by Susan Ward
“A word of advice, Damon,” I chirruped haughtily. He was carefully guiding me forward, holding my shoulders and walking behind me. “Never get a gift for a woman that requires explanation. That means you only have a fifty-fifty shot at her liking it, depending on how good you are at talking yourself out of a bad situation.”
“This is the one exception, KK. I’m one hundred percent certain that you’ll like it, but regrettably, I’m really annoyed that I did it without discussing it with you first. It’s that kind of gift.”
“Oh, another first ‘first’ for us, Damon. That’s the type of gift a husband gives, not a boyfriend. Very daring of you. Especially since I haven’t married you yet.”
“Not really daring, but you’ll admit practical.”
We stopped. I didn’t open my eyes, even though I could feel Damon stepping around me and I was very eager to see what he’d done. It was hard to imagine any kind of surprise being given to me over dinner.
He reached for my hand and squeezed my fingers. “You can look now, Khloe.”
I stared across the long mahogany table elegantly set for four and found two wonderful pairs of eyes staring back at me.
Oh. My. God.
“What are you doing here?” I squealed, running around the table to throw myself into Cody’s open arms.
Hugging me tight, he lifted me from the floor. “Gideon and I moved here two weeks ago. It damn near killed me not spilling the beans, but Damon wanted to surprise you. Got a nice little house on the property. Your dad covered the cost of building a first-rate cardiac clinic equipped with even an operating room and recovery facility so that you’d have what you need for an emergency or the transplant, right here at the house. Gideon’s taken a job as part of Dr. Hern’s surgical team for you, and you can have your required medical exams without ever stepping foot off the property. I couldn’t leave you on your own for this fight. We moved here.”
“Moved here?” My head was spinning. I was too overwhelmed to remember I’d been angry with him for not saying goodbye. My arms tightened around his neck. “But you hate the cold and love the beach. I can’t believe the two of you did this for me.”
“I love you more, and I couldn’t let my best friend take off without me. I’m always where you are, Khloe. Nothing is changing that now. Not even you marrying Damon.”
DINNER PASSED IN FESTIVE hours of food, conversation, and laughter. Every time I looked at Cody and Gideon, I startled, a bit surprised to find them there. It seemed so unreal, and I realized what a lucky girl I was to have so many wonderful people care about me.
My fingers remained laced with Damon’s even as we ate, and I couldn’t stop every so often tightening my hold on him to assure him how happy I was that he’d done this.
Damon wiped his mouth and set down his napkin. “Do the guest quarters have everything you need? If not, let me know, and I’ll make sure the Freeburgs correct it immediately.”
“Everything we need?” Cody sat back in his chair. “It’s a step up from our apartment in Redondo Beach.”
“A step up?” Gideon sounded appalled. “Babe, it’s a flight of stairs up. We’re definitely enjoying having that Jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom. I hated our tiny box shower at home.”
Cody gave Gid his annoyed don’t talk about our private junk stare, and my cheeks heated. Damon bit back a grin. “Well, it’s been a long day,” he said smoothly. “We should turn in.”
“Good idea,” Gideon said. “I’ve got a lot of reading to do to bring myself up to speed with Dr. Hern’s research. Fascinating clinical trials. I couldn’t have hoped for a better experimental research program to become a part of. He’s a brilliant physician.”
I smiled at Cody. “That just leaves you and me with nothing to do all day. Maybe tomorrow we can give each other pedis, and you can give me the full details of your move here while we binge on trash TV and Oreo cookies. We haven’t done that in a while.”
“Not tomorrow, Khloe,” Cody said, looking grim. “I’ve still gotta get Damon’s security at the house plugged in with Black Star’s. They have their procedures. We have ours. It’s been an ugly battle to get them up to speed with how we do things.”
I made a dramatic pout. “Great. Everyone has something to keep busy with except me.”
“Wrong. You have me.” Damon dropped a kiss on my mouth. He pulled back my chair and waited as I stood. “Have a good evening.”
