Bold Beautiful Love -- A Temptation Court Contemporary Romance: Temptation Court: Passion in New York (5 page)

“Are you trying to be trite, Selyna?”

“Are you snapping at
me,
Fortin? Because if I recall correctly, you were the one who opened us to the liability of his damn contract in the first—”

“
Shut. Up.
”

Every muscle in my body craves to enforce the order by slapping them both—but the dumbstruck faces in front of me belong to Ella’s parents. For the thousandth time, I ponder how a pair of such selfish, petty creatures could be the DNA donors for a miracle like Ella. Perhaps she really is the spectral sorceress I have imagined, an angel conceived by the clouds and given to mortals for safekeeping for a while. Trouble is, heaven got the address wrong.

“Shut up,” I repeat, gentler because Ella would wish it that way, and right now my poor woman can’t speak for herself. “Stop thinking about the bridge, the contract, or your goddamn liabilities.” I turn from where they’ve been bickering the wallpaper off of a Palais Arcadia sitting room, a damp washcloth in one of my hands and large glass of water in the other. “And start thinking about how your
daughter
may need you for once.”

“Cassian.”

Ella’s weak rasp jolts me back across the room, toward the chaise where her skin tone matches the pale damask entirely too closely. The parquet floor trembles beneath my furious steps back to her side. I drop to the flimsy furniture, feeling it shake beneath me. “Right here,
favori
.”

As I stretch the cloth between Ella’s temples, there’s rustling in the room behind me. More footsteps, as loud and determined as mine, followed by a discernible spike of stress from the pair I’ve just berated. “Your Majesty,” Fortin and Selyna murmur together.

“
Bon sabah
.” Evrest mutters it as if out of habit, not breaking stride on his way to the foot of the chaise. “How is she?”

“Better.” I lift an appreciative glance—all but predicting exactly what Ella does next.

“Your Majesty.” Like the good little court employee she’s been raised to be, she throws off the cloth and struggles to sit up. “I am fine,” she protests—while her head sways and her pallor turns the shade of preschool paste. “Truly. I just need—”

“To lie the fuck back down.”

I disregard Selyna’s scandalized gasp, catching Ella around her waist—making Evrests’s chuckle a welcome surprise.

“This
bonsun
truly might be the best thing for you after all, Miss Santelle.” The king’s humor grows when Ella rolls her eyes.

Weirdly, her mother saves the moment from complete discomfort. “Exactly
what
happened?” Even so, Selyna approaches on steps of hesitant caution—only to take over with confidence when I scoot aside, offering her the water glass. As thoroughly as the admission irks me, she may have more success getting Ella to rehydrate.

“We were swarmed by press at the airport. They wouldn’t even let her breathe.” I issue the statements as evenly as I can, considering the skirmish taking place in my psyche. The fury from once more thinking of that mob, unchecked by any security to be seen, crowding on us with their cameras and questions and shouts. But then the shame for my arrogance, assuming we’d actually be given protection after barely being granted permission to land the plane.

Toto, you’re not in America anymore
.

Worse yet, a lot of folks around here now think you’re the one with the green skin and the bridge-exploding spells.

So much for receptions in the grand hall, state dinners in the ballroom and fencing matches on the front lawn.

Nothing confirms that more clearly than the entrance of more Cimarron royals. Samsyn and Shiraz Cimarron, Evrest’s younger brothers, carry their tension in ways as divergent as their looks. Samsyn, more than embodying his Biblical namesake, is head-to-toe military grit, his black battle gear smudged in mud and cement dust. Shiraz is a different shade of daunting. To-the-millimeter Italian tailoring, shined wingtips, and boardroom arrogance that would daunt guys in some of the highest Manhattan penthouses. Both of them have the near-black hair and bright eyes that have turned the Cimarrons into one of the world’s most alluring royal families.

But that’s not why they’re both intimidating as hell right now.

That
I owe completely to their glares at their brother—the fucking
king
—as if he’s let a UFO land on their airstrip and I’m the wrinkled alien who’s crawled out of it with their countrywoman.

At least Shiraz takes a stab at changing things up. “Cassian.” His handshake is, on the outside, a crisp peer-to-peer acknowledgement. Since the day we first met, the same-language kinship has been apparent. But beneath the man’s twisted lips and averted gaze, I see the truth. He’s as mowed by this attack on his country as everyone else.

