The Rebel King (All the King's Men Duet #2) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,121

mirror with her puffy, red-rimmed eyes. “Stop crying.”

I wash my face, and put on a nightgown and a heavy silk robe. It’s mine, but when I pull the collar to my nose, it smells like Maxim. I love that our scents, like our lives, have become so intertwined. There are traces of him at my apartment in D.C., and signs of me in his New York place, not too far from campaign headquarters.

A large bed, the centerpiece of the room, lures my tired body and racing mind. I sit cross-legged in the middle, resting my elbows on my knees. As soon as I’m still, the tears start again. I pass one embroidered sleeve across my cheek. A lot of people’s rent costs less than this robe Maxim brought back from a recent business trip to Hong Kong. Those trips will be impossible as soon as the race heats up.

I finger the expensive silk, run my hand over the brocaded quilt covering the bed, still tasting the wine from dinner. By my calculations, a ten-thousand-dollar vintage.

I grew up on a reservation. Yes, my father was a professor, but for the first thirteen years of my life, I lived with my mother in a tiny house surrounded, in many cases, by great need. As a young girl, watching my mother fight, I dreamt of more and better for the people I loved. I didn’t dream of prince charming and his castle, but seated in the middle of a bed that could easily sleep five, on a ranch that would swallow my entire childhood community, I realize I got both. Somehow I ended up eating with my enemy, sleeping in his home, and one day soon, I’m going to marry his son. And tonight, I did get more and better for the people I love.

Tonight, we won.

I think that’s why there are tears. When Maxim’s father said he would no longer put pipelines on protected grounds, it was a victory I didn’t ever think I would taste. And in this fight, the victims often outnumber the victories. For centuries, our dreams had no borders, our lives, no limits because everything we could see, as far as we could see, belonged to us. Now ours is a displaced dignity, constantly fighting for our place—every acre, every plot, precious. And tonight, just the tiniest bit of that was restored. In a trail of broken promises, tonight one was guaranteed.

The door opens and Maxim walks in. For just a second, my damp cheeks and red eyes make me self-conscious, but our glances connect, and the acceptance and devotion remind me I have nothing to hide or be ashamed of with this man. He closes the door, walks to the bed and sits on its edge.

“Hey, you.” He brushes the hair off my face, cups my cheek, and caresses my mouth with his thumb. “You okay?”

“Hey, you.” I trace his dark eyebrows with my finger, follow the sculpted bevel of bone at his cheek, and touch his full lips. “I’m good.”

“You sure? Did my father upset you? I know he can—”

“No, at no point tonight did he upset me. Not when he challenged me to resume my place with your campaign.” I drop my eyes to the richness of the silk robe. “Certainly not when he told me about the pipelines. I’m . . . I think I’m overwhelmed. I never expected it.”

“I don’t think he ever expected to actually do it,” Maxim says dryly. “It took a lot. He’s been working up to it.”

“You made him?”

“No. I told him if he didn’t accept you in my life, there wouldn’t be a place in mine for him. He said I could tell you there would be no more Cade pipelines.” He pauses, takes my hand, kisses the center of my palm. “I told him to tell you himself.”

It would have meant a lot coming from Maxim, but hearing it from Warren Cade, seeing him gulp down his pride, meant even more.

“Thank you,” I tell him, leaning forward to kiss his cheek. He immediately turns his head, captures my lips with his, and runs his hands down my back to palm my butt. I pull back, affecting a shocked expression. “Why, Mr. Cade! Not in your childhood bedroom.”

“My childhood bedroom? We’re not sleeping in a bassinette.”

I catch my bark of laughter in my hand. “Oh, my God. I don’t want to disturb your parents.”

“You won’t. Their bedroom is basically in another zip code, and I’m sure the walls