“At the palace?”
“Yes.” I try to hand him his coffee, but he’s too busy studying me to bother taking it.
“Garrett brought you to the palace?” he says, sounding partly like he’s looking for confirmation and partly like he doesn’t believe a word I’ve said.
I think about lying—it’d probably be easier all the way around—but I’m a terrible liar. Plus, all Kian has to do is ask Roland about me and the jig is up. I’m not so vain that I think Roland should remember me after five years, but the king’s social secretary is one very sharp tack. I’m pretty sure he remembers the names, ages and occupations of every single person—including tourists—who has ever set foot in his beloved Palais les Charmilles.
“Yes,” I finally tell him, because I can’t see a way around it.
“How many times?”
Well, that’s definitely not the question I was expecting. “Excuse me?”
“How many times were you at the palace?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a dozen or so?”
“In six months, you were there a dozen times?” He sounds, and looks, flabbergasted.
“Maybe less.”
He arches a brow. “Maybe more?”
He holds my eyes, almost daring me to look away this time. In the end, I just nod and whisper, “Maybe.”
“Have you met my father?”
“Yes, but only once. We had dinner, about two months after Garrett and I started dating…” I trail off when I realize he’s stopped listening. Which is fine with me—I’d rather not discuss what an unmitigated disaster dinner with the king had been, anyway.
Not that I’d expected any different, but Garrett had insisted. Then, when his father pretty much tried to buy me off at dinner, he’d been annoyed but not surprised. That’s when I figured out why he’d really brought me there. He’d wanted to know my answer as much as his father had.
It was the first time we nearly broke up, but not the last.
I can’t help wondering if Kian would try the same thing. And what I’d do about it if he did. When Garrett pulled it, I was young and desperate to matter to someone for the first time in my life. Even before my parents died unexpectedly in a car crash, I’d never been more than an afterthought to them. Garrett was my first chance to be more, or so I’d thought. Even after he’d pulled that bullshit, I’d stayed because I loved him. More, because I needed him to love me.
But I’m not that person anymore, and I’ve already cut Kian as much slack as I’m going to.
I wait for Kian to say something, but he doesn’t. Instead, he just presses his lips together and nods his head a bunch of times.
Then he leans forward and begins doctoring his coffee.
A spoon of sugar and a splash of cream.
Then another spoon of sugar, then another splash of cream.
A third spoon of sugar, a third splash of cream.
He’s about to add a fourth spoon to a cup that really isn’t that big, when I reach out a hand and stop him. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” I tell him as I ease the spoon from his grip. “Does it really matter how many times I’ve been to the palace?”
“I don’t know.” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair, rubs it up and down against the back of his head.
Still, he shakes his head, taps his fingers back and forth against his knee. And looks anywhere and everywhere but at me.
“Kian, I’m sor—”
“Don’t apologize!” he half-laughs, half-yells. “It’s not your fault, and I’m not handling this well.”
He pushes off the couch then, walks over to the painting Garrett bought me at the end of a weekend at the family beach house.