Chap­ter 17: Brid­get

TWO DAYS LATER, WE LANDED IN COSTA RICA LIKE RHYS HAD PROMISED and drove two hours from the air­port to a small town on the Pacif­ic coast.

I stared out the win­dow at the country’s lush land­scape, my head spin­ning from how fast every­thing had moved. I couldn’t believe Rhys, Mr. Safe­ty and Secu­ri­ty him­self, was the one who sug­gest­ed a last-minute trip, but I wasn’t com­plain­ing. I had­n’t vis­it­ed Cos­ta Rica before, and four days in a trop­i­cal par­adise sound­ed like, well, par­adise.

We’d fin­ished pack­ing the town­house, and I’d turned in my keys that morn­ing. Every­thing else I need­ed to do, I could do online. I was, for all intents and pur­pos­es, free until we returned to New York.

“This is it.” Rhys pulled up in front of a sprawl­ing, two-sto­ry vil­la. “Buck­et list num­ber one.”
Go some­place where no one knows or cares who I am.
That was def­i­nite­ly the case here. The house was nes­tled high in the hills and the only res­i­dence around. How had Rhys even found this place?

My chest tight­ened with emo­tion as we unpacked our suit­cas­es from the back of our rental car and walked toward the entrance.

“How did you pull every­thing togeth­er so fast?”
Rhys would nev­er let me go any­where with­out doing the prop­er advance work first, but it had only been forty-eight hours since I told him about my list. For him to have researched the town, booked the char­ter jet and vil­la, and han­dled the mil­lions of details that came with roy­al trav­el in such a short time…

“I cheat­ed a bit,” he admit­ted, unlock­ing the front door. “An old Navy bud­dy of mine moved down here a cou­ple of years ago and owns this place. He’s on vaca­tion right now and let me bor­row it for a few days. I vis­it every year, so I know the town and peo­ple well. It’s safe. Qui­et. Under the radar.”

“Exact­ly what I need,” I mur­mured. The tight­ness in my chest inten­si­fied.

Rhys showed me around the vil­la. The walls were all glass, offer­ing gor­geous three-hun­dred-six­ty views of the sur­round­ing hills and the Pacif­ic Ocean in the dis­tance. Every­thing was open, airy, and made of nat­ur­al stone and wood, and the house’s design made it seem like it was flow­ing into its sur­round­ings instead of dom­i­nat­ing them. My favorite fea­ture, how­ev­er, was the infin­i­ty pool on the sec­ond-floor ter­race. From a cer­tain angle, it looked like it fed straight into the ocean.

Rhys, being Rhys, also walked me through the secu­ri­ty set­up. Tint­ed, bul­let­proof glass all around, state-of-the-art motion sen­sors, an under­ground pan­ic room stocked with a year’s sup­ply of food. That was all I gath­ered before I zoned out.

I appre­ci­at­ed the secu­ri­ty mea­sures, but I didn’t need a detailed break­down of the make and mod­el of the secu­ri­ty cam­eras. I just want­ed to eat and swim.

“Remind me to send your friend a big thank you,” I said. “This place is incred­i­ble.”

“He loves show­ing it off, usu­al­ly by let­ting peo­ple stay here,” Rhys said dry­ly. “But I’ll tell him.”

It was already close to two, so the first thing we did after we fin­ished the tour was change and head into town for lunch. The town was a twen­ty-minute dri­ve from the vil­la and, accord­ing to Rhys, home to less than a thou­sand peo­ple. Not a sin­gle one of them seemed to know or care who I was.

Buck­et list num­ber one.

We ate at a small, fam­i­ly-run restau­rant whose own­er, a round-faced old­er woman named Luciana, lit up at the sight of Rhys. She smoth­ered him with kiss­es before embrac­ing me too.

“Ay, que boni­ta!” she exclaimed, look­ing me over. “Rhys, es tu novia?” How beau­ti­ful! Rhys, is she your girl­friend?

“No,” Rhys and I said at the same time. We glanced at each oth­er before he clar­i­fied, “Sólo somos ami­gos.” We’re just friends.

“Oh.” Luciana looked dis­ap­point­ed. “One day, you’ll bring a girl­friend,” she said in Eng­lish. “Maybe it’ll be you.” She winked at me before ush­er­ing us to a table.

I blamed my blush on the heat.

Instead of order­ing off the menu, Rhys told me to trust Luciana’s judg­ment, and I was glad we did exact­ly that when the food came out twen­ty min­utes lat­er. Olla de carne, arroz con pol­lo, pla­tanos maduros… all so deli­cious I would beg Luciana for the recipes had I had any kitchen skills beyond scram­bling eggs and mak­ing cof­fee.

“This is incred­i­ble,” I said after swal­low­ing a mouth­ful of chick­en and rice.

“Luci makes the best food in town.”

“Yes, but that’s not what I meant. I meant this.” I ges­tured at my sur­round­ings. “The trip. The whole thing. You didn’t have to do this.”

