Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Eric had come for her.
Not because there was a Masters’ Admiralty crisis.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
Not because she was in danger.
“There’s still time to cancel.”
He’d come because he loved her and wanted to be with her.
And she’d said no.
“She needs to fuck a stranger now more than ever,” Nyx declared from the phone.
That snapped Nikolett out of her own head and into the present.
Grigoris had been the one to ask if she was sure she wanted to do this. He was standing in the bathroom doorway, phone held up facing her so Nyx could “supervise” Nikolett’s date prep.
Nikolett, sitting at the vanity in the palatial bathroom in her suite, reached for mascara to finish applying her makeup.
Date.
She had a date in less than an hour. She’d never been on a date, and not just because for most of her life she’d assumed she wouldn’t be the one to find or choose her spouse.
Everything she knew about dating was from TV and movies.
“No,” Nikolett said in response to Grigoris’ question. “I’m not sure I want to do this. I’m not sure about much of anything anymore.”
That was a bit too honest. She winced.
“Nik.” He straightened. “Let’s reschedule this dinner and go home. The Spaniard isn’t coming to Paris. Even if he had been tempted by the possibility of attacking you in addition to taking the corporate espionage job, after last night, he knows how well protected you are.”
That morning, Grigoris, Raphael, and Regina had a tense discussion that stopped just short of being a fight.
If Regina had given them a heads-up that the fleet admiral was coming, they wouldn’t have assumed the camera feed hack and black SUVs were a threat and reacted accordingly.
Regina countered that everything she did was part of the Spartan Guard protocol, and she didn’t have to tell them anything if it might negatively affect the fleet admiral’s safety.
Nikolett had deliberately stayed out of it, though it had surprised her to hear how elaborate the Spartan Guard’s security protocols were. She wondered if Eric knew everything they did to protect him.
Eric.
The image of him standing on that balcony, his hair dark with rain, his eyes both shadowed and bright, was burned into her soul.
She’d live a thousand lifetimes and never forget the way he’d looked at her when he declared their relationship dead, then said he loved her and wanted to build something new with her.
Then he’d asked her to dinner in an almost-sheepish way that made him seem young and unsure when he was neither. It was adorably and oddly sexy.
She’d still said no.
The man she’d loved for years asked her out to dinner for the first time, and for once, she’d been smart. Protected her own heart.
And now she was about to have a meal with a man who wasn’t Eric.
She’d been sure she knew why he was in Paris and had been ready for the fight. His shock at learning the details of the Spaniard plan had surprised her. Regret and heartbreak stamped his features when she told him about her search for spouses.
Last night felt different. Not the fiery burning fight they’d had in the Long Room in Dublin, or even the cold, controlled confrontations they’d had while he held her in Triskelion Castle.
Last night, he’d been calm and focused when he told her what he wanted. Normally during a discussion about their relationship, his words came out shrouded in shame.
She’d been called bitchy and ruthless many times in her life, but with him, she always gave in and let emotion take control.
Except for last night. He’d finally done what she hoped and wished for—openly declared both his love and his desire for a future with her.
Instead of running into his arms, she’d wrapped herself in the cold, cold shell and been ruthless. She said no.
It was almost like they’d flipped, each taking on the other one’s emotional mantle.
She’d spent most of last night lying awake, going over and over their rain-soaked encounter, her emotions scattered and chaotic, like billiards after the first break. Some feelings bounced off the walls of her heart to ricochet and crack against another emotion.
And once she’d settled down, breathing deep and deliberately compartmentalizing all those scattered feelings, she’d been left with one emotion she just couldn’t put away.
Curiosity.
What changed?
She’d fallen asleep just after dawn, and when she woke up around lunch, her first thought had been why now? What changed?
Something momentous must have happened for Eric to go from savagely planning to marry her off to confessing his love and asking her to dinner. He’d flown to Paris, arguably neutral ground, with flowers and a plan.
She should let it go. Intellectually, she knew that it didn’t matter what had changed for him, because nothing had changed for her. He was still an ass whose past meant he wasn’t capable of a relationship.
