Else was Tor's own good friend as far as the press were concerned. Every few weeks an article would come out speculating about when they were going to make things official.
The answer was never, but that wasn't an answer he'd be sharing anytime soon.
He caught Blythe's gaze and felt his insides heat.
By her decree, their friends-with-benefits arrangement never enjoyed those benefits when they were both at the palace.
She made the train trip from New York to Boston every few weeks and stayed the weekend in his apartment. They never went out. She never invited him up to New York, or to meet her on her travels. Discreetly, or otherwise.
Tor allowed the limits to their relationship because they worked for him too. His supposed interest in Else continued to protect her from family pressure and censure. Tor didn't want a bunch of speculation about him and Blythe either.
One day, their relationship, such that it was, would end. He had no desire to be the butt of jokes or speculation in the media about why she walked away from the prince.
And walk away, she would. Her attitude had not shifted about not wanting anything permanent or public with him. Though their friendship had grown into something deeper than he expected.
Tor wasn't interested in a lifetime commitment either. Not right now.
Tor was waiting for the sex to lose its appeal, but it didn't.
Physical intimacy with Blythe never got old, or stale. Tor craved her more, not less, as time went on.
She responded to him like her body had been created for his touch.
Else thought he and Blythe were both living in denial of what was between them, but that was because his friend had a romantic imagination.
With her tender heart that believed in fairytales, Tor worried for Else. Her parents were social climbing pragmatists with a sexist view of the world that would not allow them to see Else as her father's natural heir, despite how smart and business minded she was.
If Else was hoping to live out her romantic fantasies vicariously through him and Blythe, she was destined to be disappointed, however.
Watching the family's response to Janice's pregnancy and Bjorn's birth had cemented in Blythe's mind the truth that she and Tor had no future.
Even if he were interested in one, and ready to settle down with one woman, Blythe could not be that woman.
Her childhood cancer had not only revealed how little her parents cared if she lived, or died, but remission had come at a cost. Both the radiation treatment and the marrow cell replacement had taken a permanent toll on her body.
Blythe would never have biological children.
She had known it was possible side effect, but until she'd gone through puberty, the doctors couldn't know for sure. Having no need for a definitive answer, Blythe had never had the tests done, though her monthlies had always been irregular and very light.
As her feelings for Tor had grown though, she'd begun to wonder if maybe, just maybe, she'd been one of the lucky ones.
So, unbeknownst to anyone else, even Janice, Blythe had gone in for the battery of invasive and sometimes difficult fertility tests.
The results had not been what she'd been secretly hoping for.
Blythe's ovaries did not produce viable eggs and the lining of her uterus had been affected by the radiation. It was unlikely that even artificial insemination with a viable egg would result in a lasting pregnancy for Blythe.
If Blythe were the kind of woman who would excel at being royal, which she was pretty sure she was not, she and Tor could never have more than what they had right now.
Friendship with benefits.
She could never give him the children a prince was expected to have.
Feeling vulnerable and a lot sadder than she wanted to admit to herself, Blythe decided to seek out the person she knew could dispel those emotions.
Not her sister of the heart, Janice, but the man Blythe craved as much on an emotional level as a physical one now. Tor.
Blythe sent a quick text.