“But what?” I can tell Syr Phillip is holding back.
“I was just thinking that this never would have happened at a Pennsic held now. But—but I suppose I can’t change what happened over twenty years ago. At any rate, we finally found Steve at the end of the third day. Pennsic was officially over by then, and a lot of people were striking their campsites and getting ready to go home. Mom was pretty much in despair. She was exhausted, sick with hypothermia from exposure to cold, wind and rain, and nearly delirious with rage at my father. And with no trace of Steve anywhere, it looked like he might have either been abducted or drowned in one of flash floods.
“Just when we were about to give up, one of the Cooper’s Lake campground employees showed up at what was left of our encampment and told us they thought they might have found Steve, and asked if one of us was willing to help identify him. The way the guy said it, it sounded like he meant they’d found Steve’s dead body. You can imagine how my mom reacted. She went totally hysterical. Holly was numb with shock. So I agreed to do it. The campground worker asked me to follow him into the woods. I was dreading what I might find.
“We walked for a long time, until we finally came to a walled encampment in the middle of the woods, a part of the Pennsic campsite I’d never been to before. And when I say walled, I mean that somebody had actually built a thick wooden wall around the encampment. It was even painted to look like stone. I didn’t know it then, but this was the Great Dark Horde encampment.
“The campground worker knocked on the gate, and the Horde guard opened it. The Horde had already struck most of their campsite, too, so the place was really just a bunch of muddy tarps lying all over the place. But there was still one fancy pavilion standing. We walked over to it and went inside.
“It was Shen Fu’s pavilion. He was Supreme KaKhan of the Horde that year—it was his first reign. The Horde elects its leaders instead of having them win tournaments, and Shen Fu has always been very popular among Horde members. He’s been elected KaKhan seven or eight times since then. Of course, I didn’t know Shen Fu then, so to me he just looked like a weird ex-hippie guy in Mongol dress. Shen Fu was sitting on his pile of Persian carpets eating Pringles from a can. And Steve was sitting right there beside him. He was in clean garb, playing solitaire with a deck of Pac-Man cards. And he was fine. There wasn’t a mark on him.
“Lisa, I was so mad when I saw Steve I could hardly breathe. Turns out the little shit had been hiding out in one of the Coopers’ storage barns for the past three days, eating food stocks meant for the Coopers’ camp store. Shen Fu found him there when he went to pick up the industrial-sized order of Pringles which were part of what the East Kingdom paid the Horde to fight on their side at Pennsic that year. Shen Fu got him cleaned up and called the Coopers themselves instead of the police, I guess to keep Steve from getting into too much trouble.”
“What did you do?” I ask.
“Well, once Shen Fu introduced himself and explained what happened, I basically grabbed Steve by his ears and dragged him back to our campsite. It was all I could do to keep from beating the living crap out of him, but I knew that Mom would want to get him back home in once piece, so I left him alone. But when we got back to our campsite, Mom and Holly were gone. We couldn’t find them anywhere.”
I think back to that afternoon at the Blood and Roses Tournament when Pegeen told me she’d heard a rumor that Syr Phillip’s mother and sister were killed in a car accident at Pennsic 14. Suddenly, I begin to get a very clear picture of what I think he’s going to say next.
“I didn’t know what else to do, so I dragged Steve back to Shen Fu’s tent. The encampment walls had been torn down by then, and he was back in modern dress packing everything into his U-Haul. I asked him if he could help me find my mom and sister, and he said sure.
“Shen Fu knew all the Coopers’ Lake employees and most of the members of the Cooper family personally. He made some inquiries with them, and somehow they figured out that Mom and Holly had both left in the station wagon. To this day I don’t know why Mom left so suddenly, unless it was because she was so tired and emotionally overwrought that she just wasn’t thinking straight. I’ve also wondered if maybe she went off looking for Dad. There of course were no cell phones we could call to find her or anything else like that back then, so our only option was to get in Shen Fu’s car and try to retrace Mom’s route back to the freeway, to see if we could maybe catch up with her before she got too far.”