I reengage his stare long enough to let him know I understand. “Shiraz.” I don’t opt for Raz, the nickname he insisted I use during my first visit. Certain instincts—such as every single one in my body—tell me the offer is retracted, at least for now. “How you doing, man?” I’m sincere. He looks as exhausted as Samsyn. Evrest doesn’t get folded into the mix. The king’s job is to look fresh as a fashion centerfold, even after losing a
week
of sleep.

Shiraz shrugs. Attempts a smile. “You know what they say. Another day in the salt mines.”

“Sure.”

His gaze lingers longer. I keep my head hoisted, knowing exactly what he’s looking for. A flinch, a hitch, even a quirk of regret, confirming I really knew the dickwad responsible for blowing up his bridge and terrifying his country.

Stare all you want, Cimarron. You’re not going to find it here.

At the same time, Samsyn has parked his ass on the foot of Ella’s chaise. He’s still angled over, studying my girl with a rapt expression—a move that’d be turning me asshole jealous right now, if not for the knowledge that Mishella was closer than family to Syn and his wife of just over three months, Brooke Cimarron.

In perfect answer to that thought, the room is filled with a new flare of energy—in the form of the petite blonde who rushes in, bare feet running and long T-shirt flowing.

“Ohmigawd.” Brooke Cimarron pushes past both Samsyn and Selyna, sloshing enough water to match the tears spilling from her eyes, thoroughly smashing into my woman. My instinctive lurch of reaction is stilled when a sound erupts from Ella that’s pure music to my ears.

Laughter.

“
Bon sabah
to you too.” Happiness rushes to my girl’s face, bringing color along with it, earning Brooke fresh points in my book. “Thank you for coming, Your Highness.”

“Holy shit.” Brooke jerks the compress from Ella and smacks it to her own forehead. “Are we back to that ‘Highness’ shit already? I’m going to have to bop you, woman. You know I can too.”

Ella grins. “Well, I
have
been living as a soft American for a couple of months. Perhaps…you and Vy will need to toughen me up again.”

The smile falters as Brooke noticeably sobers. It falls completely when her friend lets out a long sigh.

“Mishella…honey…Vy isn’t in a good place right now.”

“I know.” She bites into her bottom lip. Yanks up her chin, though that doesn’t stop it from quavering. “I
know,
Brooke. That is one of the biggest reasons I came back. I need to help her…to get through this.”

Brooke takes her hand. “The only reason she saw
me
was because I snuck in with Syn, when he went to deliver Alak’s badge and personal things.” Her voice cracks into a multi-part sob, joined at once by Ella’s. They pull into each other, embracing with that fusion only women can really achieve, as if their souls are meshing into one ball of grief. Selyna watches, a strange confluence of feelings crossing her face, as the rest of us scuff the floor. While we all try to honor the girls’ burst of emotion, nobody wants to be personally gutted by it.

Shockingly, the guy who fidgets the hardest about that is Samsyn. After a few seconds of jiggling a knee, drumming steepled fingers, and plotting all his escape routes, he surges to his feet. Instantly, he bores a stare into me. I drill one right back. He jerks his head toward the terrace. I follow him there, dealing with a conflict of my own as we step outside. Arcadia was aptly named. The sunshine is like gold and the air like ambrosia. The admission makes it damn hard to think of someone deliberately setting out to destroy it.
Any
of it.

“Court.” From his brusque opener alone, I take a guess where Samsyn is headed with the confrontation. I don’t begrudge him the Shao Kahn growl. Though he leads all the security and military forces of this island, the time he’s had to deliver personal effects to soldiers’ families have likely been few until now. Over the last twenty-four hours, his life has been one nonstop suck.

I turn. Face him directly. “Yeah.”

Samsyn locks both hands at his back. The stance bolsters him, firming his expression. “My brother has informed me about what you revealed to him…from the plane. If it is true, you must know that Mishella is like family to Brooke and me.”

I lift my head an inch. Samsyn Cimarron may out-bulk me but we’re the same height, so the straight-up regard is part of the respect he’ll automatically get from me. “It’s true,” I state with just as much purpose. “I love her. Just before we saw the news report about the bridge, I asked her to be my bride.”

The corners of his eyes tighten. “Was that because you knew the report was coming?”

