Cindy Gerard: Lone Star Knight

She met Greg’s eyes, determined he’d see neither her shame nor her fear as the noise in the hall escalated to an electric buzz in anticipation of the feeding frenzy she knew it would become.

“You know,” she said, drawing on her reserves to keep her voice steady, “I really don’t think I want to do this today. It’s so pedestrian and, well, tacky—this spectacle they would make of something as uneventful as my release from the hospital.”

Greg and Anna exchanged a concerned glance.

“I mean—can’t we just make them go away somehow?” she suggested with a regal calmness her racing heart worked to undercut.

Her breath caught when the door swung open, and it suddenly seemed it was going to happen with or without her permission. She steeled herself, closed her eyes, and waited for the first verbal blow to land.

Instead of a chorus of demanding voices, one voice—a gruffly velvet, Texas drawl—rang out, clear, composed, and in total control. “It seems we’ve got a situation out here.”

If possible, her heartbeat quickened, not with fear but with relief as she looked up and into a pair of forest-green eyes that burned so furiously and so fiercely that she would have flinched if she hadn’t recognized them.

It was Matthew Walker. Her tall, green-eyed Texan. On the heels of that shock, came another. Neither her memory nor her dreams had done justice to this magnificent man in a silver-gray Stetson, slim dark slacks and crisp white shirt who had just burst back into her life like an avenging angel intent on slaying Lucifer himself if he had to.

He glanced first at Anna then at Greg before his gaze settled, with grim intensity, on her.

She didn’t stop to ask him why he was here. Didn’t think to question whether it was odd or out of the ordinary. She only knew that he’d come. And because he’d come, she knew that everything would be all right.

“Well,” she said, praying that neither her relief nor her panic affected her voice, “it would seem the cavalry has arrived. How wonderfully John Wayne of you.” Like her tone, her smile was carefully contrived to convince everyone—including herself—that this was all one grand adventure. “So tell me, darling, how, exactly, do you intend to save the day?”

The quick plan Matt had hatched to get Helena out of the hospital without being bombarded by the press was simple and effective—if reliant on a little sleight of hand. After pressing the call button to summon a nurse—who, upon hearing him out, was not only game but also excited by the prospect of a little intrigue involving a princess and the daughter of an earl—they set it in motion.

As expected, when the door to Helena’s hospital room opened and Greg, with Anna by his side carrying Helena’s overnight bag, wheeled the chair out into the hall, the paparazzi swarmed like piranhas around the woman bundled from head to toe in a hooded bathrobe.

Inside the room, Matt and Helena listened to the commotion. Matt watched her face and told himself he wasn’t indulging in the look of her after a month of watching her from a distance. As he’d intended, she’d never been aware that he’d been standing guard. Just as she hadn’t needed the extra stress of knowing she faced a potential threat added to her already difficult recovery, he hadn’t needed the complications that getting to know her better would surely bring.

From the moment he’d met her, his physical reaction to her had been far too intense. His interest, much too strong. Just because he was finally face-to-face with her, just because her eyes were a deeper shade of blue than he’d remembered, the silk of her hair as lustrous as spun gold, her face and body the epitome of a heroine in a romantic novel, it didn’t mean he was going to change his game plan now.

All he had to do was get her safely away from the hospital, settle her at the Hunts under the 24/7 guard he’d arranged, and he’d be back to business as usual. And yet, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

She said nothing as she sat on the edge of the bed, but the tight set of those beautiful full lips betrayed her tension. The solemn-eyed intensity of her gaze, never wavering from the closed door, spoke volumes about nerves that were strung drum-tight as the reporters’ voices reached them from the hall.

“Lady Helena! Look up! Lady Helena! Over here! Give us a smile for the public who wants to know how you are.”

She flinched at the sound of her name, and he couldn’t help it. He reached out. Touched a hand to her shoulder, gave it a reassuring squeeze as Greg’s voice boomed down the hall.

“Back off, Herkner,” Greg growled at the reporter from the American Investigator, a sleazy tabloid that put the other rags to shame in the exploitation department. “Give the lady a break. And give the other patients on the floor a break, too. Let us get her out of the building and she’ll give you a few words and a chance to shoot some photos.

“Or don’t back off,” Greg baited, the dare in his voice unmistakable, “and we’ll let the ER docs practice a little triage on your ugly face. Your call, of course.”

Matt looked toward the closed door, very much aware of the history between Willis Herkner and Greg Hunt. The reporter had hounded Anna during the Striksky affair. Obviously, Greg held a grudge. More obviously, Herkner was hamburger if he tested those particular waters.

When the racket quieted to a hushed din, telling Matt his plan was working and Greg and Anna were leading the press from the floor, he turned back to Helena.

She was pale and shaken and trying valiantly to keep herself together.

He hunkered down in front of her. “Hey…you okay?”

She worked over-hard to gather her composure and grace him with a look that tried to make a lie of the fact that she was far from all right. “Of course, darling,” she said in that cool, regal tone that dismissed his concern as unnecessary. “It’s just such a bother, isn’t it?”

“And then some,” he agreed, trying to get a read on her, knowing there was more going on behind those brilliant blue eyes than she wanted him to see.

“Look,” she said, all starch and breeding and a bit of impatient prima donna that didn’t quite ring true, “I don’t know why you’re here. And frankly, I don’t care. Just get me out of here. Please,” she added with enough entreaty that he knew she wasn’t as blasé about all of this as she’d like him to think.

He tipped his fingers to his hat brim and because he felt she needed one, he gave her a reassuring smile. “At your service, my lady.”

She smiled then, too. A real smile, not one he suspected she’d used on the public to hide everything from boredom to pain to fear.

“What’s next?” she asked after a steadying breath.

“What’s next is that we sneak you out the rear entrance without catching anyone’s attention.”

And that was going to be no easy feat. He’d been afraid that her release would come to this. The media circus it created wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that her visibility increased her vulnerability. He wasn’t about to give anyone but the people he trusted access to her.

All he needed to do was transport her safely out of the hospital and deliver her to the Hunts. Greg was a fellow Cattleman’s Club member and Matt knew she’d be safe with him and Anna at their ranch until the mystery behind the jewel theft and Riley’s murder was cleared up, and he was certain she was out of danger.

She’d also be out of his line of sight at the Hunts’. Maybe then, she’d be out of his mind, too. Right, and a cactus didn’t have needles. Regardless of where she was in proximity to where he was, he was afraid he’d be seeing those big baby blues for a long time to come.