The Rebel Seeks A Wife (Crownhaven #2)

Chapter 1

KATIE

Parties make me itchy. I lean against the wall of the ballroom of Crownhaven’s main house and run through the security checks in my head, half my attention on the clusters of sparkling guests grouped around the Prince siblings and half on the entrance, where a drunk guest is stumbling toward the valet.

I frown. She better not be driving—good. One of the door guys I hired for the night steadies her with a hand and then gestures for her to sit. He’ll have a car come around and take her home.

It’s Tristan Prince’s twenty-ninth birthday, and so far, everything has gone off without a hitch.

Trouble comes when everything seems calm. Never let your guard down.

My fingers tap out a rhythm on my leg through the stretch wool of my suit.

I can sprint in this thing. Faster than Tristan can, much to my best friend’s eternal dismay.

My shoes look like dress shoes, but they have a running sneaker sole.

My shirt has light compression, just like its twelve identical cousins that live in my closet, and my shoulder holster slides smoothly over the material.

I tested at least four similar shirts before deciding on this one.

It sits nicely under a suit. My hair is dyed a plain brown and braided off my face.

I’ve been dyeing it for so long that I barely know the natural color anymore.

Never draw attention to yourself. Bodyguards belong in the background. I’ll break that rule in five seconds flat if Tristan or one of his siblings is in danger.

The party is in full swing. Four hundred and seventeen guests drift from bar to terrace and back again.

We are at least four cases into the thirty-three cases of champagne we ordered.

Tongues are loosening. Heads tip back in laughter or tilt closer to gossip.

The two-hundred-year-old chandelier sparkles above art-covered walls and diamond-laden necks.

Theoretically, everything is in place. But where the hell is Tristan?

This is his party, and tonight he’s supposed to start the process of looking for a spouse.

Of all the old money families in Hart’s Hill, Rhode Island, who have the arrogance to call themselves Houses, the Princes are the most influential.

The richest. The ones with the biggest property and the largest privately owned liquor company in the world.

They’re a big, fat prize, and while others see a potential love match, I see a disaster waiting to happen. Kidnapping. Extortion. Break-ins on the property. Stalkers.

I check my watch again.

Tristan was supposed to be here at eight p.m. It’s 8:16.

He knows full well if he’s gone for more than twenty minutes, I have to send someone after him. It’s part of the security procedures we established when I started. And he might have been traveling for the last two months, but I know damn well he remembers.

Tristan Prince is trouble. Too smart for his own good. Takes the rules as mere suggestions, and even then, only when it suits him. He’s too charming to face consequences.

I’ll show him consequences.

I swipe on the screen of my smartwatch. Each of the siblings has an app on their phone that will alert me to an emergency. It’s two taps and it bypasses the lock screen.

Four min—

“Come here often?”

I whirl at the amused voice from my left.

Tristan Prince grins at me, backlit by golden candles and looking like he just got done doing something naughty. He always looks like that. He has a perpetually crooked smile and a troublesome twinkle in his grass-green eyes.

“You.” The word escapes on a breath.

“Me.” His smile grows. “Miss me?”

I can’t help the happy laugh I let out. My feet are already carrying me toward him and he’s striding for me.

We land in a collision of limbs that ends with my head pressed to his chest and his hands molding me to him like he wants to memorize the contours of my spine. I relax for two long heartbeats.

“I think you got bigger,” I mumble into his shoulder.

He squeezes me. “They put me to work.”

“I know. You complained about it constantly.” My voice is muffled by his tux.

He did get bigger. There are slabs of warm muscle pressed against me. I can feel their heat even through the fine wool. Must be from all the work he was doing while he was gone. He texted me incessantly about physical labor and early mornings, but it definitely didn’t hurt him.

Something warm winds through my stomach as he slowly lets me go and steadies me on my feet.

“So you did miss me,” he teases.

We step back, fighting smiles, and I shake my head. A passing caterer asks him if he’d like a drink, and he thanks him and takes a glass.

I haven’t seen Tristan in two months. He’s still tan and broad and his eyes glint with both amusement and sharp intelligence, but he looks more solid. More self-assured.

He’s still the mischievous young man I met at twenty-three, except now he’s in a tux with a bow tie hanging loose around his neck instead of a violently pink pair of bathing suit shorts. Same sharp jaw. Same rounded shoulders. Same devilish smile.

