Page 7 of American Queen (New Camelot Trilogy 1)
I sigh. “I can’t have dinner with you. If I’m seen out with you, then my face will end up on Buzzfeed and all over Twitter, and I can’t handle that.”
Embry is listening to me, but he’s also reaching out to touch a strand of white-gold hair that’s fallen free from my bun. “That’s why we’re going late. To an unannounced place. No one will know but me and you and the chef.”
“And the Secret Service.”
Embry shrugs, his eyes starting to crinkle again. “They won’t write their tell-all memoirs until after they’ve retired. Until then, our dinner is safe.”
I can say no. I know I can, although I’ve never been able to say it to Embry. But I don’t want to say no. I don’t want to go to the pristine townhouse, impeccably furnished and impossibly soulless, and spend another night alone in my bed. I don’t want to be staring up at the ceiling of my bedroom, replaying every moment, every glance, my hand stealing under the sheets as I remember the citrus-pepper scent and the way the shadows fell across Embry’s cheeks. I don’t want to be whipping myself for another wasted night, another missed chance…especially with him.
Just for one night, I can pretend I’m someone else.
“Dinner,” I say, finally conceding, and he grins. “But that’s it.”
He holds up his hands. “I’ll be as chaste as a priest. I promise.”
“I hear not all priests are that chaste these days.”
“Chaste as a nun then.”
I reach for my trench coat by the rack near my desk, and he grabs it for me, holding it open for me to step into. It’s attentive and intimate and charming while being dangerous—all the things I remember Embry being, and I can’t make eye contact as I step into the coat and belt it closed over my blouse and pencil skirt. For a moment—just a tiny, brief moment—I imagine I feel his lips on my hair. I step and turn, facing him and trying to keep my distance all at the same time.
Embry notices, and his smile fades a little. “I’ll take care of you, Greer. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
Oh, but I am. And not a little bit afraid of myself.
Teller’s is a small Italian restaurant a few blocks away from campus, and it’s one of those delicious tiny places that’s been around forever. Embry doesn’t seem surprised when I suggest it, and after a few phone calls and a very short trip in a black Cadillac, we are inside the old bank building being seated. We’re the only ones there, the waiter’s footsteps echoing on the cold marble floor and the lights dimmed except for those around our table, but the chef and the servers are nothing but polite and happy to feed us. The Secret Service find discreet and distant points in the dining room to stand, and for a moment, without them in sight, with Embry’s suit jacket thrown carelessly over the back of a nearby chair, I can pretend that this is normal. A normal dinner, a normal conversation.
I take a small drink of the cocktail on the table, trying to wash away history, drown it in gin. My history with Embry is hopelessly tangled up in my history with someone else, and as long as I let that someone else cast a shadow over our dinner, there’s no way I can hope to have a conversation that isn’t strained with pain and regret. The only answer is to put everything in a box and shovel gravel on top and bury it until it suffocates.
“How have you been?” Embry finally asks, sitting back in his chair. I try not to notice the way his shirt strains around his muscular shoulders, the way the lines of his neck disappear into the bleach-white collar of his shirt, but it’s impossible. He’s impossible not to notice, he’s impossible not to crave; even now, my fingers twitch with the imagined feeling of running them along his neck, of slowly unbuttoning his shirt.
“I’ve been fine,” I finally manage. “Settling into my new job.”
He nods, the candlelight at the table catching on his eyelashes and casting shadows along his cheekbones. “So it seems. I bet you’re an amazing teacher.”
I think of my lonely classroom, my silent office, my pervasive restlessness.
I change the subject. “And your job? Being Vice President? There’s more to it than being photographed with a different woman every night, I’m sure.”
The old Embry would have laughed at this, grinned or winked or started bragging. This Embry sits forward and stares at me over his cocktail glass, his hands coming together in his lap. “Yes,” he says quietly. “There is more to it than that.”
“Mr. Moore—”
“Call me that one more time, and I’ll have you arrested for sedition.”
“Fine. Embry…what am I doing here?”
He takes a deep breath.
“The President wants you to meet with him.”
Off all the things he could have said…of all the reasons I thought I might be sitting across the table from a man I haven’t spoken with in five years…
“President Colchester,” I say. “Maxen Colchester. That President?”
“As far as I know, there’s only the one,” he replies.
I take a drink from my cocktail, trying to keep my motions controlled and my expressions blank, although I know how pointless that is with Embry Moore. When I first met him, he was a servant to his emotions, impulsive and moody. But in the last five years, he’s become the master of deliberate, studied behavior, and I know by the way his eyes flicker across my face that I’m not fooling him at all.
