by Natalie Grey
So she was pacing. She was pacing and she was not thinking about that man. She definitely had not spent the entire charity dinner thinking about him, and she was most certainly not thinking about him coming through the door behind her, and about how her heart would leap when she heard his footsteps. He would be staring at her, his eyes burning as they had when he first saw her, when he thought….
What had he thought?
No. She was not thinking about this. Not at all.
She went to the mirror and stared at her face determinedly. If she were going crazy, wouldn’t she be able to see it? She frowned at her reflection, and then, hearing footsteps coming down the hall, she shoved down the leap of anticipation—it was not Mr. Williams, Ellian disliked Mr. Williams—she turned with a smile on her face for her husband.
“My dear.” He paused at the door, looking her over. “You look very beautiful tonight.”
“Thank you.” Aryn smiled and went to him, laying her hands on his chest as she kissed him. She should try to be a good wife, shouldn’t she? To do the little things that showed Ellian she loved him. If she let her eyes drift closed, she could imagine…
No. That was the insanity again.
“How are you this evening?” A banal question. Anything to keep from asking about Mr. Williams.
“It has been … a trying day.” To her surprise, a shadow flitted across Ellian’s face.
“What happened?”
For a moment, she thought he would confide in her. She could see turmoil beneath the surface, the look of distaste he sometimes wore after particularly bad meetings. There was something new there, as well. She frowned. Ellian looked … unsettled. Yes. Unsettled. It was an emotion she had never seen in him. He opened his mouth to speak and she watched him, waiting. Worried.
Then his face closed off.
“It is not important.”
A single glance told her how unwelcome any argument would be.
“Of course,” Aryn said simply. She stepped away.
“Mr. Williams just left.”
“Oh?” Aryn tossed a smile over her shoulder and went to pour them both drinks. She felt like celebrating. Good riddance to the Dragon, and God willing, in a few days she would have forgotten him.
“He’s agreed to take the job.”
She froze momentarily, ice flooding her veins. Heat followed, unstoppable, at the thought of this man standing at her shoulder, watching her, eyes burning….
“I see.” She finished pouring the drinks, briefly considered downing hers in one gulp, and brought one to him.
“What is it?” Ellian frowned at her.
“I … well, I didn’t think you liked him very much.” Aryn gave a shrug and took a sip of the sweet liqueur, savoring the burn as it slid down her throat. “I must have been wrong.”
Ellian watched her for a moment.
“No, you’re very observant.”
“Then why hire him?” It was an honest question, even if she was far too curious about this man. And as flattery never hurt, she added, “There must be thousands of bodyguards on New Arizona that are desperate to work for you.”
“He was the best man for the job,” Ellian said, and there were layers of meaning in his voice that she could not decode. He looked closely at her as he drank. “What do you think of him?”
This, she had been ready for.
“Darling, you know I know nothing about soldiers.” Aryn gave him a smile. But before she could control herself, the panic rose up again. She could not do this. She simply couldn’t. “But I was thinking, I really don’t need—”
“Not this again, Aryn.” He sounded angry, but beyond that, she heard something else she could not place.
“Oh, but my love, what are you afraid of?” She went to him and reached out to lay a hand on his arm. “No one’s ever tried to hurt me, have they? And I don’t see why they should in any case—surely your wealth shouldn’t make anyone so angry as all that.”
It was the wrong thing to say, but it was also something she couldn’t stop herself from asking every once in a while. Why, exactly, did Ellian insist so often that people would hurt Aryn for what he did? Two years since moving here, she still did not have an answer. Ellian traded in supplies, didn’t he? Food and basic goods?
He didn’t like to talk about it, so she never truly let herself ask. Not really. She just made references every so often.
And every time, his face went stony.
“I have told you that such things are not for you to worry about.”
Aryn nodded as if she were chastened, and looked down so that he could not see her eyes flash. Something about Ellian put her on edge today, and she could not say why.
No, she decided after a moment. She was on edge today. Ellian was as he always was. She blinked at her own foolishness and took a sip of her drink.
“What is it?” Ellian’s voice was one part curious, one part warning. “Why argue again about this once it has been settled, Aryn?”
“It’s nothing. Only foolishness.” She tried to find words. “The same foolishness as before.”
“Really.” His voice was skeptical. “Do you not like Mr. Williams?”
“I worried because you did not like him at first.” The right answer came automatically. “I know you make your living by knowing who to trust. It’s hard to … well, I just don’t understand what changed.”
He softened slightly.
“This man can be trusted, Aryn. He won’t let anything happen to you—I’m sure of it.”
Aryn nodded jerkily. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. There was something in Ellian’s eyes….
And then it was gone.
She forced a smile. “If you trust him, then I trust him.” To be loyal to you. But she did not say that.
“Excellent.” He settled onto one of the sofas by the window. “Come join me.”
“Do you not have to work?” She settled in beside him, his arm around her shoulders and her bare feet tucked up. It was rare, lately, that Ellian could spend an evening with her.
