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If only he knew how to let down his guard and fix it.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
Macey stood at her raised desk and typed furiously, trying to find the path through the dark web that led to a trafficking cell. She’d been consumed with finding these traffickers since she got home. Good thing, too—if she wasn’t working, she was crying. She cried as she ran the beach each morning, she cried while she lifted weights in Sutton’s home gym, she cried in the shower. She ate while she worked, so luckily she didn’t have to cry through meals.
When she’d walked out of the Traverse Hospital a week ago, she’d driven the beautiful McLaren she’d taken Kiera to the hospital in back to the castle, calling Sutton on the way and simply saying she needed a flight home. He asked questions. She had no answers. By the time she packed, leaving the gorgeous wedding ring on Tristan’s dresser, crying the entire time, and had a guard drive her to the Traverse Airport, Sutton had a chartered jet waiting.
It had only been a week, but she missed her castle, her family, and her prince. Ray. The tears pricked again, and she focused back on another dead end.
Dead ends. There had only been dead ends with the queen’s murder case, too. Maybe if she’d found some answers, Ray wouldn’t have sent her away. She’d replayed the stilted conversation so many times in her mind. Had he sent her away, or had she assumed and made it even messier and more confusing?
Footsteps came down the stairs. Male footsteps. She ignored whoever it was. They’d interrupt her if they needed to. Pushing her glasses further up her nose, she typed faster.
The urge to look in the small mirror that used to hang on the wall behind her monitor was nearly overwhelming. That was one benefit of her time with Ray in Augustine—she had developed bravery that had been nothing more than a mantra before her trip. Before Ray, she’d known who was coming down the stairs before the person hit the top step. And just for an added layer, she had placed a small mirror that allowed her to see what anyone behind her was doing.
On her first day back, she had thrown away the mirror and changed the monitor that used to show the stairs to a picture of a beautiful castle on a verdant mountain next to a waterfall. After about an hour and multiple sobbing sessions, she’d replaced the castle with an old school fish screensaver.
The person stopped behind her and didn’t move. Macey started to sweat. She could hear slow, even breathing, but none of her monitors reflected the room behind her. Had she made the wrong contact in the dark web or triggered the wrong person and now they had come for her?
No. Sutton and his people wouldn’t let anyone into the castle who wasn’t screened. She was safe here. It was one of Sutton’s guys needing help with something computer related.
She’d thought she could do it, that she wasn’t the little girl who crawled into the closet and hid behind musty clothes.
Brave, bold, and beautiful, she told herself.Take a deep breath.
Odd, but she smelled musk, bergamot, and apples. She was just uneasy with the person not moving or talking back there, so she must be imagining Ray’s scent to comfort herself. She dreamed of Ray far too often and had tried to summon him in this moment of alarm.
Macey forced herself to keep typing, but she didn’t even know what she was typing. She was probably making a mess of her own programming.
Summoning the confidence she had found in Augustine, she demanded, “Do you need something?” She did not look, did not turn around. Besides Liz, Sutton, Agatha, Gage, and Cassie, who all had plenty of questions for which she had no answers, no one else had dared to bug her lately.
“You.”
The deep, husky voice was as familiar as her own hand. The Augustine accent was clear in that one word. Macey’s hands stilled on the keyboard. Her body tensed and yet filled with heat.
He’d come.
She whirled to face him, pressing back against her desk and staring. Her breath whooshed out. Ray looked more incredible than she remembered. His blue eyes pierced into her and his handsome face was too serious. She wished she could make him smile. He was dressed in a dark gray suit with a red tie, a prince through and through.
And she was nerdy Macey Clifton, typing away in her basement in a too-big T-shirt, yoga pants, her hair in a severe bun, her glasses on for protection.
He looked her over and breathed out, “Ah, Macey … how I’ve longed for you.”
Her heart took off at a gallop. She pushed her glasses on firmer and then folded her arms across her chest.
He took a step closer.
“How is Tristan?” she asked. She’d seen the reports online, but she needed a deflection.
“Good. They think he’ll heal … for the most part. A lot of scarring, and it’s been a painful recovery, but he’s happy to not be so handsome.”
He smiled briefly then. That dimple appeared, and Macey’s knees went weak. He was here. Was he really here for her? Had he really missed her? He’d let her go so easily a week ago, hadn’t chased her down and declared his love. Not that she blamed him. It had been an awful night.
“Emotionally? He’s dealing all right?”
“Yeah. He’s tough. He’ll be all right.” He took another step toward her.
She wanted him to close the distance and at the same time she wasn’t ready.
