"Yes, Your Highness." His inflection on the last two words made a mockery of the title, and the embers of indignation in my stomach stoked brighter.
I opened my mouth to respond, with what? I wasn't sure, because he hadn't been outright hostile but Mark Stevens cut in before I said something I would regret. "Why don't we go inside? It looks like it's about to rain," he said quickly.
Daniel and I looked up. The clear blue sky winked back at us.
Mark Stevens cleared his throat. "You never know. Rain showers come out of nowhere," he muttered.
"After you, Your Highness." We entered the house in silence. I shrugged off my coat and hung it on the brass tree by the door before making another stab at civility.
"Would you like something to drink?" Irritation still stabbed at me, but I hated confrontation, and I didn't want my relationship with my new bodyguard to start on such a sour note.
"No."
Daniel scanned the living room, which I'd decorated in shades of jade green and cream. A housekeeper came by twice a month to deep clean, but I kept the place tidy myself for the most part.
"Why don't we get to know each other?" Mark Stevens said in a jovial, too-loud voice.
"Er, I mean you and Daniel, Your Highness. We can talk needs, expectations, schedules…"
"Excellent idea." I mustered a strained smile and gestured Daniel toward the couch.
"Please. Sit."
For the next forty-five minutes, we ran through logistics for the transition. Mark Stevens would remain my bodyguard until Monday, but Daniel would shadow him until then so he could get a feel for how things worked.
"This is all fine." Daniel closed the file containing a detailed breakdown of my class and weekly schedules, upcoming public events, and expected travel.
"Let me be frank, Miss Rachel. You are not my first, nor will you be the last, royal I've guarded. I've worked with Harper Security for five years, and I've never had a client harmed while under my protection. Do you want to know why?"
"Let me guess. Your dazzling charm stunned the would-be attackers into complacency ," I said.
Mark Stevens choked out a laugh, which he quickly turned into a cough.
Daniel' s mouth didn't so much as twitch. Of course it didn't. My joke wasn't Comedy Central worthy, but I imagined finding a waterfall in the Sahara would be easier than finding a drop of humor in that big,very sexy infuriatingly sculpted body.
"The reason is two-fold," Daniel said calmly, as if I hadn't spoken at all.
"One, I do not become involved in my clients' personal lives. I am here to safeguard you from physical harm. That is all. I am not here to be your friend, confidant, or anything else. This ensures my judgment remains uncompromised. Two, my clients understand the way things must work if they are to remain safe."
"And how is that?" My polite smile carried a warning he either didn't notice or ignored.
"They do what I say, when I say it for anything security- related." Daniel' s gray eyes locked onto mine. It was like staring at an unyielding steel wall.
"Understand, Your Highness?"
Forget love and passion. What I wanted most was to slap the arrogant expression off his face and knee him in the family jewels while I was at it.
I pressed the pads of my fingers into my thighs and forced myself to count to three before I responded. When I spoke again, my voice was frigid enough to make Antarctica look like a beach paradise.
"Yes." My smile sharpened. "Luckily for us both, Mr. Larsen, I have no interest in being your friend, confidant, or 'anything else.'"
I didn't bother dignifying the second part of his statement, the one about me doing what he said, when he said it, with a response. I wasn't an idiot. I'd always heeded Mark Stevens' s security advice, but I'd be damned if I fed into Daniel's inflated sense of self.
"Good." Daniel stood.
I hated how tall he was. His presence obliterated everything else in the vicinity until he was the only thing I could focus on.
"I'll assess the house before we discuss next steps, including upgrading your security system. Right now, any teenager with access to YouTube tutorials can bypass the alarm." He shot me a disapproving glare before he disappeared into the kitchen.
My jaw dropped. "He—you… " I sputtered, uncharacteristically speechless. "Why , I never!" I turned to Mark Steven's, who was trying to melt into the giant potted plant by the front door.
"You're not leaving. I forbid it." Daniel could not be my bodyguard. I would murder him, and my housekeeper would murder me for staining the carpet with blood.
"He probably has first-day jitters." Mark Stevens looked as uncertain as he sounded.
"You'll get along just fine after the, ah, transition period, Your Highness."
Perhaps… if we made it out of the transition period alive.
"You're right." I pressed my fingers to my temple and took a deep breath. I can do this. I'd dealt with difficult people before. My cousin Jason was the spawn of Satan, and a British lord once tried to grope me under the table at Monaco' s Rose Ball.
He only stopped after I "accidentally" stabbed his hand with a fork. What was one surly bodyguard compared to entitled aristocrats, nosy reporters, and evil family members? Daniel returned.
Surprise, surprise, his glower hadn't melted.
"I've detected six security vulnerabilities we need to address ASAP," he said.
"Let's start with number one: the windows."
"Which ones?" Stay calm. Stay reasonable.
"All of them." Mark Stevens covered his face with his hands while I contemplated turning my hairpin into a murder weapon.
Daniel and I definitely weren't making it out of the transition alive. OR were we?