Chapter Three
Emrys watched Caitlyn’s face carefully as he began to speak. He’d suspected that if he could lure her to him, she might not be able to make herself leave. This worked in his advantage, though that was all the advantage he would be getting here. Now, she sipped at her wine, tilted her head to the side, and eyed him curiously. It was a bit uncomfortable to have her sharp green eyes turned on him. His discomfort was inevitable, he supposed. It was good after all this time to simply feel it, instead of waiting eternally with the guilt of knowing her hurt was out there somewhere, intangibly existing in the abstract.
“Well? Are you going to explain?” Caitlyn pressed.
“I’ll try. I’m not sure you can really understand what the pressures of being in line for a throne are like.”
“You left me because of stress?” She pursed her lips and held her flute to the side.
“No.” Emrys sat and folded his hands on the table. “I did study acting at Oxford. That much was true—”
“I know. It’s on your Wikipedia page. But you didn’t just say you studied there. You said you were from England.” Caitlyn set her glass down so hard that a little champagne spilled out. “Why did you lie? And why didn’t you just tell me at the end it had to be over? It would have still hurt, but it would have hurt a lot less!”
“I didn’t know, Cait.” Emrys pinned her down with his gaze.
“You didn’t know you weren’t English? I can’t help you with that.”
Emrys slapped his hand hard against the table. “Let me finish!”
Caitlyn jumped and straightened in her seat. “Do finish, Your Highness.”
Emrys looked upon the hardness of her face. It didn’t suit her. What suited her was the rosy flush of her cheek in excitement, breathless sighs on her lips, and stars in her eyes.
“At the time, I believed I could do as I liked. I could go train as an actor, I could live my life, I could love as I wished. I enjoyed being an ordinary man. But when I returned home that summer, my father told me that I was to be married.” Emrys spread his hands at Caitlyn’s expression of alarm. “She wasn’t too thrilled about the prospect either, believe me. Miranda had another man in her life at the time, but both of us were compelled by our parents to take our engagement seriously. They’d announced it before either of us had heard a word of it.”
“That’s awful. What, did you just arrive home to find yourself at an engagement party?” Caitlyn leaned forward curiously.
“Not quite so dramatic, but near to. I arrived to be told by my father what was to happen. And we went along with it for a time. Miranda and I both played our roles well enough.” Emrys sighed. “I was so deeply ashamed, my Caitlyn. How could I keep trying to love you when I knew I had to marry soon? How could I ask you to tolerate my marrying another?”
Caitlyn touched his hand.
“I had a choice, of course. I could have told him no. I should have.” Emrys lifted her hand to his lips. “In the end, Miranda was the strong one in our relationship. She called it off and told them that marrying me would be like marrying her cousin, and she wouldn’t do it.”
Caitlyn’s brow furrowed. She looked so terribly conflicted. Emrys needed to turn that conflict in his favor.
“After that, I couldn’t bring myself to ask your forgiveness. We hadn’t spoken for nearly two years.”
“The joke’s on you, I guess,” Caitlyn managed in a thick voice. “I would have taken you back, even then.”
“And now?”
“I…I don’t know. I’ve spent so much time putting myself back together.” Caitlyn pulled back her hand, but Emrys held her fast. “What do I do? I can’t survive it again, Emrys. What happens if I forgive you, only to have another set of ‘matters’ come up?”
Emrys stroked her hand with his fingers. “I’ll have to work my hardest to earn back your trust.”
“How can you?” Caitlyn shook her head. “You’re an actor. And not a terrible one, in spite of the movie I just saw.”
Emrys laughed. “I’ll have to show you my deleted scenes. There was a whole plot cut from this one.”
“Well. Gotta make room for that drag race in the middle that made no narrative sense.”
“This is true.” Emrys topped off his champagne glass. “You must understand my position. I’m comfortable with what I earn as an actor, but my trust fund doesn’t mature for years yet. My father has seen to that.”
“He’s still annoyed with you for not marrying that Miranda,” Caitlyn guessed.
