The Prince
“Kingsley?”
“Oui, mon ami?” Kingsley opened his eyes.
“I don’t want to know what you’re thinking about, do I?” Søren asked.
“You already know.” Kingsley tried and failed to mask the bitterness in his voice.
“Don’t hate her,” Søren ordered. “It’s me who hurt you. Hate me.”
The Rolls-Royce arrived at their destination—the airport, where a private plane awaited them both. The photograph of them that Kingsley had been sent…the original had been stored at Saint Ignatius, their old school. Not knowing where else to go, what else to do, Søren had decided to travel there and make discreet inquiries. Kingsley refused to let him go alone.
The chauffeur brought the car to a stop at the gate, got out and opened the door for them.
“Don’t worry, mon ami,” Kingsley said to Søren. “I do.”
SOUTH
Nora made a mental note that the next time she asked someone, “Have you seen Wesley Railey?” and they answered, “He’s in the stables,” she would follow up with, “Which of the seventeen goddamn stables are you referring to?” For two hours she wandered from barn to barn—all of them white with elegant red trim—seeking out Wesley and not finding him. The kid knew how to hide better than she did.
Kid... Nora made a second mental note, to stop thinking of Wesley as a kid or the kid or any kind of kid. She wouldn’t be hunting him through seven thousand identical stables if she could wrap her mind around the idea that Wesley was an adult now. Last night in his bed…she should have gone through with it. It’s what he’d wanted, what he deserved. But she’d been so shocked by the fact of his virginity that she’d freaked out last night, like she’d freaked out a year and a half ago, the last time they’d tried having sex. Supposedly, she was the one with all the sexual experience. So why was she the one who kept getting scared?
Finally, in barn number two million and thirty-five, she found Wesley in a stall, brushing the mane of the fattest horse she’d ever seen.
“Good Lord, what are you feeding that thing?” Nora gaped at the huge stomach on the red beast.
“Other horses.” Wesley didn’t even look at her.
“Please tell me you’re kidding.” She’d heard of cows being fed other cows, but she prayed horses didn’t eat other horses.
“I’m kidding. She’s only got one other horse in her.”
Nora sighed with relief. “Knocked up, huh?”
“Very. She’s due this week. Any minute now.”
Wesley ran the thick bristle brush over the mare’s back and the animal shivered in obvious pleasure.
“What’s her name?” Nora opened the stall door and stepped gently inside. Last thing she wanted to do was spook a pregnant horse.
“Track Beauty. Mom named her. She’s our top broodmare.”
Nora reached out and touched Track Beauty’s nose, smiling at the feel of velvet under her fingertips.
“She is a beauty…apart from the stomach.” Nora tried smiling at Wesley. He didn’t smile back.
“She’s Mom’s baby.”
“Mom’s other baby?” Nora teased.
Wesley shook his head. “Not even my mom sees me as a baby anymore. That’s just you.”
Nora exhaled heavily. “Wes…I don’t see you as a baby. Or as a kid. Or as anything other than a twenty-year-old drop-dead gorgeous guy who I adore.”
“You have a weird way of showing it.”
“And you have a weird way of…”
“What?” Wesley asked.
“Everything.” Nora ran her hands down Track Beauty’s back and over her swollen stomach. She couldn’t even imagine what this poor horse felt like, carrying another horse inside her body.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means…you, Wesley, are weird. You had a girlfriend, right? This Bridget person? How long were you together?”
Wesley shrugged. “A few months.”
“And you didn’t have sex with her?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
Wesley walked around Track Beauty and started brushing her other side. Nora rose up on her tiptoes to look at him over the horse’s back.
“Wesley…why didn’t you sleep with your girlfriend while you were with her?”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Bullshit.”
“What?”
Nora glared at him. “Bull…shit. You are a straight twenty-year-old guy. And I’m guessing this chick was a babe. Yes?”
Wesley paused before nodding. “She was—is—beautiful.”
Nora winced internally at the simple sincerity in his voice. Yes, she was a babe…wouldn’t have hurt. She was beautiful... That hurt.
“So why not?”
Wesley ran his hands over Track Beauty’s long neck. The mare turned her head and rested her nose against Wesley’s stomach.
“You really have to ask?”
“Guess so, since I’m asking.” Nora came around and stood next to Wesley. His body seemed taut with tension. The need to touch him nearly overwhelmed her, but she feared he’d pull away from her if she tried.
“Bridget was…” He paused and took a ragged breath. “She was something, Nora. Even you would have been all over this girl. Woman. Twenty-seven. Like old Hollywood beautiful. What are those skirts you wear to church sometimes? The tight ones that stop right about your knees?”