“I should be working,” he admitted.
“You’ve been working so hard lately. Perhaps you’ve earned a rest.” She reached up to run her fingers through his hair and pulled her fingers back when he moved his head away slightly.
“Results earn a person rest,” he said flatly. “Not work.”
Aryn nodded so that he could see. This was the Ellian she knew—indeed, the one she had once hoped she could love. Irritable and snappish, he was nonetheless a man who held himself to the very highest standards and expected the same of others. He was not a pampered rich man, nothing like the Warlord’s lackeys on Ymir who became lazy and cruel, taking men and women as it pleased them and using them for toys.
No, Ellian had built his business from the ground up, and he worked as hard as anyone she’d ever met.
They sat in silence, the snow drifting and the lights glittering, and Aryn felt herself, at long last, begin to return to normal. Ellian’s presence at her side brought her back to the early days, when they would spend their evenings together and he would ask her to share her dreams for the future.
She always blushed and stammered when he asked her that. Someone from Ymir had only one dream, and it was not one she could admit to Ellian, who dealt with the Warlord—everyone needs supplies, Aryn—and any other dreams she might have had over the years were so far out of reach that she had never entertained them. To study science? To paint? To sing? She could not think of anything she enjoyed, no matter how he coaxed her.
She asked him to tell her his dreams, in those days: where he’d come from, how he built his empire. But he was reticent then, and he was still reticent now. She saw little signs that he was beginning to trust her more and more each year, each month—sometimes even each day. But that had been hard-fought. He said he liked to protect her from the way the world worked, and she had never been able to convince him that she knew. She saw. She had grown up on Ymir.
An
d now a bodyguard….
Awareness returned in a jolt and Aryn took a deep breath to steady herself, draining her drink.
“What are you thinking?”
She looked over, frowning. She did not know what to say to that. Ellian rarely asked such things.
“I was thinking about when I first came here.”
“You didn’t know how to work the showers,” he said, smiling.
“I did so!” Both the laugh and the blush came automatically.
“Because you learned on the ship, coming from Ymir.”
“Oh, hush.”
He smiled over at her, and for a moment it was as it had been at the start: hope palpable between them. The sense that they might build any life they chose, that his love for her was unshakable and her loyalty to him might become tenderness in time. She set down her glass and reached out to lay a hand on his chest.
“Ellian….”
“What is it?” His voice was low.
“I know you’ve been troubled lately.” She took a deep breath. “And I want you to know you can tell me anything.”
“Why would you say that?” His face closed off abruptly; under her fingers, it was as if she felt his chest go from living flesh to stone.
Aryn drew back, confused.
“I only meant….” Her voice trailed off, and with his eyes flat, she knew she must say something. But what? How had she offended him? “Ellian, you try to protect me. You always try to protect me. But I’m your wife. I don’t want you to suffer in silence because you feel you have no one to confide in.”
The words had sounded perfectly acceptable in her head—even in the still air, she could not hear anything wrong with them. And yet Ellian’s nostrils flared and she could see a muscle working in his jaw, his teeth clenched.
“I have work to do.”
He set down his glass and was gone, Aryn staring after him, biting her lip.
What had she done wrong?
Ellian strode through the hallway, feeling himself shake, wanting to lean against the wall to recover.
He did not. He never showed weakness. He’d been told in his youth, by a laughing businessman, that it was no use pretending to be ice at home because servants knew everything. He said they were used to it, that money kept them loyal and he’d simply made the practice of telling them when someone tried to bribe them, and paying them that and half again the amount for their silence.
But Ellian could not stand the idea of the servants laughing behind their hands at him. He never indulged in displays of fury. He was quiet and cold when he disciplined servants. He never screamed at Aryn. He never allowed strong emotion to show, and he was not about to start now.
Just like he was not about to start confiding in Aryn.
Not yet, at any rate. He looked back toward her room and had the vivid, unpleasant memory of her staring at the bodyguard. It had been plain to see what she thought of Mr. Williams, and, despite the man’s dislike, what he thought of her.
Ellian wanted to pick up the nearest vase of flowers and throw it across the room in a rage. He did not, just as he had not confided in her tonight, or killed the bodyguard for the way he looked at Aryn.
No, he would wait. He would watch. If Aryn was trustworthy, he would know.
If she was not … he would discard her. He swallowed at the thought of not seeing her in the mornings, not dining with her at night. He would miss her.
And that was weakness. His hand clenched in his pocket and he forced himself to keep walking toward his study, never breaking his stride. He had already become too attached to her. The fact that he was even giving her a chance to prove herself, was a sign of his weakness. He should drop her back on Ymir, give his compliments to the Warlord, and find a vapid new wife whose only concerns were jewelry and society dinners, who avoided him because she disliked him and only wanted his money.
Who wouldn’t try to be kind and draw him in.
Do it tonight, his mind told him. He could have Aryn back on a ship to Ymir within minutes. She could hardly protest.
