Chapter 24 #2
“I feel guilty that I’m here now, halfway around the world, while he’s back in Belfast,” he continues.
He moves to sit in the chair across from me, but seems to reconsider at the last moment, choosing instead to sit on the sofa.
Not quite touching distance, but definitely closer than professionally appropriate.
“I feel guilty that I have a career that takes me away from him, even though he insists he doesn’t need looking after. ”
“Does he? Need looking after?”
Eoin’s lips twist in a complicated smile. “Not in the way I think. He’s more capable than anyone I know.”
Seeing the pride radiating from him causes a flash of jealousy to shoot through me.
What would it be like to have a man as capable as Eoin proud of you?
“But I still worry,” he continues. His hand rests on the sofa between us, close enough to touch if I shifted slightly. “It’s hard to break the habit of feeling responsible for someone.”
“I can imagine,” I say.
Eoin meets my gaze again. “Did you feel that way about your sister?”
The question lands like I’m the recipient of a particularly brutal rugby tackle. Amelia. The sister who colluded with Welsh nationalist terrorists to attempt to kill our brother Callum.
I don’t know what Eoin sees in my face because his brows come together.
“Forget I asked. It’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s…” My hand finds my signet ring, twisting it around my finger. “It’s just that I try not to think about her too much. Because it drove me crazy after it happened, wondering if I could have…helped somehow before it went so far. And it makes me wonder if you can ever truly know anyone.”
Amelia’s betrayal eviscerated me more than I’ve ever expressed to anyone.
Callum was the only other person who understood, but it wasn’t quite the same for him.
He’d grown up across the Atlantic Ocean from Amelia.
He hadn’t been there when Amelia and I had conspired to sneak extra puddings from the kitchen at Balmoral, when she’d covered for me missing curfew.
When our father died, Amelia had been almost three, and I’d been five. I still remember her hand clutching mine when we’d been forced to stand with our mother on St George’s chapel steps reviewing condolence flowers while photographers circled like vultures.
That image of us—two tiny figures in black holding hands against the vast stone building—became the defining shot of a nation’s collective grief.
Although the cameras missed how Amelia’s fingernails had drawn blood from my palm.
“You couldn’t have known what would happen,” Eoin says.
“Couldn’t I? We grew up together. How did I miss that my own sister contained so much cunning and ambition that she was prepared to participate in a murder plot against our brother?”
Eoin’s hand moves as if he might reach for me, then stops. Instead, he shifts closer, our knees almost touching.
“People can hide a lot, even from those closest to them.”
“Is that meant to be reassuring?” A bitter laugh escapes me. “Because it rather confirms my point about never really knowing anyone.”
“No,” he says quietly. “It just means people are complicated. The sister you knew growing up is still real. What came after doesn’t erase that. People can be many things. Most of us are.”
“So, we’re back to everyone containing multitudes? Marvelous. Though some people’s multitudes are rather more homicidal than others. I don’t recall Whitman mentioning that particular caveat.”
Eoin fights a smile now, but his eyes betray him, crinkling at the corners. I find myself leaning toward him unconsciously.
Because it appears that is my spectacular weakness: Eoin O’Connell happy.
I want him.
Especially now that I know exactly how good it feels to actually have him.
My expression must betray my thought process because Eoin’s eyes darken. His gaze drops to my lips for a moment before shifting back to my eyes. The humor fades from his expression, replaced by something more intense.
The air between us shifts, thickens.
The space between us has shrunk to nothing. I should move away, reestablish distance. But instead, I’m focused on small details of him, the slight fray at his collar where he must tug at it when frustrated, the way he’s breathing through his mouth now, careful and controlled.
We sit there, the unspoken thing between us expanding like some monstrous soufflé of suppressed desire.
I glance down. The space between our hands is two inches, maximum.
I said last night was a one-and-done thing. To get this out of our system.
And I know that’s what it should be.
If people find out about us, Eoin would be disciplined, at the very least. Even if he kept his job, he’d be reassigned to another protection team. I’d never get to see him.
Yet all that logic melts as soon as I meet his eyes. Those storm-gray irises seem to see through every layer of royal polish to the real me beneath.
“Nicholas.” My name in his mouth sounds like something sacred. The Irish lilt makes it new, makes it mine.
What does he want with me? What could this man possibly see in the spare heir with a reputation for champagne breakfasts and diplomatic incidents?
He’s risking so much. Is it just for the thrill to say he landed a prince? Or does he feel the same irresistible draw to me as I feel toward him?
It’s like being caught in an undertow. The surface looks calm, manageable, but underneath, there’s this relentless pull dragging me toward something that will absolutely drown us both.
I should move from this sofa now. Make a joke. Reestablish boundaries.
Instead, my hand moves those final inches, fingers brushing against his.
The contact causes sparks to fly up my arm.
He turns his palm up, catching my fingers with his own, and the simple intimacy steals my breath.
“This is a terrible idea,” I say, staring at our intertwined fingers but making no move to pull back.
“The worst,” he agrees, but his thumb is already stroking across my knuckles.
He brings our joined hands up between us, pressing his lips to my palm.
“Nicholas,” he says against my skin, and I feel the shape of my name more than hear it.
When he leans forward to kiss me, it’s different from our previous kisses. Slower, deeper, like he’s trying to memorize the taste of me. His free hand comes up to cradle my jaw, thumb brushing over my cheekbone.
Bloody hell, this will undo me. He’s not just kissing me like he wants and desires me. He’s kissing me like he treasures me too.
We kiss sweetly, but my body is definitely not focused on sweet.