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“Yes, I expect it will. But so soon. How will we get everything done?”
“It’s all in motion. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”
Stella clapped her hands, excitement sparkling in her eyes. “Let me help plan it. I can work with the palace staff and help Sofi´a with all the protocol and rigmarole.”
Nik lifted a brow. “You teach Sofi´a protocol? She’ll have an adviser.”
Stella scowled at her brother. “I’ll be the perfect teacher. She’ll know what’s old-school nonsense and what she has to pay attention to.”
And with that Sofi´a learned that Stella always got what she wanted.
* * *
Nik was still fuming as he sat down beside his father at the dinner table in the smaller, less formal dining room. He had been inexcusably rude to his fiancée. It would not continue, but it would have to be addressed later at a more appropriate time.
His attempt to steer the conversation to innocuous ground was circumvented by the sensational news coverage of his meeting with Idas today and his father’s ire. “Your stance was called aggressive,” his father pointed out. “International opinion doesn’t like it, Nikandros, and neither does the council.”
Nik’s blood boiled a degree hotter. What was wrong with his father talking politics at the dinner table? His mind hadn’t been right since Athamos’s death. “Idas was the inflammatory one,” he said curtly. “I was merely responding to him, an error, I know. It would not have been necessary had the council representatives with me had the facts at hand.”
“What will you do?” his mother interjected. “Idas doesn’t seem to be backing down. This seems like more than rhetoric.”
“I have a meeting with Aristos Nicolades tomorrow.”
“Aristos?” Stella frowned. “Why are you meeting with him?”
“To discuss an economic alliance to replace the Agieros.”
Nik’s sister looked horrified. “But he’s the devil.”
“He is necessary now that Nikandros has eliminated the Agieros from the equation.” King Gregorios scowled. “Now we will see the scourge of humanity his casinos will bring to Akathinia.”
Nik threw his father a hard-edged look. “I don’t think this is the right time or place to be discussing this. I will meet with Aristos tomorrow and we will move forward from there. Akathinia must be protected. That is the priority.”
His father shook his head. “We will live to regret this. If Athamos were in charge, we would have had a deal with the Agieros. This would not be happening.”
“Yes, well, unfortunately, Athamos was off fighting over his lover when his car plunged into the ocean and he is dead.” All eyes flew to Nik as he trained his gaze on his father. “I am the one making the decisions. I say we meet with Aristos.”
His father muttered something under his breath, picked up his fork and started eating. The table was so silent, the clink of the king’s fork against the china was the only sound in the room.
His mother, ever the peacekeeper, asked Sofi´a about her dress for the engagement party. Nik mentally checked out as the conversation flowed around him, his anger too great to corral.
When coffee and dessert were offered, Sofi´a thankfully declined, likely no more enamored with the idea of staying at the table than he was. They said their good-nights, his fiancée promising to meet with Stella over breakfast the next morning to discuss the party.
And then, mercifully, it was over.
* * *
If the dining room had been quiet, their suite was deadly so. Nik poured a whiskey, took it out on the terrace and stood in the moonlight looking out at the gardens. The rigid set of his shoulders, his ramrod-straight spine, the explosive intensity that had wrapped itself around him all day warned her to stay away.
They didn’t need any more tension between them. She should go have a bath. But her concern for him outweighed her common sense.
She slipped off her shoes and joined him on the terrace, her elbows resting on the top of the railing beside him as she considered the moon, a luminous crescent-shaped sliver that sat high in the sky.
“I’m sorry my father was so rude to you,” he said. “It was unacceptable. My brother’s death has hit him hard.”
“You and he lock horns.”
He lifted the glass in a mock salute. “A brilliant deduction.”
She let that slide. “I’m sorry about the Agieros,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry this is such a mess.”