When we reached our bedroom, we found the lights turned low, music softly playing, and a roaring fire in the hearth. Suddenly, Damon pulled me flush against him.
“What are you doing?” I asked, breathless from my racing pulse, which took off the second I was surrounded by him.
“We haven’t danced since Venice. We’re dancing tonight,” he murmured close to my ear as he glided me in graceful moves. I’d never been a very good dancer, but my body followed his effortlessly.
“Any particular reason we’re dancing?” I moved closer into him and lay my head on his shoulder.
I partly suspected it was to avoid any blowback he feared might come his way from me now that we were alone—blowback over the clinic and having a full-time doctor in residence with us. No, I didn’t like that he hadn’t discussed it with me first and had kept it a secret, but I wasn’t upset. I loved and understood why he’d done it. I would have argued that it was unnecessary. And he would have been a bundle of nervous concern over us living here without it.
“Tell me why we’re dancing,” I prodded again.
“Because we can. Because I love you. Take your pick.”
He molded me even tighter against him as we moved sensually in time with the erotic beat of a slow song. I peeked up at him, and I could see it in his eyes. Whatever apprehension he had over the Cody-and-Gideon plot was gone. He’d moved on to thinking about the other nights we danced and how they ended.
“You’re a wonderful man, Damon,” I whispered. And he was. He made me feel sexy in the times I wasn’t. He made me want to laugh on the days I should cry. He made me unafraid of things I was terrified of. He made me feel alive on the days I felt half dead. He made me feel the power of love because he had a wealth of love to give. I knew that our future was clouded with things we couldn’t control, but he didn’t love less, and somehow, he’d taught me not to either.
I was pulsing all through my body, focused only on him by the time the song switched to another. “Take me to bed, Damon,” I whispered. “I can’t think of a better way to end this marvelous day.”
Part Two
Chapter Thirteen
Damon
The Present
I BURY MYSELF IN HER, OVER and over again, lost in a swirling cloud of black curls, held captive by the feel of her, her smell, her taste, the heat rolling off her flesh somehow scorching my already hot body.
I can’t get deep enough—there’s no such thing with how I want her—and my hands clutch her ass, lifting her from the bed. She wraps her legs tightly around me, her fingers tangled in my hair, urging me with everything she has to go deeper, harder, faster.
“Ah…oh…” she moans, sending shock waves to my center. “Make love to me like there’s no tomorrow, Damon. Love me with everything you have in this single moment…”
I cry out, and she follows. I struggle to draw enough power to lift my lids to watch her orgasm unfurl across her face. My beautiful, lovely Khloe…and then she’s gone.
I jerk upright in bed, my heart pounding so fiercely I’m rocketed from deep sleep to full wakefulness too quickly. The room around me becomes shifting patterns of things I don’t want to see. The empty space beside me on the bed. Through the wall of glass, her chair with no one in it. I’m alone in my bedroom at the ranch.
Alone…
I’m a trembling, sweaty mess, and the pace of my heart is painful. It feels like I’m suffocating, and maybe I am. Struggling to pull air into my lungs and push it back out, I grind my palms into my eyes.
It’s been seven days since I saw Khloe. Every night she runs wild in my subconscious. Every second I’m awake, it’s a vision of her in my head. The torment’s returned as bad as it had been a year ago after I lost her, and all I did was see her briefly, feel her presence near mine for a handful of minutes, and I am in agony from my want of her.
Tears singe my eyes and make my throat raw from the effort of holding them back. It’s worse when I let my heart pour out of me. It’s always worse after.
I’m flooded with that familiar sense of desperation and love; emotions inexplicably linked when loving Khloe. I don’t regret loving her. I don’t regret loving her still. What I despise is this damn quagmire of misery we’re both trapped in.
I check the clock. It’s 4:30 a.m. No surprise that my nightmares move in lockstep with the coming of the dawn. It’s impossible for me to sleep through the rising of the sun. Even after a year without her.
