Page 40 of The Unlikely Spare (Unlikely Dilemmas #3)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Eoin

Christmas Day in Auckland, and I’m watching Prince Nicholas scoop mashed potatoes onto an unhoused man’s plate.

The Auckland City Mission food bank is packed, thrumming with a particular kind of festive energy that feels more desperate than joyful.

Christmas carols play through tinny speakers, paper decorations flutter from the ceiling, and volunteers in Santa hats try too hard to spread cheer that feels as thin as discount wrapping paper.

And there’s Nicholas, second in line to the throne, serving food alongside regular volunteers like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Would you like some gravy with that?” He smiles at an elderly woman with eyes that have seen too much hardship.

“Yes please, love,” she replies, seeming more interested in the food being put on her plate than the fact she’s being served by actual royalty.

I scan the room for the thousandth time, logging potential threats, exit routes, suspicious movements. But while my eyes are doing their job, my mind keeps dragging me back to last night.

To the feel of Nicholas beneath me. The taste of his skin. The sounds he made when I?—

Jaysus. I’m fucked.

I’m so incredibly, monumentally unprofessional.

Pierce’s words echo in my mind. “ We’ve chosen you because we trust your judgment, O’Connell. Don’t let us down .”

And what did I do with that trust? I shagged the principal I was assigned to protect. The royal I was meant to keep safe from the very real threats circling him like sharks.

I’ve spent my entire career building a reputation for integrity, for doing things by the book even when it would be easier not to. All those years fighting twice as hard to be taken seriously, to prove that a kid from Belfast’s Limestone Road estates could rise through the ranks on merit alone.

And I threw it all down the jacks for one night.

One fucking spectacular night. The kind of night that ruins you for everything else, like your first proper pint after years of that watered-down shite they serve tourists.

That’s the problem. I can’t bring myself to regret it.

I force my attention back to the present. Nicholas is chatting with a young mother now, crouching to eye level with her children as he serves them extra Yorkshire puddings.

“Save room for dessert,” he tells the wide-eyed kids. “I hear there’s Christmas pudding later, and I have it on good authority that Santa might have left some gifts in the back room.”

Nicholas glances up, catching me watching him. The corner of his mouth ticks up, and he holds my gaze a beat too long. Heat crawls up my neck as memories of last night flash behind my eyes—his fingers digging into my shoulders, his head thrown back in pleasure, the way he gasped my name when he?—

I force my eyes away, focusing on a paper snowflake dangling from the ceiling fan.

Christ. I need to get a grip.

Nicholas makes his way to the dessert station, his path deliberately taking him past where I’m standing.

“Looking very festive today, Officer O’Connell,” he murmurs as he passes. “Though I must say, I prefer you with fewer clothes.”

My jaw clenches so hard I’m surprised my teeth don’t crack.

“Careful, sir.” I keep my voice low. “I’m pretty sure antagonizing your security detail isn’t recommended in the royal handbook.”

“The royal handbook also frowns upon protection officers leaving bite marks on their principals.” His fingers brush his collar in a gesture that looks casual but draws my attention to the exact spot where I marked him last night.

“Yet here we are, Officer O’Connell, both guilty of handbook violations. ”

Then he’s gone, leaving me fighting for composure.

The absolute bastard.

Officer Singh appears at my elbow. “All clear on the perimeter. Though I’m not sure about that group by the east entrance.”

I follow his gaze to where three men in worn jackets are huddled near the door. My instincts prickle, but after a moment’s observation, I determine they’re just tired, just hungry, just human.

“They look fine. But keep an eye on them anyway, just in case.”

Singh nods and moves off. My gaze follows him.

Is Singh the sleeper agent? Is he feeding information to people who want to harm Nicholas? The thought sends a chill through me.

Having Nicholas, holding him, only reminded me of how vulnerable he really is. His extreme good looks, along with his armor of charm and humor, almost turn him into someone larger than life, a character rather than a man.

But I now know intimately how he’s flesh and blood. Muscle and sinew. How easily he could be broken by someone determined to do so.

I also now know that Nicholas’s resistance to his constraints is not just a pampered prince having a tantrum. It’s something deeper than that. I know him well enough to understand how much it goes against his core nature to be passive. He’s smothering, choking under his royal binds.

He’s a risk-taker. How much do I simply constitute a risk? Another rebellion against the constraints of his life? A thrill precisely because it’s forbidden?

Maybe that’s what terrifies me most. It’s not just that he’ll get himself killed chasing the next thrill, but that I’ve become complicit in his self-destruction. I’m a match he’s striking while standing in a room full of gasoline.

He laughs at something the elderly volunteer says, head thrown back in that way that exposes his throat, and I have to look away.

Because somehow I seem to simultaneously want to protect him and possess him.

And I’m not sure where that places me in the rankings of the threats against him.

That afternoon, I arrive at Nicholas’s suite to what I expect is going to be a standard security briefing, only to discover the space has been transformed.

He’s somehow managed to get a proper Christmas tree delivered to the penthouse suite, complete with that fresh pine smell that seems to make no sense when people are currently sunbathing on the beach only a few miles from here.