He sips, and my eyes catch on the way his lips wrap around his glass.

What the hell?

I shove away the weird feeling and raise my watch in the air. “I was three minutes and forty-seven seconds from coming after you.”

“Moi?” he asks innocently. “Bailey, I’m flattered.”

“Don’t Bailey me,” I hiss. “You were supposed to be here at eight. You’re the guest of honor. I assumed you’d been kidnapped.”

“Just as paranoid as when I left you.” He lounges idly against the wall. “So, anything interesting happening back here behind this plant?”

“Nothing yet.”

“But there’s still time,” he says, the laugh evident in his voice.

“You know, Tristan, maybe if you ever do get kidnapped, I won’t come after you.”

He grins, then sips the Old Kingdom he’s drinking out of a crystal glass. I know it’s Old Kingdom because every Prince sibling drinks that whiskey on their birthday. It’s the family’s prized vintage and the most expensive bourbon in the country.

“I’d do very poorly in a kidnapping situation. I have delicate skin.” He holds out his wrist. “See? I would chafe. Duct tape makes me break out.”

I follow the veins on his wrist as they disappear into the sleeve of his tux. “I don’t know. I’m sure repeated exposure would help. You want to test it out?”

He tips his head back against the wall and laughs, his throat working.

“Fuck, you’re funny.”

I allow myself a smile and lean back against the wall next to him.

“Were things terribly dull without me?”

I snort. “No one complained I was cheating during chess, and I did miss the sound of a man crying on my morning runs.”

He chuckles. “Ah, Bailey.” His voice is warm. “America’s sweetheart you are not. No dress tonight?”

I can feel him studying me. “You might have been gone for two months, but not that much has changed. You know I’m not a dress girl.

Bodyguard, remember?” I’m a practical shoes girl.

An athleisure at all hours because it’s the one thing that fits my thighs and my waist girl.

A ponytail and no makeup girl because I’d really love to learn how to apply it, but I haven’t cracked that code yet.

The one time I wore lipstick, Tristan laughed me out of the gym.

“Why are you back here?” I gesture toward the ballroom. “Your followers await.”

A shadow passes over his face before he wipes his expression. “I thought this was a safe space.”

I give him an amused look.

“It’s our thing,” he says. “Don’t you remember? You hide behind plants at parties and I seek you out to make sure you’re not bored.”

“I’m not hiding.” I scan the ballroom again.

“Ah, but you were bored.”

His words pull my mouth into a reluctant smile. “Believe it or not, I enjoy being in the background.”

“That can’t be true.” He angles himself so he’s facing me, one broad shoulder propped against the old stone of the ballroom wall. “No one likes being in the background.”

His words are low and probing, and something leaps inside me.

“It’s where I belong,” I respond without looking at him.

“I disagree.”

“That’s because you always disagree.”

“Look at me.” His words are hot and dark, and suddenly the space behind this plant feels way too small.

I look.

I regret it.

Occasionally, Tristan’s cheekbones catch the light or he laughs with his head tipped back, and I’m right back to where I was the day I met him—speechless.

That’s how he looks right now, with his crisp tuxedo and wavy hair backlit by the lights of the ballroom, his gaze intent and green like emeralds, his lips pouting.

But I’ve never felt the breath catch in my chest like this.

I refuse to be breathless.

“I’m looking.” I keep my voice steady, even as my stomach churns.

What the fuck is happening to me? Did I eat something weird from the catering kitchen? I discreetly rub a sweating palm down my pants. Sweaty palms are a liability in my line of work.

Tristan is studying me. Not with his usual amusement, but something different. He reminds me of a lazy predator most of the time. A freshly sated lion who doesn’t bother with hunting because others do it for him.

But right now there’s a sharpness to his gaze that makes me wonder what changed while he was gone.

“Are you okay?”

His words draw attention to the pit in my stomach, the feeling I’ve been ignoring all evening.

“I’m fine. Are you okay, Mr. CEO?”

His jaw tightens. The Prince family hasn’t announced it yet, but their grandfather is retiring, Aiden is stepping aside, and Tristan is stepping forward.

“I’m fine. You want to dance?” He sets his empty glass down on a side table.

“I am not dancing with you.”

He pouts, even though his eyes dance with amusement again. “Bailey, you’re no fun.”

“I’m not supposed to be fun. I’m the bodyguard.”