American Queen

Suddenly what Ash said back in the bedroom makes sense. Jealousy is a word with too many meanings. It’s a TARDIS of a word, bigger on the inside, a small, mean thing on the surface, but a complicated dance of emotions and negotiations within. I’m suffering with every single meaning of the word jealous.

I’m relieved that now I’m not the only one in this engagement that kept an important secret. I’m terrified of what happens next. Because really. What could possibly happen next? This was supposed to be my fairy tale, with me as the princess and Ash as the prince, but there’s a third person here, a person we both want and who wants both of us.

None of the fairy tales I read as a girl had three people.

My thoughts are interrupted by another groan from Ash, but he’s stepping back and adjusting himself inside his pants. Both men have bee-stung lips and wide, dark eyes, both men seem a little thunderstruck with each other, awed and incredulous and as yet unsatisfied.

“Merry Christmas, Embry,” Ash says in a roughened voice.

Embry’s voice is husky too. “Merry Christmas.”

Ash turns away, his thumb at his forehead and then touching his lips, and Embry stands stock still under the mistletoe as Ash leaves and walks toward the office. He stands there for several long minutes, his eyes on the hallway where Ash disappeared, and then he finally turns around and goes to his bedroom, his hands scrubbing through his hair.

And me, I’m left alone the cold hallway. Confused, wanting, hurt.

Jealous.

In love.

22

The Colchesters arrive Christmas morning, bringing presents (and bags of groceries since Ash’s mother refused to let anyone else prepare Christmas dinner.) She and I spend the day in the kitchen while Kay, Embry, and Ash huddle around the table and work. I’m hopeless with cooking—Grandpa had a full-time chef when I was a girl and my meal prep in college consisted of eggs and instant noodles—but even so, she gives me a big hug after dinner and proclaims me “one of the family.” And when she learns that my mother died when I was seven, she holds me tight, smelling like the piecrust she just rolled out and Elizabeth Taylor perfume, and tells me to call her Mama. I almost cry.

The day is so busy from start to finish that I never have time to bring up last night to either Embry or Ash, even though I can feel a kind of fracture in me, a fissure across the surface of my soul, and wisping from that fissure are all sorts of questions. Was that their first kiss? Do they kiss often?

Do they do more than kiss?

Have they fucked before, and are they fucking now?

It’s like I woke up and the world was sideways, but I’m the only one who notices. I’m dizzy and fragile and uncertain, while everyone else is as steady and normal as ever. Because the men don’t know that I know. And Embry doesn’t know that Ash knows about us. And probably there’s something else I don’t know, and what if it is that Ash and Embry are cheating on me with each other?

Is a kiss cheating?

Is it cheating if they haven’t fucked each other but want to?

And there go all the different jealousies again, flying like an evil witch’s monkeys to swarm my mind, filling my head with memories of the kiss and also images of them fucking. Fucking naked, fucking in their tuxedos, fucking in their army uniforms…

And at one point, that train of thought sent me to my bedroom with the excuse of a headache, although really I had to relieve another kind of ache, rucking up my sweater dress and pulling my panties aside the moment the door closed, coming in less than a minute to the image of those two strong bodies grinding together.

(And of course Ash knows—somehow—that I came without him, and I spend that night biting his belt while he switches my ass with nettles he found growing next to one of the lodges.)

The day after Christmas, the world explodes. There’s a pipeline leak in central Wyoming, and the day after that, a terrorist attack in Germany. Colombia falls apart, the VA reform bill needs to be reworked, and Ash is set to give an important speech on sex trafficking in front of the United Nations. And suddenly I go from having Ash and Embry all to myself to not seeing them at all. Both are hopping all over the country, both are working non-stop, and the one night I get to spend with Ash, he wraps his arms around me and falls asleep immediately, even before I’ve turned off the light.

Two weeks mostly without him, and I’m a fidgeting, daydreaming wreck, twirling my ring on my finger, sighing at the snow, sleeping in a shirt of his I borrowed and never returned. So when Ash invites me to join him and a few others—Merlin and Embry and the Secretary of State—at a public meeting between the United States and Carpathia in Geneva, I jump at the chance. Maybe I’ll finally find a way to extract the answers to all my questions.

At the very least, I can steal another shirt.

“Thank you for letting me bring Abilene.”

Ash looks up from his desk, a surprised smile lighting up his face. “You’re awake.”

Air Force One thrums around us, and I’m constitutionally unable to resist white noise and soothing vibrations. Once the plane took off, Ash insisted on tucking me in for a nap in the Executive Suite, a nap that lasted almost as long as the flight itself. I’m currently standing in the doorway holding my briefcase with one hand while the other tries to untangle my messy blond waves.

“I am, and I’m going to get some work done, but I thought I would tell you thank you first.”

“Of course.” He leans back in his chair. “I’ll probably be busy most of the trip. It seemed like it would be more fun for you to have your friend nearby. Speaking of…any chance you’ll reconsider the sleeping arrangements?”