Royal Guard Tiger (Shifter Kingdom Book 2) Read online

  But if she didn’t show up tomorrow...

  She pushed the thought away. Not right now, like Tristan had said.

  “I think...” Poppy sat up a little straighter, shrugging her shoulders to resettle the weight of his coat. It sent up a little waft of warmth and she realized she could smell him on it; the faint, spicy scent shot heat through her whole body.

  Tristan studied her face, then nodded. “You’ve got some color, at least.”

  “Well, by my standards,” Poppy said, touching the back of one hand to her cheek to be sure she wasn’t beet red.

  “Naturally,” Tristan agreed, and the corner of his mouth turned up, a tiny fraction of a style that was still somehow breathtaking. “I’m used to making allowances for you pale types.”

  He stood up then, stepping into the street so that he could stand facing her as he offered both his hands. Poppy laid both of hers in them, noticing how much smaller they were, as well as paler. He left his hands open, so it was up to her to hold on, and he let her pull against him, levering herself up to her feet.

  “Oh,” Poppy said when she was standing, feeling a little rush of dizziness. “Oh, you’re really tall.”

  Tristan blinked at her, and after a few seconds, both sides of his mouth turned up in a tiny, tiny smile; she thought it must be like getting a belly laugh out of anyone else, and it made her feel warm all the way through. Poppy clung to his hands, thrown by how much she wanted to make him smile, how much she wanted to know what was behind that cool, quiet exterior.

  She giggled a little at her own inanity. She had to be making an amazing first impression right now; a serious guy like Tristan probably loved party girls who couldn’t even walk half a block in a straight line. “Sorry, that’s—I just—”

  “Quite all right,” Tristan assured her. He tugged one hand free of hers and adjusted the hang of his coat on her shoulders, making no move to take it back. “I could say that your hair is really very red, if you like.”

  “Yeah, I’m red all over,” Poppy replied, and then flushed. Now he really would think she was a party girl, or maybe just drunk. The flirtatious answer had been automatic, but she had never said it to anyone as gorgeous and kind and—and tall—as Tristan. It suddenly mattered very much what he said back.

  Tristan didn’t laugh. He took one hand from around hers to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “Would you care to walk a little farther, Miss? Or... catch a cab, perhaps?”

  “It’s Poppy,” Poppy corrected firmly, then smiled as she added, “unless you want me to call you Mister.”

  Tristan shook his head. “Tristan is... quite enough. Poppy.”

  Poppy nodded and looked around. If Tristan hadn’t helped her get free of Daniel, she’d entertained visions of just running from him. It would still be best to get farther away.

  “It would be my honor to see you home safely,” Tristan said, like that was... just a thing people said. But it didn’t sound artificial, from him; Tristan seemed like someone who knew something about honor. “We should be able to get a cab on the corner.”

  “I...” Poppy squeezed his hand tight. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  Tristan nodded, as though she hadn’t said anything strange, or anything he was going to dismiss as a drunk girl freaking out. “Then you won’t be. Come, this way.”

  He guided Poppy back up onto the pavement, and they walked hand in hand toward a larger street. Tristan seemed to make a black cab appear just by raising his hand for it, and he handed her into the back seat like she was wearing a ball gown instead of the one cute dress that never wrinkled in her pack. Plus his suit coat.

  She took a moment to slip her arms into the sleeves as she scooted across the back seat, making room for him, only to realize that the sleeves covered her hands completely. The heavy wool of the coat didn’t scrunch up easily.

  Tristan settled beside her, pulling the door shut and making the whole world seem to disappear—except for the cabbie, on the other side of the partition. When he asked where they were going, Tristan looked at her.

  Poppy’s hands curled into fists in the sleeves of Tristan’s coat. Tristan had offered to see her home, which... was nowhere, really, in the long run. But for tonight it was her hostel in the City of London, which would be a ghost town right now. She’d have to slip into the crowded dormitory in the dark to find her things, to shower the smell of the club and the memory of Daniel’s touch off her skin.

