American Prince

He finally meets my eyes as he blots his wet lips with the back of his hand. “She’s not sweeter than you, Greer. She’s not anything more than you.”

I don’t know what I want to say or what I want to do. I want him to pull out his neglected cock and fuck me into next week. I want to scream at him until my voice is hoarse. I want to push him back down to his knees and make him swear every vow under heaven to me.

I settle on doing nothing.

Embry steps back and closes his eyes. “I didn’t come here to fight or to fool around.”

“Why did you come here?”

“I wanted to tell you something before you heard it from anyone else. I wanted to tell you before you heard it from Abilene.”

Somehow, I know. Before he says anything else, before the words even really have time to sink in. I just know.

“Abilene’s pregnant. I’m asking for a paternity test to be sure, but there’s a chance it could be mine.”

I hate it in movies and TV shows when the hysterical heroine slaps someone. It’s melodramatic and sexist and ridiculous and yet, right now, I understand the urge more than I ever had. I’m so furious that my vision threatens to double, so shocked I want to lash out. My hand shakes and itches with the urge to strike him, shove him, throw things.

With great difficulty, I keep the violence restrained. I don’t hit him or scream at him, although I see in his pained face that he wishes I would. That he believes he’s owed punishment for this, which is reason enough not to give it to him. I won’t give him the satisfaction of feeling like he’s earned his way out of any amount of guilt, that he’s paid any kind of penance.

“Get out,” I say calmly.

“Greer.” He swallows, presses his lips together. Lips that were just between my legs. Lips that were between Abilene’s. I think of her stomach, of the place where it will begin to swell, which is the place where mine is flat. I think of the pregnancy tests I took in the White House bathroom with their sad, lonely blue lines.

“Get out,” I repeat.

“This wasn’t planned,” he says. “It wasn’t even—” He looks ill as he does it, but I can tell he’s stopping himself to avoid the truth again. “It wasn’t what I wanted,” he finishes instead.

“You should have thought of that before you fucked her. Get out.”

He runs a hand through his hair, bites his lip, and then surprisingly, he does what I ask without any further protest. He leaves. With a wounded blue look and a face carved into the shape of hurt, he leaves me without another word, walks out of my office with my taste still on his lips and my tear-pricked eyes on his back as he does.

I drop into a chair after he’s gone and will myself not to cry yet. I will. I will cry. Later when it hits me how deep and long-lasting this betrayal has become, but for right now—

Buzz.

It’s my phone again. With a sigh, I flip it over and see a New York number on the screen. I accept the call and hold the phone up to my ear with one hand while I try to press the tears back into my eyes with the other.

“Is this Greer Galloway?”

“This is she.”

The voice on the other end is apologetic. “I’m Officer Murphy from the NYPD. I’m calling to tell you that your grandfather died in the early hours of this morning.”

25

Embry

after

“Thanks for seeing me.”

Ash looks up from the folder he’s flipping through, sighs, and tosses it on the desk. “You’re my Vice President, Embry. I could hardly avoid seeing you if I wanted to.”

“Do you? Want to avoid me?”

Another sigh. “No. Of course not. I fucking miss you.”

I’m still hovering by the door, but this gives me the unaccountable urge to walk over to Ash and sink down to my knees. To lay my head in his lap. To have him stroke my hair and tell me it will be okay, that he loves me no matter what. And I don’t even want to be wrestled into it. I just want to fold myself into his surety, his constant strength.

But I can’t. Even without the stoic figures of the Secret Service outside the office’s windows, the truth is that I’ve lost that privilege. I lost it the moment I woke up in a bed with Abilene—maybe even the moment I walked into my mother’s library to find Morgan and Abilene waiting for me. I struck a deal with the devil, knowing full well what the consequences could be, knowing that I would appear faithless when I was being the most faithful of all.

The injustice of it all claws at me, and I walk over to a sofa by the fireplace and sit so Ash can’t see my face.

“How is she?” I ask.

“Devastated. Gutted. How do you think she is? He was a parent to her.”

I look down at my hands. My own father died when I was just a baby, replaced by Morgan’s father before I turned two. I have no experience with real grief.

“The funeral is Thursday, in case you were wondering,” Ash says. I hear the soft creak of his chair and the whisper of his dress shoes on the carpet. He comes to sit in front of me, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he does. I take a moment to admire the way his shirt hugs his flat stomach and pulls nicely around the hard lines of his chest.

Despite everything, his eyes blaze momentarily as he catches me watching him, but then we both remember the past six weeks and look away.

“I know when the funeral is,” I say. “I’ll be there.”

“You will? Oh. Abilene.”