are you going to do?” she asked.
“You’re my personal assistant, I thought you might assist me.”
She laughed, her stomach tightening. “Well, cheating fiancées and doomed royal weddings aren’t really my forte.”
“I thought everything was your forte,” he said, treating her to a look that burned her down to her toes.
“After the wedding I’m leaving. You’re going to have another assistant. You’re going to have to get a little bit more self-sufficient.” It was probably the wrong time to bring that up, but she felt somewhat desolate about it. But she was done with university now, she had a business degree and had achieved most of it remotely while acting as Kairos’s assistant, a special privilege given to her since she’d been selected for the job.
She should be excited. Looking forward to the change this would bring. To the advantage she would have with a degree from a prestigious school and three years of work experience for the royal family of Petras.
Instead, she felt as though she was being ripped away from her home. Felt as though she would be leaving a part of herself behind.
“I don’t want another assistant,” he said, his voice rough.
“That’s just the alcohol and the emotional distress talking,” she said.
“Perhaps. But nothing says that alcohol and emotional distress aren’t honest.”
“Probably more honest than the general state of things.”
“Probably.” He studied her hard. “I like you,” he said, “I want you to know that.”
Her stomach tightened further, her breath rushing from her lungs in a gust. “Well, that’s flattering.”
“You have been the perfect assistant, Tabitha. You have more poise than many women who were raised by kings. You are smart, diplomatic, and most importantly, you have not slept with my brother. Or, if you have, it wasn’t captured on video.”
She thought of the devastatingly handsome Prince Andres, and felt nothing. Kairos was the only man who had ever tested her resolve. And he never even tried. “I can honestly tell you that Andres has never so much as tempted me.”
“Is there anything you do not excel at? Any skeletons in your closet?”
“I... You read my résumé.”
“Yes. If you recall, I read yours and that of several hundred other hopefuls. You were indeed the most suitable. Beyond that which I could have ever anticipated.” He set his glass of scotch down on his desk. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”
She couldn’t breathe. God help her, she couldn’t breathe. “See what?”
“Tabitha. I think you should marry me.”
* * *
“Tabitha, are you well?”
Tabitha started at the sound of Kairos’s voice. It was rare for her to be woken up by him. In fact, she couldn’t recall if she ever had been. He didn’t spend the night with her. He never had.
She opened her eyes, bright afternoon light filtering into her vision. She suddenly remembered where she was. Remembered that it was not that day when he first proposed, or any of the days in between that she’d spent as his wife. No, it was now. She was carrying his baby. They were divorcing.
The hopeful little ember that burned in her stomach, thanks to that dream, that memory, cooled.
“Not especially,” she said, pushing into a sitting position and scrubbing her hands over her eyes.
Suddenly, she felt self-conscious, childish because of the gesture. She was not in the habit of waking up in front of him. For all that they had a physical relationship, they had very little intimacy.
She dropped her hands to her sides, balling them into fists.
“I brought your clothing up. And everything else.”
“Did you...” She looked around the room. “Did you put it all away?”
“Yes. I was hardly going to ask you to do it. And as I said before, there are no servants in residence here.”
“You don’t have any service at all?”
“I occasionally employ the services of a chef. But for the purposes of this trip, some preprepared meals were brought along with your things.”
“It’s just you and me, then?”
He nodded, his dark gaze unreadable. “Yes.”
“On the whole island?”
“On the whole island,” he confirmed.
“Oh.”
“What?”
“I don’t think we’ve ever...really been alone before.”
“We are very often alone,” he said, frowning.
“In a palace filled with hundreds, in a building other people live in.”
“I have never kidnapped you before either. You’ve also never been pregnant with my baby. Oh, yes, and we have never been on the brink of divorce. So, a season of firsts. How nice to add this to the list.”
She stood up, stretching out her stiff muscles. “Where exactly do you get off being angry at me? We are here because of you.”
“I’m angry with you because this divorce is happening at your demand.”
“Had I not demanded we divorce, I wouldn’t be pregnant.”
“Had you not frozen me out of your bed perhaps you would have been pregnant a couple of months sooner.”
She gritted her teeth, reckless heat pouring through her veins. “How dare you?” She advanced on him, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close. “Don’t.”
Her protest was cut off by the press of his mouth against hers, hot and uncompromising, his tongue staking a claim as he took her deep, hard. She had no idea where these kinds of kisses had come from. Who this man was. This man who would spirit her away to a private island. Who kissed her like he was dying and her lips held his salvation.
It stood out in such sharp contrast to that kiss on their wedding night. The first time they had been alone in a bedroom like this. His kiss had been gentle then. Cool. She had waited for this moment. For heat to explode between them. Because she felt it. She had always felt it. It had been there from the moment she first walked into his office, no matter how hard she might try to deny it.
But everything he’d done had been so maddeningly measured, so unreasonably controlled. She had been shaking, from the inside out. With nerves, with desire. He had been gentle. Circumspect.
*
