The Greatest Risk

by Kristen Ashley

  “That’s ridiculous,” she snapped, not upset with Simone, upset about the story Stellan was sharing.

  “It is to you, to me, to anyone,” Stellan agreed. “To her, perhaps the only person in her life who showed her affection, kindness and his version of love was shot dead stepping in front of her. At twelve, it was all she knew. She was too young to understand what they did to make a living was wrong, that taking a twelve-year-old to a meeting with their supplier was wrong. All she knows is the only person who loved her died saving her.”

  “This is … it is…” Tears filling her eyes, M looked away and didn’t finish.

  Stellan put a crooked forefinger under her chin and brought her back.

  “She’s in love with me, M, and utterly terrified that will in some way harm me.”

  “You need to get her into counseling,” she advised shakily.

  “I need to be certain she doesn’t disappear off the face of the earth first.”

  “How do we…” She cleared her throat. “How do we keep her with us?”

  Us.

  Stellan almost smiled.

  Instead he answered, “We do not let go.”

  He kept his finger under her chin, moving his thumb to hold her there when that chin started trembling.

  Suddenly, fire flashed in her eyes. One emotion fled and another took its place, and his thumb was unnecessary.

  She nodded her head resolutely once.

  “We will not let go.”

  He grinned at her, removed his hand and said, “Thank you, M.”

  Her head tipped to the side, and her gaze grew shrewd. “You’re very much in love with her.”

  “In the story of her life, I’m her happily ever after,” Stellan replied simply.

  Brightness immediately hit her eyes again as they got wet in a way she could not fight.

  “Shh,” he shushed, rounding her with his arms and pulling her against his body. “We’ve a fight on our hands, but that part is the good part. Not something to cry about.”

  Her voice hitched through her, “I know. And it makes me very happy because the world never seemed right to me, the handsome prince going so long without meeting his fair maiden.”

  It never occurred to Stellan that the story went both ways.

  But it fucking did.

  He’d lived a long time just living. Not searching for a woman to share his life with, more than likely, he realized in that moment, because he held fear that in the end, he would be like his father, and he’d lay a path of devastation in his wake.

  But he’d never do that to Simone.

  Never.

  Apparently, the “handsome prince” had some healing to do as well … and Simone was his healer.

  For her part, Simone would probably laugh herself sick at being thought of as a fair maiden. She was the scarred heroine who sacrificed everything to keep the people she loved safe.

  But her story was about to change.

  And so was his.

  Stellan gave M a squeeze and another smile, and it was M who pulled out of his arms.

  And then M did what M did when it came to Stellan or anyone she held close to her heart.

  She bossed him.

  Going right to a little dish filled with a number of pills in a variety of colors and shapes, she tapped it on the counter once before she nudged a tall, slim glass of cranberry juice toward it … and him.

  “Vitamins, mijo,” she murmured and moved away.

  Stellan went to his vitamins and began to take them with the juice.

  As M got busy doing something, she asked, “Is Simone coming down for breakfast?”

  “She was doing her hair when I left her, but yes. Though I’ll warn you, M, I did not tell her that you were resuming your normal schedule. She has no idea you come in the mornings to cook breakfast for me.”

  “Good,” she muttered, “the element of surprise. Keep her on her toes.”

  He knew he’d just recruited an excellent ally.

  He simply had to hope like fuck they could pull this off.

  Stellan took all his vitamins and drank his juice before M got on his ass about doing either.

  He’d made himself a cup of coffee, refreshed M’s, taken his cup to his office to load his attaché, and was returning when he saw Simone wandering to the kitchen, her gaze locked on M.

  When she saw him out of the corner of her eyes, she glanced at him only briefly before M, who from his position in the hall Stellan could not see, called, “Good morning, Simone! Did you have a nice weekend?”

  “Yes, M, hey,” Simone replied as Stellan moved out of the hall and into the kitchen. “Did you?”

  “Excellent,” M replied, headed toward Simone, and Stellan almost barked with laughter as he saw she had a little dish in one hand, a tall, thin glass of cranberry juice in the other.

  She placed the dish in front of Simone with a sharp crack.

  “Vitamins,” she declared firmly and another crack, less sharp, but still a crack, sounded and the glass was down. “Cranberry juice.” She immediately started poking the pills. “That’s Stellan’s multi. I’ll get one for women for you. But you’ll take that today. Vitamin C, no explanation. B-12, energy. Fish oil for your joints—”

  “I—” Simone tried to get in.

  M spoke over her, and Stellan had to swallow a chuckle with his sip of coffee.

  “Green tea, there are two of those. You should take two more during the day, at least. Unless you drink some of the actual tea. Those are antioxidants. And L-lysine. In case you don’t know, it’s an enzyme your body naturally has to strengthen the immune system. But as you age, it depletes. You need to keep that strong. You take those, and you’ll have my breakfast burrito with fruit this morning. Vitamins are good, but always the best source of getting them is in healthy, fresh, plant-based food. So be certain to have some fruit and vegetables for lunch, and I know that Stellan makes sure you have your veggies in the evening. If you do all this, it will make me happy.”