An ass she wanted.
It had taken everything in her not to touch him last night. When he’d grabbed her—in an attempt to shake some sense into her, which was arguably the most normal part of the whole interaction—the flush of relief she felt at the contact had been quickly followed by need.
Maybe last night she could have said no to dinner but yes to sex. Use that to prove to both of them that on her end, the emotional entanglement was dead and buried, and the physical attraction was just a chemical and biological imperative.
That was a fool’s idea. She wasn’t capable of casual sex. Not when it came to Eric. She loved the intensity of their encounters. It was never simple. Always a battle. One she enjoyed even when she “lost.”
There was no shame in losing to a man like Eric.
That meant the only sane thing to do was to do exactly what she’d done last night: say no and walk away. Residual pain and rage made it easy to go cold. A cold so bitter it burned.
She’d held on to that anger and hurt with both hands to stop herself from doing what she really wanted, which was to goad and push him until he picked her up and kissed her. One of those hot, punishing kisses that gave her permission to let go and give in.
Nikolett was self-aware enough to acknowledge that she enjoyed the chaos, drama, and action that surrounded him. More importantly, she loved the feeling of fighting beside him almost as much as she enjoyed fighting with him.
She wasn’t built for a quiet, simple existence. She wanted someone who lived just as boldly and loudly as she did, unafraid of danger and refusing to turn away from any test.
In many ways, Eric was chaos.
But so was she.
Gripping the edge of the vanity, she stared at herself. She had to stop thinking about it. And if she did think about it, about him, focus only on that curiosity.
Above all, the one emotion she had to keep in the Pandora’s box of her mind was hope. A traitorous hope that had rooted while she slept and grown and flowered through the day as she went over and over what he’d said last night.
Our relationship up to now is over. Dead. Because we both want, and need, it that way.
Now we can try again. Grow something new.
If you give me a chance, Nikki, I will love the way you deserve to be loved.
The man she both loved and hated had promised her everything she could have wanted and more. If he’d said that months ago, even after Amalfi, she would have melted into his arms.
Instead, she was about to meet with a different man, a potential spouse, and she was trying desperately to convince her heart this wasn’t a betrayal.
She and Eric were a bad idea, drawn together but not like magnets. Magnets stuck and held.
She and Eric were pulled together like positively and negatively charged atoms—colliding only to ricochet apart in a deadly explosion.
She met her own gaze in the mirror. “No more Eric.”
She wouldn’t think about his promise to love her. Wouldn’t be distracted by curiosity around what had caused the seismic attitude shift.
No more.
Nikolett put her hair up in a simple twist, decided it looked too formal and left it loose, then went to change.
She’d originally planned on wearing a pair of very-wide-legged pants that fit over the cast, but the voluminous fabric swirled and clung as she moved.
The combo of swishy pants and the walking “shoe” strapped to her cast made her too likely to fall.
Given that Gus had already seen her cast—she was vaguely embarrassed with herself for sending that picture—she instead chose a tea-length skirt made of a jersey knit. The material was soft like pajamas and hung nicely. If she were to twirl, it would flare out. Fun, casual, and a little flirty.
She paired that with a boat-neck shirt in emerald green with three-quarter-length sleeves. Realizing she looked rather plain, she dug in her bag for her travel jewelry case and put on a set of slim gold bangles and small gold earrings.
She looked good. She could picture the way Eric’s eyes would have heated had he seen her. A look both appreciative and possessive in a way that made her want to fight him until he forced her to give in.
No thinking about Eric.
There were three possible objectives tonight: practice being emotional and physically intimate with someone who wasn’t Eric, assess Gus for membership, or straightforward fucking, no intimacy.
She wished she knew which objective was the right one.
Finally ready, she exited the bathroom, and then the bedroom, into the main room of the suite.
Iacob and Maxim were fiddling with a light and a picture frame respectively.
Nikolett spun on Grigoris. “No cameras.”
“They aren’t installing cameras.”
“I doubt they’re changing the light bulbs.”