Читать книгу Secret Service Dad - Mollie Molay - Страница 10

Europe, the Country of Baronovia, February

Flailing helplessly, U.S. Secret Service agent Mike Wheeler tumbled to the ground. Moments before, he’d been idly checking out security measures around the palace where the wedding of Duchess Mary Louise to Commander Wade Stevens of the U.S. Navy was to take place in a few hours. Now, he was lying on his back in a bed of carefully tended petunias and staring up into a pair of startled blue eyes.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry! I’m afraid I wasn’t looking where I was going. Are you okay? Here, let me help you up!” A pair of manicured feminine hands pulled at his tuxedo jacket.

Mike bit back the paralyzing pain in his injured leg and grimly eyed his attacker, Charlie Norris, a fellow American and a member of the wedding party. She was the last person he wanted to meet.

He took a deep breath and struggled to his feet. Getting shot in the line of duty three months ago had been the pits. Getting knocked over by the woman who inadvertently had played a large part in the events that had led to the shooting didn’t make the pain any easier to bear.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” She took a corner of her silk stole, wet it between her lips and tried to scrub something off his chin.

To his chagrin, whether he approved of her or not, his body warmed at her touch. And tightened at the sight of full, tempting lips so close to his own. He grabbed her hand before things could become more personal.

“Thank you, no,” he said tightly. “Give me a minute. I’ll be fine.”

She waited hopefully, her concern evident. Considering how he felt about the way trouble seemed to follow Charlie and wind up affecting him, he would have been just as happy to see her leave.

“I understand that there are over two hundred rooms in the palace and that it is surrounded by hundreds of acres of grounds,” he said when he could breath freely again. “How did you manage to pick precisely the same two square feet of ground I was standing on to stumble about on?”

She colored. “I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s the problem,” he agreed as he tried to balance himself squarely on two feet. He hadn’t approved of the lady’s methods as the concierge of Blair House even before she ignored security rules to aid and abet the forbidden courtship and subsequent fairy-tale marriage of today’s unlikely bride and groom. He didn’t approve of her any more now.

Charlie bristled. She had been about to tell Mike she’d barreled into him simply because she had slipped down the sloping lawn. “The only mistake I made was to head for the only friendly face I thought I recognized out here,” she said. “Strike the word friendly. And furthermore,” she went on as she tried to balance on one foot, “it looks as if I’ve sprained my ankle. All you have to show for this accident are a few grass stains!” Turning to leave, she teetered and flailed at empty air.

Instinctively, Mike reached to catch Charlie before she fell. Too late—she stumbled, squealed and, to his discomfort, landed squarely in his arms.

He closed his eyes and mentally counted to ten. However misguided Charlie Norris might be, and no matter how wary he was of what she might do next, she was every bit as soft and warm as he’d been afraid she would turn out to be.