  But she needed her things, so that was where she had to go next, even if she didn’t want to stay there tonight. She rattled off the address of the hostel, and the cabbie nodded and pulled out into traffic.

  Tristan reached out, his hands hovering above hers where they were lost in the sleeves of his coat. “May I?”

  Poppy nodded, watching as Tristan carefully turned the stiff fabric back on itself, revealing the satiny lining underneath and, eventually, her hands.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Did I say that, before? Thank you for playing along. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t spotted someone I could...”

  Poppy trailed off, leaving the last word unspoken. Someone I could trust.

  It was true. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she had known as soon as she saw Tristan looking at her, standing so still on the threshold of the club in his crisp black suit, that she could trust him. She rarely had that kind of intuition about anyone—her assessments of strange men usually ranged from “not immediately dangerous, wait and see” to “RUN”—but Tristan was different somehow, quite aside from his looks.

  “You did,” Tristan said. “You thanked me repeatedly. But think nothing of it. I’m sure you would do the same for someone in a tight spot, wouldn’t you?”

  Poppy shrugged, looking away. That was exactly why she had been in the tight spot, of course. But she wasn’t used to anyone else being around to help her, or looking at her like they saw more in her than an aimless American girl.

  “May I ask,” Tristan said slowly. “Why did you say what you said, when you saw me? You asked if your sister had sent me.”

  “Oh,” Poppy tilted her head back, leaning against the seat and wrapping Tristan’s coat around her like armor. “It was... the word sister disarms a lot of guys. It’s the least likely connection to make a guy like Daniel flip out, but it also doesn’t suggest too much to—”

  “To me,” Tristan said, his face turning really expressionless as he looked away. “I see.”

  “No, I,” Poppy twisted toward him, reaching out to grab one of his hands with hers. Her bare knee rested on top of his, and she felt Tristan go very still beside her. His hand was warm under hers, and as soon as she touched him she didn’t want to ever stop. “I just, I mean, in the first second—”

  Tristan gave her another tiny fraction of a smile, raising the hand she hadn’t grabbed to tuck back her hair, though it hadn’t fallen down. His fingers grazed the rim of her ear, brushed against the corner of her jaw. “I understand, Poppy. It was clever. And I suppose I couldn’t have passed as your brother without a great many explanations.”

  Poppy nodded, letting herself grin now that he had smiled. “If you’d been a redhead, I might have tried that. But brothers fight over their sisters sometimes, and I didn’t want a fight. I just wanted to get out of there.”

  Tristan nodded. “Very clever. You’re a strategic thinker.”

  Poppy tilted her head, wanting to deflect his quiet, factual praise even though it warmed her inside that he saw something like that in her, something real. “I have to be. You’d be surprised how many tricks women have, especially the ones who run around alone with no brothers to fight our battles for us.”

  “Less surprised now that I’ve met you.” Tristan’s eyes stayed steady on her, and she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he’d pulled a Sherlock Holmes right then and told her her whole life story right then. She felt as if she were under a microscope.

  Poppy ducked her head, trying to hide her smile. Tristan’s hand tu
rned under hers, holding on, and Poppy curled closer to him, resting her forehead against his shoulder. She could feel the heat of his body through the thin dress shirt, and she breathed in the starchy clean smell of his clothes. She wanted so much more than this, but she was also tired, and still coming down from her narrow escape. This was good, too.

  “Do you really have a sister, then?” He asked. “Or does she only exist for strategic purposes?”

  Poppy winced, unseen. “No, she’s real. I mean, she doesn’t send people to check up on me, but I have an older sister. Siggy. She’s the responsible one. Usually, anyway. She met some guy a few weeks ago and ran off to Europe with him.”

  “Ah,” Tristan said. “That does sound rather... reckless.”

  Poppy shook her head, feeling a guilty twinge; she didn’t want to make Signy sound bad, and she had a feeling reckless was about the worst thing Tristan could think of anyone. “She sounded happy, the texts she sent me about it. They were staying someplace with this great ocean view, and...”

