“I like the sound of that.” In fact, he already had the island.
“Don’t even joke.” She stuck out her tongue and giggled, but the smile in her voice didn’t reach her eyes. “You’re the Gregory Peck reporter character in this situation. You have to walk away alone at the end, and I have to do my duty.”
That hurt more than it should. “No island?”
“Nope, we’re each on our own. Lucky for me I’ve got a decade’s worth of experience on that front.” She casually sipped her coffee, but there was no missing the slight shake to the mug in her hands. “So, what did you really need to say?”
“You weren’t alone.” Shit. He hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that.
She set her mug down with a clank, and her eyes narrowed. “The guys I went home with. You knew about them. You said you were at the bar.”
Fuck. So much for being Mr. Smooth. “Yes.”
She went still and stared at him. He gulped and shifted on the tall bar stool. Here he was, a billionaire poised to overthrow a government, and she had him squirming in his seat.
“What else?”
Feeling the sharp corner of each guilt-formed concrete brick jabbing against his stomach lining, he sighed and straightened his shoulders. He’d opened the door, now it was time to walk through it. “It took us almost a year to track you down after you’d gotten to America. Lucky for us we knew you were landing in Harbor City, so we had a starting point.”
“Nine years?” she asked, her voice sharp enough to be considered a weapon. “You, the Resistance, have known where I was for nine years?” She smacked her hand against the granite island, her eyes damp and her lip trembling. “All that time I thought I was alone and you knew where I was and never came forward?”
Yep, his stomach was shredded. He could take tears. He couldn’t take hers, not after he’d seen for himself how much spirit she had. Taking a shot at him. Fighting with all she had in the workout room. The stubborn determination not to be pushed into a decision but to choose her destiny herself, for her own reasons. That Elle wouldn’t be broken; he’d kill the person who tried. But when it came to everything that had happened before he walked out of the elevator and onto the showroom floor at Dylan’s, he hadn’t had a choice.
“The Fjende knew about us and were looking for you. If we had made overt contact, they would have found you. We were there as much as we could be.”
“What do you mean?”
Okay, fuck this. For each degree she cooled, he only heated up. Maybe it was the guilt. Maybe it was because he had done everything he could. Probably it was both.
“Your apartment? I own it. That’s why the rent hasn’t gone up in eight years.” His frustration at himself leaked into his voice, turning it hard and heated. “Your full-ride scholarship to the Fashion Institute of Harbor City? My company sponsored it.” He needed to reel the emotion back in, but he couldn’t when it came to her. He never could. So he plowed forward, his voice getting louder with each word. “Mrs. Beeman who lives in the apartment below yours and always brings you soup in the winter and asks you to watch her Pomeranian? She’s one of ours. We’ve always been there.”
He had done his best. Facing her as she blinked those big, brown eyes fast and furious to stop the tears from flowing, it felt like it hadn’t been enough.
Looking anywhere but at him, she toyed with her coffee mug, spinning it around and around with shaking fingers. The hollow sound of ceramic turning on granite echoed in the suddenly quiet kitchen. The urge to keep talking, to keep proving himself, burned him up, but giving in wasn’t an option. Pushing her never gained the results he wanted—he’d learned that the hard way the day they’d arrived at the chalet and she’d tried to blow his head off.
Finally, she righted the mug and folded her hands into her lap before looking him straight in the eyes. “Is there anything else?”
His gut churned. More? Oh, fuck, yes, there was. “What do you mean?”
“If you’ve been keeping other secrets, now’s the time to share.”
Just little things, like the fact that her father was alive and the Resistance’s leader. He could tell her. Shit, he wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t break his vow to the king who had his own secrets he didn’t think anyone knew. Within the next
few months, King Magnuz would be dead. The transplants to replace the organs torn apart by the assassin’s bullets hadn’t worked. The clock ticked down for them all. If losing her father once had been devastating for Elle, what would it be like to lose him twice, and after she found out he’d never reached out to her in the ten years she’d been on her own? Telling her the truth wouldn’t give her father any more time, and the end result would be the same.
“Nothing.” The lie left a foul taste in his mouth, one he wasn’t sure he’d ever stop tasting.
She narrowed her eyes and gave him a look that seemed to dig into the darkest parts of his soul and find him lacking. “Really, it doesn’t seem like nothing.”
“Every man has secrets.” He put a lightness into his tone he didn’t feel. He had to maneuver away from this topic. He got off his stool and rounded the island to her side. “Anyway…” Nudging a strand of hair away from her ear, he inhaled the sultry scent that drove him to distraction. “It’s Roman Holiday rules, remember?”
Cupping her chin, he turned her so she faced him and went in for a kiss. Whisper soft and harshly demanding, it was meant to distract them both from the dark turn their conversation had taken and the even darker things left unsaid. She opened for him, and he slid his tongue inside, teasing her and tormenting himself until she pushed him away.
“That won’t work forever, you know,” she said, more than a little bit breathless, color brightening her cheeks.
“What’s that?” he asked, letting his hands travel over her hips and up under the hem of his shirt she was wearing.
“Kissing me to shut me up.” She stepped out of his grasp.