  Simone stared at M, moved her stare to Stellan, who gave her a slight smile and a one-armed shrug, but somewhere deeper he was feeling a good deal more, witnessing Simone processing a woman showing she gave a damn for the first time in her life, before she moved her gaze back to M.

  “Listen, M, I—” she tried.

  Another crack of the dish on the marble countertop. “Take these, Simone. Now, querida. I’ll finish with breakfast.” When Simone didn’t move, M prompted, “I can’t make you breakfast if you don’t take them, and if I don’t make you breakfast, both of you will be late for work.”

  Simone slowly reached out to the dish.

  M didn’t move until Simone had taken half the pills.

  She then went back to the stove.

  Stellan made his way to Simone, bent, and kissed her cheek as she finished with the vitamins.

  Her eyes turned to his, and there was query in them.

  He did not have to ask after that query.

  “Did I not tell you?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I’m so sorry, my darling,” he murmured. “I texted M to tell her to resume her regular schedule. When you first moved in, I asked her not to come in the mornings while we got settled in together. Now that we are, she’s back.”

  Her eyes said a thousand words that with M there her mouth could not say.

  He just wasn’t listening.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she pushed out.

  He moved to the coffeemaker, trying not to smirk smugly.

  “All the juice, Simone,” M ordered.

  “I—” Simone started again, and Stellan didn’t turn to watch as M cut her off.

  To that, he listened.

  “If you don’t like cranberry, I’ll get you something you like. As you know, we have orange and grapefruit right now. But if you prefer apple or grape or pineapple, I’ll get it at the grocery today. Or pomegranate. That’s very good for you.”

  “Cra
nberry’s fine, M,” Simone mumbled.

  “I’ll get some pomegranate anyway.”

  Stellan walked Simone’s coffee to her, seeing her gulp down cranberry juice.

  At the sight, he couldn’t stop his smile.

  She gave him big, annoyed eyes.

  He ignored that too.

  And set about enjoying breakfast with two of his favorite girls in the world.

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, having left Simone being coaxed into taking cooking lessons from M, Stellan was halfway to work when his phone rang.

  He took the call and spoke into the car.

  “Yes, darling?”

  “Do you want to tell me what that was?” Simone demanded.

  “What what was?”

  “This morning.”

  “Breakfast,” he explained easily.

  “Stellan—”

  It was Stellan who interrupted her this time.

  “You don’t have to learn to cook, honey. I like cooking for us.”

  “I—”

  “And speaking of that, we’ll have dinner at home tonight, but tomorrow, we’ll go out. After dinner, we’ll enjoy drinks at the club.”

  “The club?”

  “The Honey,” he clarified.

  “I’m not sure—”

  “I’ll call Leigh. Ask her and Olly to meet us there.”

  She made no response.

  “Have a good day, darling. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Her whisper filled his car.

  “It’s not going to work.”

  His steady voice vibrated through the car.

  “Oh yes it is.”

  “I shouldn’t have started this with you,” she stated, like she wasn’t talking to him.

  “You’re very wrong, Simone. Deciding to do that was the best decision you’ve made in your life. Now say, ‘Goodbye, Stellan. I’ll see you tonight.’”

  “Kiss off, Stellan, I’m going to kick your ass tonight.”

  He burst out laughing.

  He also made sure she heard it.

  She loved it when he laughed and failed every time trying to hide that she did.

  Then he hung up on her.

  * * *

  When Stellan walked through the door to Susan’s office, he did not offer her a greeting, pass by, and go to his office

  He offered her a greeting, walked to the opposite side of her desk, and stopped.

  She studied him, did not return his Good morning, and instead said, “I don’t like the look on your face.”

  Stellan again didn’t delay.

  “I know it’s difficult to find a babysitter for Crosby, so how about we take that out of the equation and you, Harry, and Crosby join Simone and I for dinner at my house, perhaps Wednesday? Or if that doesn’t work, Thursday.”

  Her brows headed toward her hairline. “You want Crosby there?”

  “Yes.”

  “No offense, boss man, you picked her, I’m sure she’s something else. But the woman is a fixer and I’ve never met one but even so, I’m not sure they’d be hip on dinner parties including eighteen-month-olds. I can’t say I remember every second of every episode, but I’m pretty sure Olivia Pope never has been near a baby, but I could guess, considering the shenanigans that go on, she wouldn’t have a lot of time for one.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Stellan assured.

  “Does she like kids?” Susan asked.

  “I’ve no idea,” Stellan answered. “Though if I had to guess, I’d say they terrify her.”

  It was clear she caught herself before she rolled her eyes.

  But she didn’t let this effort stop her from saying, “Well then, take this woman’s advice about your woman who I don’t know but we both share at least that in common. Do not have her meet members of your family in a way that’s more uncomfortable than it’s already going to be.”

  “I have a variety of reasons for asking you to bring Crosby.”

  “You always have a variety of reasons for anything you do,” she muttered. “First and foremost, you don’t do it unless you can get everything you can out of it.”