Syr Phillip pauses and starts biting his nails. I instinctively take hold of his left hand, then his right, and pull his fingers away from his gnashing teeth. “You don’t have to keep going if you don’t want to,” I say, as gently as possible.
Syr Phillip looks deep into my eyes with a mixture of passion and pain. “No, Lisa, I need to go on. I need to finish the story. I need to say it out loud, especially to you.”
“Okay,” I reply, squeezing his hands tighter. “Take your time.”
Syr Phillip takes a deep breath and goes on. “It didn’t take Shen Fu too long to locate Mom’s car. She’d gone off the road and slammed into a concrete pylon at the intersection of Route 422 and Interstate 79. Our station wagon was an old, beat-up 1970s model with almost no safety features. The police and paramedics were already there, and one of the paramedics told us that Mom and Holly both died instantly. I’m sure Mom probably lost control of the car because she was too exhausted—mentally and physically—to drive. I’ll never know why she left when she did, but one thing that will haunt me until the end of my life is the fact that Mom and Holly both died thinking that Steve was dead, when in reality he was just being a bratty, selfish fuckup who was hiding out and screwing around. I swear, Lisa, I will never forgive Steve for that as long as I live.”
Syr Phillip gets up and walks into the kitchen for another beer. I can see the muscles in his back tense up between his bare shoulderblades, tightening into scores of knotty lines that squeeze and release, squeeze and release. I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he guzzles the entire bottle of beer in one fell swoop. I feel like going over to him and kissing that Adam’s apple, kissing his dimpled chin, kissing away the tears that rest in both the corners of his eyes. But I don’t. There’s still something else I have to accomplish tonight.
“So what happened next?” I ask. “Where was your father? Did Shen Fu have to take care of you?”
Syr Phillip tosses his empty beer bottle into a sleek chrome trash can. “Dad didn’t resurface until a couple of days later. He’s always refused to talk about where he was or what he was doing during that time. Shen Fu took us under his wing and paid for motel rooms for Steve and me there in Slippery Rock until the police and coroner settled things with Mom and Holly’s bodies. Of course, Steve and I were minors, and Shen Fu wasn’t a relative, so we couldn’t claim the bodies from the morgue and take them home for a funeral. Only Dad could do that. And by the time the police finally tracked Dad down to tell him his wife and daughter were dead, Mom and Holly’s bodies were cremated by the morgue. There was no funeral. We just scattered Mom and Holly’s ashes in Pennsylvania, in a field about five miles away from the Pennsic War campground.”
“Oh,” I breathe, touched. “It all must have been very difficult for you.”
“Oh, it was,” Syr Phillip said. “Lucky for me though, I was just about to turn sixteen. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having to live with Dad after everything that had happened, but at sixteen I was old enough to apply to be an emancipated minor. It was Shen Fu who first suggested I do it. He even paid for my lawyer. Four months after Mom died, a judge emancipated me, and I moved out of Dad’s house and into Shen Fu’s place with his wife at the time and their two kids. They took me in like I was their own son. I’m still close friends with Shen Fu’s ex-wife, too. Shen Fu even paid for my college education.”
“Did you ever speak to your dad again?” I know from Pegeen’s rumors that he probably didn’t, but I want to hear Syr Phillip’s version of the
truth.
“Not much. On and off for the next couple of years we did, a little. When he was dating Duchess Danyel and then just after that, I got a little closer to him for a while. That’s when Danyel and I got to be good friends, in fact. I know Dad feels guilty about what happened to Mom, even if it probably was more Steve’s fault.” With every word he utters, Syr Phillip’s brusque attitude towards his younger brother at Crown Tournament makes more and more sense. “But there was something that happened between Dad and me about twelve years after Mom died that pretty much ended all relations between us.”
