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“That sounds like him,” I murmured, toying with the flimsy wooden stir stick left over from my coffee. “Thinking of the positive, the peace and beauty rather than the death and loneliness.”
“He’s an amazing man,” Grandpa Wilde said. “The biggest heart of anyone I know, but the one most fragile too.”
He looked at me then with an assessing, almost accusatory glance. I didn’t blame him. His goal was to look out for the ones he loved, and I’d set Felix up for a fall.
“I really care about him, Grandpa Wilde,” I said quietly. “When I left him at Gadleigh, it was like I left one of my lungs there too. I can hardly breathe.”
His smile was old and knowing. “How did you know which one I was?”
I gestured to his mug. “Doc doesn’t let you have coffee. He worries about your health. He and Felix strategize behind your back ways to keep you alive as long as possible.”
“They think I don’t know they’ve swapped out all the good stuff at the ranch with crappy knockoffs. Who the hell wants light butter? Or fat-free sour cream? Jesus. It’s like I might as well already be dead.” He stood up to pour himself a second cup of coffee, and I thought about what Felix would say if he knew.
“No way to the second cup. Not under my roof. If Felix wants to keep you alive, then that’s what I want too,” I said. “I’ll get you a bottle of water instead. You should try and get some more sleep anyway.”
He lifted his eyebrow at me. “Tell you what. I’ll let you boss me around about the coffee if you tell me about Felix.”
Well, shit. That’s what I get for interfering.
I retrieved two bottles from the small glass-fronted refrigerator in the corner of the room and sat back down, passing one to Grandpa Wilde.
“You already know everything there is to know about him,” I tried.
“Pfft. Horseshit. I clearly didn’t know that the man he’d fallen in… something… with was the future goddamned king of wherever.”
“Well, Felix didn’t either. At first. When I realized he didn’t recognize me, I felt like for once in my life I could be someone other than William Triannon Frederik Harald Christien Grimaldi of Liorland—Duke, Marquis, Count, Baron, and Seigneur of all kinds of shit. But with Felix, I was just Lio—the guy he met on vacation. It was fun and free. We talked and laughed and touched. It was so damned right, you know? It was everything.”
“How did he find out who you were?”
I cracked open my water and took a deep draw. “There was a security alert of some kind in the middle of the night at Gadleigh. My guards came into the bedroom like a SWAT team and scared the living hell out of the poor man. Felix thought they were kidnapping me. Before I had a chance to explain to him what was going on, I’d been removed and secured without him. The guards took him to a separate room where he met my sister. After that, of course, the jig was up.”
“He must have been angry.”
I felt my heart grip in my chest. “No. Mostly sad. I think he understood where I was coming from. At least that’s the way he made it sound. Because of his mom. He gets the pressure from the media and the reason I didn’t want to risk him knowing. I explained that once I had feelings for him, I wanted to tell him. But that’s when he wound up telling me about Jackie. After that… well, I knew I would be ten times worse in terms of bringing the heat down on him. So I couldn’t do it.”
He seemed to study me again, causing me to feel like a restless bug under glass. When he finally spoke, I felt like I was talking to the stern father of my prom date.
“You departed Gadleigh as friends.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And? What are your intentions now?”
I wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. “I didn’t know he was coming here. My sister convinced him to come.”
He nodded. “She told him you needed him. Is that true?”
I blew out a breath. “God yes. More than you could ever know.”
“Why him? If the world knew you were attracted to men, you could have any gay or bi man on earth. Why Felix Wilde?”
I felt my cheeks pull wide as the feeling of happiness spread through my chest. “God, that’s an easy question. He’s gorgeous, inside and out. The man would carry a dying elephant up a mountain if that’s where the elephant’s favorite pillow was. He knows all the lyrics to ‘Manic Monday’ but won’t sing them any other day of the week because he’s afraid it will lessen his enjoyment of belting it out on Monday mornings. He’ll drink unlimited cups of hot tea even though he hates it because he thinks it would hurt my feelings if he admitted to not liking it. He calls himself a scientist or a professor because he’s afraid he’s not good enough to call himself an artist. He… he once realized I’d left the castle building without protection, and he ran inside to tattle on me to the guards because he cares more about my safety than wounding my pride. When my sister and her boyfriend were outed in the press, he put on his rattiest sweats before snuggling Hen on the sofa and watching Jane Austen movies with her all afternoon so she wouldn’t feel so alone. Where was I? On the phone freaking out about the fallout in the media. But Felix? Felix was freaking out about the fallout in my sister’s heart.”