But, apparently, we’re going to pretend it’s not thirty degrees outside while “Let It Snow” plays through the speakers.

Nicholas moves through the room in dark chinos and a cream linen shirt. No tie, top button undone, sleeves rolled up.

“I know it’s difficult to be celebrating Christmas so far away from family, but James helped me put together this rather modest attempt at festive cheer as a thank you for all of your hard work,” he says.

There’s something almost boyish in how he rocks back on his heels, the corner of his mouth twitching up in a half-smile. He glances around the room, his shoulders relaxing when people actually seem engaged rather than just polite.

“But before we commence the forced festivity,” Nicholas continues, “I have something for each of you. Think of it as compensation for having to put up with my occasional bouts of independent thinking.”

Davis makes a strangled sound that might be a laugh. Blake’s mouth twitches. Even Cavendish looks almost human.

There’s a table stacked with wrapped packages, each one labeled in what I recognize as Nicholas’s handwriting.

He works through the group, offering gifts that are thoughtful without being too personal.

He gives James a leather-bound planner. “For managing my ‘inadvisable deviations from protocol,’” and James actually cracks a smile.

He gives Cavendish a book of cryptic crosswords while Blake unwraps a set of police patches from every city we’ve visited, and I realize he’s noticed her habit of picking up law enforcement memorabilia.

Davis clutches the Australian cricket shirt Nicholas gave him to his chest and tells him he’ll treasure it forever.

When he reaches me, there’s a moment where his practiced ease falters. Just a second, but I catch it.

“O’Connell.” The package is smaller than the others, wrapped in dark-blue paper.

I open it. Inside is a first edition Walt Whitman. My throat goes tight.

“You mentioned containing multitudes. So it seemed only fair to provide you with the source so you can continue to quote literary references at me.”

Ah, fuck me sideways. It’s not the book itself, although a first edition Whitman isn’t exactly something you pick up at the airport. It’s that he remembered what I said.

“Walt understood about wanting things you shouldn’t,” I say quietly. “It’s probably why his poetry lasted.”

The words hang between us, innocent enough. But the quirk of Nicholas’s lips deepens into something more dangerous.

Then he recovers, but not before I catch the slight intake of breath, the way his tongue darts out to wet his lips.

“Right then. Shall we attempt this Christmas dinner?” James asks.

The food table looks like someone tried to negotiate a peace treaty between British tradition and Southern Hemisphere logic.

Traditional British Christmas dinner fights for space with sensible summer alternatives—roast potatoes nestled against potato salad, Yorkshire puddings standing guard over pavlova.

The catering staff seems to have adopted the philosophy of offering an excess of champagne in the hope of making everyone forget that mixing gravy with thirty-degree heat is basically a war crime.

MacLeod stares at her plate with genuine distress. “This is not how Christmas works.”

“No one should be wearing shorts on Christmas Day. It’s unnatural,” Singh adds, side-eyeing Davis’s cargo shorts.

“You’re all being dramatic. It’s food. In summer. Adapt,” Blake says as she loads her plate.

Nicholas appears beside me. “I see the great Christmas assimilation is going well.”

“About as well as you’d expect when you serve roast dinner in beach weather,” I say.

“Would you prefer we’d had a barbecue on the harbor?”

“Might’ve been less cruel to the Yorkshire puddings.” I gesture at the deflated offerings. “They look like they’ve given up on life.”

“Much like Cavendish.” He nods toward our team leader, who’s staring at his plate like it’s personally offended him. “Though I suppose that’s his default expression.”

“He saves his joy for paperwork and protocol violations.”

“Then I must bring him endless happiness.” Nicholas selects a prawn to put on his plate, then considers it. “Do you think combining seafood with cranberry sauce counts as a diplomatic incident?”

“Only if someone from the Foreign Office sees you do it.”

He grins. It’s not his public smile but the real one that makes my chest do inconvenient things. “Your talent for finding loopholes is concerning, O’Connell.”

The bastard. I keep my face neutral. “I’m always professional, sir.”

“Professional.” He tests the word like wine. “Interesting choice of adjective. I would have gone more with ‘thorough’ myself.”

“You seem very concerned about my performance.” I turn to face him properly. “Should I be worried about a negative review?”

His eyes glitter dangerously. “On the contrary. Your…dedication has been noted. Extensively.”

Blake saves us by laughing too loudly at something James says, breaking the charged moment.

But the damage is done.

We’re playing with fire in front of everyone, and he knows it. Worse, he’s enjoying it. And even worse than that—so am I.

Fuck.

I can’t do this. I can’t protect him when I can barely think straight around him. I can’t find a traitor in our midst when I’m too busy fighting my own desires.

I’m compromised in every way that matters.

And the last thing I want—the very last thing—is to put Nicholas at risk.

I need to leave. Request a transfer, let someone else take over, someone who can actually do the job properly.

But as I watch him navigate between the others now, somehow making everyone feel like they matter while maintaining just enough distance to stay untouchable, I know the truth.

I don’t want to leave him. Not for a second.

And that’s exactly why I have to go.