Page 67 of American Queen (New Camelot Trilogy 1)
Six Weeks Later
The snow is falling thick and fast outside as Embry walks into the room with a bowl of fresh popcorn. “Can you explain this to me again?” he asks, setting the bowl down on the coffee table in front of Ash and me. “Is this like a Martha Stewart thing? Is this because cranberries are disgusting and serve no other purpose?”
Ash looks up from the cranberry and popcorn garland spilling out of his lap and around his feet, a needle poised in one hand. “Did your family really never do this?” he asks skeptically.
Embry arches an eyebrow at the mess of popcorn and cranberries and thread. “No.”
Ash goes back to his work, reaching into the bowl of warm popcorn to thread another piece onto his garland. “I suppose you and Morgan had servants to decorate your family Christmas tree.”
“Actually,” Embry says, “we did. The trees were too big for us to put up ourselves, and the one in the main hall had to be decorated using scaffolding.”
“Sounds like it would have taken a lot of popcorn,” I comment, not looking up from my own garland.
“The hidden costs of wealth,” Ash remarks drily.
“We did have the mistletoe, though,” Embry says. I glance up at the doorway where our own bunch of mistletoe hangs; Ash insisted on putting it up there the minute we got to the lodge, and then kissed me for several long, sweet minutes underneath it as Embry watched with a troubled expression and his hands in his pockets.
“We need someone to kiss you under the mistletoe, Embry,” I say.
“I agree,” he replies. “Maybe one of the Secret Service agents will be lonely later tonight.”
We all laugh, but a wave of sadness goes through me for Embry. The perennial third wheel.
I’d kiss you if I could, I wish I could say. Maybe he already knows.
Embry grabs a handful of popcorn for himself and throws his body onto a low sofa nearby, and for a few minutes, there’s only the sound of the fire in the fireplace and the snow against the windows and the rustle of popcorn in the bowl. Then I ask Ash, “Have you heard from Kay about the Carpathian treaty yet?”
He shakes his head. “I told her to give it a rest tonight. There’s no point in her spending her holiday chasing down senators who are ready to enjoy theirs.”
It’s Christmas Eve, and Ash, Embry and I are at Camp David. Kay and Ash’s mother are coming for Christmas dinner tomorrow night, but for now, it’s just us and the Secret Service. Even the nation is quiet right now—there have only been a handful of texts from Kay and Belvedere since we got here this morning. Ash and his staff have been working hard to get Senatorial advice and consent for the new Carpathian treaty, in the hopes of having it inked and signed before spring comes and a land offensive from the Carpathians becomes possible. Other than the work on the treaty, it’s been a quiet December. Quiet for the three of us as well—six weeks have passed without a repeat of what happened between us the night of the State Dinner. We haven’t even talked about it.
But even without talking about it, something seems to have shifted. Embry—widely famous for having a different date for every event—still has a new woman on his arm almost every night, and there are times he comes into the Oval Office or the Residence with swollen lips and tousled hair, smelling like sex. Knowing he’s fucking other women—and lots of them—hurts a secret corner of me that I refuse to let anyone see, but it’s a secret corner that’s used to it. During the campaign especially, Embry’s playboy status was a running joke among pundits, and unlike Ash, he’s never brought up his sexual history to me, never made me any promises, and he doesn’t have to, because we aren’t together. I have no claim to his sex life, and I’ve accepted that, even though it stings.
Embry’s fucking his way through the Beltway elite aside, he’s seemed more attached to Ash and me than ever since the State Dinner. At night, he’ll leave whatever party or gala he’s at and join us at the Residence, freshly fucked and still wearing a rumpled suit or tuxedo, and watch television with us or help me sort through medieval research. On Sunday mornings, he’s there next to us in church, and on Sunday afternoons he’s stretched out on the sofa in the Residence living room, yelling about football with Ash, and teasing me about Nathaniel Hawthorne or whichever American writer we’ve decided to hate that day. In the mornings, when I’m getting ready to sneak out of the Residence without being seen, Embry is there with coffee and a newspaper, and the three of us share a quiet breakfast before the sun breaks over the horizon, sipping coffee and waking up for the day. Embry’s sewn himself into the rhythms of our days, so much so that whenever he’s gone, it feels like something’s unraveled.
And through all that, Ash and I still haven’t slept together. Something that bothers me more and more every day.
No man can take things that slow, trust me. Not unless he’s getting it from somewhere else.
Ugh.
I push Morgan’s words out of my head and try to focus on my popcorn and cranberry garland. Try to focus on how happy I am to be here, snowbound and as alone with Ash and Embry as I’ve ever been. I get to have them both to myself for an entire day and night, and I mean to enjoy every minute of it.
“Anyway,” Ash says after a minute, going back to our conversation about the treaty, “I think I mostly convinced the senators we need.”
“Convinced is a kind word for it,” I tease. He’s spent the last five weeks meeting personally with every senator on his list, wooing, cajoling, threatening, leveraging—you name it, Ash has done it in the last five weeks in order to keep the United States from going back to war. “I hear some congressmen are actually physically frightened of you right now.”
Ash shrugs, but he smiles down at his garland. “Whatever works.”
“No work talk,” Embry complains, flinging an arm over his face. His voice is muffled when he speaks again. “I hate work.”
“Says the man who read the daily briefing out loud to us in the car.”
“I did it to stop you from playing more of that awful music,” Embry says from under his arm.
“Christmas music?”
A muffled groan. “Yesssss.”