“What’s that?” I ask, although I already know.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Syr Phillip snaps. “I think I’ve spilled my guts enough for one evening.” He pounds his fist against the polished granite countertop and stomps back into the living room. I can tell from his more languid movements that the beer is going to his head.
“Syr Phillip—“ I begin, but he holds up his hand to cut me off.
“It’s Phil. I’m just plain old Phil Dawson when I’m at home. I just want to be an ordinary guy in your presence for once, Lisa. I’m not a knight in real life. I’m just a traveling pill salesman. Can’t you get that through your thick head?” Syr Phillip’s voice is hoarse with emotion.
“I’m sorry,” I say, defeated. “It’s just that—“
“Right, I know,” Syr Phillip hisses. “You’re here on Horde business. So get to it, then. I’ll take the Middle Kingdom throne back, that’s fine. I’ll agree to that. But you obviously have something else to tell me. So, what else did Shen Fu hire you to convince me of?”
Given what I’ve just learned—and what I know Syr Phillip refuses to tell me about his father defeating him at Crown all those years ago—I’m almost afraid to say it. But, business is still business. “Shen Fu wants you to reconcile with your father,” I near-whisper. “Not only that—he wants you to use your hopefully renewed relationship with your father to help negotiate a crazy Pennsic War alliance deal between the Horde and the Tuchux, with the end result being defeating the East Kingdom and their allies, Aethelmarc. Once that’s done, you’ll negotiate a treaty with your dad, the King of Aethelmarc, as well as the King of the East, that will help get Horde members on those thrones within the next year.”
Syr Phillip scoffs. “Ha. What a load of bullshit. What a load of Great Dark Horde bullshit. What are they trying to do, get so many kingdom alliances under their belts that the entire Horde nation will each have their own personal lifetime supplies of Chips Ahoy and Pringles or something? Lisa, pardon me, but please go back and tell Shen Fu that my response to that is he can go fuck himself.”
“But—but, from what you’ve told me here tonight, Shen Fu practically is your own father! And now, he wants you to make up with your real father, and help the Horde out besides. And what about all your talk in the beginning, where you knew exactly what the Horde was paying me to do this? Huh?” This is making less and less sense by the second. I fold my arms across my chest and stare Syr Phillip down, suspicious.
“That was only to get you back, Lisa. That’s what Shen Fu said he would do for me. If I thought that Shen Fu would then try to work something political into it—although I’m not surprised, because that’s pretty much his job as KaKhan to do—I never would have given the Horde the necessary gifts to hire you. All I wanted out of the transaction was to get you, the love of my life, back. That’s all. Sue me.”
“Oh, I see. So you just thought you could buy me back as your girlfriend, huh?” I retort as my final hard-to-get act. “That really shows what kind of person you think I am.”
Syr Phillip rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on, Lisa. Don’t play the innocent pauper with me. You didn’t exactly complain when I bought you thousands of dollars’ worth of garb. In fact, as I recall, you jumped right into bed with me.”
That does it. Now I have an excuse for the playing-hard-to-get standoff to end all standoffs. I snatch my purse and jacket off the Italian leather sofa and turn to leave. “Oh, fuck you, Plain Old Phil Dawson. You can just go straight to hell for all I care.”
“Right back at ya, babe. Give my regards to Shen Fu, even if I do think his latest request is bullshit. And you can tell him I said that.” He runs a hand through his tangled locks.
I spin around on my heel. His final comments have me practically breathing fire. My eyes give Syr Phillip a stare so full of passion and fire it could strip paint right off a tow truck. “Are you as aroused as I am right now?” I purr.
Syr Phillip seizes me, crushes me in his strong arms, and pushes me against the wall. “More,” he breathes, and covers my open mouth with a kiss that could stop time.
“My bedroom’s upstairs,” he sighs when we both come up for air. “I suppose this means we’re back together?”
“Maybe,” I reply. “There are still a few loose ends we need to tie up first.”
“I’ll tie you up first,” is Syr Phillip’s heat-soaked answer as he scoops me up and carries me up his spiral staircase.