  Poppy swallowed hard. She felt stupidly close to crying, in the back of a cab with some guy she hadn’t known for an hour. At least she could blame the adrenaline if Tristan saw, but it was still not the first impression she wanted to make on this dashing stranger.

  Was that what this was? Did she just want what her sister had? But no—just wanting a great guy couldn’t have magically summoned Tristan into existence. Maybe she wouldn’t have been so eager to stay near him, wouldn’t have found herself imagining a real relationship with him, without Signy’s example, but Tristan himself was entirely real.

  “Did she stop texting you?” Tristan asked softly. He was running his fingers over her hair again, and she closed her eyes and let him, nestling closer like a cat asking to be petted.

  “No, I turned my phone off,” Poppy admitted. “I just knew if I left it on the next thing I’d get from her would be a wedding invitation or something. That’s the thing about Signy, she always does the right thing. Mom and Dad moved us all over the country, but Signy was the one who kept track of all our school records. Signy stayed by herself for two months after the rest of us left, so she could finish high school on time. If Signy ran off with this guy, I don’t doubt she’s gonna live happily ever after with him in some little stone house by the sea, having a dozen perfect little babies.”

  Poppy blinked rapidly to hold back the tears that threatened.

  “I just,” Poppy said. “I know she... she would tell me to visit or something. But it wouldn’t be mine, you know? And she wouldn’t say, see, Poppy, all you have to do is meet the most perfect guy in the world and then you could be happy too, but...”

  Tristan kept petting her hair. He didn’t ask anything else, but somehow Poppy thought he understood.

  “I just wanted to figure it out for myself,” Poppy whispered. “Maybe that’s stupid, but I just—I just want to find something for myself. Something that’s mine. Something I did first.”

  She forced a little laugh and shook her head. “Sorry. I sound like a bitch when I talk about her. She’s great, I just—”

  “You don’t,” Tristan said softly. He turned a little, tapping his fingers under Poppy’s chin. She looked up and met his eyes, feeling a little thrill at the way he looked back at her, unwavering even when she couldn’t help getting emotional. “You sound like you’re looking for something very important. You have a right to try to find it. I hope you do.”

  “I think I’m getting close,” Poppy said softly, and then the cab came to a hard stop.

  Poppy looked outside and realized they’d arrived at the hostel, in a narrow lane near St. Paul’s Cathedral. “Oh, I—this is me, but—”

  What could she do? Invite Tristan into a darkened dormitory or a shabby common room? She looked at him, and found him studying the hostel with a slight frown. It struck her, just then, that he was older than she was—not old, obviously, there were no real lines on his face and his black hair didn’t show a single thread of gray—but a proper, serious adult. He no doubt stayed in nice hotels when he traveled, not hostels or the couches of friends-of-friends.

  She looked down at the turned-back sleeves of his suit coat and realized they were probably really nice hotels.

  “Poppy,” he said quietly. “Are you sure you’ll be safe here?”

  Poppy opened her mouth to say that of course she would—there were people around, and Daniel had no idea where she was staying. She knew how to take care of herself. She always did.

  Before she could speak, Tristan added, just as seriously, as though it really mattered, “Will you feel safe here?”

  She pictured lying awake among strangers, her phone buzzing and buzzing all night, and slowly shook her head. “But I—”

  Tristan covered her hand with his. “If you wanted company, I swear I wouldn’t expect anything. You could come to my hotel.”

  Poppy was nodding almost before Tristan finished speaking, her cheeks flushing hot as she realized that even if Tristan didn’t expect anything to happen, she did. Or, well, she wanted something to happen; she didn’t know quite how good her odds were yet. It was hard to know if Tristan just went around taking people seriously all the time, or if he was... actually serious about Poppy, especially.

  “Will you wait?” She asked, glancing toward the cabbie, who was watching them with raised eyebrows.

  “Of course,” Tristan said firmly, and he opened the door and stepped out gracefully, keeping one hand on hers to assist her onto the ancient cobblestones.