I grab my robe from the chair and wipe the sweat off my body, then shrug into it as I head for the bathroom. Avoiding my reflection in the mirror, I switch on the water and splash a blast of cold into my face.
Seizing the neatly folded towel from the vanity, I briskly rub the dripping water off my face. The Saxe family crest is rough against my cheeks. I hold the towel cupped at my nose and breathe in deeply. No trace of her, not any longer. I neatly arrange the towel back into the exact shape it had been the last day she was here and set it beside her sink.
After a quick shower, I brush my teeth and shave. Then I go into my closet to dress. I run my hand along the neatly organized suits. I’m not sure what to wear to see Khloe today. I focus my thoughts on that to avoid thinking of what is ahead when we’re together again.
What would my wife like? Something formal or something casual? As I reach for a t-shirt to wear under a sweater, my finger brushes the dark wool cap. My heart twists painfully. Why did I leave it out where Mrs. Freeburg would find it for the laundry?
My throat convulses.
Because I didn’t know that Khloe would leave the ranch and it would end with her leaving me.
IT’S FALL, KHLOE’S FAVORITE SEASON, but the terrace off our bedroom seems gloomy. The Tetons are still half in shadows, not fully bathed by the rising sun, and the sky’s a pale blue that precedes the dawn.
I settle in my chair and stare with unseeing eyes at the landscape. I don’t see the mountains. Instead, I see her curled up in her bed. Does she dream of me the way I dream of her? Has she forgotten what we were? Is our separation kinder to her than it is to me?
I’ve never felt this miserable before, not even when my father imprisoned me in the palace to keep me from her. Not all dark, cold, lonely places are the same. The awful thought crosses my mind that in the week that’s passed, she may not have thought of me at all. The possibility of that devastates me, but I wouldn’t want the abyss I’m in to be hers as well.
I drop my head in my hands, blocking out the spreading of the dawn across the sky. I can’t go on like this, in a merciless tug-of-war between my memories with her and after her. I need to erase the last memory I have of Khloe. How she looked when I saw her last Saturday. The way her eyes will stare through me when I see her today, as if I’m not in the room, and maybe I’m not, not to her.
Maybe all those who tell me to let go are right.
Merely considering that leaves me feeling defeated and wrought with pain in a way I’ve never felt before. Letting go frightens me more than where I am.
No, letting go would be selfish, and it would make me a liar. I promised to love her no matter what, and I meant it. Not that I have a choice. It’s who I am. Who she made me.
As long as we can see each other, there’s always the possibility of her coming back to me. I have to think of a way to break through the wall around her.
I have to think of a way.
AFTER A LONG MEETING with a delegate from the American National Security Agency, I’m in my make-do stateroom at Winderly with only Winthrop.
He stares at me impassively. “You have the Dutch ambassador at two. Then your weekly call with the PM.”
From my secretary’s expression, one would think the prior conversation with the Americans merely pro forma, a diplomatic exchange between their government and the United Kingdom.
“Reschedule the Dutch ambassador, and ring the prime minister at once,” I order coldly.
“You cannot cancel the Dutch, and it would be unwise to proceed with briefing the PM on our negotiations without composing a strategy. Your father knew that and relied on his advisors. You cannot be reckless as monarch.”
I arch a brow. Winthrop forgot himself again.
“Your Majesty,” Winthrop adds gruffly.
I laugh, but it’s not a thing of humor. It’s grim like all things surrounding my existence. “Tell me, Winthrop, how does one compose a strategy to lessen the blow of our reality to Parliament in our present situation? They sent me begging, and I begged. For the British people and our country. It’s too late to debate what the Americans offered, or do you not see where we are, Winthrop? If you are blind to reality, I should dismiss you.”
“Not blind, sir. Practical in how to manage things.”
