Page 40 of In Shining Armor

Terms and Conditions

Flicka von Hannover

Lieblingwächter, always.

Thursday evening, Flicka was practicing for her final exams in piano performance coming up in a few weeks, pounding the keyboard and consumed by the music.

The slightest shadow fell over her keyboard, and warmth touched her back.

“Dieter?” she asked.

His fingertips stroked down her arms. “We need to talk.”

She wrenched her headphones off her head. Dread fell through her that he was already regretting starting this affair with her. “Okay.”

“There have to be some rules,” he said.

Relief.

She leaned back, feeling his heavy muscles through their clothes. It was springtime outside, so she was wearing a sundress. The thin cotton of her dress and his tee shirt and jeans did nothing to slow the heat of his body. “Okay.”

“You need to see a doctor.”

“Done. I’ve been on pills for three months.”

His pause spoke volumes.“What?”

“I can show you the half-empty packet I have in my bathroom.”

He ran a hand through his blond hair, and he looked somewhere on the other side of the room as if the answers might be somewhere over there. “You’ve been thinking aboutusfor three months?”

She looked up at him from where she sat, and his gray eyes stared down at her. “I’ve been thinking aboutusforyears.”

“Okay.” He sucked in a breath. “All right. I need to call in one of the otherWelfenlegionto be your primary bodyguard.”

“Absolutelynot!”

“Flicka, I can’t be with you and be your personal protection at the same time. It’s a conflict of interest.”

“Nonsense. The conflict of interest comes when you’re guarding someone and dating someoneelsein the principal party. In that case, you might protect the person you have a relationship with at the expense of the person you’re supposed to be guarding.”

A smile curved one side of Dieter’s mouth. “Dammit, you have been listening to me.”

She smiled back at him. “All the time,Lieblingwächter.All the time.”

“It’s unprofessional to be involved with any principal at all.”

“When we’re out there, I know better than to ask you to carry my purse or snog in public. Your hands and eyes must be free to protect me. I understand that. We’vealwayshad that understanding. What we do when we’re here, when you’re off duty, is no one’s business but our own.”

“It’s ill-advised. I’m too old for you. You’re too young. You’re a princess, and I’m a soldier in your older brother’s private army.”

She’d been preparing for those arguments. “None of that matters one bit to me.”

“It will matter to other people.”

“Thentheydon’t matter one bit to me.”

“You don’t know what it will be like,Durchlauchtig.People can be savage.”