  “One minute,” Poppy promised, and hurried over to the door to let herself in.

  It took longer than a minute, of course. Fumbling in the dark to make sure she had all her things, she wound up pulling out the phone from her purse to use as a flashlight—which meant seeing the messages she’d gotten while she was with Tristan.

  Only one of them was from Daniel: Bright and early, poppet.

  There were three from Sasha, though. Pops? Why is Daniel texting me?? and Aren’t you going? You said you would go? and He says you ditched him for a scarfaced guy in a suit? DEETS!

  Poppy closed all the messages and zipped up her pack, shoving the phone into her bag. Sasha was safe. Sasha was on a train, away from Daniel. There was no way Daniel would lure her back to the city, or find out where she was. There was no way Poppy was going to Paris, or anywhere, with Daniel. She had done her good deed and lived to tell the tale and she had met an amazing guy. She was done with this whole night.

  She slung her pack on her shoulder, shoved the phone back into her purse, and hurried through checking out. The hostel clerk shot a curious look at the juxtaposition of her dress, her battered hiking pack, and Tristan’s suit coat. Poppy pretended not to notice, though she felt her face heat a little anyway; she was never going to have a poker face like Tristan’s.

  Less than ten minutes later she was back out in the lane. Tristan was waiting for her, standing beside the open back door of the cab. He had rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, and Poppy couldn’t help staring at the muscles of his forearms as he handed her into the cab again and slid in to sit beside her.

  She didn’t let go after he settled in beside her, and Tristan gave her hand a squeeze. The cab got into motion as soon as he pulled the door shut; he must have already told the cabbie where they were going. Poppy glanced at the meter and saw that it had started over—clearly Tristan had already paid for their trip so far, which might explain why the cabbie was cooperating with all of this.

  Poppy curled toward Tristan again, studying his profile as he watched the city go by. He was on his guard in a way Poppy tried to be in strange places; something about the quickness of his moving gaze told her that he knew what he was looking for. She thought of the scars on his face, his faint strange accent, his gorgeously tailored suit, his cool, calm self-control, and leaned close to his ear.

  She felt him go a different kind of still just before she whispered, “Are you a spy, Tristan?”

  Tristan tu
rned his head, and they were kissing-close. She had the faintest impression of a smile from the corners of his eyes, but no more. “I believe there is a traditional answer to that question.”

  Poppy nodded, smiling a little herself, even though she didn’t entirely think either of them was joking. “You could tell me, but then you’d have to kill me.”

  Tristan tilted his head slightly, not a nod but a gesture in that direction. “But we don’t have to worry about that, because I am certainly not a spy.”

  “Of course not,” Poppy agreed, trying to match his even tone. “That would be crazy.”

  “Well,” Tristan said. “It would likely mean I wasn’t very good at my job, if I could be identified so easily and meant not to be. But you are correct that I am an agent of my government, and that I am currently engaged in a highly sensitive and somewhat secret mission.”

  Poppy’s mouth fell open. “That’s... not the answer I was expecting.”

  Tristan did one of his tiny corner-of-the-mouth smiles. “Nothing you’ve said tonight has been what I was expecting, so that seems fair.”

  Poppy sat back, opening up a few inches between them. “You’re serious?”

  Tristan nodded and tapped one hand so lightly against the lapel of his coat that it couldn’t possibly be mistaken for an attempt to touch her body beneath it. “Check for yourself. I travel on a diplomatic passport.”

  Poppy sat back all the way and reached into Tristan’s suit jacket. Had he honestly let her out of his sight with his passport as well as his expensive suit coat? He didn’t seem like the type to trust random girls that much.

  Her fingers touched a familiar little booklet, and she pulled it out and stared at the seal on the cover. “Denmark?”

  Tristan arched his eyebrows slightly. Poppy flipped the passport open on a picture of a somewhat younger Tristan, his black hair cut severely short so that no curls showed. His face was perfectly smooth, unmarked by the bright new scars across his cheek.