Page 40 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
The reception mercifully ends, and we take a limousine back to the Four Seasons, Abilene scrolling through her phone for social media mentions of our wedding, seeming satisfied with what she finds. I stare out the window the entire way, promising myself a bottle of gin when I get back to my hotel room. I won’t even bother with a glass.
Abilene’s assistant has already checked us in, and some lackey of Vivienne’s has furnished me with the key to my solo room. We make a production of getting into the elevator together, but part ways after a couple of floors.
“Are you sure?” Abilene says as the doors open and I am about to step out.
I look back at her. She’s not purring or cooing or preening or anything as obvious as that. She’s asking in the same tone of voice she might ask a business partner or colleague. Almost indifferently. It’s only that weird twilit hue in her eyes that reminds me that her motives and feelings will always, always be too slippery for me to grasp. Assuming indifference on her part carries its own danger.
So I keep my voice polite when I say, “Yes, I’m sure. Sleep well,” and step off the elevator. It’s only after I hear the gentle lumber of the doors closing and the ding of the elevator leaving this floor that I can breathe for the first time since I woke up this morning.
At least until I turn a corner and see Ryan Belvedere leaning against my doorframe, his thumbs flying over his phone screen. I’m so starved for Ash and Greer that even just seeing his personal assistant has my breath stitching under my ribs.
“I’m flattered, but it’s not really customary for the groom to fuck someone from his old job on the wedding night.”
Belvedere looks up with a smile at my joke, his floppy dark hair brushing the top rims of his glasses. He impatiently shakes the hair out of his face. “Congratulations, Mr. Moore.”
“How many congratulations do you think are in order, given that you’re standing outside of my private room?”
“Fair point. I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the ceremony, by the way.”
“You have a demanding boss.”
He nods. “He sent me here.”
Hope lifts in my chest, refuses to settle its wings. “He did?”
“Yes. He’d like me to take you to your wedding present.”
Now hope is stirring somewhere else, somewhere lower and deeper. I have experienced the kinds of wedding presents Ash likes to give.
“And where are we going?”
Belvedere smiles and tilts his head toward the service stairs, where I presume a discreet car is waiting. “To the White House.”
TWELVE
EMBRY
now
The White House is quiet as Belvedere and I walk up the stairs to the Residence; it goes even quieter as Belvedere tactfully melts away before I reach the living room.
Strauss is playing, softly enough that I can hear Greer’s laughter floating above it, along with the unmistakable clink of ice cubes in a silver bucket. There’s a low husk of male laughter that has my chest going hot and tight, and when I reach the threshold of the living room, I don’t walk in. I just lean against the doorframe and watch the charming scene inside.
Greer and Ash are dancing.
She’s wearing a simple white top and a caramel-colored skirt that shows off her long legs, her feet bare and her white-gold hair tugged to the side in a messy braid. He’s in a white button down and black slacks, also barefoot, his shirt rolled up to expose his sculpted forearms. I don’t know why, but there’s something so fascinating to me about the way his forearms narrow into his wrists, the way his wrists widen into those large, rough hands. Perhaps it was all those years at war, his hands in half-finger tactical gloves and hidden from sight. Maybe it’s just the masculine perfection of it all—the muscle, the bones, the hair. The dormant power.
I watch as those hands run over Greer’s arms, as they move back to a proper waltz position—one extended, the other at her waist. And as they dance, I watch the light catch in Greer’s hair, which is every shade of gold from white to honeyed to dark—just as it always gets in the fall. I remember the way it looked spread across my pillow in a Chicago hotel, how it gleamed in the moonlight when I rescued her from Melwas, and my breath catches.
Both of them. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
In only a few seconds of observing, it becomes apparent why they were laughing. Ash keeps throwing off the swiveling box of the waltz steps, his movements as clumsy and stiff as a wind-up soldier’s. He never could find the music, never could let go of his mind long enough for his body to move on instinct. And I have to wince a teacher’s wince when I watch him attempt the dance, his feet crowding Greer’s delicate ones, his deliciously narrow hips moving barely at all.
I suppose all those dancing lessons during the war were in vain, I think. But then I remember the feel of him under my hands, the tinny echo of a CD player against stark mountain trees, how often he’d end up yanking my body flush against his and kissing me with ferocious, possessive kisses. Screw the dancing, he’d mumble, and within minutes there would be teeth and sweat and fingertips digging into muscle. I think I still have scars on my knees from all those impromptu mountain fucks; God knows I can still recall the blushing shame of asking the quartermaster for yet another uniform repair kit to patch the knees in my pants, and I have hardly ever blushed with shame in my life.
For a minute I allow myself to forget today, forget the last two months. The wedding, the blackmail, the green hurt in Ash’s eyes when I told him I was leaving him. I allow myself to believe that I’m just coming up to my wife and my husband after a long day at the office, that this sweet waltzing laughter is what I come home to every night, that when they catch sight of me, I will be rewarded with kisses both firm and soft.
In my little fantasy, I don’t have to wonder why Ash brought me here. In my fantasy, he brought me here because he misses me.
