Victoria Parker: Princess In The Iron Mask

Flipping back one charcoal cuff, he glanced at his Swiss platinum watch. With a jet on standby he’d estimated a four-hour turnaround, and frankly it was all the time he was willing to spare.

Taking one last look at the reluctant royal as she stormed through a deluge of puddles, bedraggled and unkempt, Lucas stroked his jaw in contemplation.

Trained in warfare, and adept at finding the enemy’s weak spot, he should be confident this assignment would be a stroll on the beach. After all, she was a biochemist—he’d captured mass murderers in half the time. Still…

‘Oh, my God, no.’ Claudia Thyssen glanced at the wall clock, swaying on her feet as she stood at the entrance to her lab. Her. Very. Empty. Lab. Instinctively she reached for the doorframe and gripped so hard a dull ache infected her wrist.

On any other day she would have been grateful for the isolation. So it was rather ironic that when she needed a room full of heavy pockets to fund her research the place was as deserted as an office on Christmas Day.

Her face crumpled under the sting of frustration burning her throat.

She was too late. Twenty minutes late, to be precise. Unable to avoid a visit to the children’s ward at St Andrew’s, where she’d been collating data for weeks, she hadn’t banked on a monsoon and the entire city shuddering to a standstill.

It had taken her days to psyche herself up for this visit. Long days, considering she’d prepped through the night. Even her walk today came with a rattle, courtesy of a bottle and a half of stress-relieving tablets. But through it all she’d managed to convince herself that twenty minutes of spine-snapping social networking would be worth it.

Hot and wet, a single teardrop slipped down her cheek, and each framed article covering the walls—announcing her as a top biochemist in her field—blurred into insignificance. Because she was mere weeks away from a cure for JDMS—a childhood condition close to her heart—and her budget had careened into the red. Now fifteen months of development and testing would scream to a juddering halt. And the fault was hers alone.

Before the habitual thrash of self-loathing crippled her legs, she commanded her body to move and stumbled through the sterile white room, throwing the contents of her arms atop the stainless steel workbench. Shrugging out of her coat, she let the sodden material fall to the floor in a soft splat and collapsed onto one high-backed stool. Ripping the glasses from her face, she hurled them across the table and buried her head in ice-cold hands.

‘Could this day get any worse?’

‘Excuse me, miss …?’

Claudia bolted upright, swivelled, and nigh on toppled off her perch.

‘Who are you?’ Slamming a hand over her riotously thudding heart, she slid off the plastic seat and righted her footing before the mere sight of the man, almost filling the doorway, all but knocked her flat on her back. Hand uneasy, she brushed at her lab coat until the damp cotton fell past her knees in a comforting cloak. ‘And how on earth did you get in here?’

She was surprised the floors hadn’t shaken as he’d walked in. In fact it was quite possible they had. Because Claudia felt as if she were in the centre of a snowglobe, being shaken up and down by an almighty fist.

Of course it was just shock at the unexpected interruption, blending with the disastrous events of the morning. It had absolutely nothing to do with the drop-dead gorgeous specimen in front of her. Claudia had never been stirred by a man, let alone shaken.

Strikingly handsome, smothered in bronzed skin and topped with wavy dark hair, he stood well over six feet tall. Dressed to kill in a dark grey tailored suit and a white shirt with a large spread collar, he exuded indomitable strength and authority. But it was the silk crimson tie—such a stark contrast—wrapped around his throat and tied in a huge Windsor knot that screamed blatant self-assurance. Her stomach curled. Whether with fear or envy she couldn’t be sure.

‘Apologies for the intrusion. You left the door open when you came in just now,’ he said, in a firm yet slightly accented drawl that shimmied down her spine, dusting over her sensitised flesh like the fluff of a dandelion blowing in the breeze.

Gooseflesh peppered her skin and she glanced down at her soggy lab coat, convinced her strange reaction was nothing more than the effect of rotten British weather.

With a deep, fortifying breath, she raised her gaze to meet his. Perfectly able to look a giraffe in the eye, she felt a frisson of heat burst through her veins at the mere act of looking up to a man. Yet the chilling disdain on his face told her she was wasting vital body heat and energy reserves.

Who on earth did he think he was? Coming into her lab and looking at her as if she’d ruined his day?

‘You shouldn’t be in here,’ she said, her tone high, her equilibrium shot.

Claudia had not only ruined the day for thousands of children, she’d gambled with their entire future, their health and happiness. Unless she could think of a way to reschedule the meeting. Oh, God, why had they left so soon? Twenty minutes wasn’t so long, and—

Her brain darted in three different directions. ‘Wait a minute. Are you here for the budget meeting?’

Maybe he was one of the money men. Claudia could appeal to his better nature. If he had one. Because the customised perfection of his appearance couldn’t entirely disguise a nature that surely bordered on the very edges of civilised.

His jaw ticked as he shook his head, the action popping her ballooning optimism.

‘My name is Lucas Garcia,’ he said, striding forward a pace and announcing his name as a gladiator entering the ring would: fiercely and exuding pride. With the face of a god—intense deep-set eyes the colour of midnight, high slashing cheekbones and an angular jaw—he seemed cast from the finest bronze. Beautiful, yet strangely cold.

A stinging shiver attacked her unsuspecting flesh and she wondered if there was a dry lab coat in the room next door. ‘Well, Mr Garcia, I think you’ve lost your way.’

An arrogant smile tilted his mouth. ‘I assure you, I lose nothing.’

Oh, she believed him. His mere presence pilfered the very air. She was also sure Lucas Garcia wouldn’t have just lost the chance of three and half million pounds.

An unseen hand gripped her heart. What was the point of her life if she couldn’t save others from what she’d gone through? Oh, she realised most of the children she met had families who cared for them, loved them—unlike Claudia, who’d been abandoned at twelve years old. But they still had to suffer the pain, the pity. The bewildering sense of shame. As with most childhood diseases, when adolescence gave way to adulthood the side effects waned. But she knew firsthand that was altogether too late to erase the emotional scars etched deep in the soul.

Eyes closing under the weight of fatigue, she inhaled deeply. She was so close to success she could taste musky victory on the tip of her tongue. Or was that his glorious woodsy scent? Good grief—she was losing it.

‘I need to speak with you on a matter of urgency,’ he said, the deep cadence of his voice ricocheting off the white-tiled walls.

God, that voice… ‘Have we met before?’ There was something vaguely familiar about him.

‘No,’ he said, standing with his feet slightly apart, hands behind his back, just inside the doorway.

Claudia suppressed an impulse to stand to attention. He was the most commanding man she’d ever seen. Almost military-like. Not that she had much to compare him to. One of the downfalls of self-imposed exile: she didn’t get out much. The upside was that she rarely broke out in hives and she didn’t get close to anyone. Claudia had no one and that was exactly how she liked it. No touching of her body mind or soul and there’d be no tears.