“How does one manage the unmanageable?” I lean over the reports on my desk and read through them again. I finish the entire top-secret file, slap it shut, then look up to find Winthrop still sitting across the desk from me. “Why are you still here? Reschedule the Dutch and ring the prime minister. If we fail to act quickly, Winthrop, we may not for much longer have a country to return to.”
I HANG UP THE PHONE and lean back in my chair. The prime minister’s reaction was not unexpected, but permitting the loss of the United Kingdom’s sovereignty of England to the American military, even briefly, is a crushing blow to all of us, even if it is necessary to preserve our country.
I tap the intercom to the outer office. “See that the car is brought around in an hour and that my plane is made ready.”
“Sir…” There’s a rattling noise through the phone as my secretary scrambles to take me off speaker. “Leaving would be most ill-advised, sir. You can’t go back there a second time. It’s a security—”
“In an hour, Winthrop,” I bark. “And, so there is no future confusion, make it a standing appointment every Saturday until I inform you otherwise.”
“But…yes, Your Majesty.”
I reach to tap off the phone, but Winthrop’s voice stops me. “Sir?”
“What is it, Winthrop?”
“Alan Manzone is on the line. He’s been holding for thirty minutes and refused to wait for a call back after you finished with the prime minister. Do you want the call put through, or should I tell him to ring later?”
My emotions crash through the numbness that claims me while I’m working. My blood races through my veins, humming in my ears. Every muscle turns taut as though someone is twisting them into coils.
Alan.
After a year.
He must know I’ve been to see Khloe.
“Put Alan through,” I tell Winthrop, and how calm I sound is terrifying. Exactly what one should want from a monarch, but it’s unforgivable, given the situation I caused for us all, that I can manage to remain calm where Alan is concerned.
AS THE PHONE RINGS, I move to the windows to stare out across the valley. I don’t want to be late to see Khloe. I realize in surprise it’s only midmorning. The hours felt longer, like the day should be done and not only just started.
Ring.
I look down at the phone in my hand. What will Alan say to me after all this time? And better, what should I say to him?
Ring. I tap it on and bring it to my ear. “Damon,” I say coldly.
“It’s Alan.”
I run my hand through my hair, annoyed with myself. He knows who I am. Fuck, what am I doing? “Sorry to be abrupt,” I continue, trying to find my bearings. “Long morning of meetings. I haven’t shifted gears y
et.”
A long period of silence that’s nerve-stretching.
“You’re in Wyoming,” Alan says at last. Not a question: a statement.
“I returned a week ago, but you already know that. The news and all. Hard to miss. Quite blistering, the world’s opinion of me, though I don’t blame anyone for that. I’m the first British monarch in over a thousand years to leave English soil during a time of war. Not even King George VI moved his residence from England during the Blitzkrieg. But it would be helpful to our cause if the press stopped calling me Damon the cowardly lion.”
Fuck, how could I ramble—and to Alan, of all men? I didn’t mean to say any of that. Not to Alan, whose opinion couldn’t possibly get lower of me than it already is. God damn the silence through the phone. The theatrical pauses he uses so effectively to maintain perfect composure and control every second of his life. They’re like torture.
“Was there something you wanted, Alan?”
“You’re not a coward, Damon,” he says at last. “You’re one of the bravest men I’ve ever known, and I am proud that you’re our king. You’ve not abandoned the UK. We both know why you’re in America: Khloe. You’ve gone to see her.”
The air held in my chest releases in a painful spurt. “Yes. Last week. We met over dinner. I plan to have dinner with her today.”
“I know,” Alan murmurs, his voice so faint I can hardly hear him. “I’m asking you not to go.”
Anger shoots through my veins. “You have no right to ask me that. I stayed away for a year, and not you or anyone else will stop me again.”
“Haven’t you cost us enough, Damon? Must you continue to put yourself before my daughter? Can’t you see that prolonging—”
“I really must go, Alan.” I’m about to shut off the phone, but I force myself not to.
“You should come to the house, Damon. Chrissie says to tell you she misses you. It’s been too long.”
