.
After what seemed like a sweet eternity and a disappointing nanosecond at the same time, she broke the kiss. She took a step back from him, her cheeks flushed a heated pink and her green eyes widened in shock.
“I’d say the man is definitely glad to see you,” Willie snickered.
The man’s words seemed to break the stunned spell that had momentarily gripped Isabel. “Adam, darling, this is Willie Tammerick. He was a friend of my cousin Shane. Willie, this is my husband, Adam Wilcox.”
Adam nodded, disliking the way Willie’s gaze slid over Isabel, as if she were a delectable treat that he couldn’t wait to taste. He noticed other men in the bar looking at her in the same way.
He wanted to wrap his arms around her, find a coat and throw it over her, do whatever he could to hide the luscious curves she had on display. What was she thinking when she picked those revealing clothes? And what on earth had she done to her hair?
His blood boiled and he wasn’t sure if it was because she’d been utterly shameless and irresponsible in choosing her clothes, or if it was a residual effect of the kiss they’d just shared.
Despite his reluctance, he draped a hand over Isabel’s shoulder, keeping her close to his side and establishing a proprietorship to her for every other man in the bar.
“So, you were a friend of Shane’s?” Adam asked, once again directing his attention to Willie Tammerick.
The man was a skinny weasel of a man, with eyes set slightly too close together, a long pointed nose and a scraggly gray beard that cried out for the touch of a sharp razor.
“Sure, Shane and me…we were like this.” He held up two fingers twined together and stumbled slightly as if in raising his arm he’d thrown off his balance. “Poor Shane, shot to death by them royal guards like he was nothing but a damn dog.”
Somehow Adam doubted that a man as smart as Shane Moore would have been close friends with Willie, who appeared to be nothing more than a loose-mouthed drunk.
“I guess Shane got into something over his head,” Isabel said.
Willie grinned at her, a loopy smile that displayed a broken front tooth. “Now he’s in way over his head…six feet under, he is.” His smile fell away as he realized his morbid joke wasn’t appreciated. “There’s lots of us here that are going to miss old Shane. He was always good for buying a round or two.”
He looked at Adam expectantly, obviously hoping Adam might spring for a round of drinks. Instead Adam focused his attention on a tall, burly man with tattoos decorating tree-trunk sized arms who was intently focused on Isabel.
Hunger. It radiated from the man’s eyes and Adam found himself looking at Isabel not as a subordinate who had once served a tour of duty beneath him, not as a princess whom he was sworn to protect, but as a woman.
A woman with a killer body and a full, slightly pouty mouth that could muddy a man’s thoughts. A woman who could cause a bar fight just by fluttering her blackened lashes.
As he watched, the man sauntered toward them. Adam tensed, anticipating possible trouble. He tightened his arm around Isabel, then breathed a sigh of relief as the man swept past them and toward the billiard tables in the back.
The last thing Adam wanted was a brawl. What he wanted was to get the scantily clad Isabel out of here before he had to fight for her honor.
“I need to talk to you,” he said pointedly to Isabel.
Her eyes narrowed slightly and she nodded, then flashed Willie a winsome smile. “We’ll talk to you later, Willie. My old man wants to spend some time with me.”
Her “old man?” Where on earth had the princess learned such slang? As Willie wandered away, Isabel took a key from the tiny glittery purse she carried.
“Our room is up on the third floor,” she said and pointed to a doorway at the back of the bar. Beyond the doorway Adam could see a narrow staircase. “I haven’t been up there yet. Just let me get my bag.”
She stepped away from Adam and motioned to the bartender. “Bart, sweetie, can I have my bag?”
“Sure thing, doll.” The stoic bartender beamed a smile and winked at her then grabbed a hot-pink duffel bag from someplace behind the bar and slung it onto the polished surface where Isabel could grab it.
Adam watched the flirtatious exchange between the two and felt as if he’d entered some alternate universe. From the moment he’d walked through the door, he’d felt off-center and fought against a growing sense of unease.
No, that wasn’t exactly true. It hadn’t been from the moment he’d walked through the door. It had been from the moment he’d seen her in that sexy get-up, and kissing her had only sent his senses further afield.
He felt utterly out of control and he didn’t like it one little bit. It was definitely time to get some control back. As he followed Isabel up the steep staircase that led to the rented rooms above the bar, he tried not to notice how tight her skirt fit across her shapely bottom. He tried not to notice the wiggle that accompanied each of her steps.
And he desperately tried to ignore the shaft of heat that each wiggle shot through him. He couldn’t do this. And she shouldn’t do this.
This place was too dangerous, and her choice of clothing, the role she’d chosen to play, were like tossing a lit match into a can of kerosene.
And at the moment, he felt like that explosive can of kerosene.
Isabel was acutely conscious of Adam just behind her as she climbed the steep wooden stairs to the third floor. The moment she’d first seen him sitting on the stool at the bar, her breath had caught in her chest. In all the years she’d known Adam, worked with him, she’d never seen him out of uniform.
Clad in a tight pair of worn black jeans and a black T-shirt that hugged the hard, well-defined muscles of his torso, he had looked as dangerous, as on the edge as any man in the room. The scruffy growth of whiskers that darkened his jawline only added to his dangerous appeal.
And