Tommy?” and his voice scratched over his friend’s name, as always.
Frankie drew in a heaven-calm-me breath and slid her attention to where Tommy stood with his back to her. His head was angled to one side, listening intently, and there was something coiled about him. The hissing tension of a wild animal that sensed a hand reaching toward it, and couldn’t decide whether to strike or scram.
“Hiding,” she answered, and suffered the slice of Tommy’s cautionary glare over his shoulder. She arched a prove me wrong brow.
“Will he ever stop?” Jonah’s concern was sad.
“Even lone wolves have to eat,” she said.
Jonah hesitated. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means his basic needs will drive him out eventually.” She held Tommy’s stare, shaking her head at him. Honestly. This was bordering on absurd. “Basic needs like, I don’t know, a best friend.”
“I don’t think so,” Jonah said.
“Maybe,” she said, all false astonishment, “you both secretly want to talk to each other?”
Tommy faced her properly, his thunderous expression equal parts pleading and threatening. “Don’t,” he mouthed at her.
“You could try calling him,” she said, addressing them both.
“Yeah, right.” Jonah gave a wretched laugh, and her seams tore as Tommy flinched. “It wasn’t my friend who abandoned me. It was a prince. And he’s left me here.”
Tommy’s face went white.
“Tommy’s still—”
“No, he’s not,” Jonah cut her off. Not rude—Jonah was never rude—but measured like he’d thought about this long and hard. “My friend wouldn’t have done this to me. He’s different now. He has to be. He’s a prince. I get it. And I get that someone like me has no business being friends with a man like him.”
Frankie couldn’t bring herself to look at Tommy. “That’s not true. He’s—”
“Please, Frankie,” Jonah said in the tone equivalent to a hand over his eyes. “We both know there’s nowhere to go from here.”
Her throat ached. Tommy stood as motionless as a broken statue across the room.
“You’ve still got me, Jones,” she made herself say. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Yeah. Anytime.”
Hanging up, she turned back to the mirror and blindly picked up her mascara. The bathroom air felt thin, drained. The result of the sucker-punched cowboy behind her or Adam’s suffocating truth still pressed over her face like a pillow, she wasn’t sure.
“I guess that’s closure,” she said quietly, and glanced up to find Tommy gone.
Tossing the mascara in the sink, she pressed her face into her hands. Her fingers were shaking; her blood moved through her heart like oil. It was all too much. How was she supposed to hold it together tonight? Even Tommy, distracted by an upcoming night out and Jonah’s phone call, had known something wasn’t right with her when he’d walked in.
She looked up at a faint scuffing sound, and jumped to find that Kris had materialized behind her. He’d done something gorgeous to his hair, and his black shirt was both elegant and effortlessly casual, betraying the royal tailor had been put to good use.
He was frowning. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said, turning to face him.
His frown dug lower into his brow. “No, you’re not.”
“It’s been a big day.” She didn’t want to sound breathless; didn’t want to weaken now that he was finally here. But he moved in, arms sliding around her, and she practically collapsed into his embrace. He was strong, steady, and her tension melted away, fears drifting back into shadowed corners, and for a moment, she was just a quickening heartbeat in her lover’s arms.
Then her gut knotted and she tightened her hold around him. Her eyes squeezed shut, fingers bunching his shirt.
“You were gone when I woke this morning.” He spoke softly against her hair.
“Couldn’t sleep.” Suddenly, she hated that she’d crept out in the night. She could never get that time back. She should have stayed beside him, her hand in his as he slept. He was under threat and she’d chosen to be apart from him. Something heaved beneath her breastbone, a panicked flutter, and she pressed even harder against him.
His breath loosened, and a low beat of energy passed between them. His hand slipped to the base of her spine. “What’s going on, Frankie?”
Too much. She lifted her face. “Kiss me.”
The look he gave her said nice try, but his mouth sank over hers anyway. Gentle, nudging toward persistence. It was a kiss for a different time, the start of a languid weekend spent between his sheets. His palm passed over her shoulder, thumb slipping easily beneath her dress strap, and her