Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 50869 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 50869 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 254(@200wpm)___ 203(@250wpm)___ 170(@300wpm)
“You’re getting close to the paparazzi?”
“No, just Jack. When he gets a promotion, he’s going to ask his boyfriend to marry him.”
“You think they’d want to use the palace for the wedding?”
“Can we do that?” Her eyes get wide.
“I was teasing,” I chuckle. “But if you asked me, I don’t think I could tell you no.”
“Stop being sweet.” She knocks into me a little playfully. “You know what that does to me.” I fight a groan. So not the time to get a hard-on.
I introduce Mable to a few people she hasn’t gotten to meet yet. One being Mrs. Pembroke, with whom she falls into conversation. I enjoy listening to her talk about ideas. That mind of hers is always going.
“Caldwell.” Cordelia’s voice cuts through my thoughts. She glances at Mable, who is turned toward Mrs. Pembroke. “Can you?” She points back behind her. “The ambassador is asking about the eastern boundary again. You should reassure him.”
“Which?” I turn back to the reception. The library’s main hall is crowded with donors, scholars, and the usual collection of people who want something from my family. My parents circulate near the champagne table, my father’s hand on my mother’s elbow, guiding her through conversations.
“From Noveria.” I nod. Jackson. Cordelia stares at me, perfect posture, waiting for my answer.
She’s been invaluable on the land dispute—knows the players, the history, and how to navigate the bureaucratic maze. It’s been weeks of late nights, maps spread across my office, and people fighting over what they thought belonged to them. That’s the hard part. People keep showing up with deeds hundreds of years old.
It’s been inland for the past hundred. It will be a nightmare for my people who live on the border. Not to mention a solar project that we started out there a couple years back. We can’t lose the land.
“Of course,” I say and let her lead the way over to the ambassador.
The conversation drags. Cordelia handles most of it, deflecting, soothing, promising updates we’re still hoping to find. I nod at appropriate moments and scan the room for Mable.
The last time I spotted her, she’d been by the window talking to the librarian Vicky. The two have gotten close. Mable spends a lot of time here. They bonded instantly when Vicky told Mable we have the original Beatrix Potter manuscripts in our archives.
I glance toward the other window. Empty.
The hell? I should have had security come in.
I check the refreshment table. The gardens are visible through the glass doors.
Gone.
My chest tightens. Not concern. Not yet. Just... absence. Wrongness. The room feels unbalanced without her in it.
“Don’t you think?” Cordelia is saying words, but I can’t concentrate.
“Excuse me.” I step away before she can finish or I can explain.
I move through the crowd, nodding at greetings I don’t process. Mable is not in the main hall inside the corridor.
Where is she?
Panic hits suddenly like a physical blow. Only a handful of weeks together and she’s become essential; the thought that she might have left—that someone said something cruel, that she finally saw clearly and realizes I’m an obsessive man who stalks her whenever I’m away from her. Even if I’m only in my office.
Does it count as stalking if it’s your own home and cameras? I’ll keep the screen up while I work, and she is most often reading. It’s calming to know where she is.
I turn down the east corridor, going in the direction of the older wing, and I hear it. Laughter.
The children’s section is tucked in a back corner. When I round the last bookshelf, I stop.
She’s on the floor, her legs crossed, surrounded by seven children of various ages, holding open a picture book about a bear who loses his button. She’s reading aloud, doing voices, completely absorbed. The children lean into her, some with fingers in mouths, one small girl with her head on Mable’s knee.
She doesn’t see me. There’s no awareness of her being observed, no calculation of how this looks. Just her. Genuine. Present. Real in a way nothing else in my life has ever been.
That panic I was feeling begins to drain away, replaced by something heavier. Need. I fucking need her. The certainty that I would burn this entire building down if it meant keeping her.
Mable turns the page, all smiles, the private ones she thinks no one sees, and I feel it in my chest.
“Caldwell.” Cordelia’s voice comes from behind me, too fucking close. Annoyance fills me at her interruption. “There you are. Your mother—”
I don’t turn. “Give me a moment.”
“Caldwell, this is important. The ambassador—”
“It is being handled.” I finally look at her.
Her jaw tightens; that perfection she always wears is cracking. Something flickers in her eyes—frustration or something colder. Mable might be trying to give Cordelia a chance while I’m not paying attention, but the way she’s acting has my guard going up. “She’s charming the staff, yes. But this—” She gestures at Mable, at the children. “This isn’t queenly, Caldwell. This isn’t—”