The Prince

She turned around and walked away. But not before she looked back at him once and winked.

Wesley couldn’t stop smiling. Her eyes had turned black as night.

He started to follow her, but heard his father calling his name.

“What?” Wesley asked, sounding more peevish than he intended. His father glared at him. “Sorry. I mean, what is it?”

“Do you want to see this horse or not?”

Wesley decided answering truthfully would not win him any points in this situation.

“Yes. Totally. Let’s go.” Wesley and his father walked past the paddock to another set of stables.

“Where’s that woman of yours?”

“Dad, she’s my girlfriend, not ‘my woman.’ And you know her name is Nora.”

“Don’t care what her name is. Just want to know where she is.”

Wesley tried and failed to suppress the eye-rolling urge. Thank God he’d remembered to put his sunglasses back on. Nothing pissed his father off more than disrespect.

“She’s hanging out by the stables. She’ll behave herself.”

“I highly doubt that.”

Wesley highly doubted it, too. But with all the jockeys and trainers about, no way could Nora cause any riots. Only mild mayhem at most. Worst-case scenario was she’d offend a few jockeys with pony-play jokes. It would be a miracle if he could get her through the day without her testing out the riding crops on somebody.

They entered the stall where the mare his father wanted to look at stood pawing at the ground. High-strung and well-muscled, she would make a terrible companion horse, but probably could outrun any gelding on the field. The veterinarian and his father talked about her stats and vitals while Wesley pretended to read her pedigree. Good genes that went all the way back to Ruffian. If his dad knew what he was doing, he’d put the mare and Farewell to Charms together. They’d have one hell of a runner with that genetic cocktail, probably a Derby winner. Maybe even the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978. The money would pour into The Rails with a Triple Crown. The most famous horse farm in the industry would become a legend throughout the world.

And Wesley couldn’t care less.

“Son?”

“Huh?” Wesley looked at his father. “Oh, yeah. Could work.”

His father nodded, reading Wesley’s agreement in the blank expression on his face. A mare like this would cost money—lots of it. Wesley had learned his poker face early on. His father had enough money to buy and sell the entire state of Kentucky ten time times before breakfast, but he had all that money because he never spent a cent more than necessary.

The mare settled down long enough for Wesley to give her a pat on her flank. The horse’s taut muscle twitched under his hands. Feisty thing. She and Nora would get along well. Nora…a year and a half hadn’t changed her at all. He still couldn’t quite believe it had happened, poof, she was back in his life again. All that time apart disappeared in one instant, in one embrace, in one sentence she’d groaned in his ear when she’d wrapped her arms around him.

God, you need a haircut.

Wesley still couldn’t think about it without smiling. And yet he’d been so terrified at first. He still couldn’t quite believe Søren was allowing Nora to be with him. But as much as Wesley hated Søren, he couldn’t deny that the priest would do anything to protect the woman he considered his property, even giving her up.

Søren…who was he? For two years Nora had talked about the man, mourned his absence from her life and her bed, tried to hate him, tried to stay away from, tried to convince Wesley he wasn’t the monster he thought... But until this summer, Wesley had never met him. And as soon as he had, Wesley regretted it. Seeing that six-foot-four blond priest who looked like…looked like exactly the opposite of what he’d wanted him to look like.

Nora once tried to describe Søren to Wesley. “Think Sting plus Jeremy Irons, but taller, sexier, and scarier than both of them combined.”

“You’re not exaggerating a little, are you?”

“Wesley, I wouldn’t exaggerate or commit hyperbole for a billion dollars in a million years.”

“Nora.”

And that wild light in Nora’s eye had flickered and the smile faded from her face.

“He has the most beautiful mouth of any man I’ve ever seen…” she’d said then, talking more to herself than Wesley. “Tender…and cruel.”

“Tender and cruel? You sound like one of your own books now,” Wesley had teased, hoping to bring her smile back. It scared him when she got like this, when she looked past him instead of at him, and he knew she’d gone back to Søren. At least in her mind.

“Wait until you meet him,” she’d said, inhaling and forcing her smile back. “Then tell me how right I am.”

She’d been right.

Nora’s bedroom had been the last place Wesley expected to meet the man. When Wesley and Nora lived together, the temptation to sneak off one Sunday morning and attend Mass at Sacred Heart had nearly overwhelmed him at times. But something told him that would be a dangerous mistake. He knew Nora still loved her priest, and the last thing Wesley wanted to do was give the man the satisfaction of knowing he was intimidated by him.

Especially since Søren wasn’t remotely intimidated by Wesley.

But Wesley refused to be intimidated another minute more by Søren or Nora’s feelings for him.