But he couldn’t do it. Not now. Not yet. Ellian stepped into his study and forced himself to close the door without slamming it.
He would let her prove herself. That was fair. He would punish her only if she failed him.
But for now, while her loyalty was unclear, he would not sit with her and take the risk of falling further into this useless infatuation. He would sit here, alone, and wait for Christian’s report.
14
When Cade slammed his way back into the hotel room, he didn’t even startle at the sight of Talon lounging in one of the chairs. Another suit adorned the man’s tall frame, and Cade leaned over to frown at it as he tore his own suit off. Talon’s, he noted, seemed to have been made to de-emphasize muscles and stature—and it was impossible to tell at a glance if the man was armed.
With a Dragon, however, the answer to that question was always yes. It was the one habit Cade never lost.
“So you didn’t get the job?” Talon asked as Cade stripped off his clothes and pulled on his usual sweater and work pants.
“No. I got it.” Cade looked around the spacious room, wanting to prowl, to fight. “You’re paying for all this, right?”
“In a manner of speaking.” The corner of Talon’s mouth twitched as he watched Cade wrench open the minibar and pull out several little bottles of liquor. “So what are you drinking?”
“I have no idea.” Cade threw himself into one of the chairs and looked down at his hands. “Scotch. Apparently.”
“I wouldn’t worry. It’s probably better than the scotch in that bar. Well … statistically speaking, it would be hard to be worse.”
Cade, having just downed one of the tiny bottles as fast as fluid dynamics would allow, nodded and opened another.
“So.” Talon leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His eyes held wariness and humor in equal measure. “You got the job.”
“I’m not happy about it,” Cade warned him.
Talon snorted. “I could tell that from the way you opened the door. What is it?”
“It’s….” Cade sank his head down, rubbing over the back of his neck. The alcohol wasn’t kicking in fast enough. He could still see that woman’s face in his head. Every quirk of her mouth and curve of her body was still etched in his mind.
“Williams?” Talon’s voice was genuinely worried.
“Let’s just say I never thought I’d feel bad for an arms trafficker.” Cade looked up to meet Talon’s eyes.
“This should be good.” Talon settled back in his chair, smiling now. “Tell me.”
“Well, I can see why he fell in love with her—why even a man like that would end up head over heels.”
“Oh?” For the first time, wariness appeared in Talon’s eyes.
“She’s the best actress I’ve ever seen. Which can’t be a coincidence, because she’s getting the best payout of any actress in history. You should see the penthouse, Talon. The chandelier is sapphires. The chandelier.”
“And Aryn?”
“Has this….” Cade felt his lip curl. “You see her, and you want to comfort her. But she’s cold all the way through. There’s nothing in her eyes when she smiles.”
“That’s interesting.”
“What is?” Something in Talon’s voice had caught Cade’s ear. “What do you know?”
“Nyx said—well, never mind. The long and short of it is that I would have bet that Ellian loved her.” Talon was frowning now. “And he’s not the sort of man to fall for an empty smile.”
“That’s the thing. He’s not.” Cade felt his eyes narrow, as if he could peer into the past by squinting. “He’s not one to fall for anything. He is not a nice man.”
When he looked up, it was to find Talon’s face impressively expressionless.
“What do you know?” Cade was instantly on alert.
“He’s an arms trafficker, Williams, what do you think I know?”
“That doesn’t answer my
question,” Cade said softly, putting a faint threat into each word.
But Talon had been the one who taught him that trick, and his eyes only flashed with appreciation, not fear.
“What I can tell you is that this job will be easy. No one’s after him.”
“That’s the thing.” Cade leaned forward urgently. “Someone should be. In his line of work? Didn’t you think the lack of problems was … strange?”
“Honestly? No. The number of people operating in this sector is small, and they’re careful not to get on one another’s turf. Ellian follows their rules to a T. Unless he pisses off a client, I’d say he’s fine—and he’s too careful to do that.”
Cade sat back, frowning.
“What is it?”
“He doesn’t see it.” Cade answered without thinking first. Talon had a way of speaking, his voice very low, so that he managed to pull the words out of you without disturbing your train of thought. “He has people who tell him to his face that he’s being a fool over her, and he doesn’t see it.”
“And who does it hurt?” Talon asked practically, his voice more normal now. He raised his eyebrows when Cade looked over. “To hear you tell it, she’s happy with the money, and he’s happy to have her. What’s the problem?”
“She’s….” Cade turned away. “It’s nothing.”
“Williams.”
“I hate her,” Cade said flatly.
“You just met her today.” Talon snorted. “What did she do, kill a kitten while you were there?”
“There’s no trusting her! She’s hiding—well, she could be hiding anything. For all we know, she’s a drug dealer. Slave trader.”
“Unlikely. She makes very few calls, and those are to one friend from home. Non-romantic.”
“You tapped her calls?” Cade asked wearily.
“I wouldn’t have gotten you this job if I thought it was a bad deal.”
“Still, that’s an impressive amount of due diligence.” Cade let the disbelief come through clearly in his voice.