Page 28 of Claim to Fame

“You have a boyfriend,” he said.

“It’s not real,” she whispered, as though that made it sting any less.

He leaned against the apron of the sink, crossing his arms over his chest. “Real enough.”

Maybe it shouldn’t have mattered to him, this fake relationship of hers, but he couldn’t shake the sense there was more she wasn’t telling him.

She took a step towards him. “No one would know.”

Something cold and heavy congealed in the pit of his stomach, clinging to his bones and making everything feel wrong. He stared her down, stepping so close to her she had to tilt her head up to look at him. When he spoke again, his voice was darker, deeper than he’d intended. “I’d know. And I won’t share you. Not even with a lie.”

Her eyes went wide, darting between his like she was trying to puzzle something out. At last, he broke the connection, clearing the gravel from his voice and tilting his head down the hall. “There are towels in the hall closet. Help yourself to anything you need.”

“Ethan—”

“Goodnight, Hannah.”

He left her standing there in his kitchen, her cheap plastic tiara forgotten on the floor.

FromThe Lady’s Knightsby A K Wild, narrated by Slade Hardcastle

Sir Llewellyn kept watch from the tallest rampart of the keep. Somewhere in one of the stone rooms below, with only the vicar and one of his knights as witness, Lady Windtorn was taking her wedding vows, not to that despicable oaf who had so misused her, but to Lord Havenbrook. A kind man. A gentle man. Misunderstood, seeking his own sort of refuge in the loveless marriage Lady Windtorn offered.

Still. It rankled.

Sir Llewellyn could offer her the protection of his body, his life and the lives of his men, but he could not stop the coming war. He could not secure the safety of her family. Only a union to a man such as Havenbrook could offer her those things. It mattered not that theirs would be a chaste marriage, a marriage in name only. It mattered only that in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of a god Sir Llewellyn wasn’t even sure he believed in, she belonged to another.

He heard her footsteps approaching long before she knocked, the soft patter of her slippered feet on the ancient stone. He wanted to send her away, to reject the tender caress of her gloved hand on his chest, the softness in her eyes.

“It is done?” he asked.

“Aye.”

He slid the glove from her hand, a pained noise rising in his chest at the sight of the gold and garnet ring on her finger. “You belong to another. All will know he owns a part of you I do not.”

“It is a lie.”

The pain in his chest curdled, calcified, drawing anger from his breast. Not at her. Never at her. Only at himself.

“Is it? I own you here,” he said, roughly pressing their joined hands over her heart, even though the glint of her wedding ring mocked him still. “And here.” A knee between her legs, backing her against the rough-hewn stone wall, the monster in him delighting in her startled gasp, the rise and fall of her bosom. “Tell me, my lady,” he snarled, grinding his thigh against the heat at the apex of her thighs, “am I to trust that you lie only to them, and not to me?”

Chapter Eight

“Does this look like a tree to you?” Kyla squinted at her canvas, as though that would make the fuzzy brown and green paint smudges morph into something more closely resembling the tree their instructor was effortlessly painting.

“Sure,” Tessa said, also squinting. She looked up at the tree under which the instructor had set up their easel. “Maybe you need more yellow?”

Kyla sighed. “Maybe I should stick to photography.”

“It’s impressionistic,” Hannah said. “Or an abstract. You can definitely spin that into some kind of post-modern masterpiece.”

“That’s true,” Sabrina added, etching deep grooves into the painted column of her tree trunk. “All the priciest galleries slap some kind of fancy label on a painting and it sells for double, even if it’s random splotches. Not that your painting is random splotches!” she hastened to add.

Kyla laughed. “It absolutely is.” She grinned, nudging Hannah’s shoulder with her own. “But it’s a post-modern impressionist interpretation of a tree. The vibes of a tree, really.”

“They’re excellent vibes,” Hannah said.

Her own painting more resembled a kindergartener’s drawing, all rudimentary shapes and blocks of color. Perhaps she could call it cubist and pretend it was intentional. Or she could ditch it in the dumpster by the parking lot when the class was over.

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