Page 53 of In Shining Armor

Raphael

Dieter Schwarz

I didn’t know anyone

by that name.

Dieter walked through the Shooting Stars Cotillion, shouldering aside guests and other security alike.

Flicka was going off somewhere secluded with Pierre Grimaldi, and Dieter didn’t like it. She wasn’t supposed to leave the main floor except for the obvious reasons. They set up operational protocol to keep her safe and yet allow her the most latitude possible. If they had to watch her like a hawk every damn minute, he would need to call in additional security personnel. He couldn’t be a watchdog and a damn sheepdog.

In the gala event, he’d stayed along the walls and on the balcony with the other security staff, watching.

He’d seen the guest list before the event and known to stay back and as far away as was safe for Flicka.

Two men with the last name of Ilyin were there, and he recognized the name Piotr Ilyin.

And others.

When she’d danced with Pierre Grimaldi for the first dance, he’d clenched the balcony rail with his fists until his knuckles had ached.

Lord, she was beautiful out there, her slim body bending and swaying to the music. He’d wanted so much to be there with her.

But he’d seen the guest list, and he had to stay back.

It was stupid for him to have attended at all.

Now, as he followed Flicka and Pierre Grimaldi out of the ballroom, he shoved his way through the scrum of the guests, far too visible to anyone who opened their eyes and looked at him.

He had to get out of the crowd, and damn soon.

Flicka was probably heading for that piano out in the hallway. Pianos called her.

He wound through the crowd—tuxedos, ball gowns, and black suits with guns under the arms—toward the hallway outside the ballroom.

A man touched Dieter’s arm. “Raphael?”

It took all his military training, all his control, not to look at the man.

Dieter turned his face away and grunted,“Nein,”in the most guttural, Germanic accent he could muster, mimicking Wulfram von Hannover or some of his other security and house personnel, the ones who had been with Wulfram when he had lived in Germany.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the interloper was short and sandy-haired, so he was not the worst-case scenario that Dieter had been anticipating since he had seen the final guest list months before.

But the man’s accent, even on that one, terrible word, had sounded Russian. There was a certain swallowing of the vowels, a quickness to the pronunciation, and a slur over the initialRso that it sounded like aW.

Dieter dove into the crowd, following Flicka.

As he strode after her, his heart raced. His lungs cramped as he labored to breathe normally and not betray his panic.

When he found her, Flicka was indeed sitting at the piano in the hallway, playing one of the pieces she was practicing for The Leeds competition.

Her perfect face glowed as she gazed up at Pierre Grimaldi, heir to the throne of Monaco, owner of a fortress with thick walls that would keep anyone safe inside and an actual army.

Pierre smiled down at her, a sparkle lurking in his dark eyes.

Flicka should be with someone like him, someone who could keep her safe.

She should never be with someone like Dieter Schwarz. If certain people knew his soul was aching with love for that beautiful woman, if they knew she was his heart incarnate, they would kill her.