You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

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 vil-
la. “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, offer-
ing 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 sec-
ond-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 fin-
ished 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 girl-
friend,” 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 chick-
en 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 paint-
ing 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 in-
side 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 abdi-
cation, 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?”