She would be patient and wait until she could close them off from the world and tell them-all three of them-how she felt. She would share how scared she was. She would tell them how wrong she'd been to try to cut them out because now she knew that a family faced things together even when it hurt. Her job wasn't to shield them. It was to stand beside them, to hold hands and weather all the storms.
She would tell them she loved them so much.
"Princess?" Her temporary guard had opened the door to her living area. He stepped through, looking young and so very serious.
"Yes?"
The guard bowed slightly in deference to her. He seemed deeply solicitous toward females. As they had moved through the palace, he had been courteous to every female they had encountered. It had endeared the young man to her.
"There's a man here to see you. He's your cousin's husband, Oliver Thurston-Hughes. I've made sure he doesn't have any weapons. Should I tell him to go?"
Oliver was here? She winced a little. She was going to have to apologize for destroying his plane. She doubted it would have crashed if she hadn't been in it. Oliver's family was ridiculously wealthy, but they would miss a plane. "No, not at all. Please show him in."
"Should I stay with you?" the guard asked.
Alea shook her head. Her rooms were the only place she was going to be allowed any privacy for a while. She wasn't going to give it up. "No, I'm fine. He's family."
Oliver walked through, his face a dull red. He was a little disheveled, his normally perfect suit lacking a tie and his dress shirt slightly wrinkled. "Lea, thank goodness you're all right."
She tried to give him her best smile, but he wasn't the man she really wanted to see. "It's good to see you, Oliver."
"Is everything all right? The guard was rather thorough in his pat down." Oliver smoothed down his shirt.
She didn't want to explain that there was very likely still some crazy person out there who seemed to want her dead. "Everything's fine. I think Tal is just a little touchy right now. Now why are you here? Have you been here the whole time?"
"We went back home for a bit, but Talib asked Yasmin to come back to the palace once the horrible news reports began. I don't know what that terrible girl thinks she's going to get out of this."
She led him back to the sitting area. "Brittany? I'm sure she thinks she'll either get some closure or some money for her side of the story."
"I think we should sue her. Yasmin has been representing the family on some news channels. I'll be honest, I'm rather worried she enjoys the fame a bit much."
Yas had always enjoyed attention. She'd done some crazy things to get it. Alea had hoped she was over that.
Oliver was suddenly invading her space, hugging her close. "God, I can't tell you how happy I am. I was heartbroken. Lea, you were on my plane when it crashed. That was supposed to be me and Yasmin. I can't tell you how hard it's been knowing I caused this."
Alea tried to politely put some distance between them while reassuring him. "Oliver, this was about me. I'm the one they're trying to kill."
He shook his head, stepping back. "No. I don't think so. We've been working with your investigators. It's why we came back here a few days ago. My brother got an e-mail after the plane went down. It said they wanted to take down all of the aristocracy, that our time was done. Yasmin was so upset by it that my brother gave her half a million pounds to upgrade security in all the homes and at the building where the charity is housed. How can we ever make it up to you? I shouldn't have allowed you to traipse off like that."
Allowed it? Something was tickling at the back of her mind. "I'm fine, Oliver. And I think it worked out for the best. If you and Yas had been on that plane, I doubt you would have survived."
"I doubt it, too. How exactly did you manage to escape? When I heard the plane went down over a remote part of the Pacific, I was sure you would drown. Or if you managed to survive the crash, you would likely die of exposure."
She shivered a little knowing how close she'd come. It was funny, even afterward she hadn't had bad dreams about the crash. She'd trusted her men implicitly. She'd never really thought she would die. "We got on quite well, actually."
"You don't know how many nights I sat up thinking about all the ways you could have died. I dreamed about sharks a lot. It's a bloody miracle you're alive." His voice shook a bit.
"Well, I had three former special ops guys in my corner. They're kind of amazing." They had been calm and cool, thinking only of saving her. "They weren't about to let me die."