  Very true.

  “She needs to meet you,” he went on. “She needs to get to know you. She needs to get to know me better. You’re Crosby’s mother. I’m Crosby’s godfather. Harry is a very good friend of mine. You’re all an important part of my life. I see no point in drawing out the inevitable.”

  “And?” she pushed.

  “And I’m going to find it very interesting how she responds to a toddler considering I have every intention of impregnating her eventually, and also repeatedly, so I would say that’s important to know.”

  Her mouth actually dropped open.

  “You might wish to close that,” he advised, tipping his head toward her, eyes to her lips. “You never know what you’ll catch.”

  She snapped her mouth shut but opened it immediately to state, “You’ve decided, one date, one week with this woman, to have children with her?”

  Stellan nodded. “For the most part, yes. We still have things to discover about each other, obviously. But I know she has good taste in films. She likes my cooking, can’t boil water herself, and I don’t care. She’s stubborn but hilarious, and made M fall in love with her somehow through a single conversation, and now she’s been adopted.”

  Susan assumed a stunned expression.

  “Holy Moses, M adopted her?” she breathed.

  “Yes, you belong to three sisterhoods with her now, by my count. The obvious one that involves you both sharing the same body parts. The one that involves me. And now the one that involves M deciding you’ll need a mother until you die, even though you have one and even if you leave this earth at ninety-eight. If she outlives you, she’ll mother you. Same with Simone. She forced a dish of vitamins on her this morning. I’m relatively certain I’ve pulled something with the effort it took for me not to laugh. But she took them.”

  Susan had an amusing look that was hilarity warring with incredulity when she said, “So with all that, you’ve decided to make babies with a fixer.”

  Stellan felt his good mood shifting.

  “You need to let go of this idea of her as a fixer,” he shared.

  She didn’t back down. “But isn’t that what she does?”

  “Not for very long.”

  Her expression changed again.

  This time she looked worried.

  “Stellan, I don’t have to tell you that for a century or so women have been pretty intent on finding ways to make certain decisions for themselves. Like, um … what they do to spend their time, how they make their money, being able to go out and make money, stuff like that.”

  Stellan lifted his attaché and rested it on her desk before explaining, “Simone doesn’t do what she does because she enjoys doing it. She does what she does because it’s the persona she needs to inhabit. It has a variety of uses including making people feel the need to keep distant from her as well as tricking herself into feeling alive. And last, giving life the excuse to do what it will with her, the sooner the better. If she did what she did because it was a genuine part of who she is, I wouldn’t say a word. That’s not why she does it.”

  “So you have her all figured out,” she noted.

  “Not close. She doles information out only under duress. But I have every intention of getting it figured out, so this I will do.”

  Susan knew that to be all kinds of true.

  “You should have been a psychologist,” she remarked.

  “My innate abilities in that arena allow me to be very good at what I actually decided to do.”

  She grinned up at him. “Does she have any idea what she’s gotten herself into?”

  “She thinks she does, but she has no clue.”

  Her grin turned into a smile. “Right then, this I’ve gotta see firsthand. That’s to say, Harry and I don’t have anything on ever. The minute I popped Crosby out, our social life stormed out and slammed the door behin
d it, like a teenage girl who was denied tickets to the boyband concert she wanted so badly to see but she didn’t keep her room clean. Though to give your girl a fighting chance before we enter the mix, we’ll say Thursday. I’ll call Harry to make sure it’s good with him. Do you want us to bring anything?”

  “If I say no, are you still going to bring a bottle of my favorite Scotch, flowers for Simone and some dessert you made anyway?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Then … no.”

  She dissolved into laughter.

  Stellan smiled.

  And watched indulgently.

  * * *

  Sitting at his desk, turned to the side, eyes to the non-view, Stellan listened to his phone ring in his ear.

  The ass made him wait five rings.

  He almost hung up.

  But considering he’d do anything, he was doing anything.

  “Lange,” the man answered.

  “Fred,” Stellan replied. “Do you have a few minutes?”

  “If you’re calling about that council vote, I thought we had an agreement about that.”

  “We do. I’m not calling about that, unless what I’m calling about makes its way to being about that.”

  Fred didn’t speak.

  Stellan didn’t need him to.

  He needed the buffoon who was a buffoon in a variety of ways—however not in terms of the work he did, in that he was lethally successful … literally—to listen.

  And agree.

  “It’s my understanding you farm out certain jobs to Sixx Marchesa,” Stellan stated.

  He visualized Fred straightening in his chair as he said alertly, “Where’s this go—?”

  “You’re going to stop,” Stellan finished.

  “I am?” Fred asked.

  “Yes you are.”

  “You wanna explain how you’re makin’ this decision for me?”

  “Not really, but I will. She means something to me.”

  “Right … you’re both a member of that club.”

  “No,” Stellan negated. “She’s living with me.”

  He heard a whistle in his ear as he crossed his legs and stared at the sprawling desert city.

  “She’s not who I woulda called for you,” Fred remarked.

  Stellan had no interest in what kind of woman a man like Fred would call for him.