“Very. I’m allowed home, of course, but I’m quite independent. This is the cost.”
Caitlyn bowed her head slightly, then took a sip of the champagne. She seemed to be pondering his words deeply when their solitude was intruded upon by her friends appearing by their table.
“Hey! Look who’s a fan now!” said one, squeezing Caitlyn’s shoulders.
Caitlyn sneered back at her friend.
Emrys smiled and rose to speak to them. He turned on every bit of charm he had as he gave them a bow and answered their questions about the movie. One of them was so astonished that he didn’t actually have an American accent that she seemed to nearly fall over (though it may have been due to the champagne).
Amidst the flurry of giggles and friendly banter about Cait’s heel-turn regarding her feelings on his acting, her feelings did seem to be growing softer, and she smiled more, bit by bit.
***
“Come out with me,” Emrys urged Caitlyn, and she felt her breath hitch inside of her. “It’s my last night in town.”
The result was inevitable, Caitlyn supposed. She’d needed and wanted to reconnect with him for so long that she simply had to try, even if she hadn’t yet forgiven him. Caitlyn found herself giving Melinda a hug goodbye before following Emrys out of the party and to his car. It was an ice blue BMW, and she couldn’t help but run her fingers along the spotless hood.
“I can’t believe you have this.” Caitlyn shook her head and looked over to Emrys, taking in his crisp suit. “I can’t believe you’re wearing that.”
Emrys trailed his fingers down the front of his jacket. “Oh?”
“You never wore suits before,” Caitlyn pointed out. “You hardly ever wore pants without holes in them. I never thought I’d see you so dressed up.”
Emrys clicked his tongue. “My manager would have my head if I came to promotional events in ripped up jeans and a vintage vest. I’m a bit old to be dressing like I’m homeless, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know about that.” Caitlyn leaned back against the car and smoothed her hand over side of the hood. “I’ve seen plenty of pictures of fairly famous and sinfully rich actors who dress like they just rolled out of a dumpster.”
“It’s not my brand, Cait.” Emrys gestured one hand in the air. “I’m ‘quality.’”
“I don’t think that’s what your brand speaks to.” Caitlyn wrinkled her nose in amusement and shook her head. “I think it’s ‘naked.’”
Emrys’s brow furrowed in anger, just for a moment, but then he laughed low and deep in his throat.
“Maybe it is.” He came to her side and put his hand beside hers on the car. “You like this car, do you?”
“I’m just attracted to shiny pieces of equipment. You should see me in an Apple store.”
“Is that so? I wondered if you continued on with your plan.”
Caitlyn nodded and shrugged. “That’s me. Freelance web designer. I do the websites for a lot of small businesses.”
“And that’s enough to pay your bills?”
“More or less. There are a lot of start-up businesses right now, and while they aren’t the big accounts, I can set something usable up for them. It’s cheaper in the long run to pay me up front to design your site and take care of your branding and PR needs than to go through one of the sites that act as a middleman.”
“Then I suppose you got your money’s worth from your college education.”
“I make a living, and it’s kind of fun, and I get to have a life. That’s all I’m asking out of a career. I’d like to be able to continue to eat and pay rent and still be able to travel at least once a year.”
Emrys’s hand circled around her back. She let it and looked up into his eyes.
“It seems like you and I are both more practical than we once were,” he said, almost wistfully.
“I don’t see that as a bad thing.” Caitlyn avoided his gaze. She’d let him go this far. She didn’t need to start getting mushy and romantic over their past. “It’s good to have both of your feet on the ground.”
“That’s not always true,” Emrys objected.
“When?” Caitlyn rolled her eyes. “Tell me when exactly it’s good to not have your feet on the ground?”
Emrys leaned forward and turned her face towards his with two fingers. “When you’re dancing.”
Caitlyn lifted her chin defiantly. “I don’t dance. I’ll fall.”
“That sounds like a challenge.”
“Take it as what it is. I have two left feet. I can barely walk. I think it’s actually illegal for me to dance in 48 states.”