I clench my jaw. Coming from anyone else, I’d answer that by laying him out. Who the hell am I kidding? I still consider it. Instead, I flare my nostrils, haul in a hard breath, and grit out, “No. It was because my jack-hole of a brother had just come back from the dead as an undercover CIA agent, just in time to tell me the three months of vetting contractors for all the Arcadia projects hadn’t just been worthless, but dangerous.” I pivot and grip the balcony rail with both hands, rushed all over again with the unexpected, unnerving fury from that moment. Christ. Was all of that just yesterday? “Ella was the only one who kept making sense, and not just about the bomb Damon dropped. About Damon himself. I almost beat him to a pulp, seeing him again like that…”

“Seeing him?” Samsyn repeats slowly. “Your…brother?”

“Yeah.”

“The one who returned from the dead?”

“Yeah.”

“After how long?”

“Fourteen years.”

“Fourteen—” Oddly, his stunned choke is like a balm. My rage from that moment feels more like a natural human reaction instead of unprovoked violence.

“Long story,” I finally mutter. Some tales really are stranger than fiction, as evidenced by Damon’s explanation of why he’d let Mom and I consider him dead all those years ago. “Best told over a lot of nectar sometime.” I hurriedly add, as soon as my mention of the fruity Arcadian alcohol brings on a Samsyn-style stink eye, “Or maybe a lot of whiskey.”

Approving growl this time. Samsyn follows it by leaning on the rail himself, canting a watchful stare. “But he broke cover to tell you about Kavill’s game?”

I gaze toward the horizon. This side of the Palais angles toward the east, where the airport is situated, but between here and there is a good portion of the city of Sancti. Both of Arcadia’s influences, France and Turkey, are evident in the charming architecture that abounds in the white, blue, and terra cotta structures. The entire scene would even edge into idyllic, if not for the smoke lingering in the air like a funeral pall.

After a long moment of gazing over it all, I finally answer Syn’s query. “Sort of.”

“Sort of?” he fires back. “How does a career CIA operative just
sort of
come out of hiding?”

“Because it was never his intention for me to find out.”

“Huh?”

“Because Mom and I were—
are
—possibly still in danger because of him.”

“Shit.”

“Because of that, he could only really approach Ella, and ask her to help him gather enough evidence from my Arcadian contracts in order to convince his higher-ups to shut down Kavill’s shell companies.” I shrug, copping to sheepishness. “That was about the point I butted my bitch-jealous nose into the whole thing.”

Heavy Arcadian snort. “Ah. Yes. That ‘little’ monster in the mix.”

My one-sided smirk. “Spoken like a man who’s danced with that monster before.”

“Once. Only my dance was a worse—how do you Americans say it—train wreck?”

“That works. Why?”

“Because my monster came calling
after
Brooke and I were married.”

Confusion, party of one. “Wait.
Already
married?”

“Yes. Correct.”

“But Ella’s mentioned your ‘wedding’ a number of times to me now—in the
future
tense.”

“Correct as well.” He pushes back, though maintains his hold on the rail. Squares his massive shoulders. “We shall be saying our vows again—because the first time we did it was rushed and wrong.”

I sling a whole smile now. “Fair enough—though nobody would know it from how that woman looks at you.”

“The way I
enjoy
her looking at me.” Another subtle growl. With the same wolfish surety, he rolls his body over and braces himself backward, gazing through the glass doors at the woman with whom he is blatantly in love. “But when we were first married, it was a thing of hurry and necessity. The Creator Himself was there, of course—He always is—but it was not right; not perfectly so. Words spoken without care are words often tossed from our hearts with matching dereliction.” His features, hewn with bold strokes, go noticeably soft. “This woman shall
never
be in doubt about how much I adore her…will always treasure her…and do right by her.”

The man has a damn good point. I show him so by emulating his move, turning so the rail is at my back and the view of our women is central for us both. “I like the way you handle things, Samsyn Cimarron.”

Even more, I like taking in my Ella when she doesn’t realize I’m watching. Sometimes, even now, I know my intense stares make her self-conscious. But how do I stop? How do I mitigate the gashes of her beauty on my soul? Break her hypnotic hold on my spirit? Pretend like she hasn’t drilled her life and laughter and vitality so deep inside me, I’ve been permanently ripped apart and rearranged as a person…as a man?