Page 89 of In Shining Armor

Kill Zone

Dieter Schwarz

It felt like a kill zone.

Dieter, for there could be no denying that he had thought of himself as Dieter Schwarz for many years, held the passport with someone else’s name on it and stood on line with Flicka.

He had hung their duffel bag over his shoulder because he was no longer a bodyguard. Smuggling a principal out of Europe on someone else’s passport was a black op, not personal protection.

As they waited on line, he offered Flicka his elbow to hold, and she curled her delicate fingers around his arm.

But she didn’t look up at him.

She stood beside him, holding onto his arm and staring at the flat shoes they had bought her yesterday.

He dropped his arm and wound his fingers in hers.

This was the first time they’d held hands in public, he realized. In London, they had never shown any signs of their relationship when outside the apartment, plus he had needed his hands and eyes free to protect her.

Her delicate fingers squeezed his.

Dieter lifted her hand and pressed it against his chest, right over his heart.

His heart thumped against their hands, and for a moment, Dieter closed his eyes and tried to stretch out that moment.

Voices around them echoed off the silver ceiling and blue columns. The gates’ waiting area at the Charles de Gaulle airport outside of Paris had a peaked, glass roof like a greenhouse, but passport control felt more like a bunker.

The line ahead of them moved.

They stepped forward to keep up.

The queues for passport control weren’t so much a line as a collection of lines, a linear mob, all moving in staggered fashion toward a long line of desks at the front. Dieter wasn’t accustomed to being a member of the herd anymore. Wulfram always flew through private terminals, where passport control officers inspected official documents in the comfort of his rented plane.

He could only imagine what Flicka was thinking. This was probably her very first time being crowded by rabble like him.

Someone bumped Flicka, and she stumbled against Dieter’s side. He caught her under his arm and glared at the guy over her head.

The older man apologized, and it seemed to Dieter that it had been an honest mistake. He accepted the man’s apology and smiled, and then he ducked and made sure Flicka was all right. “Gretchen, you are okay?”

She nodded. “Yes, Raphael. I’m fine.”

Raphael.

The name shot straight to his heart because even though he had been called Dieter his entire adult life, his mother and grandmother, his sisters and father, his cousins and uncles and his childhood friends had called himRaphael.

The name shook him.

He’d never wanted to tell anyone about his young life as Raphael Mirabaud before. Indeed, he’d been desperate to hide every last moment of it, everything he’d done, everything he’d been, everything he’d had to do to escape.

But here, he had one more chance with Flicka.

Whether he should or shouldn’t have left her in London, his decision had devastated them both. He’d hoped that she would pick up and flit off, date a bevy of safe and normal men, and then choose an excellent husband who would cherish her for the rest of their lives.

But instead, she’d chosen Pierre Grimaldi, and even Dieter had known she was making a mistake.

Considering what she’d said before her wedding, he suspected that Flicka had known even then that marrying Prince Pierre Grimaldi had been a bad idea.

And now she’d left Pierre, and Dieter had one more chance with her.