A Bodyguard For The Princess (A Bad Boy Romance) Read Free Page A

lip. She should tell him to get out and report the incident to her father, but for some reason, the words stuck in her throat.
    “Very well,” he finally replied. “I will be here by seven o’clock each morning.”
    “That’s not necessary. Ralph was never here until nine.”
    “I am not Ralph,” he said quickly. “If you are my charge, then when you wake, I will be here, and I do not end my day until you do. That is my job, princess.”
    She tugged harder on her earlobe but stopped immediately when his lips thinned at the action. “I don’t expect you to shadow me for so long during the day. The other guards will be nearby for the meetings and such.”
    “Princess Daphne, when I was given a job in the military, I was expected to carry it out word for word,” he explained with a tinge of bitterness in his words. “I was given the task of protecting the princess of the royal family who rules my home. I will take it very seriously, as I do all things.”
    His words weren’t loud, but the promise in them was, and Daphne was so startled by it, she nearly missed his next words.
    “I have several other things to take care of with Ambrose, my lady, before the ball.”
    “Yes, of course,” she muttered a quick reply to his question about leaving her for the moment. “Please, do what you must. I will be here until the ball starts this evening.”
    He bowed his head, backed towards the door, and left the room. Daphne stared at it, her heart pounding. She barely had time to run through their very brief and very strange conversation when a knock echoed through her room.
    “Yes?”
    “Cousin! Happy birthday!”
    Daphne grinned as Dion, her cousin—also recently twenty-one—hurried across the room and wrapped her into a bear hug. “Dion! I was wondering if you’d show up.” She tried not to look so surprised by his good mood, but lately, he’d been sour and cranky anytime they were together.
    “Why would I miss your birthday?” He kissed her on the cheek and set her back on her feet. “Supposed to be quite the spectacle tonight. Quite a few hot single ladies as well.”
    “Your mother still harping at you to find a suitable wife?” she teased.
    “You know how she is. Suitable enough to marry her son.” Dion sighed. “I will never find that woman.” He shoved a lock of blond hair from his forehead as he plopped down on her couch. “But lately, I just use that as an excuse to go out.”
    She laughed with him and kicked off her heels, sitting down on the opposite end after she shoved his legs aside. “Must be nice to get out and see the whole island.”
    He smirked. “You can see the island from your balcony.”
    She kicked him as he laughed. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”
    Daphne tried to tame her envy of her cousin, but it was hard when he was allowed to explore the island and beyond, sailing across the open waters of the Mediterranean, while she was trapped behind the palace walls. Her parents were overprotective of her. The reason was simple, everyone knew it, and it had been years since her older sister died in a tragic accident. Yet it was that very accident that had doomed Daphne to live a cloistered life.
    When it happened, Daphne had just turned six. She didn’t remember her sister well but knew she looked like their father and was strong and full of life. The death hit the family and the whole kingdom hard, but it was Daphne who suffered because of it now.
    “They won’t let up now that you’re about to inherit the throne?” Dion asked, nudging her leg.
    “No, probably not. That just makes it worse.” Dion was also in line for the throne—after her, of course—but since he was not in the direct line, he wasn’t kept under lock and key, nor always under guard. “I thought all night, hoping to find an excuse to get out of the ball.”
    Dion shook his head. “It won’t be that bad. I’ll be there.”
    “And you’ll be swarmed by ladies and watched by your mother all