Page 8 of American Queen (New Camelot Trilogy 1)
I set down my drink with a sigh, abandoning all pretense of calm. Like he s
aid before, I’ve never been a good liar and I hate lying anyway.
“I’m a little confused,” I admit. “Unless the President wants to talk about the influence of Anglo-Saxon poetry on Norman literary traditions, I don’t see why he’d want to talk to me.”
Embry raises an eyebrow. “You don’t?”
I glance down at my hands. On my right pointer finger, there is the world’s smallest scar—so small it can’t be seen. It can only be discerned in the way it disrupts the looping whorls of my fingerprint, a tiny white notch in a tiny white ridge.
A needle of a scar, a hot knife of a memory.
The smell of fire and leather.
Firm lips on my skin.
The warm crimson of blood.
“I don’t,” I confirm. I have hopes, I have fantasies, I have a memory so powerful it punishes me nightly, but none of those things are real. And this is real life right now. This is the Vice President, that is the Secret Service over there, and I have a stack of papers waiting to be graded at home.
I’m not sixteen anymore, and anyway, I told myself that I was putting that other man in a box and burying him.
“He saw you at your church last week,” Embry finally says. “Did you see him?”
“Of course I saw him,” I sigh. “It’s hard to miss it when the President of the United States attends Mass at your church.”
“And you didn’t say hello?”
I throw up my hands. “Hello, Mr. President, I met you once ten years ago. Peace be with you, and also the left communion line is the fastest?”
“You know it’s not like that.”
“Do I?” I demand, leaning forward. Embry’s eyes fall to my chest, where my blouse has gaped open. I straighten, smoothing the fabric back into place, trying to ignore the heat in my belly at Embry’s stare. “He was surrounded by Secret Service anyway. I wouldn’t have been able to say hello even if I wanted to.”
“He wants to see you,” Embry repeats.
“I can’t believe he even remembers me.”
“There you go again, assuming people forget about you. It would be sweet if it wasn’t so frustrating.”
“Tell me why he wants to see me.”
Embry’s blue eyes glitter in the dim light as he reaches for my hand. And then he lifts it to his lips, kissing the scarred fingertip with a careful, premeditated slowness. Kissing a scar that he should know nothing about.
My chest threatens to crack open.
“Why you?” I ask, my voice breaking. “Why are you here instead of him?”
“He sent me. He wants to be here so badly, but you know how watched he is. Especially with Jenny—”
Darkness falls like a curtain over the table.
Jenny.
President Colchester’s wife.
Late wife.
“It’s only been a year since the funeral, and Merlin thinks it’s too soon for Max to step out of the ‘tragic widower’ role. So there can’t be any emails or phone calls,” Embry says. “Not yet. You understand.”