“Then maybe I’ll have to take you out of the country again to get you to dance.”
“I think I’ve done my travelling for the year.” Caitlyn looked away, smiling coyly at the bright skyline.
“Where have you been?” Emrys moved closer.
“Here, though it’s mostly been a working vacation so far. I live in Cincinnati, but Melinda lives here, so that was an easy trip to plan. Plus, I took a few weeks during the summer. Did a jazz crawl through Austin, then Houston, and finished up by meeting a few friends in Mexico.”
“I see.”
Caitlyn turned to him and looked him over. “What? Is your brand so straight-laced now that you can’t do jazz or drink tequila from the bottle?”
“One of those things would end with an unflattering picture in the tabloids, which I do try to avoid.” Emrys draped his arm around Caitlyn’s shoulders. “But maybe you could inform me better on where to find some decent jazz.”
Though Caitlyn was no expert—she’d only done the jazz crawl because it was featured as something to experience in the city she was traveling to—Melinda had mentioned a few places where she and Jaina tended to go on the weekends, so she pulled each up on her phone to see who would be playing, and located an address for Emrys to put into his GPS. It wasn’t a quick drive. Friday night in the city, traffic was madness.
But Emrys brought up that time that Caitlyn had practically impaled herself on one of the stone posts that lined the sidewalks in busy traffic areas of Paris. That led to the story about the man who had tried to grab Emrys’s messenger bag and failing that, had run away, calling him “bitch” over and over again. For what had been a barely two-month affair, their memories seemed endless. By the time they reached the club, Caitlyn felt her shoulders relaxing and her heart pounding.
The club was so dark that Caitlyn could barely see. Emrys took her arm to keep her from tripping. The band was already onstage, starting off with the blaring of a trumpet and a strong rhythmic beat beneath. The club was full, but Emrys turned to the host, and a table that had been roped off cleared quickly.
Over the sound of the music, they couldn’t talk much. Emrys ordered them some drinks, and Caitlyn pointed to items on the menu for the waiter. Emrys didn’t seem to be terribly impressed with the band, but Caitlyn bobbed her head along as the singers finally chimed in, and she smiled brightly when Emrys looked at her.
When they’d finished the number, Emrys leaned to her and said, “That looked suspiciously like dancing.”
“You know that it’s not because there was no falling.”
Emrys bumped her shoulder and held a fork of Louisiana crab cake for her to try. She’d seen him grimace at the food she’d ordered, but it was perfectly fried, perfectly Cajun. She liked it, even if he was feeling squeamish. It made her want to feed him something even more ruthlessly American.
Something about his face was ever so much more entertaining than the band, though she did enjoy the blend of sounds. He wasn’t appreciating it as much, and she could tell that he was really getting lost when the musicians syncopated the rhythm. The sax solo in particular caused his brows to screw together in bafflement, and the look caused Caitlyn to reached over and squeeze his knee, grinning wickedly.
“Should I have taken you to a hip hop club?”
“No.”
Emrys’s expression was stern, but he cracked a smile. Caitlyn smirked and held a buffalo shrimp to his lips.
“Didn’t we used to talk about wresting everything we could out of life? Try it.”
“Does wresting include heartburn and headaches?”
“Yes. It absolutely does.” Caitlyn pursed her lips. She sighed at his stiff posture and knocked back the rest of her drink. “I’ll be right back.”
Caitlyn slipped through the narrow spaces between the tables and headed into the back. She felt a bit lightheaded from the champagne and the cocktails and, in no small part, Emrys’s proximity. She had no idea if he was having a good time, but being near him now was no different than it had been then. She felt drawn to him. It was going to be next to impossible to say goodbye to him when it was finally time to go home. She probably wouldn’t see him for another five years, if ever again.
She was washing her hands in the women’s room when someone knocked on the door.
“Almost finished!” she called. The knock came again, and she shook her head with a bit of irritation. She spared a second to check her mascara and then went to open the door for the impatient person on the other side.
Emrys slipped in with her and locked the door behind him.