Joan Pickart - Royal Weddings

Hauk lowered his head, a gesture she had come to realize was meant to display his subservience. “I cannot play this word game with you. I have already said more than I should have.”

“Why? We’re just…talking. Just sharing opinions.” She gave him a grin. “Minus power. And intention.”

“You have a fine mind. And a devious one.”

“Hey. I guess I’ll fit in just great at my father’s court.”

“I think you will—and I cannot help you scheme against my king.”

“I’m not scheming. I’m only—”

“Enough.” He walked on. The old man saw him coming and stepped out of his path. The pigeons scattered.

Elli had to hurry to keep up.

A short time later, they went back to the apartment where Elli found two messages on her machine. One from a girlfriend and one from a guy she’d known a couple of years ago, while she was still in school at UC Davis.

Hauk stood right there as she played the messages back. He shrugged. “Just leave them. You can answer them when you return.”

“Well, that’s reassuring. You seem to think I will return. Too bad my own mother fears otherwise.”

He had that locked-up-tight look he got whenever he decided that responding to her would get him nowhere.

He was right to get that look. She said, “I’ll answer them now, thank you very much.”

He made her return the calls on speakerphone. He stood there, listening to every word as she told her girlfriend she couldn’t do lunch this weekend and asked for a rain check, then told the old school friend, David Saunders—in town just for a couple of days on business—that she wouldn’t be able to meet him for a drink. She was leaving town tomorrow. A family trip. David said maybe next time.

“That would be great. Give me a call.”

“You know I will.”

She hung up and glared at Hauk. “You enjoy this? Listening in on my private conversations?”

“No.”

“Then maybe you should stop doing it.”

He turned away, shaking his golden head.

And that angered her.

More than angered her.

All at once, she was utterly furious with him. She grabbed his arm.

He froze.

Beneath her hand, his silky flesh felt as it if had been poured over steel. Her palm burned at the contact, her fingers flamed. The heat seemed to sizzle along her arm, blazing on, up over her shoulder and down into the center of her, making a pool of molten fire in her lower belly.

She let go, brought her hand to her mouth—and it was like touching him all over again, pressing her skin that had been on his skin against her lips.

She lowered her hand, slowly. Carefully. She felt shaken to the core—and ashamed of herself, too. “I…uh…sorry. Honestly. I got so angry. It was stupid. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.”

His eyes seemed to bore holes right through her. “Pack. Now.”

She bit her lip, shook her head.

“You will destroy us both,” he whispered.

“No. That’s ridiculous. It’s an…attraction, that’s all. It happens between men and women. It’s natural. We don’t have to act on it. And if we did—which we won’t —it would be nobody’s business but yours and mine.”

He was scanning her face again, his gaze burning where it touched. “You understand nothing.”

Fury flared again within her. She ordered it down. “Well, then.” She spoke calmly. Reasonably. “I guess you’d better explain it to me.”

He didn’t reply—not right away. She started to think he wouldn’t reply. But at last, he said, “I am assigned to bring you to your father. That is all the extent of the contact you will ever have with me. Whatever your father has planned for you, I am not a part of it. I could never be a part of it, not in any way.”

“My father told you that?”

“He had no need to tell me. It’s fact, pure and simple. It’s true that if fortune smiles on me, the daughter of some minor jarl might agree to reach out and clasp my hand in marriage. But no king would willingly give his daughter to a bastard. Some doors, as I told you, are forever closed to me.”

“Not to me, Hauk. Never to me. I’m the one who decides who I’ll be with, not my father. He has no rights at all when it comes to my private life.”

“That may be. I am in no position to say. However, your father does have rights over me. He has all rights. I live and breathe for him. All my acts are acts in his service. I am his warrior. It is a high honor. And a sacred trust.”

Chapter Eight

By tacit agreement, there was silence between them.

Hauk went where she went within the apartment. In the living room, she sat on the couch and he sat in the easy chair. She read—or she tried to read, though she continually lost her place and had to go back and reread whole passages to have any idea what she was reading about. She could feel his eyes on her the whole time—or so it seemed.

But then, when she couldn’t stand it a moment longer and glanced up, he would be looking not at her, but beyond her, into the distance. His body would be so very still and straight. She would stare at his chest, wondering if he was even breathing.

Eventually, he’d draw himself back from whatever distant meditative state he’d put himself in. He’d meet her eyes.

And she’d know that he had been there all the time, watching—and yet not watching. Across the room from her. And a million miles away.

Around five, she gave up on her book and went into the spare room. She tried to pretend Hauk wasn’t sitting on the futon behind her as she paid a few bills to get them out of the way and answered a few last e-mails, then put her various listserves on No-mail.

By seven or so, she was starting to get that frantic feeling—that feeling that if they remained alone in her apartment, just the two of them, for much longer, she would do something unforgivable.

Start screaming like a maniac. Start throwing things—favorite figurines, a lamp or two.

Climb him like a big tree, grab him close and kiss him, force him to put aside everything he believed in and make love with her.

Oh, how had this happened? How had this gone so dangerously far so very, very fast?

She honestly wasn’t some sex maniac. Okay, she wasn’t a virgin—but she was no wild thing, either.

Serious relationships? She’d had a few—well, if you included her two high-school boyfriends. One in sophomore year and one when she was a senior. At the time, she’d been certain she would love each of those boys forever and ever. But she’d grown up and so had they.

Surely this crazy attraction to Hauk was like her schoolgirl crushes—destined to flare high and hot and then, soon enough, fade away. It was the lure of the forbidden. And they’d both get over it.

Maybe he was right. She should throw some stuff in her suitcase and tell him she was finally ready to head for Gullandria.

But somewhere deep inside, she had a true stubborn streak. She wasn’t leaving until she had to leave and she didn’t have to leave until tomorrow. She shoved the chicken she’d never gotten around to roasting into the freezer and told Hauk they were going out for dinner.

He didn’t argue. He didn’t say anything. He kept his sculpted mouth shut and his expression closed against her, as he’d been doing for hours by then.

She took him to a restaurant over in Old Sacramento, where the food was excellent and so was the service. The steward brought the wine list. She waved it away.

Yes, a glass of wine or two would have soothed her frayed nerves right then. But she couldn’t afford to be soothed. When they went to bed tonight, she would need all her inhibitions firmly in place—and not because she feared that Hauk might make a move on her. He had way too much self-control to do that.