Espe­cial­ly since Rhys was pay­ing for every­thing out of pock­et. I assumed his friend let him bor­row the vil­la for free, but the flight, the car rental… they all cost good mon­ey. I’d offered to reim­burse him, but he’d respond­ed with such a dark glare I hadn’t brought it up again.

“Con­sid­er it my good­bye present,” Rhys said, not look­ing up from his plate. “Two years. Fig­ured it was worth a trip.”

The chick­en that had been so deli­cious a sec­ond ear­li­er turned to ash in my mouth.

Right. I almost for­got. Rhys only had two weeks left as my body­guard.

I stabbed at my food, my appetite gone. “Do you have a new client already lined up?” I asked casu­al­ly.
Who­ev­er it was, I already hat­ed them for get­ting a begin­ning with Rhys instead of an end­ing.

Rhys rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I’m tak­ing a short break. Maybe I’ll come back to Cos­ta Rica, or head to South Africa for a bit.”

“Oh.” I stabbed hard­er at my chick­en. “Sounds nice.”

Great. He’d be play­ing world trav­el­er while I was attend­ing queen lessons at the palace. Maybe he’d meet some beau­ti­ful Cos­ta Rican or South African girl and they’d spend their days surf­ing and hav­ing sex—

Stop it.

“What about you?” Rhys asked, his tone also casu­al. “Know who your new guard is yet?”

I shook my head. “I asked for Booth, but he’s already assigned to some­one else.”

“Fun­ny. I thought they’d be more accom­mo­dat­ing, con­sid­er­ing you’re the crown princess.” Rhys cut his chick­en with a lit­tle more force than nec­es­sary.

“I’m not crown princess yet. Any­way, let’s talk about some­thing else.” Our con­ver­sa­tion was depress­ing me. “What fun things are there to do around here?”

The answer was, not much. After lunch, Rhys and I walked through town, where I picked up some sou­venirs for my friends. We checked out an art gallery fea­tur­ing local artists, took a cafe break where I had the best cof­fee I’d ever tast­ed, and shopped for gro­ceries at the farmer’s mar­ket.

It was a sim­ple, ordi­nary day, filled with mun­dane activ­i­ties and noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ing.

It was per­fect.

By the time we returned to the vil­la, I was ready to pass out, but Rhys stopped me before I could crash. “If you can stay up a while longer, there’s some­thing you should see.”

Curios­i­ty won out over exhaus­tion.

“This bet­ter be good.” I fol­lowed him out onto the ter­race and sank onto one of the wick­er chairs by the pool, where I sti­fled a yawn. “I get cranky when I don’t get enough sleep.”

“Trust me, I know.” Rhys smirked. “Good of you to admit it though.”

I watched as he turned off all the lights, includ­ing the out­door flood­lights.

“What are you doing?” He nev­er turned off all the lights until right before he went to bed.

He sat down next to me, and I spot­ted a flash of his teeth in the dark­ness before he angled his chin up.

“Look up, princess.”

I did. And I gasped.

Thou­sands upon thou­sands of stars splashed across the sky above us, so numer­ous and dense­ly packed they resem­bled a paint­ing more than real life. The Milky Way, right there in all its sprawl­ing, glit­ter­ing glo­ry. It hadn’t occurred to me we could see it so clear­ly here, but it made sense. We were high in the hills, miles away from the near­est big city. There was no one and noth­ing around except us, the sky, and the night.

“I thought you might like it,” Rhys said. “It’s not some­thing you see in New York or Athen­berg.”

“No. It’s not.” Emo­tion gripped my chest. “And you were right. I love it. Worth stay­ing past my bed­time and get­ting cranky for.”

His low chuck­le set­tled in my bel­ly and warmed me from the inside out.

We stayed out­side for anoth­er hour, just star­ing at the sky and soak­ing in the beau­ty.

I liked to think my par­ents were up there, watch­ing over me.
I won­dered if I’d turned out the way they’d hoped, and if they were proud. I won­dered what they would say about Nikolai’s abdi­ca­tion, and whether my moth­er knew I was the one who should’ve died that day in the hos­pi­tal, not her.
She should’ve been queen, not me.

At least she and my father were togeth­er. They were one of the lucky cou­ples who start­ed off in an arranged mar­riage and end­ed up falling in love. My father had nev­er been the same after my mom’s death, or so every­one told me. I’d been too young to know the dif­fer­ence.

Some­times, I won­dered if he’d lost con­trol of his car on pur­pose so he could join her soon­er.

I turned my head to look at Rhys. My eyes had adjust­ed to the dark enough that I could make out the tiny bump in his nose and the firm curve of his lips.

“Have you ever been in love?” I asked, part­ly because I real­ly want­ed to know, and part­ly because I want­ed to pull my thoughts off the mor­bid path they’d tak­en.

“Nope.”

“Real­ly? Nev­er?”

“Nope,” Rhys said again. He cocked an eye­brow. “Sur­prised?”