* * *
I stood at the window of my assigned quarters for twenty minutes after the meeting.
The view was the seaward landing strip and the Sound beyond it. The late-afternoon light was doing something to the water that I was finding compelling, although I was finding most things compelling at present.
A chair. A lamp. The grain in the desk. The thought of her hand around mine.
All fascinating.
Deeply inconvenient.
I was running the math. I had seventy hours, give or take, until the state dinner. I had three months of diplomatic preparation predicated on the assumption that my father’s strategic priorities would be the only weight on my decisions. I now had a second weight.
A beautiful woman. A larger problem. I was trying not to visibly fall over.
The side of me that was all instinct was offering helpful suggestions. All of them involved walking down the corridor to her quarters and not coming back.
I declined.
I was patient. Shifters are. I could wait. I would wait. I’d waited seventy-five years for this afternoon and had no intention of letting any version of me complicate the next seventy-five.
I went to find the enforcer. I knew where he would be. Outside her door.
I took the long route through the corridors. He was going to be unhappy to see me, and I wanted to give himadvance notice.
Ashenmere staff were well-trained. No one stared. No one blocked my path. No one asked where I was going. But their attention moved ahead of me all the same, passed from one body to the next in the small language of posture and timing.
By the time I reached the guest corridor, the enforcer knew I was coming.
Surprises made reasonable men unreasonable.
He was on the wall opposite her door, positioned to see both ends of the corridor.
His eyes came up. He went lethally still. He wanted to kill me.
“Solberg.”
“Graves.”
“Step back.”
“I’m not approaching.”
“Step back, Solberg.”
I stepped back. Two steps.
“I’m not here for her,” I said.
“Then you are not here.”
A lesser man might’ve smiled.
“I’m here for you.”
“Why?”
“Because you also scent-locked on the translator, and we’re now both in a situation neither of us planned for.”
