Page 57 of An Heir to Blood and Power

Nicolai Romanov was movie-star handsome,royalty-handsome, almostfictional-handsome. With his dark, silken hair and clear eyes, the straight lines and sharp angles of his jaw and cheekbones, massive, towering height and contagious chuckle, the sharp intelligence in his eyes and how his lifelong friends clustered around him at the nightclub?—

The way Nicolai had seen Jimmy, figured out who he was, and then made me feel a billion bucks in his arms?—

Looks weren’t a contest.

Looks weren’t even important.

Even though Nicolai would have won a looks contest by a frickin’ mile, too.

But he’d also made me forget that Jimmy even existed for a moment while he’d kissed me.

That other woman,her,was absentmindedly clapping, but she was peering between Jimmy and me as if seeing the bond between us composed of all the times Jimmy had told me heloved me, wanted to marry me, and talked about spending our lives together.

But that bond was gone. Jimmy had wrenched it out when he’d walked away withher.

A hard bar took me out at the knees and folded my legs, but instead of falling, I was flying into the air.

Nicolai had swept me up into his arms. He grinned at me as he started walking toward the doors.

I grabbed onto his neck, trying to take some of my weight off his arms.

My wedding rings flashed like strobes in the thousands of light bulbs studding the casino’s ceiling above.

The voluminous copper silk of my long skirt fluttered around us.

Nicolai didn’t seem to struggle in the slightest with carrying me as he strode for the sliding exit doors through the applauding crowd.

Jimmy had carried meonceand told me I needed to lose weight.

I twisted in Nicolai’s arms to look back over his shoulder.

My ex was staring after us and toying with his poker chips.

Shewas talking to him, craning her neck, trying to get his attention, but Jimmy’s narrowed gaze didn’t leave mine as Nicolai carried me through the crowd and strode toward the exit.

Nicolai’s stride was swift and long, almost a strut, as the glass doors slid away from our path and he carried me into the desert night outside.

Stifling-hot night air rolled around us.

Nicolai’s head was up, looking around, and he changed the angle we were moving to a diagonal toward a cluster of black SUVs.

Behind us, the crowd followed, flooding out the casino doors into the entryway roofed withflashing lights.

“You can put me down,” I whispered to him.

“No time. We have to get to the cars.”

In the small valet parking lot to the side of the Caesars Palace casino’s entrance, Ueli saw us coming, raising two fingers that caused other security personnel to spill from two blacked-out SUVs.

Just two.

There’d been three total SUVs, two chase vehicles plus our car, when we’d driven here. “Where’s the other one?”

The security team, black suits in the spotlight-sprayed night, sprinted toward us, forming a cordon between us and the chasing crowd. They faced outward, arms spread, communicating with each other through earpieces.

Had I missed something? Had there been a move on Nico?

Fear soaked into me.