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CHAPTER SEVEN
Tor got the 911 text from Blythe when he was out on maneuvers and had to wait six hours to call her on the satellite phone.
Six hours of imagining successively grim scenarios.
"Tor?"
When he heard Blythe's voice, his knees nearly buckled with relief. "What has happened?"
"Janne thinks I have a thing for you." Blythe's tone said that would be the end of the world.
So, it took Tor a moment to realize that her 911 emergency was not in fact an emergency at all.
"You are aware that I spent that last six hours imagining the worst?" he asked through gritted teeth.
"What do you mean? What could be worse?" she asked, doing nothing for his ego and even less for his temper.
"You could have had an accident and be lying in a ditch somewhere. You could be sick." He didn't say cancer because he would not give that nebulous fear a voice. "Someone could be seriously ill or dead."
"Oh…I…I didn't mean to worry you like that. Everyone is fine. I'm fine," Blythe emphasized. "But she knows, Tor."
"Unless you have told her something, at best Janne suspects," Tor reassured Blythe grimly, still not over six hours of thinking wildly negative thoughts.
"Knows…suspects…what's the difference?"
"The difference is one is fact and the other supposition. Whatever risk you imagine to your relationship with Janne, it will not be realized over supposition."
"I'm not imagining things."
He ignored that blatant attempt to pick an argument.
"What makes you so worried she suspects something?" he forced himself to ask patiently.
"She asked me if I had a thing for you."
"And you said?"
"That she was ridiculous."
"Nice."
"Don't. You know it's not about you." She gusted out a sigh easily discerned across the satellite connection.
"Worst case scenario, you tell her we are friends with benefits and to butt out." It's what he'd done when Janne thought to advise him on his feelings for Blythe.
"I would never!"
He was aware. And now that his adrenalin wasn't spiking that awareness that Blythe was so committed to keeping their liaison a secret wasn't filling him with peace and light.
"I guess I asked one too many times if she'd had any news about you." Blythe spoke like admitting a deep, dark secret.
That surprised him. "I don't know why you ask her at all. You are more likely to have heard from me than my family."
"What to do you mean?"
"I contact the palace once a month."
"But you text me almost daily. And email me…" Her voice trailed off in confusion.
