The Elite (Romantic Suspense)

Jacob: An Unusually Perceptive Princess

Jacob shook himself mentally as the plane climbed out of Italian airspace. Rationally, he knew that he should relax now that they were safely away from the bombing and the people behind it, but he couldn't. He was never satisfied with leaving a scene without having a clear sense that it was in good hands -- it was why he normally stayed away from being a traditional bodyguard. A PPO was primarily getting concerned with their charge to safety. Jacob was mostly concerned with ensuring that the threat was neutralized. Call it a character flaw, but he didn't trust anyone to do his job as well as he could.

Daphne fidgeted in her seat across the small wooden conference table that allowed the king and his advisors to have meetings at altitude, and Jacob forced his focus back to the task at hand. Like it or not, making sure she was okay was his primary responsibility for the moment. Despite their momentary banter, he could see the shock beginning to settle over her like a blanket. Her eyes were unfocused, her hands trembled slightly around the mug of coffee she was holding -- despite her valiant efforts to hide it. All of that was to be expected, of course. She would be superhuman if she could be a witness to a bombing without going into shock. Add in the fact that her jerk of a fiance was outed on international television, and he could only imagine how she was feeling.

Jacob set his own coffee mug to the side and shrugged his jacket off, then rolled up the sleeves of his button-down shirt. He wasn't hot, but he wanted to give off an air of complete nonchalance. Nothing bothered him in the slightest. If he was lucky, her body would respond in kind. If not, he might have to move closer to her. He wasn't opposed, but the recent dissolution of her engagement made it unlikely that she would be receptive. Better to try and calm her down from a distance.

Daphne's eyes jumped to his face and then settled on sleeves, watching, fixated, as he cuffed them expertly. Jacob leaned forward slightly so that his forearms rested on the table, and tried to hide that he was watching how quickly her chest was rising and falling. If he didn't get her calm in the next few moments, he was going to have to take her coffee away so she didn't accidentally spill hot liquid all over herself.

His adrenaline was trying to buzz under the surface, all of his instincts wanting to get a lead in this case. If he were a less-experienced agent, he would have tried to get a preliminary statement from her. Given how rattled she was, though, he knew he was going to have to wait and let see if he could help her rational thinking come back online. She would be a lot more useful once her nervous system realized that she wasn't in imminent danger – for the moment, at least.

"So, you're an Oxford girl, huh?"

Daphne blinked slowly, like a kitten opening its eyes for the first time, and looked confused.

Jacob nodded at her sweatshirt. "You're wearing a Magdalene College shirt."

Daphne glanced down and a blush crept up into her cheeks, the color more pronounced given how pale she was. "Oh. No. Nicholas went to Oxford. I went to the London School of Economics."

Jacob raised his eyebrows slightly as he took that in. He vaguely remembered hearing something about the princess's unconventional choice of university while he was at the Academy, but he hadn't put the two together.

Daphne must have taken his silence for disapproval because her mouth tightened in a grimace. "I know. It was unpatriotic to go somewhere else for university. I just..." she gazed above Jacob's head for a long moment. "My brother wanted to go to Oxford his entire life, and I wasn't about to be left behind in Montrovia."

It was a plausible enough reason, but there was a flash of something in her eyes as she said the last part of the sentence, something that made Jacob doubt it was the full story. The special agent part of his brain strained against its leash, unimpressed with the finesse. Nice and easy. Let her mirror neurons kick in and then delve a little deeper below the surface, he scolded himself.