****
Two hours later, when Syr Phillip collapses against my shoulder after probably the most intense lovemaking session of my entire life, I decide that my knight and lord is finally tenderized enough for me to plead that he reconcile with his father and brother.
“Oh Phil,” I coo, running my fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. “Even if you have rendered me into nothing but a pile of oversexed goo, there’s still something we haven’t settled.”
“Mmmmppph,” Syr Phillip replies, nibbling my neck. “Mmmmrrghh?”
“Your father. And your brother. You need to patch things up with them. And not just for the Horde’s sake—for your own.”
Syr Phillip jerks bolt upright, all his post-coital fatigue suddenly gone. “No,” he hisses. “No fucking way.”
“Phil—“ I plead, gently caressing his chest, but he’s having none of it. He tosses aside the expensive Egyptian-cotton bedclothes and gets up to angrily pace the room naked.
“We’ve already been through this, Lisa. In case I didn’t make it abundantly clear the first time, I hate the both of them and I will be perfectly happy never speaking to nor seeing either of them ever again.”
I get out of bed and pad softly over to where Syr Phillip stands on the far corner of the room. I stand behind him and slowly sweep my hands across his chest and groin; he instantly relaxes back into my arms. I kiss his neck and upper back over and over, until he leans his head back onto my left shoulder and exhales deeply. “I know the real reason why you’re so angry with your father,” I whisper. “I know it doesn’t have anything to do with your mother. I know that’s it’s something a lot more superficial than that, something that definitely isn’t worth ruining your relationship with him over.”
Syr Phillip stiffens a little, but he doesn’t move from my embrace. “What exactly do you know?” he finally says, his voice low.
“I know that your father beat you in the bear pit at your first Crown Tournament. Not only that, I know that he became King that year, too.”
A low growl rises in Syr Phillip’s throat, but he still doesn’t budge from my tender grasp. “How did you know?” he whispers.
“Pegeen told me,” I reply, nibbling on his left ear. “Pegeen always gets the good gossip.”
Syr Phillip unlocks himself from my arms and flops back down on the bed, pressing both hands to his temples. After a long moment, he sits up to look at me, an expression of deep sadness and regret paining his beautiful features. “Why are you so insistent I reconcile with him, Lisa? You’ve never even met the man. You don’t know what kind of man my father is. And I’m even more mystified by why you think I should have anything to do with my little shit of a brother at all. Didn’t you listen to anything I’ve told you all evening?”
I go to sit beside him and place my hands on his shoulders. “Phil, there’s something I haven’t discussed too much with you—the fact that both my parents are dead. They died over ten years ago.�
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Syr Phillip leans in to kiss my cheek. “You had mentioned they were dead, but that was all. And I’m very sorry, Lisa. But what does that have to do with me?”
“A lot,” I say. “You see, my parents also died in a car wreck, on their way to go on vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains. It was a trip I was supposed to take with them. Except I changed my mind at the last minute and refused to go.”
Syr Phillip’s eyes widen. “Why?”
“Because I was just a stupid, selfish teenage brat, that’s why,” I reply, my voice small and riddled with guilt. “I was a senior in high school, and I thought I was too good for a silly little weekend vacation to tacky old Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. My parents loved Dolly Parton and they wanted to go visit Dollywood, and also see the national park down there. But they never made it. They got caught in a bad thunderstorm somewhere around Berea, Kentucky and lost control of the car. They drove off a bridge, and died. I should have been with them. But stupid, bratty, selfish me wanted to stay behind in Dayton so I could go to an Eagles reunion concert with Pegeen. Can you believe that? I honestly think that maybe if I had been in the car with them, they might not have wrecked. I might have been able to help drive, or I could have told them to pull over until the storm was over, or—”
Inevitably, the tears start to come. Syr Phillip tenderly kisses them away. “I’m so, so sorry, Lisa,” he whispers in my ear. “But you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened. It wasn’t your fault. Really.”
Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set Page 81