AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“But while we are discussing duties in support,” he said.
“I promised you that I would do my bit to stabilize the kingdom,” Griffin replied, a bit tightly. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Part of why I’m getting married is so that there can be no more gossip. No more innuendo. No more dating, Griffin. No more scandalous exploits. The next woman you are connected with I will expect you to marry, do you understand me?”
He thought there was something in his brother’s gaze then. Griffin looked...arrested, perhaps.
But he only swallowed, hard. Then nodded.
“As you wish, brother,” he said gruffly.
Orion turned again once Griffin left and found himself scowling out into the dark, past the lights of the city, down to where the nearly full moon danced along the waves of the Aegean.
The moonlight made a silvery path across the water, and he wished he could figure out a path through the mess this had all become as easily.
He had no idea how long he stood there, but when he heard the door to his office open again, he sighed.
“I have already told you,” he began, turning with every expectation of finding his brother there again.
But it was not Griffin who stood there.
It was Calista.
For a moment his mind blanked out. At first glance, she looked cool, impenetrable. She wore a sleek corporate outfit that made his mouth water. A pencil skirt that hugged her figure and a silk blouse that showed absolutely nothing of her beautiful breasts, yet made him so hungry for a taste of them that he thought he might shake with need. Another pair of those gloriously high, impractically dangerous shoes that did things to her calves a man could have written whole sonnets about.
Even her blond hair was ruthlessly controlled, wrenched back into something conservative and appropriate.
She looked absolutely ruthless from head to toe—except for her eyes.
They were as aquamarine as ever, blue and green and wild tonight.
Hectic, even.
“What are you doing here?” Orion asked coolly. “I assumed you had already made your choice. A week ago.”
She moved farther into the office, her hands clutching the strap of the bag over her shoulder, another sign that she was not as controlled as she wished to appear.
Though he dared not hope.
Hope had already gotten him in enough trouble.
“I did.”
Calista stopped, there on the other side of his desk, and he watched as she swallowed. Hard. And hated the part of him—that terrible weakness in him—that wanted to vault over the desk and hold her to him, as if he could somehow protect her from danger when the danger was her.
“Then I assumed we would march into our royal marriage the way most do,” he said, when it appeared she planned to say no more. “With cold reserve. A pretense of civility, when necessary. And after you provide me with an heir, we can repair to completely separate lives.”
Orion told himself he was imagining the look of misery on her face then, the one that matched the misery in him at the very notion—because of course he was imagining it. Because any possibility of something different between them was gone. She had said so herself.
It was his burden to bear that he had broken his vow and lost himself in the process. He had the rest of his life to mourn his one and only loss of control.
Or to dream about it in Technicolor detail, more like, a voice in him whispered.
“Tonight I went to the Skyros Media offices for the annual board meeting,” she told him, and he had the sense she was picking her words. That she was walking on eggshells he couldn’t see.
He frowned. “I thought you were fired.”
“From my position as vice president, yes.” She nodded. “But years ago, in an effort to cheat more effectively on his taxes, my father transferred shares of the company to members of the family. My sister sold me hers long ago, for a single shiny penny. My mother gave me hers in a lovely show of entirely feigned maternal support when I was promoted to vice president, something she has long regretted. That gave me, in total, forty-five percent of the company. My father has never concerned himself about that, because I’m so obedient. A tool for him to use, as I believe you put it so succinctly.”
