The guard nodded. “It is what she said.”
He held the passport closer. It was new. The photo was recent then, but it could have easily been taken three years earlier, for all she’d changed. Her hair was the same. Her eyes. Her skin. She looked just as he remembered. And he hated her for that.
Why had she come?
His marriage was only a week away. The last person on Earth he should be seeing was Abigail McClean. She belonged in his past. He’d spent a long time making sure she stayed there. Even when his dreams of her had been so vivid he’d felt that he could reach out and hold her to him, he’d pushed her out of his mind. He’d become an expert at ignoring the small part of his mind that was almost permanently on Abi-duty. Remembering her. Thinking of her and wondering. What was her life like now? Had she graduated? Married? The very thought filled him with an acidic burn.
“Where is she?”
“In the Eflianan room.” Only a few doors from his office.
Kiral tightened a fist beneath the marble top of his desk. She was so close. If he wished to, he could be with her in moments. He stood abruptly. “I have a full schedule of meetings. You must tell her I cannot see her today.”
The words surprised him. He wanted nothing more than to see her, and yet he was stalling. He was sending her a message. She was no longer important to him.
Why?
Because you have to, he reminded himself. His marriage was important. He could not jeopardize it for some American woman he’d once slept with.
“At all today, sir?” The guard felt emboldened to ask. He couldn’t get the woman’s desperate expression from his mind.
Kiral heard the question and he understood it. Abi’s power, then, was not diminished by time either. She had a manner about her that made her impossible to resist. As he’d learned first-hand. “I’ll see. Leave her to wait. She is not your concern. Understood?” He had spoken more harshly than he’d intended but that was a measure of how Abigail made him feel.
“Of course, your highness.” The guard left swiftly and Kiral was alone.
Only he wasn’t alone. Abigail was there with him. She stood before him as clearly as she had done three years earlier, when he’d told her he must leave. When he’d told her that he was a powerful ruler with a fiancé and a life earmarked for him in which Abigail McClean could have no part.
They’d fallen in love. It had been a disaster. He’d had no business loving a woman like her. He could offer her nothing. Even without his official betrothal to a princess of an important neighbouring country Abi would not have been a woman he could ever have countenanced marriage to.
He had made that abundantly clear to her, but only when it was too late. He had, if anything, laboured his point more harshly than was necessary. But he’d wanted her to hate him. He had erred in allowing her to care for him. He had exposed her to pain. He had also sought to avoid any ambiguity. For a short time, weeks perhaps, they had experienced impossible joy and pleasure. They had made love physically and emotionally; they’d experienced the most perfect balance that two people could share. If he’d been any less brutal when he’d ended it she might have wanted more from him. She might have let him cloud her future. So he’d ended it with cold determination.
Why had she appeared now? Three years later, she was in his palace. Had she come to beg him not to marry? Did she want another chance? Surely she knew how impossible that was?
Questions gnawed at his gut, but Kiral was nothing if not stubborn. He held to his schedule as though nothing untoward was happening. But his mind was stubbornly focussed on the mystery of her appearance.
By ten o’clock that night, when his final interview was concluded and the sun had set over the city in the distance, he allowed his curiosity space to breathe.
He walked with a fatalistic assuredness towards the Elfianan room. It was used for visiting dignitaries and he imagined she would have been comfortable waiting for him there.
He stepped in with ingrained confidence, certain he could not convey to her the emotional storm she’d sparked inside of him.
But he was not prepared for the sight that would greet him.
Abi was asleep. Her shoes were lined up neatly on the floor, and beside them was an old leather handbag. Her petite frame was curled into an arm chair. A book had fallen down the side.
And just like that, a tonne of bricks crushed down on him.
He almost groaned, so great was the desire to wake her with a gentle kiss. But that was something he’d done in the past, and he could no longer give in to such cravings. Though her lips looked just as soft as always; they were shaped like perfect rose petals. He ached to trace them with his tongue; but he did not.
He could look, though, and look he did. Like a man who had been deprived of food led to a table of offerings.
She was wearing a cotton dress and the scarf she’d wrapped around her head had fallen loose, revealing her mane of chestnut hair.
When he had first met her in New York, he’d been a man. At least, so far as she knew, he’d been a man, and not this. A King. A ruler. But here in his palace, he was royal, filled with the powerful blood that had long-since guided his people to peace and prosperity.
He cleared his throat and she startled, her eyes latching to his immediately. He saw the anguish and the shock, the rich emotion that troubled her too. She banked down on it quickly but it had been there. Whatever had brought her to him, the journey for her had been difficult.
“Ki,” she croaked, her voice dry. She blinked again and then looked around them. The room was empty. She pushed her feet into her shoes and stood. The disadvantage of height was as pronounced as ever. Years had passed, yet he stood the same, like a figment of her memory. She almost wanted to touch him to make sure he wasn’t a creation of her subconscious. Only she’d never seen him like this. In New York, he’d worn beautiful clothes but clothes that were somewhat familiar to her. Now, in what she could only guess was a traditional robe — slate grey with pale cream embroidery at the cuffs and collar — he looked regal and imposing. His dark hair was a little shorter than he’d worn it in New York, but still thick with a slight wave. Her fingers tingled with the force of memory; how she’d run them through it whenever she could.